________________
PROGRESS OF ORIENTAL RESEARCH, 1874-75.
OCTOBER, 1875.]
inscriptions at Anuradhapura and Mahintale. At the former place a new inscription of considerable length has been discovered and copied by him. The Governor has likewise resolved to have the ruins in the island properly surveyed by a competent person, and plans, drawings, and descriptions of them published.
The appearance of Dr. A. Burnell's Elements of South-Indian Palæography has successfully broken ground in an important but hitherto neglected branch of inquiry. The first chapter deals with the various theories regarding the date of the introduction of writing into India; whilst the second contains a conspectus of the alphabets and the chief dynasties of the South, followed by discussions on the South-Indian numerals, accents, and signs of punctuation; and finally by an essay on the different kinds of South-Indian inscriptions, with numerous palæographic specimens, executed from original copper-plates, stones, and palm-leaf manuscripts.
The first volume of Baba Rajendralâla Mitra's long-expected work on the Antiquities of Orissa has just reached this country. The published volume deals more especially with the principles of Indian architecture, and with the social condition and religion of the Orissan temple-builders. It is copiously illustrated by lithographs. The second volume will describe in fuller detail the antiquities of Khandagiri, Udayagiri, Bhuvanesvara, Kanarak, Alti, and Jayapur.
Sanskrit.-Professor Max Müller's edition of the Rigveda, with Sâyana's comment, originally undertaken under the liberal patronage of the Directors of the East India Company, afterwards continued by Her Majesty's Secretaries of State, has now been completed. The sixth volume contains, besides the concluding portion of the text and commentary, the second part of the useful index verborum, and an index of the uttara-padas, or second members of compound words, prepared by
Dr. G. Thibaut.
Professor R. Roth, of Tübingen, is about, in conjunction with Professor W. D. Whitney, to bring out the long-expected second volume of the Atharvaveda, containing the varia lectiones. He has lately given an account of the manuscript materials he has obtained from India since the publication of the text. Of especial interest is a MS. which has been discovered in Kaśmir, containing the sdkhá or recension of the school of the Paippaladas, the text of which greatly differs from that hitherto known.
The last volume of the Transactions of the Göttingen Academy contains a paper by Professor T. Benfey, in which he states his reasons for believing that the Sanhitâs or combined texts of the Vedas
309
have been handed down to us in exactly the same form in which they were at the time when the hymus were first collected. These and other papers of a similar kind will be introductory to a complete grammar of the Vedas, which he has prepared for publication.
In his inaugural dissertation Dr. E. Grube has published the text and an indes verborum of the Suparnadhyaya, which, though reckoned among the supplementary treatises of the Rigveda, is evidently of comparatively modern origin. The subject of this treatise is the legend of the bet between the two wives of Kasyapa, Suparni (or Vinata) and Kadra, by which the former becomes the slave of the latter, until her son Suparna (Garuda) restores her to liberty by means of ambrosia he has forcibly taken from the gods.
To last year's volume of Abhandlungen of the Munich Academy Professor M. Haug has contributed an elaborate essay on the various theories and modes of Vedic accentuation, partly drawn from sources accessible to him alone in manuscripts procured by him in India. In the same paper Professor Haug endeavours to show that, so far from the Vedic accentuation being intended, as has been generally believed, for the actual accents of the language, it is only a kind of musical modulation, and that the notion which has hitherto prevailed as to the udátta marking the accented syllable of the word is altogether erroneous. Professor Hang's views have, however. already drawn forth protests from several Sanskrit scholars, by whom the numerous analogies between the udâtta and the word-accent in the cognate languages, and the close connection between it and the gunation of vowels in many grammatical formations are justly insisted upon.
Since the publication, at Banâras, of the great commentary on Pânini's grammatical aphorisms, the Mahabhashya, the Indian Government has brought out its magnificent photolithographic reproduction of the same work, together with the comments of Kaiyața and Nagojibhaṭṭa. This work, consisting of six volumes, of together 4674 pages, was originally undertaken at the suggestion of the late Professor Goldstücker, who had himself corrected all but 300 pages when he was overtaken by death, and thus precluded from seeing completed this grand monument of his untiring energy.
Professor Kielhorn, of Punâ, has now completed his translation of Nâgojibhatta's Paribhashendubekhara, a work of infinite labour, for which he deserves the cordial thanks of all Sanskrit, scholars. In Dr. Kielhorn's opinion the greater part of these paribhashás, or general maxims intended to assist
