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THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY.
[DECEMBER, 1884.
of India, and are also in use in the Marath coun. In the present case the masks appear to represent try and in the north; but these are usually lighter KAR or PidArt, as she is called in Tamil, who, and more imposing than the present pair.
being a durd&oatd or evil goddess, is represented They have probably been buried for a century, with tysks. The large rings in the ears and the nuck. and may be considerably older,-the large ear-rings laces mark the figures as those of females. And and the forms of the necklets, however, are such as Mr. 8. M. NAtléa Sastri informs me that masks are still to be met with among certain castes in of this goddess are made of clay and burnt red to Southern India to the present time. It has been sell to people of the lower castes who worship her suggested by Sir Walter Elliot that they may be at certain seasons; but these are, of course, of connected with or allied to images employed in a much coarser type than the bronze ones here the ancestor.worship which he believes has not represented. quite disappeared from among the Dravidian Information respecting the use of such masks races. The worship of the durddatda Kali and as those here figured, as well as notes on traces Bhairava is closely connected with that of bhdta of ancestor-worship would be of interest. or the ghosts of dead persons of notoriety.
J. BURGESS. BOOK NOTICES. THE LIGHT of AHIA, being the Life and Teaching of " I will depart,' he spake; "the hour is come!
Gaatama, Prince of India and founder of Buddhism. By EDWIN ARNOLD, M.A., F.B.G.S., C.SI., &o., ............. Unto this (large 8vo., illustrated) London: Trábner & Co. Came I, and unto this all night and daye 1883.
Have led me;"- Compare this with John xii, A notice of this poem was given in our pages
23, 27.-So again(ante, vol. VIII, p. 299) when the first edition
"....... These that are mine, and those appeared in 1879. Its extraordinary popularity,
Which shall be mine, a thousand million more especially in America, where a cheap reprint ap
Saved by this sacrifice I offer now." peared at fifteen cents, has very largely helped
is taken from John xvii, 20, and the idea of a to increase the interest among ordinary readers, which was otherwise growing, in the history and
sacrifioe for others is entirely unknown to Bud.
dhist modes of thought. teachings of Buddhism. Everywhere we meet with people who think they now know something
And again the words about Buddha and his religion from what Mr.
".... Alas! for all my sheep which have Arnold has given them in so attractive a form.
No shepherd; wandering in the night" The rapid sale of edition after edition has now
give the same idea expressed in the same led the Publishers to present the poem in a new
words as in John , 14-16, and Matt., ix, 36. setting, in beautiful type, paper and binding, and
The expression of the tempter Mara—"I thou profusely illustrated with numerotis very fine
beest Buddha" is just that in Lake, iv, 3, 9; woodcuts " taken from purely Buddhist sources"
Matt., iv, 3 and 6. And in the retrospect of his without modern addition or variation. These
lifo, Buddha is represented as seeing where his alone render the volume most attractive, and are
path had often leddeeply interesting to the artist and antiquary.
".... On dizzy ridges where his feet Of the scientific value of Mr. Arnold's book
Had well-nigh slipped;" there can hardly be two opinions among those who just as in Poalm luxviii, 2. have any correct knowledge of the subject. It If the author could establish any number of his glorifies Buddha's teaching far above its true many verbal agreements with the Bible from place. We have already (vol. XII, p. 314) ex. Buddhist works, he onght, in honesty, to have pressed dissatisfaction with the way he exalte his embodied the references to his authorities in this subject, and introduces purely Christian ideas or some earlier edition of his poem. But his and even the words of the New Testament, in suggestions of verbal coincidences and even of order to paint his ideal in the most attractive co- identical ideas are wholly unjustifiable, and lead lours. To those already noted (vol. VIII, pp. 209, to a false and too favourable representation of 300) we may add a few further illustrations of Buddhism, which must seriously mislead those this :-When Asita blesses the infant Gautama, who have not derived their ideas from more he says to the father, in words nearly the same authoritative works, such as Oldenberg's most inas in Luke ii, 85
structive Life of Buddha, Spence Hardy's Manual, "... a nord must pierce
Köppen's Die Religion des Buddhas, &c., in any Thy bowels for this boy-"
of which the reader will find a very different When Gautama declares his revolution to become presentation of the teaching of the founder of a Buddha, we read
Buddhism.
