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 AUGUST 2, 1872.]

weBER ON THE RAMAYANA.

big-bulb, fine-bulb, although “root-lump” is not to be rejected. Is it not perhaps possible, that hälu, hâl,

pāl, juice, milk, is the same word as the halá, etc., water, vinous or spirituous liquor poison, under No. 1 ? and that a spirit of hatred (caste) against the Anāryas, combined with the fact that the milky or vinous juice of many trees, called hål, is obnoxious and poisonous, has given it also a bad signification ? From pål the Sans krit pålana, milk of a lately calved cow, is derived, but this is probably a recent formation. The aspirato does not appear at the beginning of the Tamil and Canarese words under No. 1, and

in the Tamil of the present day “milk” is pāl (Canarese hāl, pål); but the word without the

h (p. v) may be the original one. It would, certainly, be strange if hál, pål, the only word for “milk” in Dravidian, should not have entered into Sanskrit at an early age. It is curious that initial h and p, as in Dra vidian, so also in Sanskrit Tatsamas or Tad bhavas are used promiscuously. Thus Dravidian halli, palli, village=Sanskrit palli (which is not at all connected with puri); Dr. hallu, pallu, tooth=S. halu; Dr. halli, palli, house-lizard =S. halini ; Dr. horag (hurage), porag

(purage), without–S. hiruk ; Dr. hud, hūd, pud, púd, to join together=S. hud, hund, put :

239

Dr. hul, hūl, pul, púl, to cover=S.hul ; Dr. hud, pud, hod, pod (bod, bad), to beat (powder)=S. put, (pud) etc. Sometimes an aspirate is used in a Sanskrit Tadbhava where there is none in the original. Thus Sanskrit her amba, buffaloe=Dravidian e r u m e ; S. h river a, many-branched root of the grass Andropogon muricatus=Dr. i r u v eli, irvéli (R.ir, to go into parts); S. h in gu, Assafoetida=Dr. h ingu : (ingu may be a foreign word; if not, we have the Dravidian root ing, to dry up, evaporate, decoct, which fully ex plains it). On the other hand Sanskrit a gn i, fire, has received the form h a g g i in Canarese.

We have ventured above to find a l again in hol, pol (pul), to unite, join ; cf. al., ul and pol (pul), to sound; 6l, völ, pól, hēl, to resemble, liken ; ali, Öli, pāli, line; remember also that an initial u sometimes, and an initial o generally are written and pronounced as if there were a

v at the beginning (ondu, one=vondu or vandu). If our supposition is right, a spiritus lenis must, here and there, have originally occurred where we have now a spiritus asper; and thus the comparison of āla and hālu, milk, would become the more justifiable. We could adduce further instances in favour of this supposition It is we think worth being well tested.

ON THE RAMAYANA. By PROF. ALBRECHT WEBER, BERLIN.

Translated from the German by the Rev. D. C. Boyd, M.A.

(Concluded from page 182.)

If the preceding considerations have made it sufficiently clear that there is nothing either in

he should have heard the whole of the Rāmā

exercised a considerable influence on India, that

yana, in one day,” decides in favour of at least the “remota antiquita del poema,” (Introd. to Vol. I. p. xcvii-viii), inasmuch as king Dâmo dara lived about the beginning of the 14th cen tury B. C.,-then, of course, nothing further

on the contrary it is necessary to strike out of

need be said.

the substance or in the form of the Rāmāyana

distinctly inconsistent with the idea that it was

composed at a time when Greece had already

But it is well-known that the

the poem important passages" which clearly

Rāja-Tarangini itself dates only from the begin

indicate such an influence,—the external testi monies to the existence of the work, which we

ning of the twelfth century of our era (compos ed about 1125, see Lassen, 1nd. Alt. I.473; II.

are able to produce from the rest of Indian literature, are in complete harmony with this result. If, indeed, Gorresio is right in suppos ing that the passage in the Rāja-Tarangini I. 116, according to which king Dāmodara was condemned to wear the form of a serpent “until

18); and we should certainly hesitate to ascribe such a “remota antiquita” to this epic, merely

on the ground that in it the Rāmāyana is brought into connection with the bewitchment of a king, who is presumed to have reigned 2,400 years

before the date of the poem ' And besides, the which would be a work of some difficulty with regard to the numerous passages in which the Planets are mentioned