252 THE IXDIA3T ANTIQUARY. ist, 1875. three gates and most of the railing. The local aatnindara have presented the sculptures to the Indian Government, and it is hoped that they will soon be safely lodged in the Mu senna at Calcutta. The great merit of these sculpt^ that the sculptor has been kind enough to label nearly all of them, so that they are easily identi- fied, A large number of them represent scenes from various jatakas, or stories of Buddha's former existences. Amongst other interesting pieces oE sculpture is the medallion bust of a " Raja of Himavat/' whose name, unfortunately, is lost. NOTE. A story similar to that quoted against " Persian- ized Hindi" at page 189 of the June part of the Antiquary is charged against the Vaniya method of writing GujarAti. The message received was which was read as (Uncle has died to-day, and aunt bewails him.) But it should have been kfbl ^itwH 3 , »Rl &. *l *l*l l> % (is at Kot). 0. E G. C. [ The joke alluded to in p. 180, note, has also several There is an epigram of (we think) the younger Scaliger upon " * « Gascones • • • Quels nihil aliud est vivere quani bibere" and we remember having read somewhere of certain Tre- bizoudian envoys who gave unintentional offence by the greeting " Semper bibat imperator." — Ed.] BOOK NOTICES. Gintbal Repoet on the Administration of Hie Bombay Presidency for L878-74 Printed at the Gorerunimt Central Press: Bnmliuy. 1876. The red-letter clmpters of last year's Report, which contain most of the matter interesting to readers of the Indian Antiquary, are not re- published this year, which as regards the article on Physical Geography is perhaps prudent. Dr. Wilson's paper upon castes and languages, which we republished last year (vol. III. pp. 221 fT.), is one of those thug omitted. This year's Report, however, contains a paper upon the climate of Bombay by Mr- Chambers, F.R.S., Superintendent of the Observatory at KulAbA (p. 294), which is interesting in many ways, and remarkable for rm extraordinary derivation of the terra " ELephanta" applied to the thunderstorms which occur pn -try generally throughout the Presidency (except in Sind) at the close of the monsoon (Mr. Clmmberfl is mistaken in apply iug it to the " mango showers" which usher it in, and which are called Rohlnfc-h! pani), "from the fact of their reach in > of Bombay from the direction of the island of Ele- phanta." The name of the island was given by the Portuguese, from the stone elephant which formerly stood there, and whose disjecta m now ornament the approach to the Victoria Mu- seum. The name of the storms is derived from the Haste Nakshatra, or lunar mansion under the sign Haste, commonly called by the Mar&thos
- H a 1 1 i Nakshatra.' The Portuguese translated
the vernacular term literally, and we have inherited it from them. The Archaeological section (p, 568) we reprint nearly in full, to show what has been accompl i and may be hoped for from the liberality of Gov- ernment in this direction. "The Bombay Sanskrit Scries, edited by Dr. Biililer and Dr. Kielhorn, has been enriched by three new numbers published during the year. Two of these contain new criticnl editions of workB which have been published both in India and in Europe, and the third is the last number of Dr, Kielhorn'a edition of JTAgoji-bhatta's difficult and famous grammatical work. " Dr. Biihler wrnt on a three months' tour in Ri'ij piil ana to search for Sanskrit MSS., :m.l visim! Jodhpur, JesAlmir, Bikaner, and Bhutner. Ho appears to have been particularly sneeeeBful in JesAlmir and Bikaner. In the former town he gained access to the ancient library of the « isttiH Jamas, which enjoys a great reputation among na- tive scholars on account of its supposed extent urul importance. Dr. Biihlcr says reganlir —'The MSS. which are now found in the BhAn- dar belong to three classes. The first ooaffl palm-leaf MSS., the oldest of which is dated Samvat 1160, or ad. 1104, while the youngest belongs to the beginning of the 15th century. To the second class belong a number of very old and beautiful paper MSS. dating from the 1-lth and 15th centuries, which, according to the special li.«ts
- i<-' "rnpanying them, are votive offerings given
by rich pilgrims. The third class contains mod- ern paper MSS. which formerly were the property of monks who died at JesAlmir without spiritual descendants.
