THE following translation* is made from tlie reofini edition of Bhartrihari's Nttiial and Yairdgyisaiakam by KAshinath Trhnbak Telang, M.A., LL.B.f In tlie introduction pre- fixed to bis edition he maintains " the tradition of king Bhartrihari's lull authorship of these works." He then arrives at the conclusion that our author flourished about the close of the first •and the beginninu of the second century of tha Christian era." It is unnecessary to recapitulate his arguments here, as No. XL of the Bombay Sanskrit Series may be presumed to be in the hands of most readers of the Antiquary.

I proceed to extract from Lassen's Indische Alterihumskunde (vol. II. p. 1174) some remarks on these poems and their authorship. " The opinion I before expressed, that the date of the composition of the three hundred short poems which by universal tradition are ascribed to Bhartrihari, must be placed before the over- throw of the older Gupta dynasty, J is of course untenable if the passage in which Buddha is represented as a tenth incarnation of Vishnu really formed part of the original collection, but I have already remarked above that the earliest evidence of the reception of S « k y a M n n i among the incarnations of the Brahnmnic god is

• The Sentences of Bhartribari have already appeared in more than one European dress. J' . u jmliLiahed 11 version with a commentary a*' Berli"; GalanoB translated, them into trreek under tin: Ivbutwv ^.tra'i'pinTrtfsv HpoJlpouof, • »■ K- Typaldos at Athens, l^to ; and H. l-'ttucbe gave a French version in 1852. — Eu.

to be found in an inscription of the tenth century, and that the passage in question must therefore be regarded as an interpolation. Another al- lusion, i.e. to thePuranasas containing doctrines to which the author attaches no value, cannot help us to fix his date, as we may understand by the expression the older works that passed under that title.§ I base ray opinion that the jwems in question must be referred to so early a period principally npon their great literary merits, which render them conspicuous among roductions of the Indian mnse. They place before us in terse and pithy language the Indian views abont the chief aspirations of youth, manhood, and old age, about love, about concerns with things of this world, and about retirement from them into lonely contemplation. They contain a rich store of charming descriptions of lovers and their various states of feeling; of shrewd and pointed remarks about human life, about the worth of virtue and the evils of •vice, and of sage reflections on the happiness of ascetics, who in their lonely retirement contem- plate all things with indifference. On account of the perfect art with which they are composed, these short poems are worthy of being ranked among the masterpieces of Indian geni us. Some

f The poem* are also to he found in HabcrhV* Anth/Aoay W. Thaeker a- C. 1847)- Tins seems to be the > used by J'rofessor Laa»en.

X ic heforo the end of (to third century after Chrst.

§ Of which Lasaen supposes the present eighteen Pnri- nai to be a