Likewise, his brother, the blessed VATSA-RAJA, made over by deed of gift the village of Kardama-kháta, whose revenues had been possessed by himself, for the purposes of obtaining victory.

Likewise, two villages were made over with a deed of gift, by the blessed VIGRAHA-RÁJA, as it is written above. [See verse XXV.]

Likewise, the two sons of the blessed SINHA-RÁJA, viz. the blessed CHANDRA-RÁJA and GOVINDA-RÁJA, did religiously convey a hamlet, consisting of two divisions, and a village, with a deed of gift entirely written with their own hand, even to the prescribed formal enumeration [of name, family, date, &c.], having first taken the holy water; thus having made a record to all future times concerning the district described in the deed, whose revenues were (till then) possessed by themselves.

The blessed DHANDHUKA, though unconquered by the subjects of SINHA-RÁJA, did, nevertheless, by permission of his liege lord, make over the village of Mayúra-pura, whose revenues were received by himself, in the district of Khadga-kúpa.

Likewise, the young prince, the blessed JAYA-SRí-RÁJA, religiously bestowed on HARSHA-DEVA, the village of Koli-kúpaka, whose revenues were received by himself.

Likewise, by SAKAMBARÍ, whose husband was the blessed HARMAHATA, the whole of [the villages called] Lavana, Kútaka, Prativinsa, and Apaharshaka, was bestowed in the same manner.

Likewise, by a lady named TA'VIKA, one village, in a northern direction, was given through divine love to SRI HARSHA.

Let us behold likewise, here, the lands bestowed by holy-minded personages, the revenues of which are now enjoyed by the gods the shade of holy pippila trees

in a beautiful hamlet

causeway to those who approach the sacred soil of HARSHA

a mighty force.

XLIX.—RAMA, the splendid, thus intreats all devout kings of the earth that are to come after him : "This common causeway of virtue and religion to princes, [viz. the endowment of temples with land] is at all times to be carefully observed by your highnesses.'

N. B.-The star* throughout the Sanscrit slokas, denotes the commencement of the line on the stone, the number of which is placed in the opposite

margin.

The brackets denote the spaces where the stone is broken or defaced. Whatever letters or words are found between these are restored by conjecture.

Notes on the preceding Inscription.

I. This verse is in a hendecasyllable measure, called Ratha-udgató, of which an exact idea may be formed by one accustomed to the harmony of classical numbers, from the following slight transposition of a line in the Edipus Coloneus :

The two first lines are somewhat indistinct on the edge of the stone; and in the second of them, there might be some considerable doubt as to the syllables and, were not the others connected with them (particularly the fra f and a) so clearly marked as to admit no reading consistent with both metre and sense, beside the one here adopt ed, which is in strict accordance with the Indian notions of metaphysical theology. The far is here ovoía or abstract essence, antecedent to qualities of any kind, of which the Hindu theosophists can discourse as subtly and as unintelligibly as PLATO in the Parmenides. Such is exclusively their notion of Deity as existing prior to the developement of the ternary forms or qualities, first in the Supreme Triad [BRAHMA', VISHNU, SIVA,] and next in the several orders of created beings: this first immaterial substance being the neuter brahmă of the Upanishads and the Vedantthe y or male inactive principle of the rival Sankhya school-the BYOOX or unfathomable depth of some of the Gnostics, who attempted the introduction of these eastern metaphysics into Christianity. All these schools teach that the immaterial essence of the one all-pervading Deity is no otherwise connected with the diversities of created existence, than through an independent feminine principle: which in the Vedantic system is MA'YA' Ħ, or illusion ;-but agafa: or Radical Nature, the female parent of all, in the Sankhya system, and ENNOIA in that of the Gnostics, (in which, as in the Sankhya, Norz or Intellect af: otherwise called is the first-born offspring, and then all separate individual essences.) Now this common mother of the external world (r) is identified in the mythological part of Hinduism, with SIVA', or DURGA AMBIKA', the consort of SIVA. This identification is the principal subject of that celebrated section of the Markandeya Purána, called the Chandipatha, or Devi-mahatmya; and is thus expressed by the great SANKARA A'CHA'RYA himself, in the first verse of his famous hymn to this goddess, entitled, A'nanda-laharí, (by which he sought to atone to the mother of External Nature, for his efforts as a Vedantist, to lead his disciples from her illusions and fancied diversities, to absorption in the one essence of abstract Deity).

fra: va yài afe nafa wa: qufaġ

न चेदेवं देवो न खल कुशलः स्पन्दितुमपि ।
Batalarcıwi zftecfafċaifzfurfu
प्रणन्तु स्तोतुं वा कथमकृतपुष्यः प्रभवति ||

"If SIVA be united to his energy (his spouse SIVA), he is able to exercise dominion; if not, the god is utterly unable even to move. Where fore Thee, the goddess who art worshipped by VISHNU, SIVA, BRAHMA', and all other beings, what unholy person is competent to adore and praise?" That the same reason should be assigned by the philosopher here for SIVA and the rest of the triad adoring his consort, (agreeably to the Chandipatha aforesaid, especially the 1st and 4th and 12th books,) which is on this inscription, made a reason for SIVA being adored by her, viz. his nearer approach to abstract essentiality-will surprize no one who has studied the genius of paganism. The former is the Sáktya conclusion; the latter that of the Saivas: among whom also, as we may observe in this and the 6th verse of the inscription, SIVA has the properties of the other two members of the triad, that of Creator and Preserver ascribed to him, as well as his own.

The efforts of the human mind, at any time, to escape the metaphysical difficulties that attend the connexion of Mind and Matter; and the yet more serious kindred difficulty, the origin of evil; will never want interest in the eyes of the deeper observers of our nature, its capacities and its destinies. We cannot wonder that in the darkness of unaided reason, men have been almost universally led to interpose some independent existence, some TAH, the source alike of Nature and of Evil, between the creature and the Creator. But it is more extraordinary, that at the present day, SANKARA A’CHA'RYA, and the Vedantists, whose mode of meeting the difficulty is by maintaining external Nature to be illusion, and the perfect identity in real essence, of all human souls with the Supreme, should be represented by any as reformers of Hinduism, and as attached to that only true theology, by which the Supreme Being is recognized, in the words of Sir ISAAC NEWTON, non ut anima mundi, sed ut universorum Dominus. However natural be the desire in some, to unite the profession of the most venerated school of Hindu religion with the boast among Europeans of a pure and enlightened creed, the attempt to conciliate things so dissimilar, and even opposite, as these, cannot long consist with any accurate knowledge or study of either.

II. The second verse is in the free, but harmonious measure of the Anustubh class, (i. e. of eight syllables)-first unconsciously struck out, as it is said, by VAʼLMÍKI, the HOMER of India, on witnessing the cruel act of a sportsman.

31 faqıę afasi @ana: TI¥ÃI: Fal: I
यत्क्रेाचमिथुनादेकमवधीः काममोहितम् ।।

Upon which, struck with the beautiful cadence of his own improvisation, he composed the Rámáyana in similar verses.

*

*An account of this measure is given by COLEBROOKE, in his Essay on Sanscrit and Pracrit Poetry, and by M. CHE'ZY, (Essai sur le Sloka.) The following will be found, I believe, a more complete statement of its rules than either. Each páda, or quarter, (of which the last syllable is ever accounted common,) consists of two qua

The first quarter of this verse is obliterated on the edge of the stone, and it would be idle to attempt its restitution.

III. This verse is like the first, a lyric measure, but of a different kind, called Srag-dhará, each of the four lines being of the enormous length of 19 syllables, disposed exactly as in the following (transposed from the end of the Orestes)-with the cæsura on the 14th syllable,

Ζηνὸς λάμπροις μελάθροις δε πελάσω Ἑλένην, ἔνθα σέμναις πάρεδρος The subject of this verse is the infuriate dance of SIVA, as BHAIRAVA, after the sanguinary vengeance he exacted for the death of his self-devoted wife SATí, (the first form of the great DURGA—as the mountain nymph UMA' PA'RVATí was the second,) as related in the Siva-Purána, &c. &c. IV. The measure of this verse is a kind of reduction of the former to 15 syllables, and is called Mandu-ákrantá.

Ζηνὺς δ ̓ οἴκοις πελάσω Ελένην, ἔνθα σέμναις πάρεδρος

For these descriptions of the god, see Moon's Hindu Pantheon, under the head SIVA.

V. This and all the following verses as far as ver. XVI, (with the exception of the IX., XI., and XV., which resemble the II.) are in the same measure with the III. verse, the Srag-dhará.

On the Ganges flowing from SIVA's head, vide Moor ut sup.-The threefold Ganges-the river of heaven and hell, as well as of earth-is a frequent subject with the poets of India.

Of the last word ft: which is very clearly marked on the stone, I can make no better sense than that which I have expressed, viz. connecting it with i "the sport of a cricket." Perhaps the word may have some other meaning, which the standard vocabularies do not contain. VI. - नगकनी. The inscription apparently has नगकतो, which is without meaning but as the in this ancient Devanagari might easily, by the erosion of a slight loop, pass into a a, and as "the daughter of the mountain" is a Hindu poetical expression for a river, I have read it accordingly.

:

In this verse, of which both the sentiment and expression are of a higher order than in most others of the inscription, we have the doctrine, drisyllabic feet. The former of these is subject to no other restriction than that it must not have both the middle syllables short; and in the even quarters. i. e. the 2nd and 4th, it must not close with an Iambus. The latter is more restricted: in the even quarters, it is always without exception a Dijambus, and

-:

in the two others, the 1st and 3rd, it should be an Epitritus quartus except that after a long syllable, the following four forms are sometimes admitted, the first most frequently, the rest more rarely in the order of their position.

well known among us as the Platonic, of the Universe existing in archetype as ideas in the divine mind, before the material creation; in the words

of our Spenser,

What time this world's great Workmaister did cast

To make al things such as we now behold,
It seems that he before his eyes had plast
A goodly paterne, to whose perfect mold
He fashioned them, as comely as he could,
That now so faire and seemely they appeare
As nought may be conceived any where.
That wondrous paterne, wheresoere it bee,
Whether in earth laid up in secret store,
Or else in heaven, that no man may it see
With sinfull eyes, for fear it to deflore,
Is perfect Beauty, which all men adore:
Whose face and feature doth so much excell

All mortal sense, that none the same may tell.

Or as in the remarkable lines in BOETHIUS, (Consol. Phil. lib. 3,) which embody the whole doctrine of the Timæus on this subject, the generation and also the destruction of the material world.

Tu cuncta superno

Ducis ab exemplo; pulchrum pulcherrimus ipse

Mundum mente gerens, similique in imagine formans ;

Tu causis animas paribus vitasque minores

Provehis, et levibus sublimes curribus aptans,

In cœlum, terramque seris ; quas lege benignâ
Ad te conversas reduci facis igne reverti.

The transition of the ideas of the Divine mind into separate individual intelligences (from which APULEIUs and others derive the whole theory of Polytheism)—the propagation of various orders of beings from these, down to the grossest and most material; and the destruction of the world by the absorption of the lower in the higher existences, till all is lost in the Supreme are points in which the Hindu schemes (as partially unfolded in the present verse) wonderfully coincide with Platonism. They are parallel corruptions of one great original truth, which in the quotations here given, appears with scarcely any mixture of error.

VII-XII. The local legend in these verses has been already mentioned. The destruction of" him of the incomparable arrows," the Hindu God of Love, thence called ANANGA, or ATANU, the Bodiless One—as alluded to in the turgid and somewhat obscure expression of the VIIIth, is a favorite subject with the poets of India, and is told at large by CALIDA'SA in the 3d book of the Cumára Sambhava. An equivoque seems intended in the first line between one of these names of CA'MA, and the adjective large or immense :" but as the former meaning would involve an insipid repetition, it is discarded in the translation.