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through the broad and shallow passages the river ran at the rate of from three to three and a half miles an hour only, in proportion to its depth.

As the day was mild and warm, I waded through the water from one cluster of rocks to another, visiting all the little islands which obstructed the passage of the Araxes: and it must be confessed that, to the admirers of wild and majestic scenery, nothing could be more romantically picturesque. Towering mountains were formed on each side the river of immense masses of basalt and black granite, heaped one over the other, and hanging in an endless variety of fantastic forms, while their broad shadows threw upon the surface of the stream a fine deep gloom, quite in unison with the scene. In the centre of the river were again

seen smaller combinations of rocks, which formed innumerable islets, over some of which the water partially flowed, while their sharp points cutting the current in its course, created foaming breakers in miniature, the murmurs of which were the only sounds that disturbed the stillness of the calm. In some of the hollows formed by the annual friction of the rising inundation, when the Araxes was at its height, a bed of rich alluvial soil had been deposited, from which had sprung up young trees and bushes, the isolated verdure of which derived a higher beauty from contrast, and appeared like little Edens encompassed by a wilderness. The very rocks themselves too exhibited all the variety of form and colour; while their adamantine surfaces, exposed to the constant stream, were worn to a smoothness of polish, which art could scarcely give to them; and by the infinite variety of their positions, reflected the rays of an unclouded sun from every point like dark steel mirrors. Here were gigantic mountains of basalt, and rose-coloured granite, the latter crossed with veins of the finest porphyry and smaller lines of brilliant quartz, changing at every yard their hue of shade, and quality of grain: while the sublime solitudes of this dark and silent valley gave to the pure canopy above a brighter blue, and produced altogether a splendid. picture of nature in her wildest garb.

Such a magic combination of forms and colours could not possibly be sketched with fidelity. Were the whole to be drawn and coloured on the spot, it would require the pencil of a CLAUDE to catch the beauty and the expression of the shades which vary with every hour, from the dawn to the close of day. The sun was sinking when we returned to the encampment; and I retired to my tent as much overcome by the magnificent impressions of the scenery I had beheld, as by the fatigues of our circuitous and lengthened route of wading through the islets of the Araxes to enjoy their beauty.

The Russian General BARON RENNENKAMPFF came to take leave of our party next morning as early as the day dawned. KHOSROU MIRZA presented him with a bag containing twelve hundred ducats and two pair of handsome Cashmere shawls. The Baron's polite attentions to the whole suite were unremitting throughout: he was very desirous of crossing the boundary line, and of accompanying us to the court of His Royal Highness ABBAS MIRZA, that he might have formed the acquaintance of our highly respected envoy, Colonel MACDONALD KINNIER ; but the orders of the Emperor NICHOLAS were so positive, that he could not even transport the Prince's carriage across the river. His fear, also, of being thought more favourable to the Persians, than to his own employers, was excessive. Born a Livonian, he was eyed with jealousy by his inferiors in rank, who, if any opportunity served, would doubtless have endeavored to injure his good name and interest with the Government. On pressing my hand, he said, "The Emperor has every confidence in me at present, and I must endeavour to retain it; the Russians hate all my countrymen most cordially, because some of us hold the best appointments in the Empire."

(To be continued.)

V.-Supplement to the Historical Remarks on the Allahabad Inscription, No. 2. By the Rev. W. H. MILL, D. D. &c.

In enumerating the few historical names that remain of the dynasty or dynasties to which I conceive that the Allahabad Inscription, No. 2 may possibly belong, I confined myself to such as are authenticated by ancient testimony: in which I am not aware of any omission except that of two kings, whom the researches of Professor WILSON have supplied: viz. Sáhasanka, who appears from the Visva Prakása to have reigned at Canouje somewhere in the tenth century: and KORA, So called by the Mahometan writers, who was contemporary with MAHMUD GHAZnaví in the eleventh*. It is however scarcely pardonable to omit all reference to a series of names with which so indefatigable an investigator as Colonel ToD thinks he has filled the chasm in question, in that most valuable and elaborate contribution to oriental and general literature, the

* To these I might add the name of VIRA-SINHA-DEVA, who is said, at a period somewhat earlier, to have granted to the request of A'DISÚRA, king of Bengal, the five orders of Cányacubja Brahmans, from whom the present brahmans of Bengal are descended.

"Annals and Antiquities of Rajasthan." The Annals of Marwar contained in his last volume, might well indeed be expected to throw some light upon this subject since it was by the remains of the Rahtore family that last reigned at Canouje, by two grandsons of the unfortunate JAYA CHANDRA, that this still subsisting principality of the solar race was fixed in Central India, near the beginning of the 13th century, and escaped for several ages the notice of the Musulman princes that had subverted the ancient Hindu monarchies of the north. The pro

fessed records of the earlier periods of the family yet remain in the hands of the bards and other dependents of these princes at Marwar : and these traditional legends always deserve attention, though they cannot for various reasons command historical belief.

These chronicles all connect in a loose manner the solar race in the person of SUMITRA (about the sixtieth from RÁMA), the last prince of Ayodhya mentioned in the Puranas, with the sovereignty of the Rahtore family at Cányacubja-thence proceeding hastily to the defeat and death of JAY CHAND OF JAYA CHANDRA, and the flight of his grandsons SEOJI and SATRAM to Marwar ;-after which, they begin to wear the appearance of circumstantial history. Some of them however assume an aspect of chronological definiteness at the period of NAYN PAL (NAYANA PÁLA,) whom they represent as having conquered Canouje in the year of VICRAMADITYA 526, or A. D. 470, from king AJIPÁLA, a descendant of AJAMIDHA, of the Lunar race, which race they represent as having held the sovereignty of Cányacubja or Gádhipura, from the fabulous times of GADHI, father of VISVAMITRA, to whom its foundation is generally ascribed, down to this comparatively recent period. From this Nayn PAL, the Marwar chroniclers give a genealogical series of twenty generations to the unfortunate JAYA CHANDRA, thus filling the interval from A. D. 470 to 1193. Some observed incongruities in the testimony on which this series is given have not prevented Colonel ToD from attaching to the former date, and to the whole genealogy, a credit which he does not appear to give to any names preceding NAYN PAL in the same genealogical rolls. He takes it for established fact that the Rahtore family thus reigned for seven centuries at Canouje, and that this was the only principality of the solar race that ever occupied that ancient seat of Hindu empire.

The exhibition of this genealogy, as given by Colonel ToD, side by side with the testimony of indubitable Sanscrit monuments brought to light by COLEBROOKE, FELL, and WILSON, as to the actual reign of the Rahtore princes at Canouje, will bring to the test these assertions of the bards and panegyrists of the royal house at Marwar. It will be seen that it needs not the absence of the names of YASOVARMAN and

SAHASANKA (who certainly reigned at Canouje within the limits of these seven centuries), to prove this genealogy destitute of all historical authority.

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JAYA-CHANDRA, do. do.

1160.

Hence it appears, that the Marwar authorities are correct only as to the unfortunate JAYA CHANDRA, who died A. D. 1193, and his father

VIJAYA CHANDRA, who died in 1168. Respecting all his ancestors they are altogether wrong, and have expanded into seven centuries a dynasty which lasted but 120 years; for the same inscription which relates the conquest of CHANDRA Déva is utterly silent as to the crown of Canouje having been his by right of hereditary descent from NAYANA PALA, or any other. We have therefore little reason to credit the Marwar chroniclers in the other part of their statement; viz. that this Rahtore dynasty thus reduced to one century, was the first and only dynasty of the solar race at Canouje. It is far more probable that princes of purer descent than they (whom Colonel ToD suspects on very probable grounds to be of partly Scythian origin) occupied that seat of empire from a period at least as early as that named by their chroniclers, viz. in the fifth century, or perhaps long before it. To some of these the kings mentioned in our inscription may have belonged, whom these authorities, if admitted as true, would exclude altogether.

A greater assistance might perhaps be obtained from Colonel ToD, had he given us the Jain inscription to which he alludes in pp. 140 and 211 of the first volume of the Transactions of the Royal Asiatic Society, as written in an ancient character (very probably that of our inscription) long disused in India, but known to the Jain hierarchs, and of which he promises to the Society a key. For this inscription relates to a certain Avanti Rája or Lord of Ujjayiní, called CHANDRAGupta, and is dated in the year 427*, which if applied to the era of the great monarch of that city VICRAMADITYA will be A. D. 371, but if applied to the Jain era of MAHÁVÍRA will be B. C. 106. But the localities specified in the Allahabad pillar all seem to indicate a Gangetic kingdom rather than one whose centre is at Oujein.

In the line of the Chohan princes of Ajmeir, closed by the name of the heroic PRITHU-RAI, (who possessed himself in the 12th century of the ancient kingdom of Indrapristha or Dehli, only to be the last Hindu prince that ever reigned there) we find a CHANDRAGUPTA, son of MAHÁSINHA and grandson of MANIKYA-RÁI, the latter a king of some celebrity, whose date is fixed to A. D. 695. But the mention of these names, together with that of the son and successor in the kingdom, which is not SAMUDRAGUPTA but Pratápa-Sinha, is alone sufficient to remove all idea of this being the CHANDRAGUPTA of our inscription; even without recurring to the decisive reason, that the Agnikula class of Xattriyas, to which this Chauhána family belongs, is ex

On the second mention Colonel ToD, apparently from inadvertency, makes the date of this same monument 466, i. e. 39 years later than before.

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