1864.] 



On Ancient Indian Weights. 



255 



own lingual requirements, 12 similarly it can be shown, from as valid 

 internal indications, that they originated, altogether on their own soil, 

 that which has so often proved a nation's unassailable heritage of its 

 indigenous civilisation — a system of weights and measures, which 

 retained its primitive identity in the presence of the dominant exotic 

 nationality. It is indisputable that the intrusive Aryans, at whatever 

 period their advent is to be placed, met and encountered a people, 

 already dwelling in the land, of far higher domestic civilisation and 

 material culture than themselves. Whether their eventual supremacy 

 was due to undiminished northern energy, animal physique, or mental 

 .subtlety, does not concern us at present ; but independent of the 

 inner-life evidences to that effect,, a parallel inference might be drawn 

 from the indirect data of the contrasted tenor of. the hymns of the 

 Eig Veda, 13 which while indicating a crude social condition, refer 

 almost exclusively to the country of the Seven Rivers ; whereas Manu, 

 at a date but moderately subsequent, 14 associates the far higher pro- 

 gress manifested in the body of the work with a more easterly seat of 

 authority, and while asserting no community with things or people 

 beyond or to the westward of the Saraswati, arrogates for the existing 

 representatives of the Aryans a dominance over kindred kingdoms 

 extending, in the opposite direction, down the Granges to Kanauj 

 But, in demanding credence for the simple gift of invention arising 

 out of manifest wants among the already thrice commixed, and in so 



failed to do homage for a rectification of his, to which., he, I understand, attaches 

 somewhat of undue importance, that is to say, the substitution of an M. in the 

 place of Prinsep's P, as the third consonant in the name of Toramana (J. A. S. 

 B. vii. 633). It might have been necessary, in early days, to reclaim titles to 

 discoveries made by Lieut. A. Cunningham, (J. A. S. B. 1354, p. 714) but surely 

 the 'Bays' of the Archaeological Surveyor to the Govt, of India can afford to 

 lose a faded leaf with scant damage to the green circlet I] 



12. Prinsep's " Essays," London, 1858, ii. 43 ; Num. Ohron,, 1863, p. 226. 



13. Wilson, " Eig Yeda Sanhita," hi. pp t xviii. xix., London, 1857 ; Yivien St. 

 Martin, " E'tucle sur la Geographic * # * d'apres les Hymns Yediques " Paris" 

 1859, p. 89. 



14. " Journal As. Soc. Bengal," 1862, p. 49 ; Max Miiller's <c Big Veda," pre- 

 face to- text, iv. pp. xxv. — xxxiv. "The traditional position of the solstitial 

 points, as recorded in the Jyotisha," is calculated by Archdeacon Pratt to refer 

 to 1181 B.C., and by the Bev. R. Main to 1186 B.C. See also p. Ixxxvii. on the 

 subject of Bentley's date, 1424 — 5 B.C. 



For speculative elates concerning the Yedas, see also Max Miiller, c< Sanskrit 

 Lit," pp. 244, 300, &c. ; Wilson, « Uig Yeda," i. 47, ii. 1 ; St. Martin, p. x i x . ; 

 M. Barthclemy St. Hilaire, Joimial des Savants, 1861, p. 53; Dr. Martin llano- 5 ' 

 " Aitareya Brahmana," Bombay, 1863 s Goldstiicker, " Panini," p. 72, &c. •*" 



2 L 



