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THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY.
for these few instances, the work is, what must necessarily come from Prof. Cowell's hands, a model of careful and accurate editing. The printing is done as only the Clarendon Press can do it.
Of the seventeen books of which the poem is composed, only the first thirteen, and possibly a portion of the fourteenth are composed by Asvaghosha. The remaining four (or three and a portion) have been compiled by the scribe of the codex archetypus, Amritananda, who specially states, according to the colophon of the Cambridge MS., that he had searched for Asvaghosha's originals everywhere, but could not find them, and that hence he had made himself the four last cantos. This is an example of a kind of literary honesty which is rare in India, and Amritananda deserves all the more credit on that account, though his poetry is of a feeble description.
Amritananda completed his copy in 1830 A. D. Asvaghosha's date is more uncertain. It is probable that he was the contemporary and spiritual adviser of Kanishka, in the first century A. D. At any rate he is praised by Hiuen Tsiang, and the Buddha-charita seems to have been translated into Chinese early in the fifth century. As this must imply that it then enjoyed a great reputation among the Buddhists of India, Professor Cowell is of opinion that we are justified in fixing the date of its composition at least one or two centuries earlier. As regards bis style, his editor says:
Asvaghosha seems to be entitled to the name of the Ennius of the classical age of Sanskrit poetry. His style is often rough and obscure, but it is full of native strength and beauty; his descriptions are not too much laboured, nor are they mere purpurei panni, they spring directly from the narrative, growing from it as natural blossoms, and not as external appendages.'
This is well illustrated by some curious
parallel passages occurring, on the one hand, in the Baddha-charita, and, on the other hand, in the Raghuvansa and the Ramayana; and it would seem that in the case of the latter, the passage by Asvaghosha is the original, and that of the Ramayana the echo.
In conclusion, we regret to see that the Editors of the Anecdota still adhere to the uncouth system of transliteration, a mixture of Italic
1 Nóri Vijana or an exposition of the Pulse, by the renowned Physician-sage, Saukara, and the celebrated sage, Kanada. Translated into English from the origi
[JUNE, 1895.
and Roman letters, which defaces so much of the oriental work that issues from Oxford.
NADI VIJNANA.1
THE abovenamed work has been sent to us for review by the editor and translator. It contains the text and translation of two treatises on the pulse, the Nadi-vijñana of Samkara Sêna, and of the Ndi-vijñana of Kanada. Both works cover much the same ground. The text is fairly printed, and the translation shews evidence of care. To students of Indian medicine and of the Indian principles of diagnosis, it will no doubt be useful.
The editor, however, claims consideration for the book as a medical work, fit to be studied in the nineteenth century, and it is not a pleasant commentary on English civilization to see such preposterous claims advanced within a mile of the Calcutta Medical College. It is said that the Hindu Physicians, by noting the condition of a patient's pulse, can predict the day, nay, the very hour when he shall expire, whether a patient will be cured or not, and other things of a like nature. We have no doubt that they can predict, but we should be much surprised to hear that their predictions came true. It is easy to call spirits from the vasty deep; but do they come?
The following extract from the translation will shew the kind of learning upon which these. predictions are founded --
"When a person imbibes a sweet flavour, his pulse courses like a peacock, when he takes a bitter one, it courses like an earthworm; when he takes any thing acid, being slightly heated, it courses like a frog: and when he takes anything pungent, it courses like a Bhringa-bird."
It is possibly comforting to the unlearned to be informed that each corporeal being has thirty-five millions of blood-tubes, gross and fine (a number which is known by inspiration, and not by actual counting), that they are fastened at the navel as at a root, and that some are set obliquely, some upwards, and some downwards; but most people would probably prefer to employ a doctor who believed in the action of the heart and in the circulation of the blood. As a textbook, the work is worse than useless, but it has its value to students of Sanskrit literature and of the history of medicine.
nal Sanskrit by Kaviraj Dhurmo Dass Sen Gupta: Calcutta, 1893. Price 1 rupee.
