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ON THE KRISHNAJANMASHTAMI.
DECEMBER, 1877.]
Meanwhile we here subjoin a few more data which abundantly establish the existence in India during the last three or four centuries of a directly European influence in the field of art. First of all, then, according to p. 424 of the Catalogue des Manuscrits et Xylographes Orientaux de la Bibliothèque Impériale Publique de St. Pétersbourg, which appeared in the year 1852, in a manuscript collection of Muhammadan-Indian pictures there (No. cdlxxxix.) of date between the years 1621-1752, we find, among others, on p. 68, "an image of the Holy Virgin with the Child Jesus, and above, in letters scarcely recognizable from their smallness, the words
yé saheb al zaman, O - يا صاحب الزمان
Seigneur du temps!" Then we come to f. 77 vers. the Annunciation of the Holy Virgin,' with some words in Roman characters, in which we can distinguish MOTIR and NOSTER (compare Ouseley, Biographical Notes on Persian Poets, p. ccxxiv., London, 1846). And so, likewise, our Royal Library here is in possession of two similar collections of works. One of them (library pictures A 100) bears the title "A collection of original drawings to illustrate the costume and the manners of the Persians" it is not, however, Persian but Indian pictures that are contained in it, as, for example, two pictures of the blue Krishna, both of which represent him as a young man, the one as seated on a kind of stool, the other as milking a cow (a shepherdess stands near). It is highly surprising to find among these pictures a beautiful one, obviously modelled on a European copy, representing the child Christ in the Madonna's left arm (both without halo). Jesus is dressed in yellow, and holds a book in his hand; the Madonna has on a red under-garment, and a
That is budi, with an erroneous secondary substi tuting of s for s. Compare gana svarádi, where vadi also appears along with sudi (formerly also sudi). Both forms occur only in giving dates, and are simple abbreviations. Their being placed among the indeclinables is just such an absurdity as if, in a Latin grammar, the abbreviations cal. id. sc. were to be put down as indeclinables; sudi stands for sukladi nasya (or) su ddha-di nasya, or di vasasya), that is buklapakshasya; and vadi, badi for vahuladinasya, that is bahu lapakshasya. Benfey's explanation of the two forms as locatives (see his Vollst. Gramm. der Sanskritsprache, p. 344. Leipzig, 1852), viz. of sudi through sudivi, and of vadi through avadi, is quite wrong. In M. Müller's Sanskrit Grammar (p. 149, Lond. 1866), sudi (sic), 'light fortnight,' and badi, dark fortnight,' are also placed among the "indeclinable nouns," along with svar, sviyam, &c.-So, samvat also, occurring only in stating dates (see gana svarádi, and in Müller; in Benfey in the place referred to it is wanting) is scarcely an indeclinable, but merely an abbreviation for samvatsare, like our A. for
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blue handkerchief on her head, which falls down like a mantle, and envelopes her whole body.
تصویر حضرت : The superscription runs thus
(?) Tasvir Hazrat 'Isa bin (?) bin Maryam, "Picture of the Lord Jesus son [this word is repeated] of Mary." Of much greater importance, however, is the second of this collection (Access. 9278, 9360). The same thing appears from a border executed in gold painting and common to all the leaves, which on every leaf is adorned with separate figures-a single work of art. Of the larger pictures that are found in the middle of this frame, a considerable number are old European engravings, or at least copies of such. And in fact the subjects of these are borrowed for the most part from the history of Christ. Thus, for example, one engraving represents the murder of the children at Bethlehem, another the worship of the kings, another Christ's resurrection and descent into hell. A Madonna of Dürer's (but not the Madonna Lactans) lies before us in a free copy, and also among the figures in the frames done in gold, we find the Madonna with the Child (although not, in this case, as a sucking child), or the child Christ alone, or other persons taken from sacred history. Beside them are numerous other representations having no reference to these, some European also, but most of them of decidedly Indian character and origin. Fortunately, the date of this remarkable work is preserved to us in a perfectly authentic way. On the concluding page the Indian artist, to whom the execution of the whole evidently belongs, has represented himself as offering a roll of paper to his high patron, by whose order he had executed his work, and on this roll, in Devanagari, stand the words siyi (!) éri Yaláladina Akavara Pátiśáhi chiram jiva samvatu (1) 1646. pausha sudit naumi (1)
are
'Anno. Benfey, indeed, in his Sanskrit Dictionary, places saivat together with parut, and seeks (under parut) in the vat a separate word with the meaning of year,' which he compares with ros. For parut Tepúσi, Armen. heru, Pott, Windischmann, and Bopp have both sought a similar derivation, and in the ut a contraction of the syllable vat from vatsara, year." (See Bopp, Verg. Gram. vol. II. p. 210, vol. III. p. 481.) But the very reference to repúσi and heru makes this appear to me very improbable for parut also. The words vatsa, vatsara, year, scarcely descended from the Indo-Germanic age: vatsa I cannot show with this signification in the Rik. at all, and in the Brahmana only in the word trivatsa, which is de. fined by trivarsha, but can also be quite differently understood; vatsara, too, very seldom occurs in it, and may probably be only a secondary word, formed to denote one of the five or six yuga-years, and derived from satiratsara. This last word, not exactly one often met with in the Rik, probably at first contained an r in the middle, as derived from the root vart and standing for samhvart sara, and meaning properly the cycle rolling back on itself:
