1) The document discusses an analysis of Indian mythology according to the Mahabharata epic by Professor V. Fausboll. It provides a systematic classification of the chief mythological beings and gods described in the epic.
2) While the work provides a useful overview and index, the reviewer notes some minor disagreements with the author's interpretations. However, it is praised as the first systematic account of the religion depicted in the Mahabharata.
3) The document also briefly summarizes a contribution by M. Morisse on the Si-Hia script, an unknown script first introduced to European scholars in the 19th century that is preserved in Buddhist inscriptions in China.
1) The document discusses an analysis of Indian mythology according to the Mahabharata epic by Professor V. Fausboll. It provides a systematic classification of the chief mythological beings and gods described in the epic.
2) While the work provides a useful overview and index, the reviewer notes some minor disagreements with the author's interpretations. However, it is praised as the first systematic account of the religion depicted in the Mahabharata.
3) The document also briefly summarizes a contribution by M. Morisse on the Si-Hia script, an unknown script first introduced to European scholars in the 19th century that is preserved in Buddhist inscriptions in China.
1) The document discusses an analysis of Indian mythology according to the Mahabharata epic by Professor V. Fausboll. It provides a systematic classification of the chief mythological beings and gods described in the epic.
2) While the work provides a useful overview and index, the reviewer notes some minor disagreements with the author's interpretations. However, it is praised as the first systematic account of the religion depicted in the Mahabharata.
3) The document also briefly summarizes a contribution by M. Morisse on the Si-Hia script, an unknown script first introduced to European scholars in the 19th century that is preserved in Buddhist inscriptions in China.
1) The document discusses an analysis of Indian mythology according to the Mahabharata epic by Professor V. Fausboll. It provides a systematic classification of the chief mythological beings and gods described in the epic.
2) While the work provides a useful overview and index, the reviewer notes some minor disagreements with the author's interpretations. However, it is praised as the first systematic account of the religion depicted in the Mahabharata.
3) The document also briefly summarizes a contribution by M. Morisse on the Si-Hia script, an unknown script first introduced to European scholars in the 19th century that is preserved in Buddhist inscriptions in China.
OUTLINE. By V. FAUSBOLL. (Luzac's Oriental Religious- Series, vol. i.) pp. xxxii, 206. (London: Luzac & Co.r 1903.) Sanskrit scholars do not require to be told that the most important literary problem still awaiting their solution is the problem of the Mahabharata. The great epic, the most genial and vigorous, if not the most characteristic, product of the Indian mind, occupying a position midway between the ancient and the classical Sanskrit, and connected on the one hand by certain indications with the Satapatha Brahmana (Hopkins' "Epic of India," p. 368), on the other with the Buddhist Sanskrit literature, which in its turn bears lexico- graphical affinities to the same Brahmana, forms the centre of an important linguistic development. It constitutes also the great storehouse "of ancient mythology and tradition, whereby it becomes the key to much that is obscure in the Yedic books, while its use by the classical writers more than justifies its own confident pretension— anasrityedam akhyanam katha bhuvi na vidyate | aharam anapasritya sarlrasyeva dharanam 11 idam kavivaraih sarvvair akhyanam upajivyate | udayaprepsubhir bhrtyair abhijata ivesvarah 11 (I, ii, 380-1.) To the study of this really national creation, which during the last decade has elicited so many important works, Professor Fausboll devoted in 1897 a volume in Danish entitled " Four Studies towards an exposition of the Indian Mythology according to the Mahabharata," and he has now given to us in the present work a systematic treatise based in part upon the same materials. We may perhaps conclude that in the opinion of the great Pali scholar the time is ripe for bringing the results of the investigations of early Buddhism to bear upon the immense problem of the epic. Professor Fausb^U's work is wholly expository. After enumerating all the noticeable discussions of early Indian Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. University of Cambridge, on 12 Oct 2018 at 15:36:54, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0035869X00032378 INDIAN MYTHOLOGY. 559
mythology, he observes that "in order not to be influenced
by the opinions and views of others, but to be quite independent," he has, " while writing this book, not made use of any of the treatises mentioned above." He gives us, therefore, an objective picture of the chief mythological •conceptions as they appear in the poem itself. It must be admitted that there was room for a manual of this nature, and it will be of great use to students both of the Maha- bharata itself and of all the later poetry. The index is quite satisfactory, though we note a very few omissions (e.g. Skanda). The arrangement is that of a classification. First we have the heading Asuras, with subdivisions for Daityas, Diinavas, Dasyus, Nagas, Raxasas, and Pisacas; then Suras, divided into Adityas, Apsarases, Asvins, Lokapalas, Maruts, Pitrs, Prajapatis, Rbhus, Rsis, Rudras, Sadhyas, Siddhas, Valakhilyas, Vasus, and Vidyadharas; thirdly Yaxas. Exception may no doubt be taken to this order, but it supplies, especially as drawn out in the very full table of contents, a clear conspectus of the Pandaimonion and Pantheon. Under each heading we find a full account of the beings named, with their legends, attributes, and names, supported by citations, sometimes of considerable length, and in all cases accompanied by renderings, whereby we see the actual working of the myths. It is curious to note what a different impression the sloka produces in four lines instead of two. There are some particulars in which we are compelled to dissent from the author's views. He infers " that by Asuras the Aborigines of India have been understood " (pp. 41—2); •" it is more probable," he holds, " that the word Indra originally has been Indura from indu, a drop " (p. 82); in the sentence vrhatmd Visnur ucyate it seems scarcely correct to see an etymology of Visnu from VwA (p. 107), where probably \/vk is intended. We must also call attention to the somewhat excessive number of misprints in the Sanskrit words, giving the careful reader unexpected shocks. In spite of these small scruples and defects, we must Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. University of Cambridge, on 12 Oct 2018 at 15:36:54, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0035869X00032378 560 NOTICES OF BOOKS.
cordially thank Professor Fausb^ll for giving us in an
interesting and comprehensive form the first systematic account of the middle Indian religion. In later times the beings whom the Mahabharata presents in lifelike characters- were swamped by conceptions of a metaphysical order, which reduced most of the minor powers to lay figures for literary use. The Trimiirti, as we learn on the authority of Professor Sorensen (p. xi), does not yet occur at all. More unexpectedly we find that so thoroughly familiar a figure as that of Ganesa is but twice mentioned in the poem (ibid.).
Contribution preliminaire a l'etude DE L'ECRITURE ET DE
LA LANGTJE SI-HIA, par M. G. MORISSE, Interprete de la Legation de France k Pekin. Extrait des Memoires de l'Academie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres. (Paris: Imprimerie Rationale, 1904.) The peculiar script to which this scholarly article is devoted was first introduced to the learned world of Europe, as M. Morisse observes, by Mr. Wylie, in a paper published in our own Journal in 1871. It is one of the scripts preserved in the well-known hexaglot Buddhist inscriptions within a sculptured archway of the Great "Wall at Chii- Yung-Kuan, near Peking, where it occurs in connection with Devanagari, Tibetan, Bashpa Mongolian, Uigur, and Chinese. The inscriptions from one side of this archway were illustrated in Mr. Wylie's paper, and a reduced facsimile of his impressions of four of the scripts is also to be found in Yule's Travels of Marco Polo (vol. i, p. 28). They have since been published in extenso in a magnificent album of Documents de I'epoque mongoles des xiiie et xiv" siecles by Prince Roland Bonaparte, under the competent editorship of MM. Deveria et Chavannes. The unknown script was at first supposed, on doubtful Chinese authority, to belong to the Juchen (Niuchih) Tartars, who ruled Northern China in A.D. 1125-1234. But later researches into the works of Chinese epigraphic and numismatic authors have conclusively proved it to be Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. University of Cambridge, on 12 Oct 2018 at 15:36:54, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0035869X00032378