184 



On the Mums of Buddha Gay a. 



[No. 2, 



forgetful of his religion as to glorify his god by calling him Hari ? 

 Vishnu, Brahma, the destroyer of the demon Keshi, the deceitful 

 Vamana who cheated the giant Bali of his dominion, or a little 

 shepherd tied to a post with a rope round his waist for stealing butter 

 from the house of his neighbours. Such stories belong exclusively to 

 the Puranas and can never be expected in a Buddhist writing. Then 

 the Amara of Yikramaditya's court and author of the Dictionary 

 was a Kaestha, and his surname was Sinha.^ I have nowhere seen 

 him addressed as a Deva, which title formerly belonged exclusively to 

 Brahmans and kings, though of late years the rule has been considerably 

 relaxed. The story of the dream is of course a fiction, and the state- 



Here the deity invoked is not named ; and the commentators having tried to 

 the ntmost their ingenuity to apply the verse to most of the leading Hindu 

 divinities, but finding it inapplicable, have one and all taken it to imply Buddha. 



Mallinatha, the most distinguished among the scholiasts and the author of at 

 least twenty different commentaries, explains the verse thus. " O intelligent men, 

 for the sake of " prosperity," i. e. wealth, of " immortality," i. e. salvation, adore 

 Buddha, whose virtues, whose charities, whose forbearance, &c. &c. 



(% ^Kt fare ^#3 ^reefi^ ^rwre ^ * ^V iNraf W^W wr^t 



?r*EtaTOTT^r \mf%; i MS - As - Soc - Lib : No - 188 > p- 5 )- 



Raghunatha, another commentator of some eminence, says : "0 intelligent men, 

 Let that Buddha be adored, that is by you. Here, though Buddha is not openly 

 named still it is evident from the epithets used that he is meant. This is called the 

 rhetoric ofprasdda. Thereof it has been said by Kanthabhar ana, where the object is 

 evident from the meaning such a figure of speech is called prasada, thus (the verse) 

 " here rises the breaker of the sleep of the lotus,' without alluding to the dispersion 

 of darkness or the assuaging of the sorrow of the brahmini goose, evidently means 



the sun." ^f^T^^fkT: ^ ^ : ^TcTf ^TW *T3% T^[#Tfa51T faw^- 



(As. Soc. MS. No. 443, p. 2). Narayana, another commentator, in the Padartha 

 Kaumudi has reproduced the words quoted above without a remark. (As. Soc. 

 MS. No. 438, p. 1). Ramanatha Chakravarti, after explaining the verse as 

 applicable to Buddha, accounts for the name of Buddha not being openly given m 

 the invocation notwithstanding the epithets used being peculiarly his, by saying 

 « that to conciliate those who are not Buddhists the name of Buddha has not 



been used." ^^far^fa^T^ffT ^"W^T^T^f *T ^3 I ( As - Soc ' MS * 

 No. 443, p. 1, second series of pagination). This remark has been quoted 

 verbatim by Ragunatha Chakravarti in his commentary on ths Amarakosha. 

 (As. Soc. MS. No. 173, p. 1). 



* I have no better authority for saying this than the author of the Kdyasbha 

 Kaustulha, 



