Historical Notice of Vikramâditja.
[1.] Professor Wilson.
[2.] Reinaud, Fragments relatifs à l’Inde.
[3.] See a most extraordinary instance of this noticed in [note 11] of the Tale in this volume entitled “Vikramâditja makes the Silent Speak.”
[4.] Thus Reinaud (Mémoire Géographique sur l’Inde, p. 80) speaks of a king of this name who governed Cashmere A.D. 517, as if he were the original Vikramâditja.
[5.] The honour of being the first to work this mine of information belongs to H. Todd; see his “Account of Indian Medals,” in Trans. of As. Soc.
[6.] The art of coining at all was, in all probability, introduced by the Greeks.—Wilson, Ariana Antiqua, p. 403; also Prinsep, in Journ. of As. Soc. i. 394.
[7.] In the list of kings given by Lassen, iv. 969, 970, there are eight kings called Vikramâditja, either as a name or a surname, between A.D. 500 and 1000.
[8.] The kingdom of Malâva answers to the present province of Malwa, comprising the table-land enclosed between the Vindhja and Haravatî ranges. The amenity of its climate made it the favourite residence of the rulers of this part of India, and we find in it a number of former capitals of great empires. It lay near the commercial coast of Guzerat, and through it were highways from Northern India over the Vindhja range into the Dekhan. It is also well watered; its chief river, the Kharmanvati (now Kumbal), rises in the Vindhja mountains, and falls into the Jumna. At its confluence with the Siprâ, a little tributary, was situated Uggajini = “the Victorious,” now called Uggeni, Ozene, and Oojein, and still the first meridian of Indian astronomers. It also bore the name of Avantî = “the Protecting,” from the circumstance of its having given refuge to this Vikramâditja in his infancy.
[9.] This length of reign is actually ascribed to him in the Chronological Table out of the Kalijuga-Râgakaritra, given in Journ. of the As. Soc. p. 496.
[10.] This resolution was quite in conformity with the prevailing religious teaching. In the collection of laws and precepts called the Manû, many rules are laid down for this kind of life, and were followed to a prodigious extent both by solitaries and communities; e.g. “When the grihastha = ‘father of the house,’ finds wrinkles and grey hairs coming, and when children’s children are begotten to him, then it is time for him to forsake inhabited places for the jungle.” It is further prescribed that he should expose himself there to all kinds of perils, privations, and hardships. He is not to shrink from encounters with inimical tribes; he is to live on wild fruits, roots, and water. In summer he is to expose himself to the heat of fierce fires, and in the rainy season to the wet, without seeking shelter; in the coldest winter he is to go clothed in damp raiment. By these, and such means, he was to acquire indifference to all corporeal considerations, and reach after union with the Highest Being. Manû, v. 29; vii. 1–30; viii. 28; x. 5; xi. 48, 53; xvii. 5, 7, 24; xviii. 3–5, &c., &c. It is impossible not to be struck, in studying such passages as these, with a reflection of the inferiority which every other religious system, even in its sublimest aims, presents to Christianity. If, indeed, there were a first uniform limit appointed to the hand of death at the age of threescore years and ten, then it might be a clever rule to fix the appearance of wrinkles, grey hairs, and children’s children as the period for beginning to contemplate what is to come after it; but, as the number of those who are summoned to actual acquaintance with that futurity before that age is pretty nearly as great as that of those who surpass it, the maxim carries on the face of it that it is dictated by a very fallible, however well-intentioned, guide. Christianity knows no such limit, but opens its perfect teaching to the contemplation of “babes;” while, practically, experience shows that those who are called early to a life of religion are far more numerous than those in advanced years.
[11.] Given in W. Taylor’s Orient. Hist. MSS., i. 199.
[12.] “The Indians have no actual history written by themselves.” (Lassen, Indische Alterthumskunde, i. 357, note 1.)
[13.] Klaproth, Würdigung der Asiatischen Geschichtschreiber.
[14.] Indien, p. 17.
[15.] Examen Critique, p. 347.
[16.] But only committed to memory. See supra, p. 333.
[17.] Burnouf, Introduction à l’Hist. du Buddh., vol i.
[18.] Concerning the late introduction of this idea, see supra, pp. 337–8.
[19.] Indische Alterthumskunde, i. 839.
[20.] Lassen, iii., p. 44.
[21.] Mommsen (History of Rome, book iv., ch. viii.), writing of Mithridates Eupator, who died within a few years of the date ascribed to Vikramâditja’s birth, says, “Although our accounts regarding him are, in substance, traceable to written records of contemporaries, yet the legendary tradition, which is generated with lightning expedition in the East, early adorned the mighty king with many superhuman traits. These traits, however, belong to his character just as the crown of clouds belongs to the character of the highest mountain peaks; the outline of the figure appears in both cases, only more coloured and fantastic, not disturbed or essentially altered.”
[22.] The legend from which the following is gathered has been given by Wilford, in a paper entitled “Vikramâditja and Salivâhâna, their respective eras.”
[23.] See Lassen, Indische Alterthumskunde, ii. 49–56.
[24.] Wilson, in Mackenzie Collection, p. 343.
[25.] A vetâla is a kind of sprite, not always bad-natured, usually carrying on a kind of weird existence in burial-places. “They can possess themselves of the forms of those who die by the hand of justice, and assume them. By the power of magic men can make them obedient, and use them for all manner of difficult tasks above their own strength and sufficiency.” Brockhaus’ Report of the R. Saxon Scientific Soc. Philologico-historical Class, 1863, p. 181. “The Vetâlas were a late introduction among the gods of popular veneration.” (Lassen, iv. 570.) “They came also to be regarded as incarnations of both Vishnu and Shiva.” (Lassen, iv. 159.)
[26.] Two interesting instances of the way in which traditionary legends become attached to various persons as they float along the current of time, have been brought to my notice while preparing these sheets for the press. I cannot now recall where I picked up the story of “The Balladmaker and the Bootmaker,” which I have given in “Patrañas,” but I am sure it was told of a wandering minstrel, and as occurring on Spanish soil, as I have given it. I have since met it in “The Hundred Novels” of Sacchetti (written little after the time of Boccacio) as an episode in a no less celebrated life than that of Dante, thus: “... Going out and passing by Porta S. Piero (Florence), he (Dante) heard a blacksmith beating on his anvil, and singing ‘Dante’ just as one sings a common ballad; mutilating here, and mixing in verses of his own there; by which means Dante perceived that he sustained great injury. He said nothing, however, but went into the workshop, to where were laid ready many tools for use in the trade. Dante first took up the hammer and flung it into the road; took up the pincers and flung them into the road; took up the scales and flung them out into the road. When he had thus flung many tools into the road, the blacksmith turned round with a brutal air, crying out, ‘Che diavol’ fate voi? Are you mad?’ But Dante said, ‘And thou; what hast thou done?’ ‘I am busied about my craft,’ said the blacksmith; ‘and you are spoiling my gear, throwing it out into the road like that.’ Said Dante, ‘If you don’t want me to spoil your things, don’t you spoil mine.’ Said the smith. ‘What have I spoilt of yours?’ Said Dante, ‘You sing my book, and you say it not as I made it; poem-making is my trade, and you have spoilt it.’ Then the blacksmith was full of fury, but he had nothing to say; so he went out and picked up his tools, and went on with his work, And the next time he felt inclined to sing, he sang Tristano and Lancellotte, and left Dante alone.” “... Another day Dante was walking along, wearing the gorget and the bracciaiuola, according to the custom of the time, when he met a man driving an ass having a load of street sweepings, who, as he walked behind his ass, ever and anon sang Dante’s book, and when he had sung a line or two, gave the donkey a hit, and cried ‘Arrri!’ Dante, coming up with him, gave him a blow on his shoulder with his armlet (‘con la bracciaiuola gli diede una grande batacchiata,’ literally ‘bastonnade:’ bracciaiuola stands for both the armour covering the arm, and for the tolerably formidable wooden instrument, fixed to the arm, with which pallone-players strike the ball), saying, as he did so, ‘That “arrri” was never put in by me.’ As soon as the ass-driver had got out of his way, he turned and made faces at Dante, saying, ‘Take that!’ But Dante, without suffering himself to be led into an altercation with such a man, replied, amid the applause of all, ‘I would not give one of mine for a hundred of thine!’” (2.) It was lately mentioned to me that there is a narrow mountain-pass in the Lechthal, in Tirol, which is sometimes called Mangtritt (or St. Magnus’ step), and sometimes Jusalte (Saltus Julii, the leap of Julius), because one tradition says Julius Cæsar leapt through it on horseback, and another that it opened to let St. Magnus pass through when escaping from a heathen horde.
[27.] Quoted by W. Taylor, in Journ. of As. Soc. vii. p. 391.
[28.] Quoted by Wilford, as above.
[29.] Quoted in Wilford’s “Sacred Isles of the West.”
[30.] Lassen.
[31.] Roth, Extrait du Vikrama-Charitram, p. 279.
[32.] Lassen, ii. p. 1154.
[33.] Lassen, ii. 1122–1129.
[34.] Abbé Huc narrates how enthusiastically the young Mongol toolholos, or bard, sang to him the Invocation of Timour, of which he gives the refrain as follows:—“We have burned the sweet-smelling wood at the feet of the divine Timour. Our foreheads bent to the earth, we have offered to him the green leaf of tea, and the milk of our herds. We are ready: the Mongols are on foot, O Timour!
“O Divine Timour, when will thy great soul revive?
Return! Return! We await thee, O Timour!”
[35.] See Note 11 to “Vikramâditja makes the Silent Speak.”