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AUGUST, 1928)
BOOK NOTICES
158
connection : "Young students may also welcome fact is that when we receive the eagerly-awaited de the suggestions of subjecte for research on pp. 28, tailed description of the discoveries made at Harap. 52, 120, 162."
pa and Mohenjo-daro our conceptions of the ancient R. C. TEMPLE. history of north-western India may have to be com
pletely recast. INDIA'S PAST,o Survey of her Literatures, Religions,
The illustrations, consisting mostly of specimens Languages and Antiquities, by A. A. MACDON ELL.
of MS. records and architectural and archaeological Oxford University Press, 1927.
remaing, with a few portraits of notable persons, in In this handy little volume Professor Macdonell
some cases serve to explain and in other cases to reviews, as he expresses it, "the mental development
supplement, the text. A very full index completos of the most casterly banch of Aryan civilization
the work, which has been excellently printed. since it entered'India to land till it came in contact
After more than fifty years' connexion with the by sea with the most westerly branch of the same
study and teaching of Sanskrit, Professor Macdonell civilization after a separation of at least 3000
has, to the great regret of his numerous old pupils and years." Within the narrow compass of 273 pages the
friends, found it necessary to resign his professorial results of the researches of a host of modern scho.
chair; and we trust that he will now have the leisure lars have been sifted and arranged in due sequence,
required for the completion of the great work to forming a useful guide for the general render as well
which perhaps there is a veiled allusion in Chapter II. as for the student. The greater portion of the book
C.E. A. W. OLDHAM. is devoted to a classified survey of Sanskrit literature, from the period of the Vedic hymns down to the
ANTIQUITIES OF INDIAN TIBET, Part II. The late classical texts, including a useful summary of
Chronicles of Ladakh and Minor Chronicles the technical literature on the various sciences. A
(vol. L of the ASI, New Imperial Series). By chapter follows on the Indo-Aryan vernaculars and
A. H. FRANCKE, PH.D. Calcutta, 1926. modern vernacular literature, with a very brief re
This is the second volume of Dr. Francke's ference to the non-Aryan languages. The work may therefore be said to deal chiefly with the in
Antiquities of Indian Tibet. The first volume, tellectual development of the Indo-Aryans since
edited by Dr. J. Ph. Vogel, appeared in 1914. The their ingress into northern India down to inodern
present volume, which has been edited by Dr. times. Political history has been excluded, and
F. W. Thomas, has been published after an interval social and economic changes but incidentally re.
of some 12 years, for reasons explained in the ferred to. In the last chapter (“The Recovery of
Foreword. It deals almost exclusively with histo. India's Past ") is told, succinctly but clearly, the
rical matter. We have hero presented to us for fascinating story of how, by the research and de
the first time a complete edition of the Tibetan voted study of a succession of earnest workers, text, based upon 6 MSS., of the La-dvage-rgyalquorum pars magna fuit Professor Maodonoll, the
rabs, or History of the Kings of Ladakh, with an oldest literature of India las been made available to
English translation, interspersed with numerous European scholars, and the ancient history of that
explanatory notes. This history takes up the country is being gradually disclosed to our view.
first portion of the volume. The second half The author shows how the marked paucity of ancient
contains a number of minor chronicles, genealogies historical records has been, and is being, supple
and records (texts and translations), with relevant mented by the careful decipherment of inscriptions,
extracts from Vigne's Travels, Cunningham's Ladak in which India is fortunately so rich, and by the
and other sources. Dr. Franoke has, in fact, comparative study of coins, both of which materials gathered together all the material so far available have afforded such valuable aid to historical re
for a connected account of the history of the aron search. He enters a timely plea for the importance
of which he treate down to the year 1886 A.D. of searching out and collating the geographical data
The earlier portions of the La-duage-rgyal-rabs contained in the old records, and the preparation
includes a brief history of the ancient empire of of maps to illustrate successive periods. The work Great Tibet, while the later part deals with Western hitherto done on these lines is very incomplete; Tibet. Dr. Francke is convinced that all the earlier and a correct knowledge of the geographical posi
groupe of kings are non-historical, and belong to tion is essential to a true understanding of history.
Bon po mythology, that the first three and a half Controversial subjects have generally been avoided, chapters contain only legendary matter, and that or where inevitably involved, 48 for instance the we first reach the firm ground of history with vexed questions of the ages to be assigned to the Sron-btsan-agam-po (600-650 A.D.), though his four inroads of the Indo-Aryans, to the Vedic texts and ancestors in the ascending line may possiblybe histori the work of Papini, they have been cautiously dealt cal persona, thus taking us back to about 480 A.D. with. In these matters the views of Professor As to the authenticity of the histories, Dr. Macdonell accord more or less with those to be held Francke, who has made a special study of all the by Prof. A. B. Keith. No allusion has been made epigraphical records of these districts, como to to the opinions expressed by Jacobi, Tilak, Grass- the conclusion that the kings of the Roam-rgyal man, Westergaard, Ipson, Hortel and others. The dynasty are historical realities, their order of
