276 
Pajendralala Mitra— The Yavanas of Sanskrit Writers. [No. 3, 
recensions of Pulastya’s work, but I hope I may be permitted to ask if a single 
verse suffices to settle the question, how many recensions of the Brihat Sanhita 
would one be called upon to assume, had that work existed only in quotations, 
seeing that though its hundred and five chapters are written principally in the 
A'rya metre, they have interspersed in them verses in several different metres ? 
Dr. Weber goes further than Dr. Kern, and at once recognises in 
Pulastya vel Puliya, the author of the Eisagoge , Paulus Alexandrinus. Dr. 
Weber does not say that he has better evidence at command than what Dr. 
Kern had, and under the peculiar circumstances of the case, he cannot have, 
and his assumption, therefore, is even more noteworthy than that of Dr. 
Kern; but what is most remarkable in the case is, that the latter, though a 
former pupil and generally a faithful follower of the learned Professor, 
withholds his assent to the identification. He says— 
“Weber’s surmise is scarcely admissible; for the passage alluded to 
will be found in all works on Nativity almost literally the same, because it 
is a simple enumeration of the mansions and their lords ; two lists, if their 
contents are the same, cannot differ in form, nor can they be said to bear greater 
resemblance to each other than to other lists containing the same. Besides, 
there is no indication that Balabhadra lias taken the passage from Puliya, 
which must be established before any conclusion can be drawn. The strong¬ 
est argument, however, against the supposition is the fact that the Puliya- 
siddhanta is no work on Nativity, but an astronomical work, in which the 
original of the passage in Balabhadra could not find a place. It may be that, 
besides the Pauliya Siddhanta, there existed another work of Pauliya’s on 
Nativity, but nobody has made any notice of it, and unless Paulus Alexan- 
drinus has written, beside his Eisagoge, a book on astronomy, which again is 
unknown, we have no right whatever to infer that he and Puliya are one and 
the same; for identity of name is to me slender ground, especially when the 
name happens to be a common one.” # 
It is not for me to decide this vexed question, nor is this the place for 
it; suffice it to say that if the work of Pulastya or Puliya has been so writ¬ 
ten as not to retain any trace of its foreign origin, and the old Hindus did 
not translate the quotations, it cannot be called Greek. Pulisha is nowhere 
called a Yavana by the Hindus, and, if it be acknowledged on the authority of 
Albiruni that he was a Yavana, his birth-place Alexandria would take us to 
Egypt, and not to Greece. 
The next name on my list is Manittha. Of him Dr. Kern says : “ A 
curious name is Manittha, whom Weber suspects to be Manetho, the 
author of the Apotelesmata. I thought for a moment of Manilius, but, after 
all, Weber’s conjecture is decidedly more plausible. Manittha, that is the 
book, being of foreign origin would seem to be countenanced by the fact 
# Ibid., p. 49. 
