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JUNE, 1912.)
MAYURAJA
139
In India the caste continues the ancient customs: it even in several respects develops them in their logical direction; but it loses something of that impulse which had created the primitive groups, and does not renew their spirit. Different ideas mix with-or take the place of the genealogical bond, which had knit together the first societies. In modifying themselves, in becoming castes, they do not find a directive principle in themselves ; they cross one another, each remaining isolated in its jealous autonomy. The frame is immense without distinct borders, without organic life; a confused mass of small independent societies bent under a common level.
The classical language of India is distinguished from the kindred languages, by a striking singularity. The finite verb holds hardly any place in the sentence; the thought is developed by means of long compounds often vague in their relation. In place of a solid syntactical construction, the lines of which are set forth clearly, in which the incidents detach themselves in neatly set clauses, the sentence knows only a loose structure, where the elements of the thought, being simply in juxtaposition, are wanting in relief. The religious beliefs of India scarcely present themselves as positive cogmas. In the fluctuating lines of an ill-defined pantheism, the oppositions and divergences rise one moment to sink down again, like a shifting eddy, in the moving mass. Contradictions quickly resolve into a conciliatory syncretism wherein the vigour of schisms loses its nerve. An accommodating orthodoxy is covering all dissents with its wide cloak. There is nowhere a categorical, united, intransigent doctrine. On social ground an analogous phenomenon appears to us in the caste system. We have every where the same spectacle of a want of plastic power.
Whatever sap it may have borrowed from exterior and historical circumstances, this is indeed the fruit of the Hindu mind. The social organization of India stands in the same relation to the structure of the Hellenic "city," in which a Hindu poem stands to a Greek tragedy. The Hindu genius no less in practical life, than in art, rarely shows itself capable of organization, i, e., of measure, of harmony. In caste, all its effort has been devoted to maintain, to strengthen, a network of closed groups, without common action, without mutual reaction, finally recognizing no other motive power, but the unbalanood authority of a priestly class which has absorbed the whole direction of the minds. Under the levelling hand of Brahmanism the castos are moving, as the episodes are jostling in disorder in the vagae anity of the epic narrative. It seems sufficient if an artificial system theoretically marks such incoherence. The destinies of caste, if well looked at, are an instructive chapterin the psychology of India.
MAYURAJA.
BY BHATTANATHA SVAMIN; VIZAGAPATAM. Mâyûrâja is the Sanskřit poet of whom the Catalogus Catalogorum speaks as being a poet mentioned in the Súktimulctávali. Mahamahopadhyâya Pandit Durgaprasad quotes the following verse in his elaborate preface to the Karparamailjari:
मायूराजसमी जज्ञे नान्यः करचुलिः कविः ।
उदन्वतः समुत्तस्थुः कति वा तुहिनांशवः ।। " No other poet of the Karachuli family was born equal to Mûyûraja. How many moons have come out of the ocean ?"
Prof. Peterson in quoting from Hariharavall or Subhashitaharavalt gives a different version of this verse in his second Report, p. 50.
Herra STT : aft: :
उदन्वतः समुत्तस्थुः कति वा तुहिनांशवः ।। If in the first line 1: were the reading, as in the above verse, then tar in the socond line would entirely lose its fore, I doubt that poet named Kulioluri who is related to Mayara ever existed. The Trading of Hariharanell, as given above, must be a mistake. In the following pages of the Roport, Prof, Peterson * Hanslates the above verse thus But from Mayura there sprung (as his pupil) the poet Kaliohuri, a single l-irth
ich more rivalled the countless moons that night after night riso out of the ocean." I fear this is not the caning of the verse even according to his reading.
