Book Title: Indian Antiquary Vol 18
Author(s): John Faithfull Fleet, Richard Carnac Temple
Publisher: Swati Publications

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Page 341
________________ OCTOBER, 1889.] BOOK NOTICES. 319 importance, and the thanks that we owe to Dr. text, as he has given it, will have to be materially Sachau should be proportionately great. altered. Alberoni flourished in the time of Mahmad Dr. Sachau enters at some length into the proof Ghazni, when the Brahmanical civilization, bable date of the book, and arrives at the concluwhich had superseded the Buddhistic, was in its sion that it was written between 30th April and turn about to be overshadowed, first by that of the 30th September A.D. 1030, meaning by "writing." Musalman and eventually by that of the Christian, the final composition of a work, the various parts And it is, indeed, fortunate for the world, that, at of which had long previously been completed. It the very commencement of the epoch of destruc. appears to have been composed at Ghaznf during tion inaugurated by Mahmåd, there should have the troubled period which succeeded the death of been living and writing scholar gifted with Mahmad, and Albêrunt probably got most of sufficient breadth of view to enable him to study his information from Hindu residents of that sympathetically the system that was passing place, who were then, no doubt, very numerous, away: sufficiently endowed with the critical His actual travels in India do not seem to have faculty to appreciate modes of thought so opposed extended beyond the Pañjáb; the districts about to those with which he had been himself imbued Peshawar, Jhêlam, Sialkot, LÅhôr, and Multân, from his birth; and possessed of sufficient energy and skill to record what he had learnt for the But it is not so much from his record of what he benefit of his contemporaries and successors. He saw, as from his record of what he read, that wrote in A.D. 1030, and among his predecessors Albêrunt has become of world-wide fame. His in the description of India were the Greek diplo- learning in Sansksit literature was for his time matist Megasthenes about B. 0. 295, and the wonderful, because it was against his religious Chinese monks in the 5th, 6th, and 7th centuries teaching to study systems foreign to Islam, and in A.D. But Alberoni is incomparably, as far as the few cases where this prejudice has been overwe are concerned, the most important writer of come no other instance exists of a Muhammadan them all. Of Megasthenôs we have but fragments, trying to procure his foreign learning at first and the Buddhist monks from China are as babes hand. As a translator, he rendered from Sanscompared with the highly cultivated and well- kpit into Arabic, Kapila's Sankhya, the book of informed scholar whose work we are now con Patañjali, the Paulisa-Siddhanta, the BrahmaBidering Siddhanta, the Brihat-Samhitá, and the LaghusThere are three MSS. of the great book in Jataka; while from Arabic into Sanskrit he Europe :-(1) in the library of M. Schefer, rendered Euclid's Elements, Ptolemy's Almagest, Membre de l'Institut: (2) in the Bibliothèque and a book of his own on the construction of the Nationale in Paris : (3) in the library of the Astrolabe. Mehemet Köprülü Medrese at Constantinople. This list of works raises the questions as to how The last two are copies of the first, which purporte much he acquired or Sanskrit, and as to how far to be a copy of the author's autograph, "with he was a real translator, or merely the mouthwhich it has been collated as carefully as possible" piece or supervisor of those who explained or by some unknown hand long ago. With the translated for him. Dr. Sachau gives reasons exception of some lacune and blunders, probably at some length for considering that he really resulting from partial illegibility or from worm. knew enough of Sanskrit to enable him to go holes in the autograph, and of the misplacement of alone in the language to a small extent without the leaves at the end, Dr. Sachau considers M. blundering, but that he read his Indian books with Schefer's MS. to be " of very rare merit, one of the aid of Pandits and made his translations into the most accurate I have ever known." This is i Arabic from their dictation; while his translathe MS. Dr. Sachau has followed, and on which, tions from Arabic into Sanskrit meant that he with the advantage of emendation where neces. explained to Pandits, who converted his explanasary by the light of modern Arabic and Sanskpit tions into blokas of approved form. All this learning, his text is based. The nature of Alb- involves the assumption that Albérdni and his růni's work has prevented its being copied and Pandits spoke or understood well some common treasured up in the libraries of the East, and so vernacular, and there seems to be abundant interfar it has not been found there. This fact, how. nal evidence in the Indica that Albôruni was well ever, while it venders us all the more grateful to acquainted with the vernacular of the period, the European scholars who have saved Albêrůni whatever it was, then current in the extreme from the fate which has overtaken Megasthenes, north-west of India. does not, Dr. Sachau thinks, lead us to suppose In explaining the extent of Alberoni's Sansthat, should more MSS. be found hereafter, the kşit scholarship, Dr. Sachau has to tread along

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