on the right, and Gaṇeśa in front. Together with Brahma, Visņu and Mahesa, let the five deities protect us.

It is the practice in the district of Gaya to observe what is known as Vande Newar as a protective charm. On the door tops of temples (mandirs) imprints of fingers dipped in solution or paste of sandal or pounded rice (sun-dried) tinged with turmeric are noticeable; also in Bengal.

It appears that this custom is world-wide and practised from time immemorial. The hand symbolizes power, and necessarily the power to ward off the evil; this probably accounts for its wide. use. The power of the master on his slave and its renunciation are expressed in terms of the hand (in manu and manumission). "In several Aryan languages," says Sir Henry Maine, "the term signifying hand' is an expression equivalent for Power and specially for Family or Patriarchal Power." 26 This is why the hand is pictured to drive away the demon as mentioned in Kautilya. In Egypt "an amulet on which was depicted a human hand was considered to be efficacious, and the Egyptian mother suspended it from a cord which was put round the baby's neck."27

In prehistoric caves also signs of hand were painted on the walls." On the white surface of these, glazed over with a preserving film of stalactite, we at once notice the outlines of many hands. Most of them are left hands, showing that the Aurignacians tended to be right-handed......Curiously enough, the practice of stencilling hands upon the walls of caves is in vogue amongst the Australian natives, though unfortunately they keep the reason, if there is any deeper one than amusement, strictly to themselves. Like the Australians, again, and other rude peoples, these Aurignacians would appear to have been given to lopping off an occasional finger -from some religious motive, we may guess-to judge from

26 Early History of Institutions. For connection of "Geilfine", herus, manus, punchayet with hand, see pp. 216, sq.

37 D. A. Mackenzie: Egyptian Myth and Legend, p. 176.

the mutilated look of a good many of the hand prints." 28 W. J. Sollas says: "The inhabitants of America, both North (Colorado, Arizona, Mexico) and South (Peru, Patagonia) have also left imprints of the hand on the rocks as well as paintings or carvings which are not unlike some of the ancient work in Europe." 29 There seem to be certain similarities between these ancient cave paintings and the paintings of Bushmen. Mutilation of fingers is practised among these people. Says Ratzel, "The custom of cutting off joints of the finger alike as a medicinal process, a sign of mourning and an expiation, looks like a sacrifice. You seldom meet a Bushman whose left-hand fingers have not lost some joints.30 Some Australian tribes and communities of Canadian Indians did it on burial occasions; and to avert ravages of disease, or pestilence, "to cut off deaths." Bushwomen sacrificed a joint of the little finger when a near relation died.31 Chopping off a portion of the finger, or a joint, or a finger plays a great part in sacrificial substitution as a pars pro toto, many examples of which are given by Tylor.32

Along with the hand wavy and interlacing lines are found on Bushmen paintings of hunting scenes and in Aurignacian cave pictures in France and Spain, intended perhaps to snare demons or cast spell over wild animals. Indians still charm their houses with hand imprints and trace wavy and interlacing lines in front of their doorsteps. The figures of the animals on the caves were probably totemistic and the images had magical significance in compelling the appearance of the original animals before the hunters to become their food in the chase.33 In the rock-drawings in the caverns of Australia the positions and attitudes of men and animals point to hunting and

29 R. Marett: Anthropology (H.U.L.) p. 49; also D. A. Mackenzie: Myths of Crete and Pre-Hellenic Europe, p. 30.

29 Ancient Hunters (1915), p. 366, see impression of the left hand on p. 192. 30 History of Mankind (1896) ii. 276.

31 D. A. Mackenzie: Myths of Crete and Pre-Hellenic Europe, p. 31.

32 Primitive Culture (1920) ii. 400 sq.

13 A. C. Haddon: Magic and Fetishism.

fishing, and some of the paintings have religious signification.34 The symbolical ritual employed in food-quest by the Arunta, a people of Central Australia, known as the Intichiuma ceremony, may furnish a key to the paintings of animals found in the Aurignacian caves.35

An interesting account of prehistoric paintings in the caves of Singanpur has been given by C. W. Anderson.36 They represent hunting scenes. Lack of the full number of fingers is also noticeable. "A lively imagination," observes Mr. Anderson, "might see in the number of fingers allowed by the artist-never more than three or four signs of the widespread custom in primitive races of cutting one or two off. But as a corrective we have only to remember that a child in his first efforts at portraiture draws perhaps three fingers and then refuses to labour the idea ad nauseum "37 This may be true. But it cannot be gainsaid that this mutilation of fingers as a magic and sometimes as a substitute and a symbolical satisfaction for full human sacrifice figures as well in folk-tales as in actual practice.38 Anderson considers these paintings to be connected both with food-quest and religion (magic) associated with it. Some interlacing lines in the form of a triangular shield both in front and the back of the elephant in Pl. 15 may probably represent a latticed trap, or corral, into which the elephants are being driven." Pl. 4 is also remarkable. Mr. Anderson considers it probable that it (together with Figs. I and II of Pl. 1, Pl. 5, and Fig. III of Pl. 7) had its origin in some form of totemism.39 In an account of "Some more Ladakh "the Rev. A. H. Francke

Rock Carvings from Lower

84 Ratzel, op cit. i. 344, 345.

35 Spencer and Gillen: Native Tribes of Central Australia, p. 176; Marett Anthropology, p. 220.

36 The Rock Paintings of Singanpur in J.B.O.R.S., Vol. IV.

37 Ibid, p. 392.

Pp. 298

8q.

88 See ante. Also Flora Annie Steel: The Tales of the Punjab, pp. 100, 138,

May

explains Fig. 9 of Pl. VII as a scene of " Dance in honour of the gods (lha): fourteen dancers, one leader."'40 it not, however, have some kindred with Pl. 4 (the lower part) given in J.B.O.R.S., already referred to, and have some relation to totemism? The man has got only four fingers in either hand, which may be similarly accounted for.

In the Singanpur rock-drawings, however, separate imprint of the hand, which we have found along with the interlacing line in the Aurignacian, and Bushman and Australian cave drawings, does not appear. Mr. Anderson saw other paintings at Singanpur at a height of at least 50 feet above the hunting scene which he then could not reach. Who knows if the hand be there? At any rate we have seen that the custom of imprinting the hand as a means of warding off the evil and of bringing good luck is worldwide dating from a time to which memory of man runneth not.

the

4o Indian Antiquary, Vol. XXII, p. 362.

9

5 Res. J.

VI.-New Light on Hindu Political

Science Literature.

By K. P. Jayaswal, M.A. (Oxon.)

Up to this time the writers on Arthas astra or Hinda Political Science were known from references to their views in the Kautiliya Artha-Sastra, the Mahabharata, the Kamandakiya Nitisāra and Chandeśvara's Rāja-nili-Ratnākara. I may also refer to Nilakantha's Niti-mayukha and Mitra Misra's Rajanitiprakasa. But the latter do not carry our knowledge of the Artha-Sastra literature very much further.

The work which opens up for us a catalogue of hitherto sealed literature on the subject is a commentary on the Jaina author Soma-deva Suri's Nitiväkyämṛita. The Nitiväkyämṛita is a well-known little book written for the education of young princes in the tenth century of the Christian era. It is a mixture of ethics and politics, in short sutras or aphorisms. The commentary under discussion is by an author whose name is yet unknown. A manuscript of the work discovered is dated the 4th of Kartika Sudi, Vikrama Samvat 1541 (=1463 A.C.) in the reign of Sultan Babalola Sāhi, i.e. Bahlol Lodi. The manuscript was presented by a pious Jaina lady to a Jaina scholar, Pandita Medhävi, of Hisar, where it was placed in a Jaina library. From there it was transferred to a Jaina library at Amer. Pandita Nathūrāma Premin of Bombay obtained this manuscript through some Jaipur friends and has printed the commentary as a volume in the Manikachandra Digambara Jaina Series. It discloses a welcome mass of information, and we are thankful to Pandita Nathūrāma for the publication. Unfortunately folios 51 to 75 of the manuscript are missing, the matter available in 133 [folios (11"x5", 20 lines to each page) alone could be published. The missing portion covers parts