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THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY.
[MAY, 1878.
repelled still more by English. The Marathi translation will find its way to the educated classes among the natives; the English is intended for that small but important class of Indian society which has adopted the language of the ruler as the lingua franca of the day. It is to be hoped that this important work may be continued, though it will probably take at least ten years to finish it."
both European and native, have testified their ap- probation of it. Its object is chiefly social and religious. "There are thousands of Brahmans," the editor remarks," who know the whole of the Rigveda by heart, and can repeat it in Sarhite, Pada, Gata, Ghava, and Krama, without making any mistakes [these are different methods of learning the Veda, by either reciting each word separately, or by repeating the words in various complicated ways]; there are probably not more than a dozen who have ever attempted to understand what the Veda contains. There are quite as many who can repeat the Yajus and also the Sama Veda, though Atharva-Vedis are very few, at least in the Bombay Presidency."
Prof. Max Müller, in a paper on "The Veda and its Influence in India," taking this publication as his text, speaks of it thus:-“The translation now offered to the natives in Sanskrit, Marathi, and English is chiefly intended to show what the Veda really contains, and especially to prove that those texts which are supposed to authorize modern rites and beliefs among the people do not authorize them. To this object the greater part of the notes are devoted. Thus the verse i. 6, 3, Ketum kringan aketave is repeated in a ceremony now performed to avert the ill-will of the imaginary planet Ketu. An ignorant priest, who only knew how to repeat the verse, at once connected the ketum of the verse with the planet Ketu, and accordingly taught that all the Purdnas tell about Ketu was authorized by the Veda. A note of the translator fully explains this, and shows the simplicity of the religious conceptions of the Vedic Rishis as compared with those of their modern interpreters.
"We are told that, if the authority of the Veda is regarded as invulnerably sacred, the belief that it is impossible for any human being not inspired, like the old Rishis, to interpret the Veda, is almost as invulnerably firm. Hence the editor has adopted the following plan. He gives first the Samhitâ text of the Rig Veda with the Pada text, because the Vaidik Brâhmans regard the Samhith text alone as quite incomplete. He then gives a translation based as much as possible on the re- cognized commentary of S&yana. He does not, however, follow Sâyana slavishly, but if he finds that the explanation of a word which that infallible commentator gives in one passage is impossible, he takes, whenever he can do so, another explanation of the same word given by the same writer in some other passage, thus shielding his departure from Sâyana by the authority of Sayana himself. This rendering of the Veda into Sang- ksit is chiefly intended for the old Shastris, who despise all vernacular speech, and who would be
The Life of JENGRIZ KHAN. Translated from the Chinese. With an introduction by Robert Kennaway Douglas, of the British Museum, and Professor of Chinese at King's College, London. (London: Trübner & Co. 1877).
This little volume on the Life of the great Tatar conqueror Jenghiz Khân supplies, from Chinese sources, a record of his early life and of his victorious career in China, which are treated but cursorily in the Persian and Mongol historians, who concern themselves principally with his more western conquests. "It has been translated from the Yuen She, or "The History of the Yuen dynasty,' by Sung Leen; the Yuen she luy peen, or "The History of the Yuen Dynasty classified and arranged,' by Shaou Yuen-ping; and the She wei, or The Woof of History,' by Chin YunSeih. Each of these works contains facts and details which do not appear in the other two," and the translator has judiciously woven the three narratives into one connected history. But, to make the account of the conquests of Jenghiz more complete, he has preceded it by an introduction of about twenty-five pages, giving a brief sketch of the campaigns in Western Asia and Eastern Europe, drawn principally from the third chapter of Howorth's excellent History of the Mongols.
The translated narrative extends over 105 pages, and is a thoroughly readable chapter of a history that, with the exception of a few incidents, may doubtless be accepted as authentic and tolerably accurate in its details of the life of the man "whose armies were victorious from the China Sea to the banks of the Dnieper." It was the march of his Mongols that displaced the Ottoman Turks from their original home in Northern Asia, and thus "led to their invasion of Bithynia under Othman, and ultimately to their advance into Europe under Amurath the First."
The Chinese materials for these annals have been already drawn upon by continental scholars such as Pauthier, Hyacinthe, D'Ohsson, Erdmann, Gaubil, Schott, Kavalevsky, and others, but this is their first appearance in an English dress. We hail the volume as an evidence of a growing interest in Oriental research, and hope Professor Douglas will be encouraged to undertake other versions.
The Acauler, Sov. 18, 1876, p. 501.
