382 
NATURE 
[ Sept. 14, 1871 

the chief study of my leisure hours; while, for the last 
four years of my residence, these subjects were my sole 
occupation, as I was then employed by the Government 
of India as archzological surveyor to examine and report 
upon the antiquities of the country.” 
General Cunningham has divided the geography of 
India according to the same system which is generally 
adopted in the history of India, viz., into the Brahmanical, 
the Buddhist, and the Mohammedan periods ; and he has 
selected the second or Buddhist period as the principal 
subject of his first volume. The first or Brahmanical 
period traces the gradual extension of the Aryan race over 
Northern India, and comprises that early section of their 
history during which the religion of the Vedas was the 
prevalent belief of the country. The geography of that 
period, as far as it can be worked out from the Vedic 
writings, has been treated by M. Vivien de Saint- 
Martin, and by Prof. Lassen in his “ Indische Alterthums- 
kunde.” 
The second or Buddhist period embraces the rise, ex- 
tension, and decline of the Buddhist faith, from the time 
when Buddhism became the state religion of India to the 
conquests of Mahmud of Ghazni. As the beginning of 
the political influence of Buddhism coincides in time with 
the invasion of India by Alexander and the subsequent 
establishment of Greek dynasties on the Indian frontier, 
the historian of this period has, in the beginning, the 
advantage of the Greek accounts, while further on, from 
400 to 700, he has to depend mainly on the accounts fur- 
nished by Chinese pilgrims. This period, too, has been 
ably treated by M. Vivien de Saint-Martin in several 
mémvires, and by Prof. Lassen in his “ Indische Alter- 
thumskunde,” yet there was room left for new inquiries ; 
and the results of these inquiries have been published by 
General Cunningham in the volume now before us, 
The third or Mohammedan period has not yet been 
treated as a whole, though there are ample materials 
for it in the works of Reinaud, Elliot, Erskine, and 
others, 
The chief merit of General Cunningham’s work con- 
sists in his description of spots of which he can speak 
as an eye-witness. Here his knowledge of the actual 
localities has enabled him either to confirm the identifi- 
cations of his predecessors, or to fix by more correct evi- 
dence the real site of the places described by Greek or 
Chinese geographers. He furnishes himself, at the end 
of his Preface, a list of the more important of his own iden- 
tifications. Whenever his identifications are based on local 
peculiarities, his arguments seem always powerful and con- 
vincing. It is when he bases his views on the evidence of 
mere names that one feels occasionally inclined to withhold 
one’s assent. The changes in local names are, no doubt, 
most capricious, and amenable to hardly any rules, Every- 
thing is possible here; but for that very reason nothing 
should be assumed that cannot be proved by historical 
evidence. Hiouen-thsang calls Ceylon Sevg-kzalo, which 
is the Chinese rendering of the Sanskrit name Sin/hd’a. 
The fuller Sanskrit name is Szzhd/a-dvipa, This passes 
through a chain of changes, all of which can be traced his- 
torically, from Szzgal-dib to Sirzndib to Zilan and Ceylon. 
These changes may seem violent; but they are not 
half so objectionable as, for instance, the simple change 
Sdlatura to Haldtura, Aldtur, and finally to Lahor, pro- 
posed by General Cunningham (pp. 57, 58). It is true 
that the s of S7zzdhu is changed to # in Hindu, and 
afterwards elided in 7uda, but the s of Simdhuis different 
rom the palatal s of S@/dtura. Besides, that dental s was 
changed into / in Persia, not in India, and dropped at last 
onlyin the mouths of Greeks, who first heard the name from 
the mouths of the Persians, The same objection applies 
to the proposed change of Sve/avdsa into Khetds (p. 125). 
The sv of Sveta, ‘‘ white,’ would not become Xz in the ~ 
western countries ; it could do so only if the s were a 
dental s, which it is not. 
Again General Cunningham admits occasionally for- 
mations of Sanskrit names, which are entirely against 
the genius of the language. On page 29, in explaining 
the name of Begrém, he says :—“ Masson derives the 
appellation from the Turki 4e or 07, ‘chief? and the Hindu 
gram or ‘ city,’ that is, the ‘capital’ But a more simple 
derivation would be from the Sanskrit v2, implying ‘ cer- 
tainty,’ ‘ascertainment,’ as in véaya, ‘victory, ’ which is 
only an emphatic form of jaya, with the prefix vz. V7- 
grdma would, therefore, mean emphatically ‘the city,’ 
that is, ‘the capital” and Bigrdm would be the Hindu 
form of the name.” A Sanskrit scholar would say at 
once that such a compound of gvdma, “village,” with the 
preposition vz is impossible. The preposition v7 may be 
joined to a verb or verbal noun, like jaya, “ victory,” but 
not to a noun like gyd@ma. I had, myself, derived the 
name of Begradm from édhaga-déréma, the abode of the god 
Bhaga, or of the gods in general ; taking é/aga either in 
the sense of the Sun-god, or like the Zend dagha, the old 
Persian Jaga, in the sense of gods in general, and drama 
as abode. Bhagdrdma changed to Begradm would be a 
sort of synonym of Behistdn, 4 Bayioravov dpos, the place 
of the Bhagas, or of Bhaga,the Lord. In this conjec- 
ture I have since been confirmed by finding that Albyruny 
mentioned Bhagapura, town of Bhaga, as one of the 
names of Multan (Reinaud, Mémoire, p. 98). 
It is well known that the name of the Kabul river, 
Kody, occurs in the hymns of the Rig Veda as Kufhd, 
but I cannot understand on what ground General Cun- 
ningham declares that name to be non-Aryan. The 
etymology of proper names is never very easy, but 
there would be no difficulty in connecting Awbhd either 
with Awmbhd, “ vessel,” Greek xipSos, or with cudy an 
old Cretan word for “head” (Sk. ka-kubh), or with kudos, 
“bent, crooked.” A wtz/d@, “ crooked,” is the name of a 
river, and Kampand, “the trembling,” is the name of 
one of the rivers of Kabulistan, it may be of the Kabul 
river itself. As Awédhd, the Kabul river, is men- 
tioned but twice in the Rig Veda, I shall give the two 
passages : 
Ma va Rasa anitabha Kubha KrumuZ ma va/ Sindhu/ 
ni viramat, Ma va/ pari sthat Sarayu% purishizi asme it 
sumnam astu vak. (“O ye Storm-gods, let not the Rasa 
with infinite splendour (amitabha), let not the Krumu, or 
the Sindhu delay you ; let not the misty Sarayu surround 
you :—with us alone be your delight !”) (Rv. v. 53, 9.) 
Trish¢amaya prathamam yatave sagti# Susartva Rasaya 
Svetya tya Tvam Sindho Kubhaya Gomatim Krumum 
Mehatnoa /aratham yabhif iyase. (“ First joined together 
with the Tvish¢ama for thy course, with the Susartu, the 
Rasa, the Sveti, thou O Sindhu (goest), with the Kubha 
to the Gomati, the Krumu, with whom thou proceedest 
together with the Mehatnu.”) Rv, x. 75, 6. 
