Indian Antiquary Vol 04

Author(s): Jas Burgess
Publisher: Swati Publications

Page 31

CORRESPONDENCE AND MISCELLANEA.
JANUARY, 1875.]
He who is brooding over eighty subjects is a fool; He who uses bad language against his own mother is a great fool;
He who betrays the house in which he has eaten is a fool:
He who utters calumnies is a fool;
He who sees the glorious Purandara Vithala with the white-lotus eyes and does not worship him is a great fool, O master!"
According to many other hymns the Purandara Vithala is identical, for instance, with the Krishna idols at Pandaripura and Tirupati, in the lastmentioned place being the Venkatagiri or Paragiri or Seshadri on which he dwells.
9. Krishna Charitra or Vara mohana tarangini; 42 chapters, with 2705 verses (the metre of our manuscript being very irregular, I cannot tell in what metre it is composed), by Kanaka Dâsa. The second chapter begins: "He who has uttered the work is the best servant (dása) Kanaka; she to whom he has uttered it is his wife, the very wise woman; the lord of the work is the Adi Kesava of Kâginele; when a person hears it, virtue is obtained." And towards the end of the work Kanaka Dasa says: "Kâginele's Narasimha, who is the Adi Kesava, will cause the wishes of good people to be fulfilled." Kanaka Dâsa, "by the favour of Kâginele's Adi Kesava," composed also a Bhakti Sára, 108 verses in Satpadi.
Of Stories in prose I mention the translations of the Sanskrit Panchatantra, Vetála Panchavimsati,
To the Editor of the Indian Antiquary.
SIR, Since the publication, in your December number, of my concluding paper upon Castes in Pun and Solapur, I have received from a Catholic friend a letter objecting to some statements made in it respecting the native Christians, of which I hope you will publish the enclosed copy. The passages omitted and indicated by asterisks were purely personal, or referred to names of persons and places which I think it unnecessary to publish, although entrusted with a discretion to do so.
CORRESPONDENCE AND MISCELLANEA.
Even without the proofs advanced by my correspondent, I would have no hesitation in accepting his authority as superior to my own, and to the sources whence my original information was desired, although these were not prima facie untrustworthy. It only remains for me to add that I used the word Ultramontane' simply as the name of a party, for which I don't know any other in general use, and without attaching to it any objectionable sense, and that the paper in question
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and Hamsa Viméati. The translation of Suka Saptati is in Satpadi verses. Of stories in prose I may adduce still the following, as they are connected with a semi-historical person, viz. the tales about Rama Krishna of Tennâla. The work begins with saying that in Tennâla, to the north of Madras, there was the Brahman boy Râma Krishna. Once when a Sanyâsi saw him, he liked him so much that he taught him a mantra, telling him to repeat it thirteen million times in a Kali temple, when the goddess with her thousand faces would appear to him and bestow a proper boon on him, if he did not lose his courage. The boy did as he had been told, and Kâli appeared to him as a female with a thousand faces and two hands. He was anything but afraid, and began to laugh. Kâli asked: "Why dost thou laugh at me?" Then said the boy: "O mother, man has one nose and two hands; but whenever he catches a cold, he gets overmuch to do with blowing his nose. Thou hast a thousand faces and a thousand noses; well, when it sometimes happens that thou catchest a cold, how dost thou blow thy noses ?" Then Kâli cursed him to become a prince's jester. In course of time he went to Anegondi, the capital of the Karnataka country, where Krishna Râya, with his minister Appâji, ruled, at the court of whom he played the nineteen tricks related in the work.
I trust others will undertake to make our knowledge of Kanarese literature more complete.
was written several months ago. Had I written now, after Mr. Gladstone's essay and pamphlet have excited men's minds upon the subject, I should certainly have omitted the whole passage, having no desire to make the Antiquary a field of religious discussion, whatever my private opinions may be.
W. F. SINCLAIR.
MY DEAR MR. SINCLAIR, I however take exception to the correctness of your remarks on the Catholics of Western India under the jurisdiction of the see of Goa.
You say (1) that they are very much at one with the (so-called) Old Catholics of Germany, and (2) that they are at bitter feud with the 'Ultramontane party,' as represented by the Bishop of Bombay and the Jesuits. I have had nineteen years' intimate personal experience of the condition of Catholics of both jurisdictions, and say confidently that you mistake in both these assertion.
In March last there was an open-air meeting in