No CrossRef data available.
Article contents
Extract
More than thirty years ago Professor Sylvain Lévi, in his excellent book Le Théatre Indien (1890), p. 361, suggested that the Śakāra, the ridiculous, brawling scoundrel of a king's brother-in-law (śyāla) in the Hindu drama, is in reality a Śaka, a type of the Scythian princes ruling during nearly four centuries in Western India, as seen from the Indian point of view. This very judicious suggestion was repeated by Professor Lévi some ten years later in a very interesting article in the Journal Asiatique, ix, 19 (1902), p. 123, and might be looked upon as being fairly well established though its author has not given any detailed proofs to support his hypothesis. No reasons whatsoever have been adduced by Professor Konow in his book Das indische Drama, p. 15, for rejecting this theory, and so we need scarcely regard his rejection more seriously than several other less well-founded assertions in his work.
- Type
- Articles
- Information
- Copyright
- Copyright © The Royal Asiatic Society 1925
References
page 238 note 1 Cf. Mémoires de la Société de Linguistique, xviii, p. 90.
page 238 note 2 Cf. also Professor von le Coq in the JRAS. 1909, p. 318.
page 238 note 3 A recent article by MrDivatian, in the JBBrAS., xxvi (1923), p. 159 seq.Google Scholar, which tries to invalidate one of the chief arguments of Professor Lüders, is scarcely worthy of any great attention.
page 239 note 1 Cf. the German edition, p. 259 seq.
page 239 note 2 Cf. Kielhorn's edition, ii, p. 259.
page 239 note 3 I am, unfortunately, not aware of what is meant by jaṇḍa ; the Siddh. Kaumudī gives jāḍāra, meaning the offspring of a blockhead (jaḍa).
page 239 note 4 Cf. Whitney, Sanskrit Grammar, § 1188d.
page 239 note 5 Cf. Macdonell, Vedic Grammar, p. 142, n. 1.
page 240 note 1 Cf. Zeitschr. d. deutschen morgenl. Ges., lxxi, p. 368, n. 4.
page 240 note 2 The form toχrī, preserved in an Uigur manuscript and frequently discussed by Messrs. F. W. K. M
ller, Sieg, Siegling, von Stael-Holstein, Konow, etc., cannot be of any absolute value for ascertaining the oldest form of the word Far more reliable must be forms like Tukhāra and Τχαροι.
page 240 note 3 One might suggest some sort of relationship with the word gandutava- (or possibly ˚mava), the name of a province in Arachosia, but the word is very uncertain; cf. Justi, , Grundriss der iranischen Philologie, ii, p. 430Google Scholar, and Bartholomæ, Altiranisches Woerterbuch, p. 489. The still unsolved problem of the word gandharva (Avesta gandar∂wa) may perhaps also present itself in this connexion.
page 241 note 1 Invasion of India, p. 69. This hypothesis is repeated by Yule and Burnell, Hobson-Jobson 2, p. 431.
page 241 note 2 Also atāra, which has no direct Indian counterpart.
page 241 note 3 Cf. Grundriss der iranischen Philologie, i : 2, pp. 169, 177.
page 241 note 4 Cf. Zur nordarischen Sprache und Literatur (1912), p. 139, and Hoernle, , Manuscript Remains of Buddhist Literature found in Eastern Turkestan, i, p. 338Google Scholar.
page 242 note 1 Cf. Le théatre indien, p. 361.
page 243 note 1 Cf. the articles on these rulers by Bhagwanlāl Indrājī and Professor Rapson, JRAS. 1890, p. 639 seq. ; i899, p. 357 seq.
page 243 note 2 Cf. Professor Lévi in the JA. 1902, i, p. 117 seq.
page 243 note 3 I am unable to find out to what passage the quotation xii, 130, in Konow, Das indische Drama, p. 15, refers; there is no such verse in Grosset's edition.
page 243 note 4 Cf. e.g. the paragraph in the treaty drawn up between Akbar and the Rājpūt chiefs of Bundī, according to which the latter were not to be forced to pass beyond Attock, v. Tod, Annals and Antiquities of Rājasthān, iii (ed. 1920), p. 1482Google Scholar ; Smith, Akbar, p. 99.
page 244 note 1 Cf. Smith, Oxford History of India, p. 151; but cf. now JA. 1923, ii, p. 201 seq.
page 244 note 2 Cf. JA. 1902, i, pp. 95–125.
page 244 note 3 Cf. loc. cit., p. 123.
page 245 note 1 Quite the opposite is the opinion of Messrs. Pisharoti in the Bulletin of the School of Oriental Studies, iii, p. 108Google Scholar ; but their reasons do not seem to be convincing as far as concerns this special question.
page 245 note 2 I refrain from considering in this connexion the appearance of the śyāla in the praveśaka of the sixth act of the Śakuntalā. For, even if we are still unable to settle the date of Kālidāsa with absolute precision, there can be little doubt that he belongs to the latter half of the fifth century A.D.
page 245 note 3 Cf. JRAS. 1923, pp. 593–607. Professor Keith's objections to this theory seem to me rather inconclusive.
page 245 note 4 The facts set forth by Messrs. Pisharoti had been forestalled to a certain degree by MrIyer, A. K. in his Cochin Tribes and Castes, ii, pp. 130, 132Google Scholar.
page 246 note 1 In the JRAS. 1923, p. 608, I have pointed to a passage in the Nāṭyaśāstra (xiii, 208–9) dealing with the different seats to be offered to persons of different rank. To ministers (amātya) a vetrāsana is to be offered. There is what seems to be a direct quotation from this passage in the Jātakamālā, p. 138, 12, where we find an amātyamukhyādhyāsanayogyaṃ vetrāsanam (cf. also Kumārasambhava, vi, 53). The lower date of the Jātakamālā is, of course, tolerably well fixed by the discovery by Professor Lüders of quotations from it in the caves of Ajaṇṭā dating from the sixth century (cf. Goett. Nachrichten, 1902, p. 758 seq. = IA. xxxii, p. 326 seq).