114 Dr. R. Mitra — New edition of Mann. [April, 



and the editor had to content himself with only a few ; but none has 

 been printed from a single MS. The varice lectiones supplied leave no 

 room for doubt that we have got the works intact, and to philologists 

 and historians, as well as to practical lawyers, they will not fail to be of 

 immense value. 



I am aware that some leading European orientalists attach little 

 importance to Indian commentaries ; a few go the length of saying 

 that it would have been better had no commentaries existed of the 

 Vedas and other very ancient texts, since they warp our judgment, 

 and often mislead us in our search for the original meaning of our 

 ancient records. They hold concordance, analogy, philological argu- 

 ments to be better proofs, and insist that we should always abide by 

 them to the exclusion of the commentaries. As a matter of course, 

 orthodox Hindus look upon this course with great repugnance, and 

 their arguments per contra are not by any means weak. A reductio 

 ad ahsurdum argument they sometimes use is amusingly effective. 

 There is a precept in Sanskrit which is daily recited by a large num- 

 ber of Indians, and it runs thus : — 



S'ukldmbaradhararn devam saskarnam cliaturbliujam prasannavada- 

 nam dhydyet. 



It means ' let the devotee meditate on the divinity as dressed in 

 white garments, refulgent, of the colour of the moon, four-handed, and 

 of benign countenance.' Now, an advocate of the concordance school 

 intervenes, and says that cannot be. The first term is a compound 

 of three words, of which the first sufcla means ' white;' the second 

 amhara, 'cloth;' and the third dliara 'to bear' or 'carry,' the whole 

 meaning ' that which carries white cloth,' i. e. a washerman's donkey, 

 which carries home white clothes from the bleaching field. It is called 

 deva or ' bright,' or light coloured, and no one has yet seen a jet 

 black donkey. Any possible doubt in the case is removed by the 

 epithet, sasivarna, moon-coloured, which can only mean ash-grey. The 

 epithet ' four-handed' (chaturbhuja) is a very becoming euphemism for 

 four-footed, and the 'benign countenance' (prasanna-vadana) is obviously 

 indicative of the natural non-expressiveness of the countenance of a 

 donkey. The different meanings of the words may be supported by 

 hundreds of concordant passages, and the conclusion follows that the 

 Hindu S'astras require a Vaishnava devotee, for his salvation, to meditate 

 on the image of a washerman's donkey loaded with recently bleached 

 cloth. 



Grammatical ingenuity is, however, not satisfied with this exposi- 

 tion. The philologist comes forward, ami argues from his own pecu- 

 liar standpoint. He holds, and with perfect grammatical and lexi- 



