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MISCELLANEA.
SEPTEMBER, 1880.]
taining much new and interesting matter relating to the Persian Gulf accumulated since Vincent and Heeren conducted their investigations.
This is followed by "Notes on the Locality and Population of the Tribes dwelling between the Brahmaputra and Ningthi Rivers," by the late G. H. Damant, M.A. The paper is accompanied by tables of comparative vocabularies.
"On the Saka, Samvat, and Gupta Eras"-a supplement to his paper "On Indian Chronology," (N. S. vol. IV. pp. 81-137), by J. Fergusson, D.C.L., &c. takes up, first the dates of the Indo-Scythian inscriptions of Kanishka, Huvishka, Vasudeva, &c. which the author regards as dating from the Saka era established, he believes, "by King Kanishka, who himself was a Saka king." This is supported by the fact of Gondophares, in the first century, being anterior to Kanishka, and coins of the time of Domitian, Trajan, and Hadrian, being found with those of Kadphises, Kanishka, and Oerke in a tope in Afghanistan. Secondly, the Kshatrapa coins, he contends, do not date from the Vikrama Samvat, but from the Saka era, and overlap the earlier Guptas, and that the Vikrama Samvat was not in use till about the year 1000, when it was introduced and dated from 600 years, or ten cycles before the battle of Karur, assumed to have been fought in A.D. 544, in the time of Harsha Vikramaditya; and at the same time the Harsha era, dating 1000 years before the same event, or 456 B.C., was proposed and partially established. The Guptas he regards as dated from A.D. 318-19, and that the "foreign invaders" who overthrew them were the White Huns whom Kosmas Indikopleustes mentions as a powerful nation in the north of India, early in the sixth century.
"The Megha Sâtra" by C. Bendall, follows and gives the text and a translation of this late Sútra of the Mahâyâna school, from the Nepalese MSS. at Cambridge.
The next article is "Historical and Archæological Notes on a Journey in South-Western Persia, 1877-78," by A. Houtem-Schindler; and the last in this number is on the "Identification of the False Dawn' of the Muslims with the Zodiacal Light of Europeans," by J. W. Redhouse, This is a continuation of a paper on the same subject in vol. X.
The third part, for July 1880, contains a second paper by Mr. E. L. Brandreth on the Gaurian compared with the Romance languages, in continuation of the first in vol. XI. In this interesting paper the author carefully developes many striking analogies existing between the forras in which Sanskrit has broken up into the various modern
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Prakrits, and the way in which Latin broke up into the various Romance languages of modern Europe. These analogies are not only very marked and extend to many details as between one Prâkrit and one Romance language, but what is more strikingly curious even, we find one Prakrit following the precise analogy in its derivations from Sanskrit that Italian does in its derivations from Latin, whilst another is in as close analogy to French. Take as examples Sansk. nar-as' man'; Sindhi, nar-u; Hindi, nar; and compare Lat. annus, Ital. ann-o, Fr. an; or Sans. jihv-d, Sind. jibha, H. jibh, with Lat. ros-a, It. ros-a, Fr. rose; or, again, San. bhitt-is, Sind. bhitt-i, Hind. bhit, and Lat. turr-is, It. torr-e, Fr. tour; &c. The next paper is by Arminius Vambéry, "On the Uzbeg Epos," a poem in 74 cantos containing upwards of 4,300 distichons in the metre of the Mejnun u Leila of Jâmt. It is from a MS. in the Imperial Library of Vienna, and bears date upon the last page of 916 A. H. (1510 A. D.), and must have been written shortly after the death of its author, Prince Mehemmed Salih, the son of Mir Said, formerly ruler of Kharezm. The poem celebrates the glories of his master the great Uzbeg Chieftain, Sheibani Khân, and from its length, the historical events related are brought before us in such detail, and with such episodes, as neither Baber nor Mirkond, nor the Tarikh-i Rashidi used by Erskine, and still less the little Sheibani Námeh edited by the Russian Orientalist K. Berezin, in 1849, can supply us. The narrative commences. with Sheibani's first march upon Samarkand, then governed by Baki Terkhân; then follow his engagements with the Mirzas (as the Timurides are called) in Transoxiana, in which Baber plays a prominent part, particularly in the account of the siege of Samarkand, and of the troubles which the founder of the Mogul dynasty in India had to suffer at the hands of his triumphant rival. After the expulsion of Baber and the downfall of the Mirzas, which led to the defeat of the Mongol auxiliaries of Baber, Sheibani crosses the Oxus (called Öküz or Üghüz by the author), and enters upon the long war with the children of Mirza Husein Baikara, and with Khosru Shah, the lord of Rahistân-comprizing in those days Badakhshan, Khatlan, Dervaz, Roshan, and Shignan. After the defeat and death of this Turkish prince, Sheibani concludes the war against Kharezm, where Chin Sofi, the chief of the great Ada-Turkoman tribe, made a vigorous resistance, and inflicted heavy losses on the Uzbegs, who had to besiege the capital of the said country for eleven months, and only reduced it through the indomitable perseverance of Sheibani. Here the poem
See Beal's Catena, p. 416 ff.; Asiat. Res. vol. XX., p. 529.
