February, 1873.] CORRESPONDENCE, &c. 57 verbs with ne—a construction which, it should be noted, is rejected in speaking by at least one-half of those who use the language. It is, however, wrong to call the form of the conjunctive parti¬ ciple in e—as kiye, liye, &c.—“ an irregular form,” it being in reality the original form of this participle, and derived from the locative of the Sanskrit past participle in ta, as krite, yate, &c., and some centuries older than the modern forms in he, bar, and karke. In fact, a group of ancient and much-used verbs has retained the older form, which has almost dropped out of use in other verbs. It is amusing to see the respect with which, on page 113 (note), the inaccuracies of the Bdgh-o- Bdhar and its fellows are treated. They are elevated to the dignity of a crabbed passage in Thucydides, and the blunders of the ignorant mCtnshi are treated with the same respect as we should accord to the genuine phrases of the idiomatic Greek historian. The construction with ne is really so modern and artificial an invention, that it is extremely common to find natives misusing it. Our space will not allow us to go page by page through this interesting book. The syntax is parti¬ cularly good, bringing out in the clearest and most refreshingly intelligent way, in spite of occasional misapprehensions, the many-sided expressiveness of a language which has no parellel for vivacity and graceful turns of phrase, except in the most polished Parisian French. We conclude, then, by congratulating Professor Dowson on having writ¬ ten by far the best Urdu Grammar that has yet appeared, and having thus rendered the acquisition of the most elegant and useful of all the Indian vernaculars both easy and pleasant to the student ; and if he pursues, as we hope he may, his task of editing a complete series of educational works, wo would recommend him to write to some one in India for a selection of genuine native works, such as are current among the people, and not to content himself with the threadbare and indecent trash which Forbes has raised to the position of Classics. Professor Dowson’s Grammar is a distinct advance on Forbes; his texts should also be an advauce.—J. B. CORRESPONDENCE AND MISCELLANEA. REMARKS ON PARTS X. AND XI. By Prof. WEBER, BERLIN. To the Editor of the Indian Antiquary. Sir,—I beg to offer you some observations on Nos. X. and XI. of your Indian Antiquary, as they are very full of important and interesting communications. I begin with the paper of R. G. Bhandarkar on the Date of Patanjali. Clever as it is, it is a great pity that its author was not aware that I treated the same subject ten years ago in my critique of Gold- stucker’s “ PAnini’’ (Indische Studien, V. 150 ff.). Patanjali’s mentioning the Pushyamitra SabhA (thus, Pushyamitra, not Pushpamitra, is the name, according to the northern Buddhists) and the Chan- dragupta SabhA is already noticed there. But the question regarding his age does not depend upon this only, but has further light thrown upon it when we adduce and criticise the testimonies of the YAkyapadiya and the Rajataraitgini as quoted by Goldstiicker; and the final conclusion at which I arrive is, that Patanjali lived about 25 after Christ. There is, after all, only one point in this argument which requires further elucidation. Kern, in his excellent preface to his edition of VarAhamiWra’s Brihat SanhitA (pp. 37, 38), refers the passage “ arunad Yavano Madhyamikunnot to the Bud¬ dhist sect of that name, but to a people in middle India, mentioned in the Brihats. 14, 2 (see also Sankshepas'ankarajaya, 15,156, in Aufrecht’s Cata¬ logue of the Sanskrit MSS. of the Bodleian Library, p. 2586). Biihler’s paper on the VrihatkathA of Kshemendra is also of the greatest interest. Last winter Burnell too found a copy of the same work in Telinga character : a comparison of both versions will no doubt yield much critical help for the restoration of the text, and for the correction of Somadeva’s later work. There can scarcely be a doubt that the Bhutabhdshd of GunAdhya’s original composition, according to Dandin’stestimony on the Pais'dchabhdshd, in which it was written according to Kshemendra and Soma- deva, is but a Brahmanical slur on the fact that GunAdhya was a Buddhist and wrote in PAli (Mr. Gorrey, in a very clever critique on my paper on the S'aptas'atakam of IIAla, in the Journal Asiatique, Aout-Sept. 1872, p. 217, arrives at nearly the same conclusion; even Somadeva’s work contains some direct allusions to the Buddhist Jdtakas (65, 45j 72, 120 cd. Brockhaus) ; and the Buddhist /xv<- character of many of its tales is quite manifest (sec my Indische Streifen, II. 367). The more we learn of the Jdtakas, the more numerous are the stories shown to be which are found in India for the first time, and never afterwards appear in the Brahmanical fable-and-tale collections. Some of them are originally ^Esopic, borrowed by the Bud¬ dhists from the Greeks, but arranged by them in their own way (see Indische Studien, III. 356-61). The passage from Rumania's TantravArttika, which forms the subject of Burnell’s very valuable communication, was pointed out previously by Colebrooke (Misc. Essays, I. 315). That the A'ndhra and DrAvida BrAhmans were in early times fully engaged in literary pursuits, is manifest from the fact that, according to SAyana, the last (tenth)
