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they can here find a thoroughly trustworthy and accurate, though brief, account of all the ancient Vedic rites. Information of this nature has hitherto been obtainable only from rare Sanskrit MSS. or scattered and, to the general public, inaccessible, articles in scientific German periodicals. In pp. 2048 the learned author gives the essential parts of each of the twenty-one sacrifices according to the usual arrangement, and he also gives copious reference to the Srautastra printed and MSS. the Brâhmanas and Sanhitas, with very appropriate explanations of the meaning and purpose of the rites.
THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY.
CORRESPONDENCE
WAS SIHARAS THE SAME AS S'RI'HARSHA.? SIB, I do not know whether the Siharas of the Chachnama, (Sir H. Elliot's Hist. of India, p. 153) has ever been explained to mean Sri Harsha, but it appears to me that it would be a very natural Prakrit form of that name. The loss of the R and the change of S' into S are very common phenomena, illustrated by the conversion of the Sanskrit Sråvasti into the Prakrit Sawattha. I therefore venture to suggest that Siharas of Kanauj is really Sri Harsha as pronounced in the local dialect with which the author of the Chachnama was brought into connection. Now if this Sri Harsha was Harshavardhana the second, the predecessor of Hiwen Thsang's Siladitya (and the name of his father as given in the Chachnama,-Râsal, looks suspiciously like a corruption of Rajyavandhana, whom we know to have been the father Harshavardhana II.) it is obvious that the Chachnama is guilty of a gross anachronism in making him fight with an uncle of Rai Dâhir of Sindh.
The date of the composition of the Chachn ma is involved in obscurity, but it appears to me that this argument makes it very unlikely that it could have been before the death of Mahammad Kásim. There are other facts tending to throw suspicion on the book, such as its romantic stories, and the bien trouvé name of Budhiman for the prime minister of Chach. The only possible way out of the difficulty that I can suggest is that Sri Harsha might have been used as a family name for the Bais Kings of Kanauj, and refers to the last of the series Jayaditya, but there is nothing whatever to show that this was the case, and the name Rasal, as well as the existence of another family name Aditya, makes the supposition unlikely.
This anachronism relates to an event which at the outside could not have occurred more than thirty years before the Arab conquest of Sindh, and I have invariably found oral tradition pretty accurate in its chronology for at least eighty or a hundred years. Beyond that, of course, it gets wild in the extreme. It is not likely that the author of the Chachnama, if he was co-temporary with the
[Nov. 1, 1872.
The Indian sacrificial rites are very numerous and often exceedingly complex; they therefore form a very uninviting object of study. But some knowledge of them is necessary to all who would understand even the modern Sanskrit literature and Hindu ideas, and Mr. Kittel's tract will, I think, be found the most useful aid to be had at present by students who cannot have recourse to the original texts. The object of this "Tract" is purely Missionary, but the description of the Vedic rites is of general interest, and is throughout well done.
A. B.
AND MISCELLANEA.
events he describes could have been so grossly misinformed about quite recent occurrences.
W. C. BENETT. Gondah, Oudh, 26th January 1872.
GINGER.
As regards Ginger, the derivation of which Col. Yule asks about (I.A. p. 321),-it is supposed to be from the Sanskrit Sringavera (see Colebrooke, Amarakosha, II. ix. sl. 37), but this is derived from the Malayalam name of the plant, and the Greeks probably took it direct from the same. In Malabar green ginger is called in chi and in chiver is from inchi, 'root.' Inchi was probably in an earlier form of the language sia chi or chia chi, as we find it in Canarese stills' anti. Ginger is chiefly exported even now from Malabar, and in earlier times the Greeks procured it almost exclusively from that province, so that there is every probability that the name is Dravidian and not Sanskrit. If we look at the form of the Sanskrit word, it is impossible to doubt that it is a foreign word altered by the Brahmans, who, by their pedantry, disguise all they meddle with.
A. C. BURNELL.
Mangalore, Oct. 17th, 1872.
BELGAM FAIR.
FAIRS in honour of Lakshmi are very common in the Southern Maratha Country. They are celebrated once in two years in almost all large places. The fair of Belgâm however surpasses all the others. It takes place every twelfth year. The goddess Lakshmi is held in great veneration by the common people; but this goddess is not the same as that cele. brated in Puranas. The tradition about the origin of this fair is as follows:
A son of a Mâhår left his home and went to a village where he used to pass through a street, on one side of which was the house of a Brahman who taught boys to recite the Veda. The Mahar's son
