Page:The Indian Antiquary, Vol. 4-1875.djvu/263

 250 THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY. [August, 1875. hand either in print or in person, and given every- where their Btatemeuts in full. Nor do I think that Mr. Growae on his part has been very for- tunate with regard to those particular points in which he attempts to set right, with considerable confidence, what I have said. For when he calls the rosary " a devotion instituted by St. Dominic in the 13th century" he is somewhat behind the real state or the investigations on this point. What he says is indeed the usual tradition of the Dominicans, to whose exertions no doubt the com- mon use of the rosary owes its popularity, hut ac- cording to Sieiiz— the last, as far as I know, who wrote on this subject (seo Hcrzog ReoUE 'fitrprotestani. Theolog-ie und Kirelie, III. 127, Gotha, I860) — this tradition is " as dubious" as the Opinion of those who maintain that the rosary was invented by Benedict of Nubia, or by the Venerable Bode, or by Peter the Hermit. Steifcz repudiates also the opinion of those who believe that the rosary came to the West with the Crusaders, though he concedes that the influence of the Muhammadan custom may have contributed to its propagation. In his opinion the belts of the Anglo-Saxon Church in the ninth century (septem hrliiJvw paternoster pro eo cantefur in the tenth canon of the Consilium Call- hi 'tense, a.d.814) 'y to the independent origin of the rosary iu the West ; whereas to Koppen as well as to me it seems very improbable that so singular an invention should have been made independently in two parts of the world, in the West and in the East. In the latter we find it no doubt earlier thau in the former, ns its Hindu use goes back to the Atharva- IsTdaS, the Rthmhjana, KitmdrnsauiM.n'a, Fa- riihr-ihlhiin.. Besides, wc have hero a good expla- nation of its name as well as of its origin. After nil, it was not I, but Koppen, who first derived it from Siva's garland of .skulls, and he made she conjecture (Mr. Growse would do well to read the ige in the book itself, Die Religion issBuddha, II. 319, 1859) without even knowing the least of the particular relation of the rosary to the Siva-cult which I have pointed out in my note, viz. the indis- pensable use of it at the Sivapuja, which is fruit- less vind rudrdkghamdlayd, and the very name rii>ln!k*hamdld, which we find at least already in the Ttdjatarongint. 1 add that Siva himself is eie,[alcehamdlui. 'intUL'Mnhdhhdruta. XII. 10,374, and ( ! a u r i wears tho rosary in Eu Y. 11. And for the particular point in question it is of sotno interest after all that in Jamin i BlulraUi, XXI t. 36, a Brabmarakshasa actually appears: ^H*"fll- I adduce this passage only as an il- lustration, not as evidence of the conjecture, for I am not prepared to assume also that the ijajiiopa- vita owed its origin to a string of human entrails I whereas I think it very probable that the garland of human skulls worn by Siva himself, ftfl well Mi in his honour, by the Sivaitic Kapalika sect, may j have become, in the diminutive form of the rosary, 1 from an emblem of his service an expedient also for the right execution of the prescribed numerous repetitions of his names, as well as of the solemn mantra professing faith in him. In Koppen's opinion the rosary has been borrowed by the Christians (as already Baurogarten proposed in his ChristlkheA ! • r, Halle, l7t>8) through the intermediation of the Moslems; but the Anglo- Saxon belie make this rather doubtful indeed (seo Binterirn, D'vkuriirdigkeiten der kathol. Kirche. "VII. Ill ff. Mainz, 1831), and point to an earlier age for the borrowing. How old the rosary (As**- ) js j n i s i am i s uncertain as yet ; an Arabic Dictionary with full quotations from the oldest literature downwards— as we have it for the Sans- krit in the great Petersburg I, of Boht- lingk and Both, which is to be completed iu these days — does not yet exist, and we have therefore no distinct guide for the oldest use of the word and, what is the same, of the thing. The Qoran itself does not mention either, and my learned friend Prof. Dieterici is of opinion that the rosary was adopted by the Moslems especially in order to secure the right enumeration of the hun- dred fine names of Allah collected from the Qoran {^J c> l »*^f *& cJa^J.thcboginningor which » - b * formula, viz. the words, *^l cy^"** praise of God. repeatedly occurs in the Qoran itself. I proceed to the second rectification of Browse, viz. bonis statement that St. John Clirv- sostom, in that very sermon in which he notes that the Christmas festival had in Antioch been in Q years, * add* that at Borne it had been celebrated on the 25th of December from the first days of Chriitianity." Here alee Mr. Growse has taken his information from a very unsafe source : for there is not a word of all that in tho text of the sermon of the saint (J...! mi Chrysost. Opp. II. 418, 119, Paris and Leipzig, 1835), as ho does not mention either Borne w i hejtrsl days of Ohri 'ft 'icir.it ij • what he says is more gen, nil and at the same time more restricted ; ho calls the festival new as well as old, — new because it bad been introdnced with i<* («p&ff$p« 6«) only recently. old because it bad been known to the inhabitants of (ha Fl ■'< tt qf ■-. (R-apA per roU tjv io-rripov oiKovfrtv uvuBtv yvupt(fiftii^f). Now to render uvaGf* by "from the Brit days of Christianity" is certain- ly a very free and extended translation, whereas "Rome" alone does not suffice to cover "the