In offering to the learned public a specimen of a translation of the Âdi Granth (or first holy book of the Sikhs), we premise a few words on the language in which that work is composed, as hitherto wrong notions have been entertained on this point. The language of the Âdi Granth is not the old Hindî, as has been recently stated, if the old Hindî (if it may be called so) is taken identical with the Hinduî, the language of the middle age of India, from which the present Hindî has sprung, and which is now nearly extinct. Even the learned Garcin de Tassy was of opinion that the Âdi Granth was written in Hinduî, but he had apparently not paid any attention to the study of this work, and his statement can, therefore, be only a surmise.

The two Játakas I here lay before the public contain, as will be seen, two fables which, in the tale that forms the framework of the second book of the Pancatantra, were combined into one. Only the main features, however, are the same, the details differing greatly; and the same is the case in all the other tales which the Játakas have in common with the Pancatantra and the Hitopadeça. But, as the MSS. of these two works disagree so much that there are almost as many texts as there are MSS. (“ut pœne quot codices, tot textus esse dicere possis,” Kosegarten, p. vi), new editions of both of them, based on the oldest MSS. that can be found in India, would be of great value; and if once the oldest MS. in existence had been discovered, I should particularly recommend its publication without any alloy from other MSS., that we might be sure we have one clear, self-consistent text. I think that if this had been done, the similarity between the Singhalese (Pali) and the continental (Sanscrit) fables would appear greater; the Pancatantra being originally, as Prof. Benfey has clearly shown, a Buddhistic work. If we look at the first of the two following fables, it will be seen that the truth to be expounded is the old one, couched by Sallust (Jugurtha 10), in the words, concordia parvse res crescunt, discordia maxumse dilabuntur, or in modern form: union is strength, disunion weakness.

I have given in the following pages some of the results of a careful study of the text of Dhammapada, rendered necessary by the preparation of a Páli Dictionary. In endeavouring to elucidate some of the obscure or difficult points of this important text, I have given prominence to a few passages enabling me to test the theory of Nirvâna which I propounded last year in the columns of a periodical.

Travellers from the city of Peking to the town of Kalgan on the great wall of China, must make the journey by the rugged defile known as the Nankow Pass. Five miles north of the entrance, where the village of Nankow stands, is the smaller village of Keu-yung kwan. Fortifications there run up the steep slopes of the mountains on both sides of the valley; and besides arched gateways at the two ends of the village, the highway passes under a limestone archway of a much more striking appearance. This is covered with mythological and symbolic sculptures of obviously Indian origin. The tradition of the natives in the neighbourhood asserts it to have been the basement story of a pagoda which stood there; and the name by which it is still designated, Kwŏ keae t'à, “Pagoda crossing the street,” bears out the statement. We are told that this pagoda, though erected for the benefit of the locality, proved an object of such terror to the superstitious Mongols, coming south from their native wilds, that they could not be induced to pass under the ominous-looking structure; and thus it was found necessary in the early part of the Ming dynasty, to remove the upper stories of the erection; the policy of the government being to conciliate and attract these wild nomades.

The eastern half of the Narbadda district, the Çoṇa, Orissa, Vanga, Suhma, Kalinga, Balkh, the Scythians, Greeks, Magadhas, Çabaras, Prâgjyotisha, the Chinese, Kâmbojas, Mekalas, Kirâtas, Viṭakas, the people beyond and within the Mountains, the Pulindas, the eastern half of the Draviḍas, the south bank of the Jamnâ, Campâ, Udumbara, Kauçâmbi, Cedi, Vindhya forest, Kalinga, Puṇḍra, Mounts Golângûla, Çrîparvata, Bardwân, the river Ikshumatî; moreover, robbers, Pârata, wildernesses, herdsmen, seeds, grains in husks, pungent substances (pepper, etc.), trees, gold, fire, poison, heroes, medicines, physicians, quadrupeds, ploughmen, princes, evil-doers, chiefs on march, thieves, beasts of prey, woods, renowned men and bravoes; of all these the Sun is the lord.

1. Each year (during which Jupiter completes a twelfth part of his revolution) has to bear the name of the lunar mansion in which he rises; the years follow each other in the same order as the lunar months.

About eighteen months ago I was engaged in preparing an edition of Brahmajála Sutta, and of Buddhaghosa's commentary upon it which forms the first section of the Sumaṅgala Vilásiní. Buddhaghosa's commentary upon Brahmajála Sutta is one of the most important of his writings, since it contains a detailed account of the First General Council, held immediately after Buddha's death for the purpose of settling the text of the Buddhist Scriptures. Intending to publish this work in the same volume with the Brahmajála which it comments upon, I began, and made considerable progress with, a translation of it. At the very outset I met with a difficulty, in the shape of an historical statement in Buddhaghosa's introductory verses which seemed in the highest degree improbable and untrustworthy.

Long before I had set foot in India I had been greatly struck by the exceedingly different statements regarding its people which were made by those who knew them best. Some, and notably the missionaries, could find no language strong enough to express the utter abomination of Hindu life and custom. Every chapter of Ward's great work teems with phrases of the strongest reprobation. The ceremonies he describes are indeed vile, and it cannot be said that his condemnation is too strong. On the other hand, civil and military officers, of the highest integrity and the closest observation, have set up the Hindus as models which it would be greatly to the benefit of Europeans to follow. They saw in the Hindu village system, and the ordinary life of the villagers, a living type of patriarchal happiness, uprightness, and wisdom. Major Scott Waring may be taken as a type of such men. The discussions in Parliament upon the clauses of the great India Bill that permitted the appointment of Bishops, and opened India to mission work, are full of illustrations of this contradiction; and I can well remember when, as a boy, I waded through the reports, being struck with wonder that men who had lived side by side in India, who had gained enormous experience and possessed the ability to learn the lessons that experience should teach, could, by any possibility, arrive at conclusions so diverse. After many years spent in close intercourse with the people of India, I do not wonder now. On one occasion both views of the question were brought vividly before me. I had seen the Pongol, the touching domestic festival it is now my chief object to describe.

The portion of Rabadan's poem given in the present part of the Journal relates the history of Shaibeh or Abdulmutalib, the son of Heshim, and of his son Abdullah, the father of the Prophet. It contains a narrative of the offering up of Abdullah in sacrifice by his father, with regard to which see the following observations of Sir Wm. Muir, vol. i., p. cclix. That writer believes the story, because, as he says, “the simple desire to establish an analogy (between it and Abraham's intended sacrifice), had there been no facts to found the story on, would have led to a very different fiction; for Abraham was commanded to offer up his son, and the Mussulmans believe he acted piously in obeying; whereas they hold Abdulmutalib, who was borne out by no such divine order, to have been wrong both in the vow and in his attempt to fulfil it.” These observations are supported by this poem, for Rabadan does not appear to draw any analogy between the sacrifice by Abraham and that by Abdulmutalib, whereas by using similar expressions he seems very clearly to intend to point out the analogy between the Deluge and the end of the world. The opinion which Sir W. Muir describes as the prevailing one with respect to Abdulmutalib's act is here spoken by the sage Ykrama.

The various Brahmanical creeds prevailing among those Hindus who worship Vishnu and Siva have been amply illustrated by Colebrooke and other eminent scholars. When I was in England in 1836 the learned H. H. Wilson desired me to ascertain and describe the peculiarities of the Jangams or anti-brahmanical worshippers of Siva, whom he had but slightly noticed in his Essay on Sects, in the seventeenth volume of the Asiatic Researches.

A writer remarks, “If men at the lowest as well as the highest stage of civilization enunciate the same truths, the fact goes to prove that these truths are unimportant.” I can hardly assent to the conclusion, even were the premiss correct, whereas it is not. Those familiar with proverbial literature have remarked that some aphorisms are common in matter, and a few even in actual manner and form, to almost all nations and languages. The Syrian, for instance, will say, “The egg of to-day, not the hen of to-morrow;” and “A live dog is better than a dead lion.” On the other hand, the points of difference are far more important. Setting aside the sayings which “bear the stamp of their birthplaces, and which wear the colouring and the imagery of their native climes,” we find that there are proverbs peculiar to every race—proper to it, as are its syntax and its idiom; that each people speaks out the truth or the half truth which is in it, and, consequently, that for the most part neither the idea nor the wording bear comparison. Moreover, were it a fact that all enunciate the same truth, it by no means proves the latter to be unimportant, except to the few.

The Arabs and Africans who first visited the west coast of India, came “Mu-abbar”: “from beyond” the sea. In the voyages of Ibn Batuta, translated by Dr. Lee, the country is called Muabbar, without any surmise that this is Malabar. The Syrian Christians who live in Travancore wrote the word in Syriac characters , and it has occurred to me that in careless writing this may have been altered into Malabar: a name unknown to the inhabitants; who fancy it is the European name for their country and language. The Eastern shore of India also was visited by men “from over the sea:” and the name Malabar has also been wrongly applied to the Eastern coast.

This curious and, I believe, unique relic of antiquity is in the form of an ordinary Indian lotah, and measures as follows: Total height, 6¼ in.; diameter, 5½ in.; ditto at neck, 2 in.; with a projecting circular lip of ½ in. It is apparently wrought in some fine alloy of brass, copper, and spelter (?), the brass prevailing, and has resisted corrosion in a very remarkable manner; for the date which I would, from external evidence, assign it is between 200 and 300 A.D. It has evidently been treated with the greatest care; for we do not find upon it any signs of the constant polishing with sand and ashes which the lotahs of the natives undergo when in constant use, and which in a few years wears them quite thin.

In the following remarks the term “nexus” is employed to denote a conjunction of two or more consonants in one word without the intervention of a vowel, as kt, dhy, rn, etc.

I divide the neo-Âryan languages of India into two classes. The Prâkrits and Pâli are called the “languages of the first period;” Hindî, Bengâlî, Ûriyâ, Panjâbî, Marâṭhî, Sindhî, Gujarâtî, are the “languages of the second period.”

This race, variously known by the terms Râbhar, Bharat, Bharpatwa, and Bhar, once inhabited a wide traot of country extending from Gorakhpur in Northern India to Saugor in Central India. Other tribes, such as the Cherûs, the Majhwârs, and the Kôls, were, in places, associated with them, or contiguous to them; but there is good reason to believe that the Bhars greatly outnumbered them all. They were very powerful in Oudh; and the country lying between Benares and Allahâbâd, on either side of the Ganges, a tract of about seventy miles in length, was almost exclusively in their possession. The entire district of Allahâbâd also was originally in their hands, and traces of them are still to be seen in every pargannah, more especially in those situated across the Ganges and Jamna. Their forts there, called Bhar-dîh, some of which are of vast size, are very numerous; and they have the credit of having excavated all the deep tanks which now exist. The pargannah of Khairogarh bears very abundant traces of their toil and enterprise. The stone fort of that name, of immense proportions, is said to have been their work.

Dr. Fergusson's book on “Tree and Serpent Worship” has opened a large field for inquiry and research. After looking through the photographs and lithographed scenes relating to the Sânchi Topes, two questions naturally suggest themselves, viz.: What was the idea which suggested the peculiar form of the Indian Tope? and, What are the scenes so carefully represented on the rails and gateways at Sanchi and Amravati ?

The term Jihad is technically applied to warfare carried on for the propagation of the Mohammedan religion. As such warfare is unlawful, unless the people against whom it is about to be waged have been first summoned to embrace the faith, this summons has entered into the legal definition of the term. Jihadis accordingly defined to be a call to the true religion, and war with those who refuse to accept it in their persons or property,—that is, by professing the faith themselves, or by submitting to pay the jizyut or poll-tax, by means of which they are rendered free to the open profession of their own religion.

The plates which accompany this article have only recently been rescued from an obscure corner, where they had lain for years unappreciated. They originally constituted one division of a comprehensive medallic series, illustrative of the annals of the Sassanian Kings of Persia, which were prepared under the supervision of the late J. R. Steuart, from specimens in his own cabinets, and executed by the same conscientious Italian artist who engraved the copper-plates of the Sauráshtran coins inserted in one of the earliest numbers of our Journal (vol. iv. p. 273, o.s.).

The Inscriptions which are the subject of the following observations were collected by General Cunningham at Mathura, in the execution of his functions as Archæological Surveyor to the Government of India, The account of his visit to Mathura is given in his report for the season 1862–3. It is not my intention to do more with these Inscriptions than to offer decipherments and translations, with a few remarks upon their character and language. General Cunningham himself will sum up the results derivable from them. His intimate knowledge of Mathura and other similar localities, his long study of Indian antiquities, and his acquaintance with the coins of the period in public collections and in his own private collection, will enable him to do this much more effectually than I could hope to accomplish.