Indian Antiquary Vol 05

SR No.: 032497
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Jas Burgess
Publisher: Swati Publications
Publication Year: 1984
Total Pages: 438
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 20 MB

Page 107

MARCH, 1876.]
TRANSLATION OF THE INDICA OF ARRIAN.
85
only those Greek words which they could not render exactly; nevertheless Sayyid Ahmad Khân and some other writers in journals use many Eng. lish expressions, just as if Arabic and Sanskrit could not in the sciences and arts supply many words not existing in the colloquial, and even the formation of Persian or Sanskrit compounds would be better than to borrow from English. It is rather surprising that this intrusion of English words has not met with any resistance yet, and thus neither the Aligadh, the Bihar, the Panjab, the Ajmir, nor other literary societies have taken measures to stop this torrent, which may nltimately so overwhelm Hindustani (Hindi and Urda) that the labour of purification will be insurmountable, but which, if now undertaken, would not be more arduous than that of the Germans, who have, since the last war, redoubled their efforts to extirpate French words from their language, and have well-nigh succeeded, at least in books.
The Review terminates, as usual,' with obituary notices of the past year, and the first of them is naturally devoted to M. Garcin de Tassy's personal loss in his own wife, an amiable and virtuous lady, a trne patioratá, whose unchanging gentleness and attachment, proof against all trials, constituted his happiness during more than fifty-two years. After this little tribute to the memory of his spouse, the mortuary notices of a few scholars follow :-The poet Mir Babar-i Ali Anis died at Laknau in Deo. 1874, at the age of about eighty years. Iltudus Prichard died Jan. 1875 at Dhera
Dhun, aged 49; he was the son of the celebrated ethnographer, but himself produced several works to facilitate the study of Hindustani, and co-operated in the translation of a work on The Roman Lars. His career was at first a military one,-he fought in the campaign of the Panjáb,--and afterwards he became editor of the Dehli Gasette; he wrote The Administration of India from 1859 to 1868, the first ten years of administration under the Crown, 2 vols. 8vo, 1860. Mirza Salamat 'Ali Dabir of Laknau, known as a wit and poet, died there in March 1875. Lord Hobart, the patron of Muhammadan education, and General John Briggs, editor of the Persian text of Ferishtah, and translator of it, as well as of several other works, died on the same day, April 27, 1875. F.G. Eichoff, a distinguished Indianist, author of ParalTele des Langues de l'Europe et de l'Inde, and of many more books, died May 10, 1875, aged 76 years; and on the 26th of the same month Dr. R. Sinclair, Director of Public Instruction in Berar, expired. His zeal in the cause of education was so great that during six years he raised the number of schools from 33 to 500, and his memory will long be cherished in Berår. Lastly, M. A. Sédillot expired in Paris on Dec. 2, aged 67. He occupied various positions at the Collége de France, as the administrator of which he died, but his works on the sciences, and especially on the astronomy of the Arabs, secured him many admirers in France as well as abroad, among whom the celebrated Alex. ander von Humboldt was one.
E. R.
TRANSLATION OF THE INDICA OF ARRIAN.
BY J. W. M'CRINDLE, M.A., PATNA. I. The regions beyond the river Indus on against the Indians, but perhaps also of natives the west are inhabited, up to the river Cophen, of the country whom Dionysus, with their own by two Indian tribes, the Astaceni and the consent, had settled along with the Greeks. The Assaceni, who are not men of great stature district in which he planted this colony he like their brethren on the other side of the In- named N y s tea, after Mount Nysa, and the city dus, nor so brave, nor yet so swarthy as most itself Nysa. But the mountain close by the Indians. They were in old times 'subject to city, and on the lower slopes of which it is built, the Assyrians, then after a period of Median is designated Meros, from the accident which rule submitted to the Persians, and paid to befell the god immediately after his birth. Cyrus the son of Cambyses the tribute from These stories about Dionysus are of course but their land which Cyrus had imposed. The fictions of the poets, and we leave them to the Nysæans, however, are not an Indian race, learned among the Greeks or barbarians to exbut descendants of those who came into India plain as they may. In the dominions of the with Dionysus,-perhaps not only of those Assaceni there is a great city called M&sGreeks who had been disabled for service in the saca, the seat of the sovereign power which course of the wars which Dionysus waged controls the whole realm. And there is an
• From Teubner's edition-Leipzig, 1867.