264 On the Funeral Ceremonies of the ancient Hindus. [No. 4, 



was formerly taken."* Max Miiller's reading is closely similar. 

 lie writes — 



" Steh auf, o Weib ! Komm zu der Welt des Lebens ! 

 Du scblafst bei einem Todten — Komm beruieder ! 

 Du bisfc genug jetzfc Gattin ihm gewesen, 

 Ibm, der Dicb wablte und zur Mutter macbte.t" 



In our version, following Sayana' s second and more recent com- 

 mentary, we take the word hastagrdbhasya " of him who holds thy 

 hand," and the other predicates in the present tense, and the didhi- 

 shu in its crude sense, and apply them to the party who holds the 

 widow's hand while lying on the pyre. This appears the most con- 

 sistent and in keeping with the whole ceremony, and therefore 

 preferable to referring them to the dead. The only objection 

 to this reading is to be found in the fact that the verb is in 

 the past perfect tense, but seeing that Panini has laid down more 

 than one special rule for the use of the past for the imperative 

 (Linarthe let 3, 4, 7, &c), and Sayana has accepted the same, it is 

 perfectly immaterial. In a pamphlet on the impropriety of widow 

 marriage, lately published by some of the Professors of the Benares 

 Sanskrit College, the word jivaloham " the world of living beings" 

 has been rendered by martyalolcdt any am, " other than the region of 

 mortals," but such a meaning is not admissible either by any posi- 

 tive rule or by analogy. Sayana renders it, in one place, by — " the 

 region of the living sons and grandsons," jivdndm putrapautrddinam 

 lolcam, and in another, by " aiming at the region of the living crea- 

 tures," jivantam pr&nisamuhamabhilakshya. Other interpretations 

 of the Professors are equally open to question, but it is not neces- 

 sary to notice them. That the re-marriage of widows in Vedic times 

 was a national custom can be easily established by a variety of 

 proofs and arguments ; the very fact of the Sanskrit language 

 having, from ancient times, such words as didhishu, " a man that 

 has married a widow, " parapurva " a woman that has taken a second 

 husband," paunarbhava, " son of a woman by her second husband," 

 are enough to establish it ; but it would be foreign to the subject 

 of this paper to enter into it here. 



* Journal, E As. Soc, XVI, p. 202. 

 f Zeitschrift, IX, p. vi. 



