170 
[No. 3, 
The Alla Upanishad , a spurious chapter of the Atharva Veda — text , 
translation , notes. — By Ba'bu Ba'jendrala'la Mitiia. 
[Read 5th July, 1871.] 
Fifty years ago Mr. Francis Ellis of Madras brought to the 
notice of this Society the existence of a modern imitation of the 
Yajur Yeda prepared by some Jesuit Missionaries of the last cen¬ 
tury with a view to establish, by Yedic evidence, the divinity of 
Jesus Christ and the authenticity of the Bible. The attempt was 
characterised by Mr. Ellis as a “ religious imposition without a 
parallel.” From a manuscript which I have lately received from 
Babu Harischandra of Benares,* it appears, however, that a cour¬ 
tier of the Emperor Akbar had, a century before, anticipated the 
Jesuits, and attempted to impose upon the Hindu public in the same 
way by producing an apocryphal chapter of the Atharva Yeda, 
designed to establish the superiority of the religion of his master, 
and to enlist on its behalf the attachment of his Hindu sub¬ 
jects. 
The forgeries were, in either case, very clumsy, but the Jesuits, 
having selected the Yajur Yeda, every chapter of which is well 
known, and has very precise and authentic commentaries, laid them¬ 
selves open to easy detection, and failed to give currency to their 
work; whereas the Muhammadan, by selecting the Atharva 
Yeda, of which a complete MS. was nowhere available, which 
was not religiously studied, and the extent of which, from the ab¬ 
sence of commentaries, was undefined, avoided such a contingency. 
It is possible that an Atharva school of Pippalada to which the 
latter appealed, did once exist, but there is no mention of it in the 
Charanavyuha, nor is there any text of that school extant. It 
might have been among the now lost S’akhas, and if so, in appealing 
to it, the author invoked an authority which none could consult, and 
adopted a course, the futility of which has been very cuttingly con¬ 
demned in the Tantravartika, where it is said, “ If a man maintain 
* In Dr. Biihler's Catalogue of Sanskrit MSS. from Guzerat (p. 44), I notice 
the existence of a MS. of this Upanishad in the possession of Krishnarav Bhi- 
masankar of Vadodara. 
