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THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY.
hand either in print or in person, and given everywhere their statements in full. Nor do I think that Mr. Growse on his part has been very fortunate with regard to those particular points in which he attempts to set right, with considerable confidence, what I have said. For when he calls the rosary "a devotion instituted by St. Dominic in the 13th century" he is somewhat behind the real state of the investigations on this point. What he says is indeed the usual tradition of the Dominicans, to whose exertions no doubt the common use of the rosary owes its popularity, but according to Steitz-the last, as far as I know, who wrote on this subject (see Herzog Real-Encyclopædie für protestant. Theologie und Kirche, III. 127, Gotha, 1860)-this tradition is " as dubious" as the opinion of those who maintain that the rosary was invented by Benedict of Nubia, or by the Venerable Bede, or by Peter the Hermit. Steitz repudiates also the opinion of those who believe that the rosary came to the West with the Crusaders, though he concedes that the influence of the Muhammadan custom may have contributed to its propagation. In his opinion the belts of the Anglo-Saxon Church in the ninth century (septem beltidum paternoster pro eo cantetur in the tenth canon of the Consilium Celichitense, A.D. 814) testify to the independent origin of the rosary in the West; whereas to Köppen as well as to me it seems very improbable that so singular an invention should have been made independently in two parts of the world, in the West and in the East. In
the latter we find it no doubt earlier than in the former, as its Hindu use goes back to the Atharvaparisishtas, the Ramayana, Kumarasambhava, Vardhamihira, Besides, we have here a good expla nation of its name as well as of its origin. After all, it was not I, but Köppen, who first derived it from Siva's garland of skulls, and he made the conjecture (Mr. Growse would do well to read the passage in the book itself, Die Religion des Buddha, II. 319, 1859) without even knowing the least of the particular relation of the rosary to the Siva-cult which I have pointed out in my note, viz. the indispensable use of it at the Sivapuja, which is fruitless vind rudrakshamalaya, and the very name rudrakshamáld, which we find at least already in the Rdjatarangint. I add that Siva himself is called akshamálin in the Mahabharata, XII. 10,374, and Gauri wears the rosary in Kumarasambhava, V. 11. And for the particular point in question it is of some interest after all that in Jaimini Bharata, XXII. 36, a Brahmarakshasa actually appears: नरान्त सूत्रसंभूतं कण्ठे यज्ञोपवीतकं । विभ्रनरकपालानां जपमालां 4. I adduce this passage only as an illustration, not as evidence of the conjecture, for I am not prepared to assume also that the yajñopa
[AUGUST, 1875.
vita owed its origin to a string of human entrails! whereas I think it very probable that the garland of human skulls worn by Siva himself, as well as, in his honour, by the Sivaitic Kâpâlika sect, may have become, in the diminutive form of the rosary, from an emblem of his service an expedient also for the right execution of the prescribed numerous repetitions of his names, as well as of the solemn mantra professing faith in him. In Köppen's opinion the rosary has been borrowed by the Christians (as already Baumgarten proposed in his Christliche Alterthümer, Halle, 1768) through the intermediation of the Moslems; but the AngloSaxon belts make this rather doubtful indeed (see Binterim, Denkwürdigkeiten der kathol. Kirche, VII. 111 ff. Mainz, 1831), and point to an earlier age for the borrowing. How old the rosary
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(a) is in Islâm is uncertain as yet; an Arabic Dictionary with full quotations from the oldest literature downwards-as we have it for the San'skrit in the great Petersburg Dictionary of Böhrlingk and Roth, which is to be completed in these days-does not yet exist, and we have therefore no distinct guide for the oldest use of the word and, what is the same, of the thing. The Qorân itself does not mention either, and my learned friend Prof. Dieterici is of opinion that the rosary was adopted by the Moslems especially in order to secure the right enumeration of the hundred fine names of Allah collected from the Qorân (a), the beginning of which
praise of God,
formula, viz. the words, a repeatedly occurs in the Qorân itself.
I proceed to the second rectification of Mr. Growse, viz. to his statement that St. John Chrysostom, in that very sermon in which he notes that the Christmas festival had in Antioch been in existence only for ten years, "adds that at Rome it had been celebrated on the 25th of December
from the first days of Christianity." Here also
Mr. Growse has taken his information from a very unsafe source: for there is not a word of all that in the text of the sermon of the saint (Joann. Chrysost. Opp. II. 418, 419, Paris and Leipzig, 1835), as he does not mention either Rome or the first days of Christianity; what he says is more general and at the same time more restricted; he calls the festival new as well as old,-new because it bad been introduced with us (wpòs nuas dè) only recently, old because it had been known to the inhabitants of the West of ancient time (παρὰ μὲν τοῖς τὴν ἑσπέραν oikovow avadev yuopiouévm). Now to render avdev by "from the first days of Christianity" is certainly a very free and extended translation, whereas "Rome" alone does not suffice to cover "the
