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Upanishads already know and accept the doctrine of the transmigration of souls, we should perhaps seek in these accounts. for a designed and significant (tendenziöze) allusion to the circumstance that the Brahmans did not absolutely reject and hold for unlawful, instruction even in the highest truths, received from the Kshatriyas. Ajatasatru, as is well known, was king when Buddha was born. There may have prevailed at this very period a general impulse, which was not confined to the Brahmans, and could not be restricted by them, to engage in enquiries of the highest metaphysic, in which King Janaka, for instance, played a great part; and this circumstance might fix with certainty the origin of the Upanishads as belonging to the period of the beginning of Buddhism, and as contemporaneous with the later Brahmana era."
THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY.
The instruction of Brahmans in divine knowledge by Kshatriyas is referred to in Professor Max Müller's Chips from a German Workshop, vol. II. p. 338 (edit. 1867). See also my Original Sanskrit Texts, vol. I. pp. 426-436. The subject has been more recently referred to in M. P. Regnaud's "Matériaux pour servir à l'histoire de la philosophie de l'Inde (Materials for a history of Indian philosophy) Part I. pp. 55 ff., from which I translate the following observations on the " influence exercised by the Kshatriyas on the primitive development of the doctrine of the atman."
"A priori, it is very probable that in India philosophical speculations did not originate in the sacerdotal caste, or, at least, were sure, at first, not to meet with much favour among its members.
"When a religious system is established, as Brahmanism was towards the end of the Vedic period, and especially when that system comprises a multitude of rites, the knowledge and practice of which form the appanage of a class which makes it its hereditary profession and property, the priests of which that class is composed have an interest of the first order in constituting themselves the vigilant and perpetual guardians of orthodoxy. It was thus that in Judea the doctrine of Christ found among the priests and the doctors of the law its fiercest and most persevering adversaries. And without going out of India, we have in Buddhism, the founder of which, S& kya Muni, was sprung from the caste of the Kshatriyas, the example of a new religion or philosophy originating outside of the sacerdotal caste, with which the latter soon entered into open hostility. The
See also the same author's History of Ancient Sanskrit Literature, pp. 80 and 421 ff,
[NOVEMBER, 1879.
doctrine of the Upanishads, from which the orthodox systems of philosophy, and more especially Vedantism, issued, never,-at least if we may judge from the documents which we possess,entered into pronounced hostility with the primitive Brahmanism. But if the latter incorporated it at an early period into its system, and liked better to adopt it than to combat it, it is not the less presumable that it was neither the initiator nor the early promoter of it. And this is not a mere presumption based upon simple analogies. In reference to the preponderating part played by the Kshatriyas in the propagation of the doctrine of the dtman, the ancient Upanishads furnish us with indications too explicit to make it possible for us not to take them into serious consideration. and not readily to see in them a movement of ideas inaugurated without the Brahmans, and perhaps in spite of them.
I may mention that the author of this book on the Upanishads, M. Regnaud, has been appointed Professor or
"I proceed to adduce the different texts which authorize these conjectures, while I draw attention to the circumstance that the proof which they furnish is the stronger, and their authenticity is the less assailable, that the Brâhmans had every interest to suppress them, if the thing had been possible, when they had admitted, and attached to the Vedas, the new philosophy."
The texts referred to are then adduced.* J. MUIR.
Über die MAGAVYAKTI des Krishnadása Miçra. Von A. Weber. (Berlin: 1879.)
By way of relaxation from the drudgery and toil which his forthcoming enlarged edition of Håla entails upon him, Professor A. Weber has been investigating the history of the origin of the Maga or Sakadvipiya Brahmans, on the basis of a Sanskrit tract on the subject, the Magavyakti. After a critical examination of previous notices of the Maga clan of Brahmans to be found in European writers, but more especially in the Bhavishya Purána and in Varåha Mihira's Brihat Samhita, he fully discusses the bearing of those accounts on the history of the Parsi settlements in Western India, as well as various collateral questions connected with the religious and literary history of the Hindus, and gives in conclusion the text of the Magavyakti in Roman characters. The whole essay is so interesting and so suggestive of further research that we venture to express a hope that some competent scholar may be induced to make it accessible to a wider circle of readers by means of an English translation. R. R.
Lecturer (Maitre des Conférences) at the Faculty of Letters in Lyons; and recently opened the work of that chair by an Address on the Sanskrit language and literature.
