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national hero; with the Adityas, especially with Varuna, whose lieutenant in a certain field Indra seems to have been, until finally he succeeded his master on the throne of heaven (a question treated of at considerable length in the essay); with the Maruts, the gods of the storm, who support their leader Indra in the storm-battle; with Soma, originally the well-known intoxicating beverage, supposed by the simple-minded worshippers to be enjoyed by the god with even greater gusto than they themselves experienced, but before long personified and elevated into a hero of boundless prowess, and associated with Indra in all his exploits; with Brihaspati or Brahmanaspati, the god of prayer, with Agni, the god of fire and lightning, and Vishnu, the sun-god; and with Tvashtar and the Ribhus, the skilful armourers and artificers. From the notion of Indra's paramount importance in preserving the natural order of the world was developed, by gradual stages, the belief that he was its creator, in which character we find him celebrated in passages of great sublimity, His benevolence towards his worshippers, finally,
BOOK NOTICES.
BOOK
A COMPARATIVE GRAMMAR of the GAUBIAN LANGUAGES, with special reference to the Eastern Hindi, accompanied by a Language-Map and a table of Alphabets. By A. F. Rudolf Hoernle. London: Trübner & Co.
333
is praised in grateful language, and gives occasions for associating with him Pashan and the two Asvins, the divinities of benevolence par excellence among the Indians.
Here is a book the simplest examination of which shows better than any ex professo dissertation whatever could do, to what degree of precision the art of analysing and describing a group of languages has been carried, of following or divining the progressive alterations in them and establishing their affiliation. Twenty years ago, supposing even that the materials on which it is founded had been accessible, the idea of writing on the same plan would not have occurred to any one. The accomplished grammarian who had succeeded in grasping the subject as clearly, would have been obliged in the exposition and at the risk of being understood by only a very few readers, to stop at each step to plan or clear his way, to establish or recall principles, to make digressions and impede his progress with a whole array of general theories. Dr. Hoernle has found the ground better prepared. He has been able to reduce his impedimenta to the strictly necessary, and comprise in 400 pages the historical and com. parative grammar of all the modern Aryan idioms of India. His book, which embraces the same geographical and linguistic area as Mr. Beames's, is, in several respects, materially more complete, at the same time the teaching is carried deeper. This is a result which does infinite honour to
IV. The extraordinary popularity which this robust deity (who in the warlike epic period becomes the supreme unchallenged ruler of the gods) enjoyed among the Indian Aryans was the cause of his being celebrated in the most extravagant language. His personal appearance, his weapons, horses, chariot, his enormous appetite, and still more prodigious thirst, are all described with the minuteness and exaggeration characteristic then, as now, of eastern poetry.
The Proceedings appended to the volume give abstracts of several other papers, and among them that of Prof. Whitney's paper on the Transliteration of Sanskrit, reproduced ante p. 263.
The XIIth volume, published before the preceding, contains Prof. Whitney's Index Verborum to the published of the Atharva-Veda,-a volume that will be specially welcome to Vedic students.
NOTICES.
Dr. Hoernle, but it is also a happy sign of the actual state of linguistic study, that such a result is attainable, without presuming too much on the public.
In order to confine himself within such narrow limits, Dr. Hoernle has necessarily been obliged to compress the lines. The volume has but scant margin and the pages bristle with initials, abbreviations, grammatical terms, designations of languages and dialects, names of authors, titles of Hindu and European works, known or unknown, published or in manuscript, and many contractions-the multitude of which would be troublesome in any other book less intended for patient minute study. By way of compensation, economy is never practised at the cost of essential or really important matters. The examples, and they are innumerable, from the simple form to the developed citation, are all given in Devanagari characters, and from the beginning to the end accompanied by the translation. Although generally sparing of comments, the author does not hesitate to engage in long discussions on particularly obscure or questionable points. But what he has, above all, avoided is to economize in facts. In this respect his book is of astonishing richness. In no other work do we find for all the periods of the history of these languages, the inventory of their grammatical mechanism so complete, from the smallest phonetic peculiarities to the characteristic processes of their syntax.
