58

THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY.

book of the Taittiriya A'ranyaka is extant in two recensions which go by their name. Sashagiri Sastri's paper on Vikramāditya and Bhoja is rather superficial ; his assertion that the Brihat kathá is believed to be the same as the Khathâ

sarit Sāgara, and that the author of the Vasavadatta must therefore have flourished in the twelfth century, as he mentions the Brihatkathá, is particularly mis placed in this number, which contains, some pages before, Bühler's excellent remarks on the same sub ject. His paper on Kālidasa in No. XI. is better, especially as it contains some very valuable inform ation regarding a hitherto unknown work attributed to a person of Kãlidasa's celebrated name, and the commentary on it by a Nichulakaviyogindra. I send you here with my papers on the Jyotirvida bharana. In the first of them (page 727) I have pointed out the passage in Mallinatha's commentary on the Meghadūta, where he speaks of the poet Nichula as a friend, and of Dinnāga as an adver sary, of its author, and intimates that the fourteenth verse of that poem contains an allusion to both of them; and in the same paper I have also tried to deduce the consequences which would result from such a fact. The present discovery of a Nichula kavi as writing a commentary on a lexicographic production of a Sri-Kālidasa, and doing this at the instigation of a “Mahārājā Bhoja,” is indeed very curious. Which of the many Bhojas may be meant here 2

The Bengali Kirtans published by Beames in the same number are of the highest interest, as well as his notes and remarks on them. It is, for instance, a very curious coincidence that Bhojpuri, Bangali, and Oriya, that is to say, three quite modern Hindu dialects, have resorted again to the same expedient for the formation of the future tense as old Latin did more than 2,000 years earlier, viz., to the agglutination of the present tense of

• ...

Such an occurrence, or, one ought to say,

recurrence, is a striking evidence of the inherent consanguinity of the Aryan race and language, and of the inveterate and unchangeable character of them both.

Bhandarkar, in his paper on the date of the

Mahābhārata, makes good use of the Mahābhāshya. And I hope shortly to be able to follow him, as soon as I get the edition of this work issued this sum mer in Banāras. I have always considered the publication of this work as one of the greatest services which could be rendered to Sanskrit philo logy, and I am very glad that it has come at last. It is true that, according to the statements of Hari's Våkyapadiya, as given by Goldstücker in his

[FEBRUARY, 1873.

mony will always be of great value, though not perhaps exactly decisive for Patanjali's time itself. I am very curious to know if really no direct allusions to the Ramayana will be met in it, as this would be very favourable to my conjecture regard ing the comparatively late age of this work. With regard to the Mahabharata, the mentioning of Janamejaya and Dushyanta is not restricted to the Aitareya Brahmana, which alone is adduced by Bhandarkar, but they are mentioned also in the Satapatha Brähmana, which contains moreover

(partly relying on the Vājas. Sanhitá and coincid ing with the Taitt. Samhita, and the Kāthaka) quite a number of allusions to other names and personages who play a prominent part in the story, especially in the great war of the Mahābharata, viz., Nagrajit, Satánika, Ambá, Ambikä, Ambālikā, Subhadra in Kâmpila (?), Arjuna and Phälguna (but as names of Indra !), Bhimasena, Ugrasena, and Srutasena as three brothers of Janamejaya (compare Iudische Stu dien, I. 189-207, and my lectures on Indian Literature [1852], pp. 110, 130-33, 175-7). The Kāthaka has a

legend about Dhritarāshtra Vaichitravirya (Indische Studien, III. 469). The Sankhāyana sūtra (XV. 16) speaks of an expulsion of the Kurus from the

Kurukshetra, “Kuravah Kurukshetrad chyoshy ante.” There can be no doubt, therefore, that in the time of this work, as well as in that of Pánini,

the main story of the Mahabharata had already firm existence, and probably also even then in a poetical form. The Buddhist legends, too (I mean those treating of Buddha's life-time and his jatakas, former births), contain direct allu sions to some of these and to other personages of

the same epic circle. But all this does not help to fix the age of the Mahabharata itself, which has grown out from the songs of the minstrels at the courts of the petty rājās of Hindustan, and probably

got its first form (it contains itself a tradition [I. 81] that formerly it consisted only of 8,800 verses) under the hands of either a Vaisampāyana or a Părăsarya (see my Indische Skizzen, p. 36), at a time when a race of Pandava kings was reigning in India (Indische Studien, II. 403), and in friendly con nection with the Yavana kings of north-western In dia; for the Yavanadhipa Bhagadatta, king of Maru and Naraka (very probably Apollodotos, about 160

before Christ), is called by Krishna “an old friend of the father of Yudhishthira (Mahabharata, II. 578; Indische Studien, W. 152), and is mentioned

repeatedly as supporter of his sake. The age of the grihya sūtra, in which the passage occurs—Suman tu Jaimini-Vaisampāyana-Paila-sătra-bhāshya-bhā rata-mahabharata dharmāchāryah . . tripyantu–is itself uncertain : the corresponding passage in the

“Pānini,” and corrected by Stenzler and myself

Sánkhāyana-grihya omits the words “bhārata-ma

(Indische Studien, W. 166, 187), and according to those of the Rājatarangini, I. 176, IV. 487 (ibid. V. 166, 167), the Mahābhāshya in its present

hābhārata-dharmāchāryah" (compare my lectures on Ind. Lit., pp. 56-57), which may be a later

form appears to have undergone much remodelling

tioned also by Pānini, I have pointed out very early (Indische Studien, I. 148); but I remarked at

by “Chandrāchāryadibhih.”

But still its testi

addition.

That the word “mahābhārata” is men