Page:Castes and tribes of southern India, Volume 5.djvu/25

Rh principal Rāni — a little old woman who reached half way up the back of the chair, and whom the Viceroy had been within an act of squashing. He said it gave him such a turn!"

A classified index to the Sanskrit Manuscripts in the Tanjore palace was published by Mr. A. C. Burnell in 1880. In the introduction thereto, he states that "the library was first brought to the notice of European scholars by H.S.H. Count Noer, Prince Frederic of Schleswig-Holstein, who brought an account of it to the late Professor Goldstucker. But its full importance was not known till I was deputed, in 1871, to examine it by the then Governor of Madras, Lord Napier and Ettrick. The manuscripts are the result of perhaps 300 years' collections; firstly, by the Nāyaks of Tanjore; secondly, after about 1675, by the Mahratha princes. Some of the palm-leaf manuscripts belong to the earlier period, but the greater part were collected in the last and present centuries. All the Nāgari Manuscripts belong to the Mahratha times, and a large number of these were collected at Benares by the Rāja Serfojee (Carabhoji) about fifty years ago."

In the Marātha Darbar Hall of the Tanjore palace are large pictures, of little artistic merit, of all the Marātha kings, and the palace also contains a fine statue of Sarabhōji by Chantrey. The small but splendid series of Marātha arms from this palace constitutes one of the most valuable assets of the Madras Museum. "The armoury," Mr. Walhouse writes,* " consisted of great heaps of old weapons of all conceivable descriptions, lying piled upon the floor of the Sangita Mahāl (music-hall), which had long been occupied by many