February, 1910.] Annual Report. 



XVII 



Philology. 



In the field of Sanskritic Studies.— Mx. A. C. Sen published 

 a lengthy article on Trita, one of the Hero-Gods of the Rig-veda ; 

 in which he tries to remove some of the difficulties which have 

 beset scholars in East and West with regard to the double 

 character and personality of this god. He has taken all th 

 passages in theRig-veda in which reference is made to Trita, and 

 arranged these passages under groups, according to the various 

 conflicting statements, and offered an interpretation of each. 

 Mr. A. C. Sen tries to prove that Trita was a man, and as such 

 worshipped the gods and performed sacrifices to propitiate 

 them, appointing a clan of the Angiras family as his priest>. 

 He is claimed as a kinsman by a Vedie bard named Kutsa. 

 That Trita was a man is further evident from the passag< a 

 which refer to his distress; for instance, he is spoken of as 

 having once fallen into a well. That Trita fell into a well is a 

 fact of ordinary life, the significance of which is easily under- 

 stood by those who have had oocasions to travel in the jungle 

 lands of India, where open wells are even now a terror to tra- 

 vellers. While setting forth his own views, Mr. Sen frequently 

 refers to a monograph on Trita by Prof. A. Macdonell, according 

 to whom Trita is the god of the atmosphere, or more precisely, 

 the third form of fire or lightning, and his being thrown into 

 a well symbolises the obscuration of the atmosphere by clouds. 



Mr. D. K. Banhardkar of Poona has a long and learned 

 article on the Origin of the Guhilot dynasty of Rajputana ; and 

 explains among other tilings how the Guhilots, who were 

 originally Nagar Brahma nas, became Brahmakshatrisor Khatris, 

 exchanging their priestly for military pursuits. 



Mr. Rakhal Das Banerji contributed two articles, one on the 

 Mathura Inscriptions now in the Indian Museum, and the other 

 on the history of Saptagrama or Satganw. 



In the field of Buddhist Research .—Mv . Nundoial i>ey contri- 

 buted a very interesting article on the Vkiramasilii Monastery, in 

 which he deals with the foundation and subsi-<juent history of t his 

 Vihara, which was the last Buddhist University in the kingdom 

 of Maghada. From various inferences tiie writer concludes that 

 the Vihara cannot have been founded earlier than the middle 

 of the eighth century of the Christian era, and be the ruins at 

 Patharghata. Mahamohopadhyaya H. P. Shastri contributed 

 two important articles connected with Buddhist Literature. 

 The first on a new Manuscript of the Buddha-Carita found in the 

 Divyadeva Collection in the Darbar Library, Nepal, supplies 

 certain lacunae left in Cowell's edition. The second deals with 

 another Nepalese Manuscript in which the learned Shastri has 

 discovered a hitherto unknown epic by the famous Buddhist 

 author Asvaghosa. Dr. Satis Chandra Vidyabhusana also con- 

 tributed a valuable paper on certain rare Sanskrit works on 



