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THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY.
(SEPTEMBER, 1880.
most MSS. which claim to be of that date are And whilst the great field of Mr. Hodgson's merely copies of old MSS. the dates of which are labours lay in Nepal and along the northern fron. repeated by the copyists. The Sukhavatt-vydha tier of India, it must not be forgotten that these is written in a northern form of Nâgarf which essays are by no means restricted to that zone: belongs to comparatively recent period, but the fifth and sixth sections of these volumes is on many of the letters have not been copied exactly, the Aborigines of the Eastern frontier, and the and it is impossible to fix the date satisfactorily. Indo-Chinese Borderers in Burma, Arakan, and
Any one who will take the trouble to compare Tenasserim, while the ninth is on the Aborigines the facsimile plate with the corresponding text on of Central India, the Eastern Ghâts, the Nilagiris, p. 30 will not fail to admire the admirable way and Ceylon. Thus to students of ethnology and in which Prof. Max Müller has restored this almost glossology in all parts of the Indian empire these illegible and very corrupt text.
essays will be of interest. In the notes (pp. 24, etc.) the Professor has The few lithographs that illustrated the original discussed and cleared up the meaning of a num- papers have not been reproduced (except a Map) ber of difficult words which perpetually occur in with these reprints, but a greater defect is the Buddhist texts, and many of which are of great want of an Index of some sort to make the work interest to Sansksit students.
more convenient for reference. On p. 7 the Professor identifies Konkana- We have already (vol. IV. p. 89) noticed the pura with the western coast of the Dekban, but reprint of Mr. Hodgson's Essays on the Languages, the presence of a forest of the Borassus palm there Literature and Religion of Nepal and Thibet : wecould is decisive against this, as it only grows in large only wish that they were re-edited with the same numbers in dry places; Konkanapura is care as these volumes, and issued as a third one. surely Konkana halli, a former chief town in
1. Vie ou LEGENDE DE GAUDAMA le Boudba des Birmans, the Mysore territory.
et Notice sur les Phongyies ou Moines Birmans. Par A. B. Monseigneur P. Bigandet, Evéque de Ramatha, vicaira
Apostolique d'Ava et Pegou. Traduit en Français par MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS RELATING TO INDIAN SUBJECTS, by Victor Gauvain, Lieut. de vaisseau. Paris : E. Lerode,
Brian Houghton Hodgson, Esq., F.R.S., late B.C.S., &c. 1878. (8vo. Pp. viii. and 640.) 2 vols. London: Trübner & Co. 1880.
2. Tux LITE OR LEGEND OF GAUDAMA, tbb Buddha of the These two volumes of Messrs Trübner & Co.'s
Burmese, with annotations; the ways of Neibban, and
notice of the Phongyies or Burmese Monks. By the Oriental Series' contain a number of papers con- Right Rev. P. Bigandet, Bishop of Ramatha, &c. in 2 tributed principally to the Journal of the Asiatic vols. London: Trübner, 1880. Society of Bengal between the years 1847 and 1853, Bishop Bigandet's invaluable work on Buddha and relating chiefly to the languages and ethnology and Burmese Buddhism first appeared in a single of the aboriginal tribes of India, with some other volume (324 pp.) printed at Rangoon in 1858, essays of a more general character. The first and was favourably noticed in the Calcutta Review Essay on the Kochh, Bôdô and Dhimal tribes
in June 1859. A second edition revised and appeared separately at Calcutta in 1847, the tenth much enlarged (538 pp.) appeared at the same and eleventh on the Route of the Nepalese Mission place in 1866. Both these editions were out of to Pekin, and on the Route from Kathmandd to print when Lieutenant Victor Gauvain prepared Darjiling, with the twelfth, on the Systems of Law his very excellent French translation of the second and Police in Nepál, were published in the Selec- edition, which brought the work again within the tions from the Records of Bengal. The short paper reach of European scholars in a convenient form on the Native Method of making the paper called and clear type.
Nepalese,' is from the Transactions of the Agricul- Messrs. Trübner & Co. now reproduce the same tural Society; and the Letters on Vernaculars, work in a faithful reprint of the second English with which the second volume concludes, are edition in two handy volumes, which will be wel reprinted from the Friend of India, 1848.
come to English students. Buddhism in Burma, "Almost all the papers," says the editor, Dr. R. as in Ceylon, differs markedly from the religion Rost, "more especially the longer Linguistical which passes under the same name in Nepal, Tibet, Essays, have been reprinted from copies revised and China: it knows nothing of the Bodhisattwas, and annotated by the author himself, who has Joana Buddhas, Saktis, Devis, and the multiearned a fresh and lasting title to the gratitude of tudinous pantheon of the Mah@yana sects, and all students of Indian glossology and ethnology on this account alone deserves a special study. by allowing the rare and valuable Papers comprised And no work founded-rather translated-from in these volumes to be made generally available." original sources presents to the Western student
Oply too faithful: for it reproduces even the misprinta,-6.g. Ilahabas' in the note vol. II. p. 266. Gauvain (p. 480) has not overlooked such errata.
