52 Rejoinder to Mr. Beames. [No. 1, 



Rejoinder to Mr. Reames, by F. S. Growse, Esq , M. A., B. C. S. 

 (See Vol. XXXVIII. for 1869, p. 176.) 



Mr. Beames in replying to my criticisms on his translation, lias 

 evidently written under great excitement ; but at this I am not sur- 

 prised ; it must be very annoying for a translator of Chand to be con- 

 victed of not knowing some of the commonest Hindi words. I am 

 aware that nisan will not be found in Forbes, or any similar dictionary 

 of modern Hindustani ; but it occurs repeatedly in the Ramayana of 

 Tulsi Das, and in the glossary appended to most native editions of 

 that poem is explained by the words nagara and dauhd. The deriva- 

 tion is no very recondite mystery ; since the root is simply the Sans- 

 crit swan (Latin sonarej with the prefix ni. In the same glossary, 

 Mr. Beames will also see the word bais explained by avasthd, and the 

 Hindi form is so evidently a corruption of the Sanskrit, that I should 

 have imagined the fact would be obvious to the merest tyro in philo- 

 logy. But to discuss Mr. Beames's reply in detail : — 



I. — I am dissatisfied with his reproduction of the text, since I 

 detect in it several conjectural emendations. I should much prefer to 

 have seen it precisely as it stands in the MS. and with the words un- 

 divided. I also miss the concluding stanza, which I was particularly 

 curious to see, as the English version of it is anything but lucid. 



II. — Mr. Beames's sarcasms are quite innocuous, being mainly 

 directed against the imperfections of my text. I always stated it to 

 be a mere fragment, never vaunted its accuracy, and am even willing 

 to follow Mr. Beames in stigmatizing it as a ' bad, faulty garble and 

 jumble.' Still the question remains, which of the two translators has 

 made the better use of his materials? And further, if the differences 

 are so exceedingly great, how comes it that I at once discovered in 

 my copy the parallel passage to Mr. Beames's specimen ? The diffi- 

 culty ought to have told equally against both of us. 



HI. Assuming my text to be faulty, my translation of it at least 



appears to be tolerably correct. Mr. Beames, with natural anxiety to 

 discover the joints in my harness, has hit only upon four vulnerable 

 points, which I now proceed to examine. 



1st. He says Bijay, or subijay, as it stands in his text, (su being 



merely an expletive) cannot be a proper name as I translate it, but 



