________________
40
THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY.
[FEB. 2, 1872.
and ceremonies, make oblations on the hearth to the three sacred fires, not omitting in due time the ceremonies to be performed at the conjunction and opposition of the moon, and also to “perform the sacrifice ordained in honour of the Lunar asterisms, make the proscribed offering of new grain, and solemnize holy rites every four months, and at the winter and summer solstices." Nothing has been said by Manu as to the propriety or otherwise of ascetics keeping cattle; but the epics and the the Puranas clearly show that the ancient sages were partial to milk, and the saintly character of Vasish th & was not in any way opposed to his keeping the famous cow Nandini. The rites enjoined them could not be performed with- out an ample supply of milk. The Buddhist ascetios, likewise, lived in huts, and not unfrequently collected money enough to dedicate images and topes built at their cost. During their four months vassa they lived in monasteries together, with their religious sisterhood.
Some of the hermits in the Sánchi bas-reliefs are engaged in worshipping the five-headed, Nága, but as the Hindu recognised in it an emblem of the sempeternal divinity, Ananta, and the the Buddhist & race of superhuman
beings worthy of adoration, devotion to it would not be by any means unbecoming a hermit, who is required to observe all the necessary regular and periodical rites and ceremonies.
The last and most important argument of Mr. Fergnsson in support of the non-Aryan origin of the Dasyus is founded upon their features ; but at Sánchi the figures are generally so small, so rough, and so weather-worn, that their indications of the aboriginal broad face and flat nose cannot be relied upon. That the appearance of youth and beauty, and rank and wealth, should be different from that of age, decay, decrepitude, and squalid poverty, is a fact which none will question, and therefore what are taken in the sculptures for ethnic peculiarities, may be entirely due to a desire to mark the distinctions of condition.
It may be added that the term Dasyu itself is Aryan, and indicates an Aryan and not a nonAryan race. According to Manu, all those tribes of men who sprung from the mouth, the arm, the thigh, and the foot of Brahma, but who became out-castes by having neglected their duties, are called Dasyus or plunderers (X 45); and the designation therefore fails to convey the idea which the learned author of the History of Architecture wishes to attach to it.
THE TEMPLE AT HALABID.
BY CAPT. J. S. F. MACKENZIE. SIXTEEN miles north of Hasan, in the Mai- patam. Vishnu Verdhana was converted from sur province, is Halabid, or as Ferishtah the the Jains religion-the religion of his foreMuhammadan historian, calls it, Dhur Samudra, fathers—by the celebrated Vaishnava reformer, once the capital of the Belála kings, who ruled Ramanujácháryá, a reformer who-protected by one of the minor states into which Southern the king-hesitated not at using physical force India was formerly divided. Fables and the to convert the followers of the heterodox Jaina dimness of a remote period throw illusive religion, and by grinding their priests in an oil shadows over the traditions of these kings of a mill effectually did away with anything like bye-gone age. Doubt and uncertainty haunt the
active opposition. After his conversion, Vishnu enquirer into their unilluminated history. Verdhana is said to have resided at Bailur (the
From inscriptions and other sources it appears, present head-quarters of the taluqa, and distant however, that the Belála kings held the sceptre 10 miles from Halabid); and, from an inscripfrom about 950 A. D. to 1310 A. D. when a tion there, it appears he rebuilt the temple Muhammadan army, led by Kafar, plundered Keshava Perural in the year 1116 A. D. their capital for the first time. An expedition Such is the account given, of the most imsent by Muhammad III, in 1326 finally des- portant event in the history of the Belála kings troyed Halabid. The seat of a declining go- by Buchanan in his Journey through Mysore and vernment was removed by Vishnu Verdhana, Canara.• A cursory examination of known the then reigning sovereign, to Jonur, better dates, however, proves that the Verdhana, who known by the name of the Moti Taláv (Lake of became a Vaishnava, was not the same Verdhana Pearls), 12 miles north of the famous Seringa- who fled before the Musalman invasion of 1862.
• Conf. Buchanan, Journey, dc. vol. II. p. 81, and vol. III. p. 401.
