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BOOK NOTICES.
NOVEMBER, 1877.]
himself built on ground from Anuradhapura, for their ease, that it may serve for the four pratyoyas, and one yala to the chaitya here and one yála to the image-house-the pain in hell, which those shall suffer who obstruct this merit acquired from the offered......... which shall last as long as sun and moon endure (literally, sun and moon being the measure), shall be now and in all future, (but) wise men who, having renounced covetousness, hatred, pride, and not obstructing the merit, do... ......may be pleased to share (the merit)."
A grant made to the identical general Lak Vijayasingu Kit is the subject of a long inscription of king Sahasa Malla (1200-1202), engraved on the two sides of a fine stone slab and excellently preserved; the greatest portion, however, is historical, referring to events connected with the accession of the king to the throne of Ceylon. We learn from it that Sahasa Malla was a brother of Niśśañka Malla, being the son of Sri Jayagopa of Kalinga, but by a different queen. This inscription, together with Niśśañka Malla's inscription at Anuradhapura, has lately been published in the Jour. R. As. Soc. (N. S. vol. VII. pp. 353ff); but as, unfortunately, native copies only
BOOK NOTICES.
THE HISTORY OF INDIA from the earliest ages. By J. Talboys Wheeler. Vol. IV. Part I.-Mussulman Rule. (London: Trübner & Co. 1876.)
This is the fourth instalment of what Mr. Wheeler calls the "History of India from the Earliest Ages." The first volume, as most are aware, contains an analysis or abridgment of English versions of parts of the Vedas and the Mahábhárata, and the second of the story of the Rámáyana and the Institutes of Manu. To call these volumes a History, however, we hold to be quite a misnomer: they have no claim to the title. The Mahabharata and the Ramayana are neither of them the work of a single age; and the events chronicled in them, so far as they may chronicle actual events, were perhaps of little more importance in the political history of the time than the feats of Robin Hood were in England. And until these works have been analyzed in a way they are not likely to be for years to come, and the portions belonging to different epochs, if possible, distinguished and separated, the pictures they present can have no claim to historical truthfulness as reflecting the character of any particular age. And when such analysis has been made, the result will only be such history' as might be extracted from any good novelnot a narrative of actual events which formed or
It is well known that every Afghan claims to be one of the Bani-Isráfl, or Children of Israel, and Mr. H. Vansittart as long ago as 1784 addressed Sir W. Jones on
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had been procurable, the text of both abounds in blunders.
I found one short and comparatively modern inscription besides at Polonnaruwa, on a post at the staircase leading to Kiriwehera, fron which I have been unable to make out any sense.
The jungle covering the ancient streets of Polonnaruwa has been cleared to so small an extent that there is no doubt much more must be hidden than we have found as yet; new inscriptions, though probably pretty modern, will certainly be of great interest, for their language as well as, more still, on account of the historical matter they are likely to contain; as for buildings, though at Polonnaruwa they are, as a rule, very inferior imitations of the Hindu style of art, their dis covery may nevertheless prove valuable from more than one point of view.
I beg leave to add regarding the inscriptions inserted in this report that I have translated then into English as literally as possible, as they contain new matter, though being aware of the insufficiency of this kind of translation. Philological explanations it would have been out of place to give here. Akuressa, 11th September 1876.
helped to form the character of the times, but rather, conversely, that character as illustrated by incidents not so real as those in the Waverley novels.
The third volume, on the Hindu and Buddhist periods, is a compilation from more varied materials, which, as has been noticed (ante, vol. IV. p. 62) the writer has often misinterpreted; and the present is a volume, or part of a volume, of 320 pages, with xvi pages of contents, which professes to give the history of Muhammadan rule from 570 to 1650 A. D. The first chapter is devoted to Islâm before the conquest of India, or from 570 to 997 A. D., and is as brief a survey as it well could be, since on p. 22 begins the account of the contest between Jayapala and Subuktigîn, the assertions crowded into the preceding short résumé being made with a confidence that must tempt the careful reader to ask for authorities, which are scarcely ever alluded to. Mr. Wheeler, among other things. believes the Afghâns to be the descendants of the Ten Tribes. But unfortunately he is more fond of theories like this than of facts: here is a specimen from the preface". It will be seen," he says, "in the course of the present volume that the Moghuls bore a striking resemblance to the
the subject of their Hebrew descent. Jones thought there might be some basis of truth in the hypothesis, and suggested that the Arsareth (2 Esdras xiii. 45) to which
