English
The heroes of these poems are heroes still ; their exploits, with many embellishments and sectarial additions, are recounted in prose and verse, and the tales of Rfima and the PaTK^avas, of Hanumat and Ravana, are still read and listened to with wonder and delight. A host of legends has grown up around the hero K77'sh?ia; they attend liim from his cradle to his pyre ; but the stories of his infancy and his youth are those which are most popular, and interest all classes, especially women and young people. The mild and gentle Rama, " the husband of one wife," pure in thought and noble in action, is in many places held in the highest honour, and the worship paid to him and his faithful wife Slta is the purest and least degrading of the many forms of Hindu Avorship. This later mythology, Avitli its wonders and marvels, and its equally marvellous explanations of them, is the key to modern Hinduism. Tt is curious to trace its descent, to contrast such legends as are traceable with their simple beginnings in the Yedic hymns, and so to follow the workings of the mind of a INTRODUCTION. xv great people throiigli many centuries. Such a survey supplies important and interesting matter for the history of religion, and gives a clear and complete view of the degradation of a mythology. But for the purposes of comparative mythology the Pauranik legends are of trifling importance. The stories of the Epic poems even are of no great value. It may be, as has been maintained, that tliey " are simply difi'erent versions of one and the same story, and that this story has its origin in the phenomena of the natural world and the course of the day and the year ; " but still they are of later date, and afl'ord no direct clue for unravelling the mythology of the Aryan nations. The most ancient hymns of the i^zg- veda are the basis upon which comparative mythology rests, and they have already sup- plied the means of unfolding the real source and signification of several Greek and Zoroastrian myths. The science is young, and has a wide field before it. Some of its results are beyond doubt, but there are other deductions which have not advanced as yet beyond conjecture and speculation. In the present work some of the more obvious identifications, or proposed identifica- tions, have been mentioned as occasion offered ; in a work of reference like this it would be out of place to have done more. The reader who wishes to pursue the study must consult the writings of Max Miiller and the " Aryan Mythology " of the Eev. Sir George Cox. In them and in the books to which they refer he will find ample information, and plenty of materials for investigation and comparison. TRANSLITERATION AND PRONUNCIATION. If this work answers the purpose for which it is intended, it will be used by students who are acquainted with the alphabet in which Sanskrit is written, and by readers to whom that alphabet is unknoTVTi. Its system of transliteration ought then to be such as to enable a student to restore any word to its original letters, but the ordinary reader ought not to be em- barrassed with unnecessary diacritical points and distinctions. The alphabet of the Sanskrit is represented on the following plan : — • VOWELS. a as ir i ,, Short. I America, pin. put. rill. The V Long. a as in last. i , , police. u ,, rule. rl „ chagrin, owel Iri will not be met with. DIPHTHONGS. e as in ere or fete, ai ,, aisle. * o ,, so. an as ou in house. CONSONANTS. Guttural k Palatal ch Cerebral t Dental t Labial p Semi-vowels y Sibilants s kh g gh n chh j jh n th d dh n th d dh n ph b bh m r 1 V, w sh, s Aspirate h Visarga h Anusw£ xviii TRANSLITERATION AND PRONUNCIATION. To the uninitiated Englishman the chief difficulty lies in the short ' a,' the primary inherent vowel of the Sanskrit, pro- nounced as in the word * America,' The English alphabet has no distinct letter for this sound, but uses every one of its vowels in turn, and some even of its double vowels to represent it ; so it is the ' a ' and ' e ' in * servant,' the ' i ' in ' bird,' the ' o ' in ' word,' the ' u ' in ' curd,' the ' y ' in ' myrtle,' and the * ea ' in ' heard.' The Sanskrit short ' a ' has this sound invariably, and unafifected by any combination of consonants ; so Sanskrit ' ham ' must be pronounced not as the English 'barn' but as 'burn.' The pronunciation of the other vowels is sufficiently obvious. The vowel ' ri ' is represented in italics to distinguish it from the consonants 'r' and 'i.' Of the consonants, the cerebral letters ' ^,' ' /A,' ' ^,' ' dhj' and 'w,' the palatal sibilant '5,' and the visarga 'A,' are represented in italics. Practically these are the only distinctions necessary. The guttural nasal is used only in combination with a guttural letter ('nk' or *ng'); the palatal nasal is used only with palatals (' ncli ' and ' nj '), and no other nasal can be combined with these letters. The anuswara, and the anuswara onlv, is used before the sibilants and ' h,' so in ' ns,' ' nsh,' ' ns,' and ' nh,' the nasal is the anuswara. The letter m before a semi-vowel may be represented either by m or anuswara. In all these instances the combinations distinctly indicate the proper nasal, and no discriminative sign is necessary. Of tlie pronunciation of the nasals it is only necessary to notice the anuswara. This, with a sibilant, is a simple n, but l)efore li it is like ng or the French n in hon; so the Sanskrit iSinha, in the modern derivative tongues, is written and pro- nounced Singh. The aspirates are simple aspirations of their respective con- sonants, and make no other change of their sounds ; so ' th ' is to be pronounced as in the words ' at home,' and ' ]ih ' as in ' up- hill,' never as in 'thine' and in ']>hysic.' The letter *g' is always hard as in 'gift.' The palatals are the simple English TRANSLITERATION AND PRONUNCIATION, xix sounds of ' cli ' and ' j ' as in ' church ' and 'just.' The cerebrals and the dentals are similar letters, but the former are drawn from the roof of the mouth and the latter from the tips of the teeth. In 'train' and 'drain' we have cerebrals; in 'tin' and 'due' we have dentals, or an approach to them. The ordinary English ' t ' and ' d ' are more cerebral than dental, and the natives of India in transcribing English names use the cerebrals for our 't' and 'd.' The palatal sibilant '5' has a sound intermediate between 's' and 'sh,' resembling the double 'ss' in 'session.' The visarga, the final ' li^ has no distinct enunciation, but it is nevertheless a real letter, and changes in certain positions into ' s ' and ' r. ' Thus the name /S'una/isephas is sometimes written /Sunassephas. [In French the palatal ' ch ' is represented by ' tch ' and the 'j ' by ' dj.' In German the 'ch' is expressed by 'tsch' and the ' j ' by ' dsch.' These very awkward combinations have induced Max Midler and others to use an italic ' h ' and ' g ' instead of them.] Some words will be found with varying terminations, as 'Hanumat' and 'Hanuman,' 'Sikha7Z(iin' and 'Sikha?i(ii.' The explanation of this is that Sanskrit nouns have what is called a crude form or stem independent of case termination, and the nominative case very frequently differs from it. So ' Hanumat' and ' Sikha?zc?in ' are crude forms ; ' Hanuman ' and * SikhawcZi ' are their nominative cases. Tliere are other such variations which need not be noticed. The letters b and v are often interchanged, so words not found under the one letter should be sought for under the other. HINDU CLASSICAL DICTIONARY. ABHASWARAS. A class of deities, sixty-four in number, of whose nature little is known. ABHIDHANA. A dictionary or vocabulary. There are many such works. One of the oldest of them is the Abhidhdna ratna-mdld of Halayudha Bha/^a (circa 7th cent.), and one of the best is the Abhidhdna Chintd-mam of Hema-chandra, a Jaina ^vi'iter of celebrity (13th cent.). The former has been edited by Aufrecht ; the latter by Colebrooke and by Bohtlingk and Rieu. ABHIlMANl. Agni, the eldest son of Brahma. By his wife Swaha he had three sons, Pavaka, Pavamana, and iS'uchi.