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 NOMINAL BASES IN SANSKRIT.

May 3, 1872.]

Bar is in the Agra district; S on a, famous for its hot sulphur springs, is in Gurgååw; while the ‘S i r as en kä gānw’ is supposed to be Bate sar, a place of some note on the Jamunā below Agra, the scene of a very large horse-fair held on the full moon of Kartik.

137

before the Christian era. Thus the only possible

hypothesis is that some Pandit, struck by the marvellous circumstances of our Lord's infancy,

as related in the Gospel, transferred them to his own indigenous mythology, and on account of the

But the lines above

similarity of name, selected Krishna as their hero.

quoted cannot be of any great antiquity, seeing that they contain the Persian word hadd; the exact locality of an ideal centre need not be very closely criticized ; and certainly all the places of legendary reputation fall well within the limits of the modern pari-kr a m a. Attempts have been made to establish a con

It may be added that the Harivañsa, which pos sibly is as oldt as any of the Vaishnava Puranas, was certainly written by a stranger to the country

of Braj; and not only so, but it further shews distinct traces of a southern origin, as in its de scription of the exclusively Dakhini festival, the

Punjāl; and it is only in the south of India that

nection between the earlier chapters of St. Ma

a Brahman would be likely to meet with Christian

thew's Gospel and the legends of Krishna as com memorated by the ceremonies of the Ban-jätra.

traditions.

There is an obvious similarity of sound between the

the absence of any historical proof, to establish

But after all that can be urged, the

coincidences though curious are too slight, in

names Krishna and Christ ; Herod's massacre

a connection between the two narratives.

of the innocents may be compared with the

bably they would never have attracted attention

massacre of the children of Mathurā by Kańsa; the flight into Egypt, with the flight to Gokul; as Christ had a fore-runner of supernatural birth in the person of St. John Baptist, so had Krishna in Balarama; and as the infant Saviour was cradled in a manger and first worshipped by shepherds, though descended from the royal

had it not been for the similarity of name; and it is thoroughly established by literary criticism that the two names had each an independent origin. Thus the speculation may be dismissed as idle and unfounded. To many persons it will appear profane to institute a comparison between the inspired oracles of Christianity and the Hindu scriptures. But if we fairly consider the Indian legend, and allow for a slight element of. the grotesque and that tendency to exaggerate which is inalienable from Oriental imagination, we shall find it not incongruous with the primary idea of a beneficent divinity, manifested

house of Judah, so Krishna, though a near kins

man of the reigning prince, was brought up among cattle and first manifested his divinity to herdsmen.”

The inference drawn from these

coincidences is corroborated by an ecclesiastical

tradition that the Gospel which St. Thomas the Apostle brought with him to India was that of St. Matthew, and that when his relics were dis covered, a copy of it was found to have been buried with him.

It is, on the other hand, ab

solutely certain that the name of Krishna, how ever late the full development of the cycle of legends, was celebrated throughout India long

Pro

in the flesh in order to relieve the world from

oppression and restore the practice of true re

ligion. As to those wayward caprices of the child-god, for which no adequate explanation can be offered, the Brahman may regard them as the sport of md/d : in western phraseology—sapien tia ludens omni tempore, ludens in orbe terrarum.

ON THE TREATMENT OF OXYTONE NOMINAL BASES IN SANSKRIT AND ITS DERIVATIVES. BY JOHN BEAMES, B.C.S., M.R.A.S., MAGISTRATE OF BALASOR,

The following remarks are intended to direct attention to a hitherto neglected point in the formation of nominal bases.

It has been observ

ed that the -a base in Sanskrit, as in nara, putra,
 * Hindu pictures of the infant Krishna in the arms of

his foster-mother Jasºodă, with a glory encircling the heads both of mother and child and a back ground of Oriental

scenery, are indistinguishable, except in name, from repre sentations of Christ and the Madonna.

-

&c., divides itself into two separate sets of bases in the mediaeval and modern Aryan languages, and investigators seem to have been puzzled by this fact. Dr. Trumpp, writing on Sindhi, in the standard authority even in his time.
 * 1) It is quoted by Birüni (born 970, died 1038 A.D.) as a

f Conf. Trench, Hulsean Lectures, 1846, Lect. III., 4th ed. 1859, pp. 203-4, &c.—Ed.