1868.] Proceedings of the Asiatic Society. 47 



whether abstract or translation, certain it is that no portion of the 

 work is a translation or even a fair paraphrase of the Sanskrit, original. 

 The skeletons of the different stories and episodes are no doubt given, 

 but they are mere skeletons artificially articulated, and no more. Of 

 the muscles and integuments which make up the figures and the 

 spirit which vivifies them' — of the details and descriptions which fix 

 the character of the stories — they have none. To convey an idea of 

 the extent to which the process of abridgment or condensation has been 

 carried on, I may mention that the story of S'akuntala i. e. of the birth 

 of Bharata, which is the first extract quoted in Mr. Wheeler's book, 

 as given by Vyasa occupies 13 quarto pages of closely printed Sanskrit 

 in the Society's edition of the Mahabharata, and extends to 320 stanzas. 

 In Mons. Hippolyte Fauche's French translation, this subject takes up 

 about 33 octavo pages (pp. 297 — 330) and in Abul Fazl's Persian version 

 13 demi folio pages (pp. 47 b to 53 b), but in Mr. Wheeler's book it 

 extends to only one page and two and half lines. All the other extracts 

 are equally condensed and contracted, and as this abridgement was effect-. 

 ed once by an uncritical Hindu translator who prepared his Persian ver- 

 sion for the entertainment of Muhammadan readers, without the shadow 

 of an idea as to what are the requirements of true history, and then by 

 an Englishman who abstracted as much as he thought proper from 

 the Persian without consulting the original Sanskrit, the result is such 

 as to be utterly untrustworthy for critical analyses of the ages of the 

 different portions of the Mahabharata. In short, Mr. Wheeler's texts 

 are abridged translations, of abridged translations, which, owing to that 

 gentleman's want of familiarity with the Sanskrit, have not been so 

 compared with the original as to render them reliable data for history.* 

 I am sorry to be obliged to make this remark with reference to a book 

 which has been well received by the reading public, and which is un- 

 questionably very interesting, but for the sake of truth I cannot help it. 

 Of the history of the MS. I have not been able to ascertain any 

 thing. No mention of it occurs in the lists of presentations to the 

 Library published in the Researches and the Journal, nor in the MS. 

 1 proceedings, all which I have carefully examined. That the MS. is 



* Since wi*iting the above I have been assured by Mr. Wheeler, that he had 

 some of the more important extracts compared with the original Sanskrit by a 

 young Sanskrit scholar Babu Avinasa'chandra Ghosha, and that some are 

 independent translations. 



