Indian Antiquary Vol 04

Author(s): Jas Burgess
Publisher: Swati Publications

Page 74

64
THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY.
[FEBRUARY, 1875.
may have preceded an Aryan invasion, the Brah- small white elephant!" "Thu Kathæi," he says mans were probably the priests of a phallic deity (p. 172)," have been identified with the Chatties named Brahma, from whom they may have derived of Kattaywar in Guzerat !!!" The serpents mentheir distinctive name." " Again, the Indian home tioned by Megasthenes, with membranous wings of the Vedic Aryans was in the Panjab, to the like bats, whose moisture will putrefy the skin, westward of the river Saraswati. The Indian "are nothing more," he says, "than the common home of the Brahmans was apparently in Hinda. house lizards, and certainly their moisture will stan, and extended from the Saraswati eastward to cause acute inflammation." Plithana and Tagara the banks of the Ganges in the neighbour are "two important marts on the western coast." hood of the ancient city of Kanouj." Further, In the name of Zarmanochegas, who burnt him"the Brahmans had undoubtedly made their way self at Athens in the time of Augustus, the word into the Panjab, whilst the Vedic Aryans were "Chegas," he says, " has been identified with mere colonists in the land. But the Rishis com- Sheik ;" but he never says who made this or any posed satirical hymns against the Brahmans." other of the identifications he notices. What will the Brahmans themselves say to this He makes Sankar Acharya Lingayat (p. 364), and other similar assertions of the author's P and does not seem to have heard that there
The origin of Sati, Mr. Wheeler considers as a are Digambara Jains (p. 361). Sometimes Brah"Skythian usage modified by Aryan culture." ma, Vishnu, and Siva, he tells his renders, are "The Skythinn Sati was modified by the Aryan "separately worshipped "as the creator, the preworship of the fire and the sun. Agni, or fire, was server, and the destroyer of the universe, under the purifying deity. She was not only the domes. the name of the Trimurti." The Smartta sect tic goddess of the household, but the divine mes- wear the linga (p. 393): and possibly the era of senger that carried the sacrifice to the gods; the Parasurama (A.D. 825) corresponds to the era of purifying flame that bore away the widow and her Rama's war with Råvana (p. 423). lord to the mansions of the sun." Now we very | When he comes to points of chronology Mr. much doubt the Skyths ever having influenced the Wheeler tosses about without helm. First Asoka inner life of another race to any such extent: was lives in the age of the rebuilding of the Jewish satt not a political institution to get rid of the temple,--that is, we suppose, in the fifth century widows, whose plots still disturb native states | B.C. He is so like Sandrokottos that the two
He returns to the details of the former two may b. one and the same (pp. 232, 487); then he volumes, and again drags the weary reader over ascended the throne B.C. 325,---quite forgetful the stories of Råma and Křishna, leaving him no that in the great edici Asoka mentions Antiochus wiser than before, except that "the whole narra- Ptolemaios, Antigonos, Magas, and Alexander, who tive" of the exile of Râma "may be dismissed as lived nearly seventy years later, or in 258 B.C. apocryphal; as a mythical invention of compara- We had noted many more such rash or ertively modern date, intended as an introduction | roneous statements in this volume; but these may to the tradition of another and later Råma," who suffice to show with what care its assertions must carried on a war with Ravana, whose subjects, be received. The author is a good précis-writer, and, "there is reason to believe, represent the Bud with the text of Tod's Rajasthan, Fahian's, Fytche's, dhists." But Mr. Wheeler is fond of relegating or Marco Polo's Travels, Faria y Sousa's History, people wbom he knows little of to the Buddhists. or Bigandet's Legend of Gaudama before him, he He says elsewhere (p. 428) "there is reason to can produce a readable and interesting résumé: suspect that St. Thomas was a Buddhist Srâman but bis reading is too 'limited, his power of obserwho had perished in the age of Brahmanicalvation too superficial, and his logical faculty too persecution;" Chera Perumal, of whom Faria y untrained, to enable hiin to generalize with accuSousa mentions that he is said to have retired to racy or to investigate with approximate certainty : the Church of St. Thomas and died at Meliapur, he is more of the sciolist than of the investiga"in all probability" also "turned a Buddhist monk tor, and wants that accuracy without which even in his old age." Even Manu was a Buddhist such a book as this is not only wanting in what (p. 82).
ought to constitute its chief value, but is positively Though a gifted writer, Mr. Wheeler does some- pernicious. The scholar will detect its faults, but times write in a style that is unnaturally inflated; it is addressed to the popular reader, who has not and the employment of similes like "the Indus the special knowledge to enable him to sift what and its tributaries" appearing "on the map like is matter of history from the misconceptions of the the sacred candlestick with seven branches" is author. To those who can do this, however, the tasteless as it is pedantic. He speaks also (p. 165) volume will afford pleasant and interesting readof Mays becoming "incarnate in a dream with a ling.