Oct. 4, 1872.]
311
SKETCHES OF MATHURA.
Grammar appeared, it is technically used to de
about the 10th century A.D. this is pretty full.
signate the South Indian family of languages.
The country of the Brahmans, as is well known, originally comprised but a small part of the vast peninsula now known by the name of India, (conf. Mānava-Dh. S. ii, 17 and fig.), and at the time the Digests were compiled the lawyers
The last few words mention the P & r a sik a
Yavana, Rom a ka and Barbara languages. The first three, it is almostunnecessary to remaik,
are Persian, Greek, and Roman (Latin); what language is intended by Barbara is not easy to say. The Greek word 2422pos is here not to be thought of"; it may perhaps be intended for Bod-pa, Tibetan, or for Burmese, which (if I recollect rightly) is called properly Mramma. At all events, in addition to the proofs furnished by the Astronomical treatises, this list of lan guages will show that the Brahmans knew much more of foreigners than is commonly sup posed, or they indeed have ever been willing to admit.
There is another reason for believing that Southern India was brahmanized but compara tively recently, and this is taken from the Nib and has or law-digests.
In most of these
we find a chapter termed Des an i r n a y a , and in the Smritic h an drik a which belongs to
had to determine how far the laws of
Åryāvarta
and Brahmāvarta held good in other countries. In the end they are obliged to admit that peo
ple must follow the customs that prevail where they live; the question had evidently arisen very recently. I do not mean to deny for a moment
that
a few Sanskrit names are
found some centuries earlier in South India,
such as are preserved to us by classical writers, but they occur only in the fertile deltas or important seaports of the South, and were pro bably introduced by Buddhist missionaries. Indeed the process is so slow that the brahma nization of wild tribes in Central and South
India is going on to this day, and is yet far from complete. Mangalore, 11th August 1872.
SKETCHES OF MATHURA. By F. S. GROWSE, M.A., OXON, B.C.S. 1 W.-BARSANA AND NANDGA NW.
BARs ANA, according to modern Hindu belief the home of Krishna’s favourite mistress Rádhá,
is a town which enjoyed a brief period of great prosperity about the middle of last century. It is built at the foot and on the slope of a ridge, originally dedicated to the god Brahma, which rises abruptly from the plain, near the Bharatpur
posing feature in the landscape to the spectator from the plain below. A long flight of stone steps, broken about half way by a temple in hon our of Rádhá's grandfather, Mahibhán, leads down from the summit to the foot of the hill, where is another temple-court, containing a life
border of the Chhátá Pargana, to a height of
size image of the mythical Brikha-bhán robed in appropriate costume and supported on the one
some 200 feet at its extreme point, and runs in
side by his daughter Rādhā, and on the other by
a south-westerly direction for about a quarter of a mile. Its summit is crowned by a series of
Sridãma, a Pauriſnik character, here for the nonce represented as her brother.
tempſes in honour of Lárli Ji, a local title of
The town consists almost entirely of magnifi cient mansions all in ruins, and lofty but crumb. ling walls now enclosing vast, desolate, dusty areas, which once were busy courts and markets, or secluded pleasure grounds. All date from the time of Rúp Rām, a Katára Brähman, who having acquired great reputation as a pandit in the earlier
Rádhá, meaning ‘the beloved.” These were all erected at intervals within the last 200 years and now form a connected mass of building with a lofty wall enclosing the court in which they stand, each of the successive shrines was on a
somewhat grander scale than its predecessor, and was for a time honoured with the presence of the divinity. But even the last and largest, in which she is now enthloned, is an edifice of no
special pretension; though seated, as it is, on the very brow of the rock, and seen in conjunc tion with the earlier buildings, it forms an im
part of last century, became Purohit to Bharatpur, Sindhia, and Holkar, and was enriched by those princes with the most lavish donations, the whole of which he appears to have expended on the embellishment of Barsána and the other sa
cred places within the limits of Braj, his native
- Though Fick (Indogerm. Wörterb.) 2nd edn, considers that the Sanskrit word is borrowed from the Greek,
