1874.] Rajendralala Mitra —The Yavanas of Sanskrit Writers. 
277 
that in one of his opinions he agreed with the “ ancient Greeks” and dis¬ 
agrees with Satya and Varaliamihira. If I had been able to get the Apote- 
lesmata, I should have compared the quotations from Manittha. It will 
be always worth while doing so, although it is not to be expected that the 
marked and espeeial coincidences will be numerous and conclusive. In the 
same manner as a few traditions sufficed to enable Hindu astrologers to 
father the children of their own brains on their holy sages, so, I strongly 
suspect, they also did with the more renowned of the Greek astrologers. 
The notion of the productions of a man’s mind being his property, a notion 
carried to such a ridiculous extent in Europe, was unknown to them. Un¬ 
happily, the opposite extreme they fell into, is much more pernicious. In 
Manittha, as quoted by Utpala, there is an extremely absurd passage where 
the author ascribes antiquity to himself! “ lti brumas cirantanah ;” that 
shows the spirit.”* 
I need add nothing to this to show that the name does not help us in 
any way to prove that the Hindus translated works on astronomy or astro¬ 
logy directly from Greek texts, or that Yavana meant a “ Greek and a Greek 
only.” 
The last name I have to notice is Ptolemaios. He is nowhere men¬ 
tioned in Hindu astronomy or astrology, and the only question is as to 
whether the Hindus borrowed the idea of the armillary sphere from that of 
Ptolemy, or not. With reference to it, I cannot do better than quote here 
the remarks of Colebrooke, the highest authority on the subject. He says : 
“ They may have either received or given the hint of an armillary sphere as 
an instrument of an astronomical observation, but certainly they have not 
copied the instrument which was described by Ptolemy, for the construction 
differs considerably. ”f It may be added that the Almagest of Ptolemy 
was severally translated, epitomised, and revised by the Arabs,J and the 
Hindus might have got their knowledge of that work from those versions, 
even as Hindu boys now-a-days familiarise themselves with the history and 
literature of ancient Greece from English and vernacular translations with¬ 
out knowing a word of Greek. As no translation of, or quotations from, 
the Almagest are, however, to be met with in Sanskrit, the name of Ptolemy, 
or resemblances to his doctrines, may be accounted for more reasonably in a 
different way. The name of the Almagest, beginning with the Arabic article 
al, shows that it was written by one who was thoroughly imbued with 
Arabic learning, and probably drew largely from it, and as the Hindus 
acknowledge to have drawn largely on the Arabs for astromical facts, we 
have one common source whence both Ptolemy and the Hindus derived their 
* Ibid., p. 52. f Essays, p. 345. J Loc. eit., et p. 472. 
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