1868 -] Th* Poems of Chand Bar day. 131 



that sacred stream, man is purified permanently from sin and error. 

 It possesses in a pre-eminent degree the virtue of many tiraths : he 

 who worships there with pure intent, performs a most meritorious 

 act. 



As the king reclined upon his couch of kusa grass, the gods came 

 and blessed him : « Build a fort upon my holy mountain, then reign 

 for twenty generations." When he heard the gracious words that 

 proceeded from the mouth of the gods, he set heart, tongue and body 

 to work at the foundation of the city. He had a fort built in four 

 courts, with a splendid gate to each, with frowning towers of vast 

 dimensions. Then he collected for the fort, stores of all eight metals, 

 with guns and men to look after them, and placed the stores in order, 

 hallowing the work with prayer. Then he cleared the ground from 

 blocks of stone and dressed it, and set up an enormous figure of a 

 lion : lastly gave alms in great profusion, for alms-giving brings with 

 it a blessing. 



There still remain 14 stanzas to the end of the canto, but I think 

 it unnecessary to translate them, since they are nothing but an 

 enumeration of the grain, live-stock and other stores, including balls 

 and powder for the guns above mentioned, which were stowed away 

 in the fort. This mention of fire-arms is certainly curious : Sir H. 

 Elliot in his Bibliographical Index quotes from the Kanauj-khand 

 three passages of five or six lines each, in which the words dtish, 

 zambur and top occur, and says " it appears to me evident that the 

 passages where these are mentioned are spurious and interpolated, to 

 accommodate the poem to the knowledge of subsequent ages." He 

 adds, however, that the verses in other respects have anything but a 

 modern ring, and the same may be said of the lines with which my 

 translation concludes. 



I had expected to find a large intermixture of Persian words in 

 these poems ; since some scholars who condemn the pedantic use of 

 pure Hindi in modern composition, have defended their practice by 

 the example of Chand, the father of vernacular literature. However, 

 in the canto now translated, I have detected only eight foreign 

 words ; viz. jahdn, the world ; zdhir, manifest : both occurring in 

 one line ; sher, a lion ; sahm, fear, in a doubtful passage : and hdz, 

 a hawk ; jwra, a hawk, Jcadd, size and khiydl, thought, all of which 



