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THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY.
[SEPTEMBER, 1877.
as the libraries belonging to the Persian-speaking pandits have not been fully explored.
As regards the efforts of European scholars to translate the Rajatarangink, and to use its contents for historical purposes, Professor Wilson's and General Cunningham's results are the most trustworthy. Considering the corruptness of Prof. Wilson's MSS., his article in the As. Res. is admirable, and deserves the great fame which it has enjoyed. It is, however, by no means free from bad mistakes, some of which, e.g. the misstatementt that Prat&på ditys, the second Karkota ka king, had seven sons, instead of toree each called by two or three names, have been oupied by every succeeding writer on Kasmirian history, and have caused mischief in other respects. He has also omitted to make use of the key to the chronology of the Karkotaka and the later dynasties, which Kalhana gives (I. 52) by saying that the Saptarshi or Laukika year 24 corresponded to Śaka 1070. General Cunningham has supplied this omission in his paper on Kasmir coins and chronology published in the Numismatic Chronicle for 1848. The dates which he has fixed for the kings following Durlabha ka require few alterations. I
As regarde Mr. Troyer's work, it is impossible to commend either his translation or the historical and geographical essays attached to it, however much one may admire his patience and industry. He undertook a task very much beyond his strength, for which he was qnalified neither by learning nor by natural talent. The Rdjatarangint is, no doubt, a difficult book, and nobody who attempts to translate it can hope to accomplish his task without making a number of mistakes. But Mr. Troyer has seldom been able to make out the meaning of the text, except where Kalhana user the simplest, plainest language. His renderings of passages in which Kalhana adopts a higher style are invariably wrong, and frequently unintelligible. The worst portions of the translation are cantos vii. and viii. The contents of the historical and geographical essays attached to the translation require no condemnation on my part, as they have beer estimated at their proper value by other Sanskritists. But I must touch on one point discussed in the preface to Mr. Troyer's 3rd volume, regarding which Professor Lassen also has followed him. Mr. Troyer undertakes there, p. x., an inquiry about the anthorship of the last two cantos of the Rdjatarangint, and comes to the conclusion that the author of these cannot be the same person as he who wrote the first six tarangas, t As. Res. vol. XV. p. 13.
The necessity of one alteration in the date of Lalit- dity and his predecessors, whose reigns Kalhaps has ante. dated by thirty yours, has been recognised by General
because (1) he allots to the last two hundred and fifty years double the number of verses which he devotes to the preceding three thousand two hundred years; (2) because the referencc and résumés made in cantog vii. and viii. to and of events narrated in the first six cantos are not exact; (3) because the viiith canto relates events which occurred after A.D. 1148, the year given (I. 42) as the date of the book. To these arguments Professor Lassen adds the difference in style observable in the two portions, and that in some MSS. the last two books are wanting.
These arguments, plausible as they may seem, are altogether insufficient to support the assertion made. For, with regard to the first point, Mr. Troyer himself has already given the objection which is fatal to it. If a chronicler narrates the events of his own time and of the period immediately preceding it at greater length than the remoter portions of the history of his country, that is no more than might be expected. His materials were more abundant, and the events in which he himself, his immediate ancestors and his patron, played their parts possessed for him an interest which the more distant times did not possess. This interest which he took in his surroundings explains also why he introduces details which to men of later times appear trivial and uninteresting. To say less would also have been considered an offence against the Raja, in whose employ Kalhana's father was. The answer to the second argument, the discrepancies between statements in the first six cantos and the last two, is that these discrepancies are mostly, if not wholly, due to Mr. Troyer's bad materials and faulty translation. It is true that the successor of Chandrapida is called LalitAditya in the ivth canto, and Muktápida in the résumé attached to the viiith. But it is not the fault of Kalhana that Mr. Troyer has not been able to understand the verses (iv. 42, 43) in which it is clearly stated that Muktậpida and Lalitâditya are names of the same person. As regards the third argument, Mr. Troyer has overlooked the fact that Kalhans states that be began to write his poem in Saptarshi Sathvat 24. It contains more than 8000 blokas, and it cannot te supposed that the author completed it in the same year. The fact that he mentions in the viiith book events which happened nine years later, in Saptarshi Sarvat 33,|| merely proves that the poem was not completed until after that time.
Professor Lassen's additional arguments are not more conclusive. Neither myself nor the Cunningham himself: compare above, p. 48, note, Anc. Geog. p. 91, and Ind. Ant. vol. II. pp. 102 8899.
Ind. Alt. vol. III. 481. Rdjat. vii. 3193, Troyer.
