FEBRUARY, 1873.]

CORRESPONDENCE, &c.

verbs with ne—a construction which, it should be noted, is rejected in speaking by at least one-half of those who use the language. It is, however, wrong to call the form of the conjunctive parti ciple in e—as kiye, live, &c.—“ an irregular form,” it being in reality the original form of this participle, and derived from the locative of the Sanskrit past participle in ta, as krite, yāte, &c., and some centuries older than the modern forms in

ke, kar, and karke. In fact, a group of ancient and much-used verbs has retained the older form, which has almost dropped out of use in other verbs. It is amusing to see the respect with which, on page 113 (note), the inaccuracies of the Băgh-oBáhar and its fellows are treated. They are elevated to the dignity of a crabbed passage in Thucydides, and the blunders of the ignorant manshi are treated with the same respect as we should accord to the genuine phrases of the idiomatic Greek historian. The construction with me is really so modern and artificial an invention, that it is extremely common to find natives misusing it.

57

Our space will not allow us to go page by page through this interesting book. The syntax is parti cularly good, bringing out in the clearest and most refreshingly intelligent way, in spite of occasional misapprehensions, the many-sided expressiveness of a language which has no parellel for vivacity and graceful turns of phrase, except in the most polished Parisian French. We conclude, then, by congratulating Professor Dowson on having writ ten by far the best Urdu Grammar that has yet appeared, and having thus rendered the acquisition of the most elegant and useful of all the Indian vernaculars both easy and pleasant to the student ; and if he pursues, as we hope he may, his task of editing a complete series of educational works, we would recommend him to write to some one in India

for a selection of genuine native works, such as are current among the people, and not to content himself with the threadbare and indecent trash

which Forbes has raised to the position of Classics. Professor Dowson's Grammar is a distinct advance

on Forbes; his texts should also be an advance.—J. B.

CORRESPONDENCE AND MISCELLANEA. REMARKS ON PARTS X. AND XI.

By Prof. WEBER, BERLIN.

To the Editor of the Indian Antiquary.

SIR-I beg to offer you some observations on Nos. X. and XI. of your Indian Antiquary, as they are very full of important and interesting communications.

I begin with the paper of B. G. Bhandarkar on the Date of Patanjali. Clever as it is, it is a great pity that its author was not aware that I treated the

same subject ten years ago in my critique of Gold stücker's “Pānini” (Indische Studien, W. 150 ft.). Patanjali's mentioning the Pushyamitra Sabhá (thus, Pushyamitra, not Pushpamitra, is the name, according to the northern Buddhists) and the Chan dragupta Sabhā is already noticed there. But the

question regarding his age does not depend upon this only, but has further light thrown upon it when we adduce and criticise the testimonies of the

Vákyapadiya and the Rājatarañgini as quoted by Goldstücker; and the final conclusion at which I

is also of the greatest interest. Last winter Burnell too found a copy of the same work in Telinga character: a comparison of both versions will no doubt yield much critical help for the restoration of the text, and for the correction of Somadeva's later work.

There

can scarcely be a doubt that the Bhūtabháshá of Gunādhya's original composition, according to Dandin's testimony on the Pais'échabhāshā, in which it was written according to Kshemendra and Soma deva, is but a Brahmanical slur on the fact that Gunādhya was a Buddhist and wrote in Pāli (Mr. Gorrey, in a very clever critique on my paper on the Saptas'atakam of Håla, in the Journal Asiatique, Aout-Sept. 1872, p. 217, arrives at nearly the same conclusion ; even Somadeva's work contains some direct

allusions to the

Buddhist

Játakas

(65, 45,72, 120 ed. Brockhaus); and the Buddhist character of many of its tales is quite manifest (see my Indische Streifen, II, 367). The more we learn of the Játakas, the more numerous are the stories

shown to be which are found in India

arrive is, that Patanjali lived about 25 after Christ. There is, after all, only one point in this argument which requires further elucidation. Kern, in his

for the first time, and never afterwards appear in

excellent preface to his edition of Varāhamihira's Brihat Sanhitā (pp. 37, 38), refers the passage “arunad Yavano Mādhyamikán,” not to the Bud dhist sect of that name, but to a people in middle India, mentioned in the Brihats. 14, 2 (see also Sankshepas'ankarajaya, 15, 156, in Aufrecht's Cata logue of the Sanskrit MSS. of the Bodleian Library,

dhists from the Greeks, but arranged by them in their

p.2586).

engaged in literary pursuits, is manifest from the fact that, according to Sāyana, the last (tenth)

Bühler's paper on the Vrihatkathá of Kshemendra

the Brahmanical fable-and-tale collections. Some of

them are originally AEsopic, borrowed by the Bud own way (see Indische Studien, III. 356-61). The passage from Kumārila's Tantravārttika, which forms the subject of Burnell's very valuable communication, was pointed out previously by Colebrooke (Misc. Essays, I. 315). That the Andhra and Drávida Brähmans were in early times fully