60 Ancient Indian Weights. [No. 2, 



second volume of the Arabic text of Masaudi,* where mention is made 

 of Alexander's having, after the conquest of Porus, entered into corre- 

 spondence with one of the most powerful kings of India, who is in- 

 cidentally stated to have been addicted to magic, named Kand (•^)- 

 Masaudi is not very lucid as to the exact position of this potentate's 

 dominions ; hut the Arabs of his clay (330 a.h.) had but limited know- 

 ledge of the geography of India beyond their new home on the Indus. 

 This king, however, I believe to be no other than the Kanancla (pro- 

 perly, it will be seen, Krana?ida), monarch of the sacred centre of 

 Brahmanism and the valley of the Granges, whom I have already had 

 occasion to refer to, under the numismatic aspect, as having been un- 

 scrupulous in the measure of the value of his coinsf (a reproach I shall 

 perhaps now be in a position to relieve him of). The same name of 

 Kanancla, obscured under the three letters of Semitic alphabets, re- 

 appears in the Shah Namah as iXvS*, Kaid, " the Indian ;" and long 

 stories are told of him and his mystic powers in connection with 

 similar traditions of Alexander. { Tbe triliteral designation is preserv- 

 ed in other original authors as &*£, with the necessarily imperfect 

 ti-anscription§ incident to the Semitic conversion of Indian words, and 

 the systematic ignoring of short vowels ; but the name occurs, as a 

 nearer approach to the apparent original, in a work entitled " The 

 Mujmal-al-Tawarikh," compiled about 520 A.n., at the court of Sanjar, 

 wherein the letters appear as «^ AA »,|| a mistake probably for *>>1Lj, Kan- 

 anda, where the ear perhaps designed to do more in the first instance 

 to restore the true pronunciation, than the hands of succeeding copyists 

 knew how to follow. 



Before proceeding to examine what the Indians say of themselves 

 on this subject, I will revert casually to the incidental references in the 

 Greek authors. The leading passage, which contributes the name of 



* Macoudi, " Les Prairies d'Or," par C. Barbier de Meynard et Pavet de 

 Conrfceille. Paris, 1863. " Apres avoir trie Porus, l'un des rois de l'lnde, 

 . . . Alexandre . . . apiit alors que dans les extremites les plus reculees de 

 1'Inle il y avait un roi, plein de sagesse, tres-bon administrateur, practiquant la 

 p ote, equitable envers ses snjets. II avait vecu plusieurs siecles, et il etait 

 hupei-ieur a tous les philosophes et a. tous les sages de l'lnde. Son nom etait 

 Kend." Vol. ii. p. 260 



f Num. Chr.on. N.S., iv. 128. See also Num. Chron., iii. p. 230, note 8. > 



J Macau's " Shah Namah," iii. p. 1290—1296, &o. 



§ Ibn Badrun, quoted in Masaudi, French Edit., iii. 452. 



|| Reinaud, " Fragments Arabes," p. 14, and " Mctnoire sur l'lnde," p. 63. 



