198 Remarks on an Inscription from a Temple in Nepal. [April, 



I need hardly add, after what has been just stated, that the circum- 

 stance of the inscriptions being mantras proves the temple or chaitya, 

 adverted to, to be the work of Tibetans, though existing on the very 

 confines of Nepal proper — -a fact indeed which, on the spot, wants no 

 such confirmation. It is notorious; and is referrible to times when 

 Tibetan influence was predominant on this side of the Himalava. 

 The great temple of Khdsa chit, standing in the midst of the valley of 

 Nepal, is still exclusively appropriated by the Trans- Himalayans. 



Note. — So much has been published on the subject of the mystical man- 

 tra above alluded to, that it is unnecessary to do more than direct the 

 attention of the reader to the learned dissertation by Georgi in the Alpha- 

 betum Tibetanum, page 500, &c. and to a more recent elucidation of the 

 same subject in Klaproth's FragmensBouddhiquesin the Journ. Asiatique, 

 Mars, 1831, p. 27. — The mantra is quite unknown to the Buddhists of Ceylon 

 and the Eastern Peninsula, and it forms a peculiar feature of the Tibetan 

 Buddhism, shewing its adoption of much of the Brahmanical mystic philo- 

 sophy. A wooden block, cut in Tibet for printing the very passage in the 

 two characters, and from its appearance of some antiquity, is deposited in 

 the museum of the Asiatic Society.— Ed. 



Note. — M. Klaproth, in his memoir in the Nouveau Journal Asiatique, 

 where he has brought so much of the erudition of Eastern and Central Asia 

 to bear upon this Buddhist formulary, attaches himself to two versions prin- 

 cipally, as preferable to all that he finds elsewhere among Tibetans, Mon- 

 golians, and Chinese. The former is, " Oh precieux Lotus ! Amen/' on the 

 supposition of ^f TrftrrTpjj 5? being the true reading ; but if it be read, as he 

 justly prefers, %t ^f^rtf^ £?, " Oh ! le joyau est dans le Lotus. Amen." 



There is no objection to the former translation, that of " Om mani-pud- 

 ma hum :" for the two nouns cannot be read as separate vocatives, " Oh 

 jewel ! Oh Lotus !" (as M. Csoma de Koros informs us it is understood in 

 Tibet,) without reading mane nv\ instead of fffur. 



The latter translation of " Om mani padme hum" is not equally admissi- 

 ble : for it would require indispensably by grammatical rule, either the in- 

 sertion of a Visarga after mani, or the substitution of a long i for the short 

 one, so distinctly marked in the inscription; i. e. the nominative *ff?P or WJTt 

 instead of the crude form irftn". The junction of the two nouns in one compound 

 is therefore as necessary in the reading of the locative case, as in that of the 

 vocative ; and this makes it necessary to translate it thus: " AUM (i. e. the 

 mystic triform divinity) is in the jewel-like Lotus. Amen." The legends 

 cited by M. Klaproth respecting Buddha apply as well to this version 

 of the formulary as to his. I hope that Mr. Hodgson may hereafter fa- 

 vour us with the import of these words, as explained in the yet unexplored 

 treasures of Sanscrit Buddhist literature in Nepal." W. H. M. 



Nipalese, solely by the two features above pointed out — unless we must add a 

 qualified subjection on the part of ttie Saugatas of Nepal to caste, from which th e 

 Tibetans are free ; but which in Nepal is a merely popular usage, stript of the sane, 

 tion of religion, and altogether a very different thing from caste, properly so called # 



