THE ISLAND OF BALT. 
133 
tlences of the princes of Badong, situated at no great distance 
from each other. We may translate Bandkanapura, “ the 
town of union” or f<r the united palaces of the princes,” pura, 
meaning a town and a royal palace, The Balinese word 
badong has also the same meaning. It is written with alp a - 
sdstra (small letters}; which makes us think oi capital (ICawi 
and Sanskrit) letters. The usual Balinese letters may indeed 
he said to be small ones (alpctJ if compared with old writings 
still existing in Java. However we find no other letters in Ball 
than the common recent current writing, and even the learned 
priests have lost every recollection o( more ancient letters. 
Inscriptions on stone (as noticed already) are not found, and 
the letters of the Sanscrit shown by me to them, were perfectly, 
unknown to them. We can thus make nothing more of alpasas - 
Nathan that the writer humbly acknowledges that lie makes 
use of the imperfect letters, since the want of greater know¬ 
ledge does not permit him to write better and more correctly. 
The last words contain an invocation of the Deity, and we 
find them with slight variations at the end of several manu¬ 
scripts; they are pure Sanskrit, and correspond to the invo¬ 
cations at the beginning of Sanskrit works: Sidir astn , iatas- 
tu ong Saraswali narnah, ong t’mung Ganapataye namah , 
ong sri Gurubyo namcth” “ be this the accomplishment, 
be it thus (?): Ong adoration to Saraswali , Ong adora¬ 
tion to Ganapati, Ong to the gurus adoration !” The wofd 
t'rming is not very clear and no Sanscrit. The invocation of 
tat-astu (let this be) appears also superfluous; if we explain 
it by tatha astu (may it be), the sense becomes no better; 
Saraswati is the goddess of letters, the consort of Brahma ; 
In every Balinese year she has & feast, where the collected 
manuscripts are brought forth and consecrated in the temple. 
Ganapati or Ganisa, the son of Siva and Parvati is the god 
of arts and cunning, the Indian Mercury. His cunning is invok¬ 
ed in India as well as on Ball, in order to overcome the 
obstacles, which are likely to be met with in the composition 
of an important work. The guru ? are on earth the parents 
and spiritual teaches; here however are meant the celestial 
gurus, the Pitaras, or “ spirits of the departed members of 
the family,” who receive a daily worship. 
The Hamayana is divided into 25 sargas or chapters. It 
begins with the incarnation of the god Wishnu in the family 
of the king Ddsarata of Ayoja (the present Oude); he be¬ 
comes the son of Dasarata by his wife Kosaya (Sanskrit 
Kausalya); his half brothers are Barata of Kekaya and 
Lalcsmana of Sumitra. His teacher is the Muni Wasista, 
