1835.] Notes on the preceding Inscription. 393 



present monument. [As. Res. vols. ix. and xv.] The former hypothesis, 

 notwithstanding - the greater distance of time, derives some plausibility from 

 the comparison of what the Ayin Akbery states concerning that Guzze- 

 rattee prince who is there truly called Durlabh, with the larger details of 

 others. It is stated by Abul Fazl, that Mahmu'd having, in A. H. 416, or 

 A. D. 1025, conquered Chamunda, son of Mu'la.ra'ja, king of Gurjarastra, 

 or Guzzerat, (who was connected by the father's side with the princes of 

 Dehli, but whose maternal grandfather and predecessor on the throne was 

 descended from the Kanoj kings,) took a prince of the same house, who is 

 called in his catalogue Durlabha, prisoner with him to his own capital, 

 at the request of another of the family, (called there Beyser, perhaps 

 Vatsara, but by others Vallabha,) whom he left viceroy in Guzzerat, 

 and who dreaded the ambition and martial ability of his kinsman. After- 

 wards, at the request of the same person, who had secretly provided what 

 he thought a more secure prison for his dreaded rival, Durlabha was 

 sent back to the new king, who going out to meet with treacherous pro- 

 fessions the kinsman whom he purposed to immure in a dungeon, accident- 

 ally lost his eyes ; and was on that account deposed by his subjects in 

 favour of his intended victim. Ferishta, who tells the same history 

 at much greater length in his Mahomedan History of India, (Briggs, pp„ 

 76 — 82,) and moralizes on the retributive close of it, gives to both of these 

 kindred princes, to Vallabha as well as Durlabha, the name of Da'b- 

 sheli'm. Now of this last appellation, the name in the Anvdri Soheily 

 of the Raja for whom those popular stories were recited, (which originating 1 

 from the Sanscrit Pancha Tantra, after successive Pehlevic, Arabic, and 

 other translations, have become so well known in Europe as the Fables of 

 Pilpay,) we may observe that it is as naturally applied by a Persian 

 to any Indian prince who can be made to bear it, as the name of Hercules 

 by a Roman to any great foreign conqueror, or Ulysses to any wan- 

 derer in unknown regions. In this case, where Durlabha and Da'bshe- 

 lim are scarcely more unlike in sound than Odin and Odysseus*, — it is not 

 wonderful that the name should have been so applied by the Mahome- 

 dan invaders, men of much less critical judgment in these subjects than 

 the historian of ancient Germany ; and to justify the application of the same 

 name to Vallabha, it is not extraordinary, considering their strong attach- 

 ment to ethical stories of this kind, that they should have converted the 

 last-named prince into something like his imagined prototype, a man of emi- 

 nent wisdom and virtue, living in contented poverty notwithstanding his 

 royal descent, until sought out for this viceregal honour by the Musulman 

 conqueror — like him on whom Alexander bestowed under nearly the 

 same circumstances the conquered kingdom of Sidon. Ferishta indeed 

 acknowledges, that this account of Mahmu'd's viceroy was doubted even in 

 his time ; and that instead of a hermit, he was represented by many as a 

 cruel and ambitious prince, who had before made several attempts against 



* See F. Schlegel, Lect. 6, on the History of Literature. 



3 D 



