138 Captain Tod's Comments on a Sanscrit Inscription. 



ever much of the Scythian they possess in their ancestry, it might be going 

 rather too far to suppose them a ramification of the Cho-han dynasty of 

 Cliina, and one of the most powerful. According to De Guignes, they 

 had penetrated into the Transoxiana, in the second century before Christ, 

 nearly about the period that other tribes overturned the Bactrian kingdom. 

 The Tartar tribe of Yue-chi* (the Assaceni of the Greek writers) is men- 

 tioned, in the Chinese histories, as having, after aiding in this event (the 

 overthrow of the Bactrian kingdom) penetrated into India, and settled tliere 

 in the second century before Christ. To these, De Guignes applies the term 

 Indo-scythian. In the second century after Christ, Gibbon has recorded, 

 from the same authorities, an invasion which even reached Guzzerat ; and 

 Cosmas is given as authority for another, in the sixth century. But we 

 have inscriptions, decyphered by a learned member of this Society, which 

 record the Huns having even penetrated to Bengal ; and I have met with 

 a remnant of tliem, under their pristine name of Hiin, in my travels in 

 Guzzerat. 



De Guignes adds, that the Yue-chi were fixed in sovereignty, in the 

 northern parts of India, touching the Thibet mountains, in the fifth cen- 

 tury. The Jit of Sal-indra-piir, already mentioned, of whom I possess a 

 memorial of this very period, may have affinity to this branch. 



But it is not in mere name, that we are to trace resemblances ; but in 

 manners, and religious opinions. 



The Hindu genealogist is inferior to none of the class on earth, in giving 

 a " local habitation, and a name," to his kings, hierarchs, and heroes; 

 and of the ancestry of the fiimily under discussion, we have the stapleof 

 the chain of pedigree rivetted in the Agnicunda, or fire foimtain, whence 

 they sprung, on the summit of the Olympus of India, the celebrated A'bii. 

 I had the pleasure of visiting this classical spot in the mythology of both 

 religions, where Adindt'h and Adiswara, Rishabhadeva and Nandiswara, 

 have their primitive shrines, and their common origin in name, and in 



Chuhumdna, or ChdJiuvdna. The metropolis of his empire, likewise, is divei'Sely spelt : Dilli, Dili, 

 DUlt, D'hili, D'hilli, or D'hiUi. In short, consonants are interchanged, and vowels confounded : 

 not always by carelessness of transcribers ; for the exigence of the metre sometimes supports 

 the variation. There is, consequently, much uncertainty in the proper ortliography of names. — 

 H.T.C. 

 « De Guignes, Vol. I. p. 168. 



