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AUGUST, 1880.]
CORRESPONDENCE AND MISCELLANEA.
covery of the Grantha MS. of Sâyana, he sends me several other items of information which may be of interest to Sanskrit scholars, and which I feel at liberty to publish. Among our new finds," he writes, "you will see a long list of Vedica. There is a Pada-pátha of the Mantras of the Maitrdyaniya Samhitd which is unique. It seems most opportune, as Dr. Schroeder intends pub- Oxford, June 5, 1880.1 lishing the book. I found that in Gujarât, north of the Narmada, there are still many Maitrayaniyas, among them three so-called Suklas, who recite the whole Samhitd from day to day. The others know little of their sacred writings. The Northern Atharvavedins are really, as the Charana vyúhabháshya asserts, all Paippaladins. But as they have lost their books they study the Saunaka Samhitá or the Samhita of any other Veda." "What I have bought this year of Vedica consists of nearly one hundred numbers. For the other Sastras there is also some new material, even some historical texts, and such scarce works as the Pañchasiddhantiká of Vardhamihira. The Sasvata Kosha, according to Aufrecht the oldest Kosha, has been found. A little time ago a portion of a very old MS. of Sayana's Commentary on the Rig-Veda- samhitd was brought to me. It is written initio saec XV! I collated some passages with your edition, and found that the MS. belonged to what you designate as the O. family. It is wonderful that that family should be so old. I shall go on collating some more of it."
The same letter contains some very important information about the discovery of new inscriptions and their bearing on the date of Buddha's death in 477 B.C.; but in regard to these matters I do not like to anticipate Dr. Bühler's own
statements.
What is a matter of real congratulation in these discoveries is that they have been made on the very spot where they were expected to be made, and that hope deferred has at last been rewarded. We seldom find what we are looking for in exactly the place where we think it ought to be, and therefore the discovery of Sâyana's Commentary on the Atharva-Veda, after thirty-four years of search, in the South of India, i.e., in exactly the locality where it ought to have been, like the discovery of Sanskrit texts in Japan, is the best encouragement that could have happened in this field of research.
I cannot close this letter without stating that not only Japan, but China, too, is at last surrendering some of the literary treasures which, beginning with the first century of our era, and not
1 From The Academy, June 12, 1880.
See Mem. sur les Cont. Occ. tom. I. p. 43n: also pp. 30, and 319, tom. II. p. 224.-ED.
203
with the seventh, were poured into it from India. I have now the Sanskrit text of the Vajrachchhedika and some other Sútras published in China, and I hope soon to find leisure to report more fully on those new trouvailles.
F. MAX MÜLLER.
CINDERELLA-HEPHAESTUS-KUVERA.
Rev. S. Beal writing to the Academy (July 3, 1880, p. 11) thinks "we may find a probable explanation of the story of Cinderella in the far East. If we take the Russian variant Chornushka, which according to Ralston is derived from chorna, 'black,' her connexion with the figure known in Japan as Dai Gakf-the Great black one' is at once suggested. Dai Gakf' is worshipped there as the god of riches. He is represented as a little man with a large sack on his shoulders and a hammer in his hand. His proper place is in the kitchen, and he is always found placed near the hearth." Hwen Thsang mentions him as Chinwang, and he is described "as a little black figure seated on the hearth and called Mahakâla (the mighty black one)." "In every case he is represented as a little dwarf, two or three feet high." Now in Smith's Dictionary of Biog. and Mythology, art. Hephaestus,' we find that "the Greeks frequently placed small dwarf-like figures of this god near the hearth, and these dwarfish figures seem to have been the most ancient." Hence, adds Mr. Beal, "in Aristophanes, Aves 435, we have the expression Anoiov Toù énioráтo, where émiorárns is thus described by the scholiast: simulacrum luteum Vulcani quod prope focum collocari solebat, idque sic dictum fuisse quod Vulcanus esset émiorárns, i.e. praeses et inspector ignis sive foci' (vide Suidas sub eriorárns, and Spanheim ad Callimachum, p. 172). And now, taking Max Müller's derivation of Hephaestus from yavishtha, i.e. the youngest, we have some light let in upon the question why Cinderella, who answers to the Norse Boots, is described as the youngest child and always sitting in the hearth among the ashes."
"But again, as to the connexion of Cinderella, or rather Cendreusette and the other variants, with the cow. This is at once explained by the myth that Bera was the mother of Vulcan. In the later form of the myth she was his husband-less mother, and under this form she is represented as disliking him on account of his deformity. This appears to be the origin of the idea of the step
See Mr. Lang's paper in The Academy, June 26, 1880,
p. 474.
