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THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY.

[JULY, 1873.

CORRESPONDENCE, &c. PROFESSOR WEBER ON PATANJALI, &c. SIR,-Let me offer you my thanks for having given to your readers a translation of my lucubra tions on the date of Patañjali.” True, I should have liked to see it given in full, with all the

copious annotations, and also with my treatment of that important passage from the Wikyapadłyam

about the melancholy fate that befell the Mahd bhāshya for some time. But as your space is limited, I easily conceive that you could not well afford to devote more of it to this discussion.

Doing it, you have, dishtyd, elicited from Prof. Bhāndārkar some very able and pertinent re marks, and I am glad to acknowledge the scho larly skill displayed by him in handling the sub ject. He begins by saying that he “hardly shares in the regret” I had expressed with regard to his not having been aware of the fact that I had ten years ago treated the same subject, as his “facts were new, and his conclusions not affected by anything” I had said formerly, and I beg therefore to inquire first somewhat deeper into the merits of

study is going forward, begun, not yet finished; for when they are not studying, being engaged in eating and other like things, the use of the word “we study” seems not proper, therefore an ex press statement is required. The meaning of this is : the present tense may be used as well of short actions which are really going on at the very moment of speaking, as of prolonged actions which are for a certain time in the course of going on and not yet finished, though they may be inter rupted for a time by other business, such as studying a certain system, staying at a given place, sacrificing for Pushpamitra. Are we now really ob liged to draw from this last example Prof. Bhāndār kar's conclusion that this sacrificing for Pushpa mitra was “not yet finished”—at the time Patañjali wrote, was “still going on ”? If we did not know anything of an individual of the name of Pushpa mitra, we should no doubt take the word simply as a common proper name in the sense of Gajus,

Calpurnius, Sempronius, like Vishnumitra (see

The example: “iha Pushpam it ran yāja

Mahābhāshya, p. 233, ed. Ballantyne). It is there. fore of the highest importance that we get from another passage Patañjali's precise notion (and this fact was adduced first by myself), that the Push

yāmah” is no doubt new, as it was neither noticed

p a mitr a spoken of by him was really a king,

this rather blunt rebuff.

by Goldstücker nor by myself, but the question

and a noted king too, as it seems, as distinguish

is, does it really conveys that meaning which Prof. Bhāliqārkar gives to it—“that at the time Patafi jali wrote there lived a person Pushpamitra, and a great sacrifice was being performed for him and under his orders”? The whole passage, rendered by him somewhat obscurely, is to be translated as follows. Pánini (III. 2, 123); lat (the present tense) is used when something is going on;– Kútſdyana : they should be taught with regard to the not-being-finished (i.e. continuation) of an action going forward (i.e. to use lat also when an

ed as Chandra g up t a, no doubt the Savópo

of the Brahmans; and of his ačvamedha even Kāli dāsa takes notice in one of his dramas. This

action going forward is not yet finished, merely stopped), as it is not going on;–Patañjali: “they

a name which recurs under the Brahmanic fa.

should . . . . action” (i.e. to use it also in the following cases): here we study—ihá'dhámahe, here we stay—iha vasāmah; here we sacrifice for Push

pamitra—iha Pushpamitrath yºjayāmah. What is the reason P. It is not clear (wants to be stated expressly), “as it is not going on; ”—Kaſyafa :

Komros of the Greeks, along with whom he is

mentioned,—distinguished, as this example, “iha Pushpamitram y(Jaydmah,” as well as a similar one

happily broughtforward by Prof. Bhāndārkar (p.69), shows, especially also for his sacrifices. And this agrees well with what we know from other sources of a king of that name,t as the tradition of the Buddhists affirms, that he was a staunch friend

dynasty is called in the Purānas that of the Suñgis, milies and teachers of the Sūtrā-period, in the

Sātyāyana, Asvaldyána, and Nidāna Sátras, as well as in Pālini (IV. 1, 117), and which has probably accrued to Pushpamitra, its founder, from his spi ritual affiliation by one of his gurus (just as Śā

“here we study,” so (one is to say as long as) the

kyamuni is called Gautama for a similar reason, see Ind. Stud. X. 73), or from the sacrificial cus.

• There is one passage in which the translator, who has

it thus, though the other form given by the northern Bud.

done his work in other respects to my full satisfaction, has missed my meaning : I refer to the passage on page 63a. about Kaiyyata, whom I do not call “contemporary of the author of the Trikāndašesha and of Hemachandra,” but

• “supported by the author of the Trikāndasesha and by

dhists, Pushyamitra, as a mºkshatra name, would seem to merit the preference in a royal name.

Hemachandra (dem sich moch der Verfasser des Tri.

kåndasesha und Hemachandra zugesellen). t. As I am informed by Prof. Bühler that the Jainas spell the name as Pupphamitta, I join now too in reading

1. According to the Aśoka-Avadana (Burnouf, Introduc. tion à l’Histoire , du Buddhism, I, 431,432), he offered for each head of a Sramana a hundred dināras, and got for this his persecution from the Buddhists the nickname— ºn unihata, “ celui qui a mis a mort les solitaires.”

He is considered there as the last of the race of the Mauryas (!).