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THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY.
[APRIL, 1879.
the still more dangerous class of philistine guides which the tourist creates, as well as from railway ballast contractors. He instances the excavations for ballast for the Fathegarh and Kanhpur railway. "Miles of sandstone clips," he says, "have been stacked along the roadside, and it is not too much to say that perhaps a good mile of this excellent ballast has been supplied by figures and carvings, some of which, had they been preserved, might have proved of interest.” Mr. Rivett-Carnac rescued some pieces of undoubted merit on the spot, and Bent them to Calcutta. Another of the evils he complains of is the dilettante excavator for coins and relics, who, if he find anything, is almost certain to keep it to himself and never publish it, at least satisfactorily: and when he dies it is lost. The philistine class of guides is well illustrated by the Peskar of Ajanta, who for years past has been cutting pieces out of the wonderful wallpaintings in the Bauddha Caves there, and present- ing them to visitors in hopes of a larger inám. We do trust Government will take up the whole matter, and try to devise some means of stopping the vandalism that is daily going on both in our own and Native States.
NOTES AND QUERIES. COUVADE, ante p. 87.-In vol. III. p. 151 of the Indian Antiquary will be found an account of the Couvade as practised round about Dummagudem. That account was given by a woman of the Erakalavandhu caste, and when a by-stander rather incredulously laughed, she pointed to her two boys who were standing, by, and exclaimed
Well, when these two boys were born, I and my husband followed that custom, and so also after the birth of all my other children.'
On p. 188 vol. V. is another allusion to these people. I ought to have added there that the women are called 'hens' by their husbands, and the male and female children cock children,' and hen children respectively.-JOHN CAIN.
GHOST-WORSHIP.-A collection of facts regarding the remnant of Nature-worship underlying Brahmanism and Muhammadanism would be most interesting. How far is this connected with Shamanism
CESSATION OY CASTE AT CERTAIN PLACES.-In the temple of Jagannath all caste ceases : is this the case in any other place of sanctity P-R. Cust, Lib. R. As. Soc.
BOOK NOTICES. PAPERS relating to the Collection and Preservation of the • Dictionary of Islâm' which he has in course of
Records of ANCIENT SANSKRIT LITERATURE in INDIA. Edited by order of the Government of India by A. E.
compilation. This second edition has undergone GOUGR, B.A., Professor in the Presidency College and most careful revision and important additions. Principal of the Madrasa, Calcutta. (Calcatta : Office of the Superintendent of Govt. Printing, 1878).
It contains fifty-five notes or chapters on such In this handsome volume of 234 pages Mr.
subjects as Islâm, the Quran, Allah, Prayer, Gough has collected the principal records relating
Zakat, Nikah Janaza, the Wahhabis, Sufism, to the search for, and cataloguing of, Sanskrit
Zikr, Tahrif, &c. &c., all treated in a brief, clear, Manuscripts, so wisely and liberally undertaken
popular style, and yet with a comprehensive by the Government of India on the basis of the
scholarship that omits little of importance. The Note prepared on the subject in 1868 by Mr.
book (282 pp. 12mo) may be confidently recomWhitley Stokes. This search has been most suc
mended to all who wish for accurate information cessful in the discovery of new and important
on & most interesting subject. codices, and it is to be hoped it will still be continued, and that the further object originally The BIRTH OF THE WAR GOD. A poem by Kalidus, aimed at, of publishing the rarer works discovered
translated from the Sanskrit into English Verse. By
Ralph T.H. Griffith, M.A., Principal of Benares College. will now be also steadily carried out. To all in
(London: Trübner & Co., 1879). terested in the work and its results Mr. Gough's Mr. Griffith's very spirited rendering of the compilation will be found of value and interest.
Kumdrasambhava, first published twenty-six years
ago, is well known to most who are at all interNotes on MURAMMADANISM, being OUTLINES of the RE
ested in Indian literature, or enjoy the tenderness LIGIOUS SYSTEM of ISLAM By the Rev. T. P. HUGHES, of feeling and rich creative imagination of its M.R.A.S., C.M.S., Missionary to the Afghans, Peshawar. -Second edition, revised and enlarged. (London:
author. The first edition having for long been W. 1. Allen & Co., 1877.]
out of print, Messrs. Trübner & Co. have done The first edition of this very interesting and well in presenting it again to the English reader really scholarly accurate work appeared in 1875, as a volume of their very handy and nicely got and was intended by the author as the notes of a' up. Oriental Series.'
