LES textes vèdiques ne nous renseignent guére sur la nature du “ Bouc monopede ” (Aja ekapād). Dans la plus ancienne littèrature, il est gènèralement en relation avec le “ Serpent du fond ” (Ahi budhnya) et cette association s'affirme jusque dans le rituel domestique.1Atharva-veda, xii, 1, 7, nous apprend que Rohita, le “ Rouge ”, après avoir ordonné l'univers et ètabli la voûte cèleste (nāka), èrigea un support pour ètayer le ciel. V. Henry, suivi par Bloomfield, admettait que cet animal mythique ètait une entitè solaire (Les Hymnes Rōhitas, p. 25 ; SBE., xlii, p. 664).

H. Oldenberg n'en voulut rien croire (Religion du Vèda, trad. Henry, p. 60, n. 2). A. Hillebrandt reste indcis (Vèd. Myth., iii, p. 340). Macdonell, approuvè par Keith, identifie le “ Bouc monopède ” avec l'èclair (Ved. Myth., p. 74 ; Rel. and Phil, of the Veda and Upanishads, p. 137).Suivant l'èpopèe, le Soleil est formè de deux parties : l'une lumineuse qui nous èclaire, et l'autre obscure qu'on appelle son “ pied ” (pāda). Au moyen de ce “ pied ”, il pompe l'eau pendant huit mois et la fait ensuite retomber en pluie pendant quatre mois (Mhbhār., 8, 79, 78, et xii, 363, 5 et suiv.; cf. Hopkins, Epic Mythology, p. 85).Ce dernier mythe a pu être suggèrè aux populations de l'Asie des moussons par le spectacle des trombes.

It is now more than a hundred years since the birth, in 1826, of Edward Byles Cowell, the guru of perhaps the greater number of English Sanskrit scholars. His story is well known. The son of an Ipswich merchant, he was called at 16, by his father's death, to leave school and carry on his father's business. His heart was set on learning. He was already widely read in classics, Statius, Lucian, and Greek romances being added to his school reading, and he was destined, while yet in his 'teens, to publish articles on Rabelais, Longus, and the Persian poets. In 1841, at the age of 15, he had been introduced to Sir W. Jones' works, and in the early morning (called, it was said, by the milkman pulling a string attached to his foot) he had studied in them the Asiaticae Poeseos Commentarii (on Persian and Arabic poetry) and the Persian grammar, working by himself at the extracts from Hafiz and the Shahnamah. Soon, however, help came to him from an old Bombay officer, Major Hockley, whom Professor Cowell cited in 1898, when receiving the gold medal of the Royal Asiatic Society, as a proof of the power which “ enthusiasm and sympathy can always exercise on others, wherever we may be placed ”.

Viśvarūpa Tvāṣṭra, the son of Tvaṣṭar, is the name of a certain demon of whom we hear in the Rig-Veda and elsewhere. Indra, the demon-hunter par préférence, fought with him and killed him ; but his chief adversary no doubt was originally Trita ሀptya, an old Aryan water-god, whose deeds and fame have slowly been usurped by the all-overshadowing Indra. Reasons which cannot here be dwelt upon, as I have already explained them elsewhere,2 make it probable that Viśvarūpa was originally a serpent deity of the class which was later on generally styled nāgas. We shall here try to find out something more definite concerning his original surroundings and sphere of activity.

In the Introduction to his translation of the Vaikh1nasasmārtasūtra (p. xiii fll.) Professor Caland has called attention to certain Tamilisms in the said work, such as anyāṃ vivāhaṃ kuryāt (═ vēru peṇṇai vivākam ceytu-kolla-vēṇum), vedān … adhyayanaṃ Jcaroti, etc. In a work like the Vaikhānasa-sūtra, which is obviously not written in the best Sanskrit, this is not very surprising, nor can it be said that these irregularities render the text unintelligible anywhere. But there seem to be, even in the works of well-known Sanskrit authors, cases of Sanskrit influenced by the vernacular which actually embarrass the reader. One such case is the following one which I came across recently in Śankarānanda's Bhagavadgītā-vyākhyā.

Die im britischen Besitz befindlichen Handschriftenschätze in Tocharischer Sprache gehören bis auf ganz verschwindende Reste der Mundart B an, die in England nach dem Vorgang von Prof. Sylvain Lévi als „ Kuchean Language ” bezeichnet zu werden pflegt. Den Grundstock bildet die „ Hoernle Collection “, die nach Prof. Hoernle's Tod dem India Office überwiesen wurde. Ihr hatte ursprünglich auch die 42 Blätter umfassende Handschrift medizinischen Inhalts angehört, die unter dem Namen „ Weber MSS. Part ix and Macartney MSS. Set I “ geht, von der Hoernle bereits 1901 im JASB. 70, Part ii, Extra-Nr. 1, Appendix (p. 1–31) einen Transliterations- Versuch gemacht und die er auch in „ Facsimile-Reproduction “, Calcutta, 1902, veröffentlicht hat. Aber von diesen Blättern liegt jetzt die eine Hälfte (Bl. 1–12 und 30–42) in der Bodleyana in Oxford, die andere (Bl. 13–29) im British Museum in London. In der India Office Library befinden sich indessen ausser der Hoernle Collection auch noch die allerdings wenigen Blätter in Kucischer Sprache, die aus den späteren Funden Sir Aurel Stein's stammen.

In choosing the subject for this short paper I am guided not solely by the fact that the archæological observations which first drew my attention to it were gathered in that field of my Central-Asian explorations with which I have fortunately been able to associate my old friend Professor Rapson as one of the earliest and most helpful of my collaborators. What invests certain curious finds among modest burial remains of the Lop desert with a special quasi-personal interest for me is the distant and puzzling relation they bear to a much discussed question of Vedic and Avestic research, that of the sacred Soma and Haoma.

It is a question which was often touched upon in his lectures by that great scholar and teacher, Professor Rudolf von Roth, during the years 1881–4, when I had the good fortune, figuratively, to sit at his feet as an eager devoted pupil. The question as to the identity of the original Soma plant and its home which he had discussed just at that time in two short papers of masterly clearness, was not to be solved then, and still remains undecided. But Roth's main contention still holds good that a solution for it could be hoped for only by the study of relevant physical facts, if possible, on the ground of early Aryan occupation.

Since the investigations of Oldenberg on the language of the Lalitavistara, it is no longer a useful question to ask whether the prose portions or the verses are the older. There is more than one layer of verse as well as of prose. Still less is it sufficient to describe it as “ a poem of unknown date and authorship, but probably composed in Nepāl, by some Buddhist poet who lived some time between six hundred and a thousand years after the birth of Buddha ”. As Oldenberg has shown, there is an older layer of verse in fairly good Sanskrit, which rests on passages in a dialect closely related to Pāli, and which was hence easily sanskritized. There are also the poems in so-called mixed Sanskrit, mixed just because they were once in a dialect that resisted all efforts to fit them with a proper Sanskrit dress, and still later are the verses which may have been originally composed in Sanskrit.

In the Kharoṣṭhī records from Chinese Turkestan, of which the edition commenced by the Abbé Boyer, Professor Rapson, and Monsieur Senart, has recently been completed with important dissertations and index by Professor Rapson and Mr. P. S. Noble (Kharoṣṭhī Inscriptions, i-iii, Oxford, 1920-9), the vocabulary is composed in the main of recognizably Indian terms or of personal or topographical designations belonging to the locality ; but we can discriminate a relatively small number of words having other traceable origin or obscure signification. To the last mentioned group we mayassign the words mukeṣi and lote (loteya, lode).

These two terms, although they do occur apart, are apt to be found in more or less close conjunction; and the general sphere of their meaning may be ascertained by considering one of the passages where they are associated. We may take document No. 474 (p. 171) of the edition, which, except as regards spacing, majuscules, and some added punctuation, is followed in all respects.

The normal suffix of the future in Sanskrit was –syá-. The root had full grade, e.g. kartsyáti, jeṣyāti. It follows that in the futures of dissyllabic (seṭ) roots the suffix was preceded by i (< IE. ә), e.g. jani-ṣyāti, bhavi-ṣyāti. Even monosyllabic (aniṭ) roots ending in –r (-ͬ) had an i between the root and the suffix, e.g. mar-i-ṣyáti. The Ŗgveda adheres to this division except for one apparent exception, asiṣyát-, fut. part, of ásyati. But, despite ástra- and astá-, ásyati perhaps contains a dissyllabic root **esē(i) (cf. ásira- ‘ ray ’). Of this ásy-ati (which, as a transitive verb, probably does not contain the suffix –ye- of the intransitives of the type táp-yati) and ásira show full grade in the first syllable; á-sát ‘ he has slain ’ and sāy-aka- ‘ javelin ’ show full grade in the second syllable. In that case asi-ṣyá should be analysed like jani-ṣyá-.

The remarkable group of five rock-cut temples at Māmallapuram or Māvalivaram, to the south of Madras, has often been described. Popular imagination has associated these wonderful shrines with the Pāṇḍvas; thus it has happened that the one which is smallest in size has become known as the rath of Draupadi. Evidently this temple was in reality dedicated to some form of the goddess Durga, whose effigy, standing on the severed head of the Buffalodemon, is found carved upon the outer wall, whereas her vehicle in the form of a well-conceived but unfinished lion-statue may be seen at no great distance.

In the course of my tutorial work on the Palaeography and Epigraphy of India and Ceylon, I have had to read the Aśoka inscriptions with some of my pupils. As a result, I have come across the following words and phrases which to my mind seem to demand an interpretation other than that already supplied by scholars interested in the subject.

(1) Rock Edict III. Girnār. Parisā pi yute ānapayisati gaṇanāyaṁ hetuto ca vyaṁjanato ca.

This sentence, which occurs with dialectic differences in other versions of the third rock edict, has already been discussed by previous writers. I would, nevertheless, translate it thus:—“ The Council (of Mahāmātras) shall also give orders to the yuktas (in respect of these rules) in detail [i.e. item by item] regard being had to (their) raison d'être and to the letter (of the law).”

Speaking of the materials furnished by the Ṛgveda, Dr. A. B. Keith has rightly said that “ conclusions can be drawn only with much caution. It is easy to frame and support by plausible evidence various hypotheses, to which the only effective objection is that other hypotheses are equally legitimate, and that facts are too imperfect to allow of conclusions being drawn ”. (The Cambridge History of India, vol. i, p. 78, 1922.)

That position seems to be sound, but in the same paragraph the writer commits himself to an evident acceptance of the view that “ the bulk at least ” of the hymns of the Rgveda were composed “ south of the modern Ambala ”.

The revelations of Harappa and Mohen-jo-daro and the possibility of finding archæological strata contemporary with the beginning of the Vedic age in the Panjab lend a new interest to evidence of the Veda and it is reasonable to challenge the bases of any prevailing belief with regard to the location of the main settlements of the Vedic Aryans.