was the literature of Nathism, preached about the end of the eighth century by Minanatha, his chief disciple Matsyendra and Matsyendra's chief disciple Gorakṣa. These do not seem to have been men highly educated, and they seemed to have been drawn from amongst fishermen and others. Their chief practice was Hathayoga or to fix the mind on one thing while the body lies in various gymnastic postures. They worshipped Siva and Sakti in union. They thought that the nine organs of senses, present at the time of union of the God and the Goddess, when He revealed the doctrine to His consort are symbolizel by the nine Nathas who brought down the doctrine on earth. It has been said before that no work of the original Nathas have yet been discovered, the existence of this vernacular literature is known only by a few quotations in the commentaries on Buddhist vernacular works. There is a large body of Sanskrit literature of the Nathas dealing mainly with Hathayoga written during the ascendency of the Palas. The works of this sect as well as of the Siddhācāryas are written in a sort of Sanskrit, which might be termed pidgin Sanskrit in the same way as the coast people in China speak pidgin English. Far from being ashamed of their bad Sanskrit, Buddhist writers ridicule the Brahmaņas for their punctillious care for grammatical accuracy. They say if something good is to be said, tell it in a language that will be understood by all,-Care for the sense and not for the language. There was a big monastery in Bengal, Jagaddala, as famous in Buddhist literature as the celebrated monasteries of Nālanda and Vikramsila. Its position has not yet been identified but it was close to the capital founded by Rama Pāla; and the Gañgā and Karatoya flowed past it. In one sense it was much more important than the well-known Vihāras of Magadha. It was the chief resort of Tibetan monks coming to learn Sanskrit in India. The Bengali monks of this place knew to read and write Tibetan and this was the place where hundreds of Sanskrit books were translated into the Tibetan language, some by Bengalis, some by Tibetans and some by collaboration. Two names stand prominent in the matter of translation, one Vibhuti Candra and the other Danasīla-both of them collaborated with the Tibetans in translating Sanskrit works. Vibhuti Candra was a Sanskrit writer too. His knowledge of the later-day Buddhist literature was extensive and he had treatises on all subjects in which these Buddhists took interest. He had a good library of manuscripts. A manuscript, copied for him and belonging to his library, in Bengali character and on paper, is deposited in the Cambridge University Library. The Tibetans used to send wellread scholars to Bengal for the purpose of collecting manuscripts. Sthiramati Pandit is one of those scholars who came to Bengal and collected a good library. One of his manuscripts has recently come to Calcutta. Scholars, possessed of large number of manuscripts, had another important function to perform. They were asked to correct the translations made by others. Preachers. Dipankara Srijñāna, or as the Tibetans called him Atisa, was the son of the Raja of Vikramanipura, east of Magadha. He received his education in his native city from Nada Pandit, and early in life he wrote a work entitled Abhisamaya-vibhañga in collaboration with Lui, the founder of the Siddhacarya sect. He went to the Eastern Peninsula to study Mahāyāna doctrines. Coming back to India, he became the chief priest of the Vikramasila Vihara. In the year A.D. 1038, when he was 58 years of age, he was invited to Tibet to reform the existing Buddhism there. He went to western Tibet and laboured there unremittingly for fourteen years. He is regarded in Tibet as the great reformer of religion in that country. The villages hallowed by the dust of his feet are, even up to this day, regarded as places of pilgrimage. Sakyasri Bhiksu was one of the few Bhiksus who escaped the massacre of Buddhists by the early Muhammadan invasion of Bengal. He went to Tibet and from thence to Mongolia, where he converted Kublai Khan, the son of Changiz Khan, t his own doctrine, and so became the chief priest of Mongolia and the founder of Buddhism there. About the beginning of the twelfth century, another Buddhist priest from Tamralipti went to Pegu and in collaboration with four others reformed the Buddhist faith there. He went first to Ceylon and to the Mahavihāra there and introduced in Pagan the doctrines and practices of the Mahavihāra. II.-Studies in the Kamasutra of By H. C. Chakladar, M.A. Date and Place of Origin. Introductory. The great value of Vatsyayana's Kāmasūtra for studying the social condition of the Indian people in ancient times is gradually coming to be realized, but the abundant wealth of its contents has not yet been fully explored. It furnishes a beautiful picture of the Indian home, its interior and surroundings. It delineates the life and conduct of a devoted Indian wife, the mistress of the household and the controller of her husband's purse. It describes the daily life of a young man of fashion, his many-sided culture and refinement, his courtships and peccadillos, the sports and pastimes he revelled in, the parties and clubs he associated with. The wanton wiles of gay Lotharios and merry maidens, the abuses and intrigues prevailing among high officials and princes and the evils practised in their crowded harems, are described at great length and often with local details for the various provinces of India. The Kamasutra shows, moreover, that, as in the Athens of Pericles, the hetærae skilled in the arts, the artiste, the actress and the danceuse, occupied a no very mean or insignificant position in society. The book thus throws light on Indian life from various sides and an analysis of this important work will, it may be hoped, be of immense value to students of Indian sociology. But first of all it is necessary to determine, as closely as may be, what particular period in the long history of the Indian people it depicts and represents, and for this investigation it will be useful to ascertain Vätsyāyana's place in Indian literature and to examine the few historical facts that may be gleaned from his sutras. Vātsyayana's Indebtedness to Earlier Sanskrit Literaturə, Vatsyayana has quoted freely from the works of previous authors not only in his own subject but also in other co-ordinate subjects bearing on the social life of the people. When referring to his predecessors in the science of erotics, he has taken care to mention the authorities whom he cites and discusses, but in the other cases he has not cared to acknowledge his debt by mentioning the source. Some of them may however be indicated. In his chapter 1 on the selection of a bride (वरण विधानप्रकरणम्) the Kāmasūtra has ai ceat fasalmi azû afcadâg 2 || 13 || This is exactly the same as that given by Apastamba in his Grihyasūtra I. 3. 10.3 The next two sutras show only slight modifications, but making allowance for differences in reading they are exactly identical. Vätsyāyana has : gwi zai dai quaequi fanai fanzi fayci gfagfadı ainfcat zai afant fuai egai qu'act ▼ qdfâḤ || 32 || नचत्राख्यां नदीनाम्म्रीँ वृक्षनाम्त्रों च गर्छिताम् । 1 The quotations from the Kamasutra have been made throughout from the Benares edition, edited by Pandit Sri Damodarlal Gosvāmi and published in the Chowkhamba Sanskrit Series. Another edition of the Sanskrit text had been published by Pandit Durgaprasad of Jaipur but as it is not available in the market I have made use of the former. There is also a Bengali edition of the text and the commentary with an elaborate Bengali translation published by Babu Mahes Chandra Pal. The arrangement of the chapters and the numbering of the sutras is not quite the same in the three editions and the readings vary occasionally. The references are to the pages of the Benares edition. 2 Benares edition, p. 187. s The Apastambiya Gṛihyasūtra edited by Dr. M. Winternitz, p. 4. • Benares edition, pp. 187, 188. |