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refer to any era, still the expression may mean 98. Altogether the supposition that the expression represents the date appears to be extremely impro bable. The grammatical difficulty the Babu thinks I have myself solved, when I admit the alternative interpretation that “the temple took the 888th year to be constructed.” But what one would naturally expect to find in an inscription is that such and such a building was constructed in such and such a year, and not that it took such and such a year to be constructed. And the phrase that a temple took the twentieth or any such year to be constructed is not Sankrit as it is not English. " I admitted the interpretation only so far as the grammar was concerned. The writer has not sinned against grammar in using b h (, s h a na as masculine, for abstract verbal nouns ending in ana, only are necessarily neuter, but others signifying the instrument or place of an action, generally take the gender of the noun qualified. This is clear from the lingfinus'asana (Sid. Kaum. Calc. edn. Vol. II. last page). This appears to be more especially the case when the verbal noun has what may be called an Upapada, or another noun de pending on it. In the Sid. Kaum. under Pan. 3-3-113 and 3-3-117 the instances given are rāja bhojanāh, Sālayah, idh ma-pravraschanah kuthä rah and godohani-Sthali, in which nouns in ana take the gender of the nouns they qualify. Bhu shana as an abstract noun is neuter, but in the

sense of Bhushyate anema it may take any gender. Many verbal nouns in ana are used by Sanskrit authors in this way. In the present case bhābhū shana qualifies prūsāda, and hence it is masculine. Babu Rajendralal supposes a double entendre on the expression in question, but such a double en tendre appears to be purposeless. For the syntac tical connection of a word on which a play is intended is generally the same in both senses, but here

[July 5, 1872.

THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY.

in

the one sense the compound becomes

an epithet of Gaudapatina, and in the other it stands independently, Babu Rajendralal calls the compound awkward when interpreted in the way I have done, but he takes it to be a bahuvrihi, which it is not. It is what may be called an Upapada compound ; and is to be dissolved thus :-Kunjarānām ghatá= Kunjara-ghatā ; kunjara-ghatám varshatiti, kunjara ghatá-varshah, Pan. 3-2-1. Neither is it farther from the noun qualified than such epithets are even in such a simple kāvya as Raghu. R. G. BHANDARKAR.

Note on Tap. ALLow me to point out a little slip of the pen in the Rev. K. M. Banerjea's article “Bhavabhuti in

English garb.” On p. 145a the learned writer con nects the Sanskrit root tap with the Greek rvºra. Mr. Banerjea specially “invites discussion,” I there

fore beg to point out that Bopp and other philolo

gists agree in assigning to 53 the original meaning of “to burn.”

Bopp quotes na tatra sūryas tapati from Bhaga vad-gitā 11-19, and similar passages. The next meaning is that of pain in general. We can readily conceive that to the Aryan race, natives originally of a cold climate, the excessive heat of the plains of India would be very distressing, and the idea of heat and pain would thus grow out of the same root. In the other Aryan languages the Latin gives us tepeo, tepidus, the Greek 9xtra which originally meant to burn dead bodies, but, as the practice of burying gained ground, was applied to it, and so lost its first meaning. The Greek rvºr. means ‘to beat,’ and is connected with a different

Sanskrit root 73.

Tapas therefore, like penance, is

originally merely “pain,” subsequently self-inflicted pain in hope of expiating sin ; or, in the case of al ready sinless beings, of adding to their merits. And there is therefore no word which so accurately ren ders the Sanskrit tapas as the Latin-English penance from pana. Balasor, June 11, 1872. John BEAMEs. -

Query 9—Derivation of Elephant. Is the word elephant of Dravidian descent 2 Professor Bopp in his Comparative Glossary seems inclined to think that it is composed of the Semitic article and Sanskrit ibha. Professor Weber

in his Indian Sketches favours the view of its being aleph hind, i. e. Indian ox. Of further guesses I do not know ; but my own impression is that the word is Dravidian as regards its first part. In the South

Indian languages à ne (often pronounced y áne, sometimes changed into file) means elephant. This à n e I consider to be the e le.

Sanskrit

Do we find this in

I believe it is the airá in airā-vata

The interchange of the liquids n, l, r (cf. Sanskrit i da, i lá, i r fi) is not uncommon. Initial yá is not seldom changed into è in Dravidian, and in the middle of words the vowel 6 is generally pronounced as yā. Further, the Sanskrit ed a, sheep, for ins tance, is derived from Dravidian à du (y a du). The Vriddhi vowel in a ir à ought to raise no serious ob stacle. Initial vowels are sometimes changed with out any apparent necessity. Thus air à-v at a means

also “an orange tree"; here the air à is the Dravidian i le, orange. When air à-v at a conveys the mean ing “lightning,” the air à is probably the Dravidian i i (ide), thunderbolt. The v at a, vant (phant) would be a secondary addition, and from the second ary composite form air à v at a (air à-van t) ele phant may have been introduced into the Western languages. To me it would be most strange, if a ne had not entered the Sanskrit language at a remote time ; and I have not been able to discover it in another word but air à. F. KITTEL.