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CHAPTER VIII]
BOWER MANUSCRIPT
lxxxvii
with pips. Another explanation of the phrase, however, is possible which is given in note 1 on page 197. There is also another difficulty in the circumstance that the introduction (11. 2, 3 on page 192, speaks of dice in the plural number, prdsakd [!] patantu,“ may the dice fall." But the reference may very well be, not to the number of several dice, but the number of casts of a single die If more than one die should really have been used, the number of the dice, of course, would have been three, and each act of divination would have required but a single cast, the three dice being thrown at one time. They would probably have been loose; though at the present day the dice of the Indian cubomancer, which moreover are four in number, are strung on a short thin iron rod. A description of this kind of modern cubomancy is given on pp. 44-46 of Peterson's Third Report on the Scarch of Sanskrit MSS. in the Journal of the Bombay Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, Extra No. for 1887, in connection with a work called Ramalamrita, or "the fine art of Ramal." The Arabic term ramal signifies geomancy, or any kind of divination, specially cubomancy. The performer always, or often, is a Muhammedan. In the above-mentioned case, reported from Bombay, the four dice seem to have been immovably fixed on the rod; but in a case examined by me in Calcutta, they were loosely strung on the rod round which they could rotate freely, though they were secured from falling off the rod by two rod-heads. This mode of cubomancy, however, scems to be a comparatively modern importation into India, and is, therefore, hardly relevant to the understanding of the mode of cubomancy which forms the subject of the two manuals.
These two manuals are quite independent works. Their oracles, though of course touching on similar subjects, are totally different compositions, of much greater length in Part V than in Part IV. In early Indian times several cubomantic manuals appear to have been current. The manuals, which survive at the present day and are ascribed to the authorship of the Sage Garga, possess a few striking points of agreement with the manual in Part V. The subject of these agreements is fully discussed in the appendix to Part V, pp. 214 ff. The evidence points to the existence of three rather widely different recensions of what may possibly have been originally a single manual, The latter might possibly be represented by the recension preserved in the Bower Manuscript. This recension is of considerable antiquity. As shown in Chapter VI, it may have existed as early as the second century A. D. (ante, p. Lvii), and of course it may go back to a much earlier time. The other existing recensions cannot be older than the end of the fourth century, because in the fifth verse of their introduction they speak of cubomancers as possessing hôrá-jxäna, or the knowledge of the doctrine of hôrd (Greek apa), or lunar mansions (latin domus). The first mention of that doctrine has been traced by Professor Jacobi (in his dissertation de astrologiae indicae hora appellatæ originibus, Bonn 1872) to Firmicus Maternus, who lived about 335-350 A, D, in the West, whence it came to the knowledge of the Indians. For some further information on the subject of Indian cubomancy the student may be referred to A. Weber's paper in the Monatsberichte der Kgl. Preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Berlin, 1859, pp. 158 ff., and in the Indische Streifen, vol. I, pp. 274 ff; also to Dr. J. E. Schröter's Inaugural Dissertation on Pisaka-kêvali, ein indisches Würfelorakel (Borna, 1900). The latter contains a critical edition of the recension of the manual on cubomancy, ascribed to Garga.
(6) Parts VI and VII contain two different portions of the same text, which is a Sūtra or Dharani referring to a charm protective against snakebite and other evils. The name of the Sätra is Mahâmâyüri Vidyarajñi (scl. Dharani), lit. the great peacock' queen of charms. It apparently takes its name from the fact that the peafowl (mayûra) is the great traditional ene ny of the snake. It is a charm of great repute among the Buddhists, and is included in the highly valued collection of Dharanis, called Pancha-rakshâ, or the Five Protective
