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380
THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY.
[NOVEMBER, 1890.
the Mahabharata was originally the national epic of the Kuru-Patchala country, the Ramd. yana was originally the national epic of the Eastern Aryans, though afterwards remodelled hy its Brahman rédacteure. It is in keeping with this view that, in the ancient literature of North-Western India, the heroes of the Mahd. bharata are so often referred to, while those of the Ramayana are conspicuous by their absence. While there is an allusion to Vasudeva, Yudhish. thira and Arjuna in Påņini, and Patañjali frequently brings in Mahabharata characters in his illustrations, there is not a single reference to Råma, his brothers, or their father, Dasaratha, in the works of these grammarians. Amarasimha, in his list of the synonyms of Vishnu, gives a good many names derived from the Krishna legend; but the name of Råma, the son of Dasaratha, does not occur, though Râma or Balabbadra, the brother of Krishna, is mentioned.
It should be noted, on the other hand, that, while a Buddhist (or Eastern) version of the Ramayana (viz. the Dasaratha-Jataka) has been discovered, no such version of the Krishṇa legend or of the Kuru-Pandava war has yet been found among writings of the Eastern Aryans. All these facts are easily accounted for, I think, if we look upon the Ramayana as the national epio of those Aryans who first entered India, but who in course of time had to recede more and more towards the east before the advancing tide of a new group of Aryans who produced the most ancient monuments of the Indian mind which we possess and which constitute the Vedic literature. Many of the chronologioal difficulties created by the hypothesis now generally received and counte. nanced by high anthorities, that the Ramdyana is really later than the sister epic, are obviated by the view suggested above. Jaypur.
HARIDAS SASTRI.
.گوا لیا رtwo centuries wan
CORRESPONDENCE. CHITOR.
Gwalior on page 221. It onght to have been TO THE EDITORS OF THE
Gwaluar, as the spelling on coins for more than INDIAN ANTIQUARY. SIRS, - In the footnote on p. 222 of the present The ye at the end of Sju may be & ort. The volume of your Journal, you object to jus pronunciation is immaterial, as bimdr is prospelling Chitór. With dots it may be y Jaipur
nounced by Persians bemar (without strength '). or you. You, however, say she is the correct
! I don't know how it was pronounced in Akbar's time. The word tanka, however, cannot be tanki,
1 spelling. I have gone through Tod. He spells it everywhere Cheetore. Sir Thomas Roe spelt it
as it is spelt on the coins af tanka. Your first "Cytore." Tod gives a facsimile native letter in
note on p. 220 overlooked this spelling. In supwhich the word occurs and is spelt far. This is port of your theory for the other words, you have fair evidence that in all probability I am right in the yé going across the coins at the end of yndi assigning the coin to this town, Jaipur being out and I l, both of which are pronounced now of the question. I have often heard the word as 6. The origin of the word would shew whether pronounced Chaitaur. I compared several coins 1 it is è or , as we now use these sounds. in my possession before I ventured to make a He88. You say it may read Qanauj. On coin
Were I going to stay on, I would set to work at
the Sort copper coins, and write a full monograph 27 I give this mint . It does not much
on them, but I fear I shall never do it, as my time resemble de
is fully ocoupied until September 30th. After The mint of Islam Shah's coin, which I men.
that I shall have to work at other subjects and
probably in England, and all my knowledge of this reading, as I have some half dozen coins to
the coins of India will be a burden to myself back me up.
and lost to the country.
O. J. RODGERS. If now, however, we decide that Jus is not Amritsar, July 28th, 1890. Jaipur and not Chitor, we must try and find out what it may be.
[The diffioplty of arguing with Mr. Rodgers is that
his platos are hand-drawn and not reproduced mechani. I hope I did not make the mistake of writing cally. -ED]
tioned, i8
I am certain about شیر کره عرف قنوج
