74 On the Ballads and Legends of the Punjab. [No. 1. 



of Wales, intermarrying there with a royal bride Ap Shenkins, ap 

 Morgan, Ap Jones. Let us suppose the descendant some hundred 

 years afterwards to be driven out of "Wales into some obscure island 

 of his former kingdom, and there to set up a petty monarchy : 

 who would venture to remind this new king of his descent from 

 the obscure Captain de Vere ? Bard and courtier would alike 

 forget the intruder, and after histories of the royal house would 

 record only the exploits of the illustrious Shenkins or of the im- 

 mortal Jones. 



Had not the Muhammadan faith uprisen to blot from the earth's 

 bosom whatever was blessed in social or graceful in public life, we 

 might still have Grecian or Pali histories of the fourteen centuries, 

 now erased from the annals of the world. The monumental sculptures 

 alone, would, like the coins, have presented an unbroken series in 

 the history of the human mind ; from the moment, when vigorous, 

 matured and accomplished, it leapt into being, like their own virgin 

 goddess, amid the blackness of an unarranged chaos ; to its gradual 

 obscuration and final barbarity, by amalgamation with surrounding 

 night. 



But a wide field of discovery and research is opened to us by our 

 possession of the Punjaub. Here we stand upon a mine of buried 

 relics at the very junction of the Grecian with the Eajpootre tribes. 

 Here we have the probable birth-place of that Earn Chundre,* who 

 is the hero and progenitor of the most illustrious Hindu race. Coins 

 bearing his efiigy and name, abound in every deserted site. It was 



* The Sinde Sagur Dooab is full of traditions of Ram Chundre. He is said to 

 have been born at Furwala, near Rawalpindi (afterwards the capital of a petty 

 Gukkur Sooltaun) and to have wandered Southward to Rajgurh, ploughing upon 

 the road a gigantic furrow, from the Western foot of the Kurungli Mountain, 

 which is to this day called Rama Hullana, or Rama's furrow, being in fact a cleft 

 or chasm between two parallel strata of sandstone. Hindus object that Ram Chun- 

 dre was from Aodia, or Oude. But the ancient Hindi name of liuzara and its 

 Northern Mountains is Oodiana. And the singular disappearance from history of 

 the kingdom of Aodia after the death of Raam, may well cause doubt, whether the 

 modern Oude can be the birth-place of Raam. Although the author of the Rama- 

 yana may in ignorance of the geography of these parts, have adopted the Aodia 

 best known in his day. 



