196 Remarks on the supposed identity 



Buddhas eminent for austerity. Alter them, when 150 years had elapsed from 

 the emancipation of the Lord Sacya Singha in this essence of the world, a 

 Bodhisatwa in this country, named Na'.>arjuna, was Bhumiswara, (Lord of the 

 earth,) and he was the asylum of the six Arhatwas." 



The Hon'ble Mr. Tumour, with that zeal in the cause of 

 oriental research, for which he was eminently distinguished, 

 and with a view to identify Nagarjuna with Nagasena, and 

 to adjust the date here given to that assigned to the latter in 

 Bhudhistical annals, has* corrected the text in two most 

 important particulars : 1st, by prefixing a cl to sardhan- 

 varsha-satan, " one hundred and fifty years," and converting 

 the passage into dasardhan varsha sat an, 66 half-a-thousand 

 years ;" and 2ndly, by giving to the concluding portion of 

 the Sanscrit quotation, which Professor Wilson has rendered 

 " He was the asylum of the six Arahatwas," a negative sig- 

 nification — conveying that he did not recognize (i, e. he 

 denounced) the six Arahatwas ; and by identifying them with 

 the six Tirtakas mentioned in the Milindapprasna. The 

 entire translation which Mr. Tumour has offered, runs thus : 

 "They (Hushka, Jushka, Canishka) of Turushka descent were princes., 

 asylums of virtue, who founded colleges and chetiyas in Suscha and other 

 countries. During the entire period of their rule, the whole of Cashmir was 

 under the spiritual controul of ascetic sages, eminent for their rigid piety. 

 Thereafter, when (half a thousand) five hundred years, had elapsed in this 

 (land) as well as the whole world, from the period that the sanctified Sakya 

 Sinha attained Parinirvritli, the pre-eminently endowed Bodhisatwa Nagarjuna,, 

 became the (spiritual) Lord of this and many other lands, and did not recognize 

 {i. e. denounced) the six Arhatwas (who were his contemporaries.)" 



Before remarking on the important alterations thus effected 

 by Mr. Tumour, it may be necessary to examine the original 

 text, and to notice the fact, that it is written in that most 

 frequent and useful form of Sanscrit verse called the 

 Anushtubh — a metre " in which the great body of metrical 

 composition, whether narrative or didactic, exists" — a metre 

 too, in which "the laws of Manu, the Mahabharata, the 



* See liengal Asiatic Society's Journal for 1836, p. 530. 



