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THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY.
"Hasan and Husain-O'Duldul' of our lord, where is our father and thy master? Where is our chief and our prince? Where is our dear supporter and protector? Where is the lustre of the Prophet's religion? Where the husband of Zahrah the virgin pa O poor creature, thy master has been killed by the insensate populace."" (Vol. I. pp. 149-153.)
This is a fair specimen of the literary character of the great Tragedy-but the original must be far more impressive when it is acted, and it finds a ready response in the hearts of an excited multitude.
A CHRONOLOGICAL and HISTORICAL CHART of INDIA, showing at one view all the principal Nations, Governments, and Empires which have existed in that Country from the earliest period to the Suppression of the Great Mutiny A.D. 1857-8, compiled and drawn by A. A. DURTNALL, of the High Court of Justice. (London: W. H. Allen & Co.)
The idea of such a wall chart as this, which measures about 3 ft. 3 in. by 4 ft., is excellent. The columns on each side are reserved for the dates-those on the left being for the Kaliyug, Brihaspati Cycle, Samvat Hijrah, and Christian reckoning; those on the left, for the last two again with the Saka Cycle of 60 in the Dekhan, and Yezdegird eras. On the right are four columns for "Contemporaneous History," chiefly European, and on the left three, occasionally broken, for Herat, Kandahar and Kabul. The space, 2 feet wide, that remains in the centre of the sheet, is divided into seventeen principal columns-some subdivided and others combined at different places-but representing generally the events in the histories of the Panjab, Sindh, Rajputana, Ajmer, Dehli, Kanauj, Magadha (Banâras), Behår, Bengal, Malwa, Gujarât, Khândesh and Berar, Maharashtra, Telangana, Karnata, the Tamil country, and Orissa. When we mention that "the principal works referred to are the Ata-i Akbart, Elphinstone's History of India, Gleig's, Thornton's, and Murray's Histories of the British Empire in India, The English Cyclopædia, Brown's Carnatic Chronology, Wilson's Glossary of Indian Terms, and Tytler's Elements of History," it will be understood at once that the work has not been executed with any pretensions to research or authority. Prinsep's Useful Tables alone afford the student much more information, and would supply materials for a most useful chart on a similar plan, or for recasting and greatly improv
Burton's El Medinah and Meccah, vol. I. p. 815,
1 Les Stances érotiques de Bhartrihari in Ind. Ant. vol. V. p. 81; Iter Persicum, vol. VII, p. 30.
Wilson's Theatre of the Hindus, vol. I. p. 6. Archaeological Survey of Western India, vol. III. p. 56. Jour. B.B.R. As. Soc. vol. XIII. p. 812. According to Lassen Alterthums. II. (2nd ed.) p. 965, (1st p. 945),
[SEPTEMBER, 1879.
ing this one. Still as a popular representation to the eye of the revolutions, conquests, &c. in the history of India, from the time of the Muhammadan invasion, it will be interesting and instructive, especially for Indian schools and colleges: the small space devoted to the period from B.C. 550 to A.D. 1100 is not so satisfactory, but neither are our histories of it.
Le CHARIOT de TERRE CUITE (Mrichchhakatika) Drame Sanscrit attribué au roi Sûdraka, traduit et annoté des scolies inédites de Lalla Dikshita. Par PAUL REGNAUD. 4 tom. 18mo elzevir. (Paris: E. Leroux, 1876-77). We have already noticed some of the neat and beautifully printed volumes of Leroux's Bibliothèque Orientale Elzévirienne.1
By its antiquity, literary merits, and extent, The Toy-Cart is one of the most important-if not the most important-of the Hindu dramas. Who its reputed author, Raja Sadra ka, was, it is difficult to fix the Kumáriká-Khanda of the Skanda Purdna appears to place a king of this name in A.D. 190; a local Mahatmya of Paithana says he founded a dynasty there in A.D. 372; and other accounts make him the first of the Andhra kings, one of whose successors-Satakarni-has left a long inscription at Nânâghât, and others were the excavators of Bauddha caves at Nasik, but it is
doubtful whether the first. Åndhrabhṛitya's name was Sudraka, and not rather Sisuka, Šuru ká, or Sipraka, and his era is not fixed,-being placed as late as A.D. 192 by Wilson," by others in B.C. 21, or 31,7' and between the first and third centuries B.C. by Wilford, which is just as probable as any of the other assigned dates. From the poem itself, when we try to determine its date the indications are vague enough; the Bauddha religion was prevalent and prosperous at the time to which the characters of the play belonged, but it does not necessarily follow that it was written then, any more than that Shakespeare's Julius Cæsar or King John were written at the times of the events they represent. Still the purity of the language and its freedom from grammatical pedantries and studied rhetorical flourishes, indicate that the Myichchhakatiká belongs to the age before the early decline of Sanskrit literary taste, and M. Regnaud attributes it on such grounds to the period between A.D. 250 and 600, and rather nearer the first of these dates than the second.
Wilson translated the play into English verse and published it at Calcutta in 1827; the Sans
also pp. 1209, 1211,-he was king of Vidis. Theatre of the Hindus, vol. I. pp. 6, 9.
Prinsep's Useful Tables (in Thomas' ed., Essays vol. II.) p. 241; conf. Archaeol. Sur. of W. Ind. vol. II. p. 132. Fergusson, Ind. and East. Architect. p. 717; Jour. R. As. Soc. (N.S.) vol. IV. p. 122.
Asiat. Res. vol. IX. p. 101.
