Indian Antiquary Vol 04

SR No.: 032496
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Jas Burgess
Publisher: Swati Publications
Publication Year: 1984
Total Pages: 410
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 18 MB

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THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY.
author there gives unbounded scope to his imagination, and furnishes a very beautiful illustration of the Hindu belief in the transmigration of the soul. The other stories tell how the mountains and the Girnår Brâhmans came into Vastrapatha. But the above extracts will
CORRESPONDENCE AND MISCELLANEA.
PROFESSOR WEBER ON THE YAVANAS, MAHABHASHYA, RAMAYANA, AND KRISHNAJANMASHTAMI.
To the Editor of the "Indian Antiquary." SIR,-Since I last wrote, you have produced some more translations of papers written by me on different points of Indian literature and antiquities, and I am very thankful to you for this honour. On the other hand, there have appeared, either in your columns or in those of other Indian journals, several articles directed against the views maintained by me therein, or in the papers formerly translated by you. I think it proper therefore, with your leave, to notice them cursorily, and to defend or to give up my own positions according to the value of the objections raised. Following the chronological order, I divide my observations under four heads: 1, the Ya vanas; 2, the Mahabhashya; 3, the Rámáyana; 4, the Krishna janmashtami.
[AUGUST, 1875.
convey a sufficiently correct idea of the character of the contents of the Mahatmya. Śiva gives a caution to Pârvati against disclosing this account of the Vastrapatha to an unbeliever. Kailasa is promised to the hearer of this story.
1. The Yavanas.-Mr. Rehatsek's translation of my paper Hindu Pronunciation of Greek, and Greek Pronunciation of Hindu Words (vol. II. pp. 143-150), has elicited from the pen of Bâbu Rajendra Lâla Mitra a very curious article "On the supposed identity of the Greeks with the Yavanas of Sanskrit writers" (Jour. As. Soc. Beng. 1874, pp. 246-79). I leave aside all speculations as to the etymology and origin of the name itself, as foreign to the question at issue, and restrict myself to the historical proofs of its actual occurrence in India.
The oldest passages in which we as yet find it are those famous edicts of king Priyadasi, which mention twice the Antiyoka Yonaraja, once alone (tabl. II.), and again along with Tulamaya, Antikona, Maka, Aliksa (m). dala: see the facsimile of the Khâlsi Inscription in Cunningham's Archaeological Survey, I. 247, pl. xli. This facsimile gives us in the seventh line also the reading Yona-ka(m)bojesu, the very compound which is used so often in the Pâli texts, and which (see my Indische Streifen, II. 321) fixes, if other proof was required, the geographical position of the Yonas by that of the other frontier-people so closely allied with them therein,
the Kambojas. Wherever we find them both mentioned in this compound, or even only along with each other, we may be quite sure that we have to understand under the Yonas the Baktrian Greeks, the neighbours of Kabul. This decides at once the question also as to the meaning of Yavana in the oldest works in the Brahmaņic literature in which the word is mentioned,-the Mahabharata, Mahábháshya, and Ramayana. The compound Saka-Yavanam in the Bhashya shows the Yavanas in a similar intimate connection also with the Sakas, Indoskythes (and in my opinion, see Ind. Studien, XIII. 306, the Yavana king mentioned in it as the besieger of Sâketa is not necessarily to be taken as a Greek king, but may possibly already denote a Saka king, as the name of the Yavan as went with their supremacy to their successors in it, the Sakas; see below). There is only one apparently older passage in which the name of the Yavanas is mentioned, viz. that sutra of Panini which teaches to form the word Yavandní (lipi, writing of the Yavana, as the varttikakára explains). But the age of Pânini is not settled at all; and though he may be older than the passages of the Mahabharata, and is really older of course than the Mahabháshya or the Ramayana, still there is not the slightest proof that he also preceded Alexander and the establishment of the Greek Baktrian kingdoms. And, no such proof existing, it is certainly very provoking to take just this his mentioning of the Yavanas as a proof to the contrary, viz. of his being later than Alexander (conf. Ind. Stud. XIII. 375): for it would no doubt be very hard to understand under the Yavanas of this Gandhara author any other people but those famous neighbours of the Kambojas and Gandhâras, and this the more so, as in fact we know at present of no other people of that name. For with regard to the opinion of some scholars, Lassen for instance, that Yavana was used by the Hindus originally for a Semitic tribe or nation, we must consider it as a mere gratuitous supposition, so long as it is not substantiated by any real fact. Where are the passages to countenance it ? Let them be brought
At Junagadh, Túramayo.