[66]. Numbers, chap. xxxv. 11, 12.
[67]. Numbers, chap. xxxv. 25, and Joshua, chap. xx. 6. There was an ancient law of Athens analogous to the Mosaic, by which he who committed ‘chance-medley’ should fly the country for a year, during which his relatives made satisfaction to the relatives of the deceased. The Greeks had asyla for every description of criminals, which could not be violated without infamy. Gibbon [ed. W. Smith, iv. 377 f.] gives a memorable instance of disregard to the sanctuary of St. Julian in Auvergne, by the soldiers of the Frank king Theodoric, who divided the spoils of the altar, and made the priests captives: an impiety not only unsanctioned by the son of Clovis, but punished by the death of the offenders, the restoration of the plunder, and the extension of the right of sanctuary five miles around the sepulchre of the holy martyr.
[68]. [The chief sanctuaries in Rājputāna are: Nāgor; Barli, a few miles distant; Chaupāsni; Udaimandir and Mahmandir, close to Jodhpur. The system is a serious obstacle to the detection of crime (General Hervey, Some Records of Crime, i. 122 f., ii. 327 ff.).]
[69]. [Smith, Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities, 3rd ed. i. 235.]
[70]. [iv. 33; L. R. Farnell, Cults of the Greek States, iv. 101 ff.]
[71]. [Perā, a sweetmeat made of cream, sugar and spices, for which Mathura is famous.]
[72]. Pallas gives an admirable and evidently faithful account of the worship of Krishna and other Hindu divinities in the city of Astrakhan, where a Hindu mercantile colony is established. They are termed Multani, from the place whence they migrated—Multan, near the Indus. This class of merchants of the Hindu faith is disseminated over all the countries, from the Indus to the Caspian: and it would have been interesting had the professor given us any account of their period of settlement on the western shore of the Caspian Sea. In costume and feature, as represented in the plate given by that author, they have nothing to denote their origin; though their divinities might be seated on any altar on the Ganges. The Multanis of Indeskoi Dvor, or ‘Indian court,’ at Astrakhan, have erected a pantheon, in which Krishna, the god of all Vaishnava merchants, is seated in front of Jagannath, Rama, and his brothers, who stand in the background; while Siva and his consort Ashtabhuja ‘the eight-armed,’ form an intermediate line, in which is also placed a statue which Pallas denominates Murali; but Pallas mistook the flute (murali) of the divine Krishna for a rod. The principal figure we shall describe in his own words. “In the middle was placed a small idol with a very high bonnet, called Gupaledshi. At its right there was a large black stone, and on the left two smaller ones of the same colour, brought from the Ganges, and regarded by the Hindus as sacred. These fossils were of the species called Sankara, and appeared to be an impression of a bivalve muscle.” Minute as is the description, our judgment is further aided by the plate. Gupaledshi is evidently Gopalji, the pastoral deity of Vraj (from gao, a cow, and pala, a herdsman). The head-dress worn by him and all the others is precisely that still worn by Krishna, in the sacred dance at Mathura: and so minute is the delineation that even the pera or sugar-ball is represented, although the professor appears to have been ignorant of its use, as he does not name it. He has likewise omitted to notice the representation of the sacred mount of Govardhana, which separates him from the Hindu Jove and the turreted Cybele (Durga), his consort. The black stones are the Salagramas, worshipped by all Vaishnavas. In the names of ‘Nhandigana and Gori,’ though the first is called a lion saddled, and the other a male divinity, we easily recognise Nandi, the bull-attendant (Gana) of Siva and his consort Gauri. Were all travellers to describe what they see with the same accuracy as Pallas, they would confer important obligations on society, and might defy criticism. It is with heartfelt satisfaction I have to record, from the authority of a gentleman who has dwelt amongst the Hindkis of Astrakhan, that distance from their ancient abodes has not deteriorated their character for uprightness. Mr. Mitchell, from whose knowledge of Oriental languages the Royal Asiatic Society will some day derive benefit, says that the reputation of these Hindu colonists, of whom there are about five hundred families, stands very high, and that they bear a preference over all the merchants of other nations settled in this great commercial city.
[73]. Other travellers besides Pallas have described Hinduism as existing in the remote parts of the Russian empire, and if nominal resemblances may be admitted, we would instance the strong analogy between the Samoyedes and Tchoudes of Siberia and Finland and the Syama Yadus and Joudes of India [?]. The languages of the two former races are said to have a strong affinity, and are classed as Hindu-Germanic by M. Klaproth, on whose learned work, Asia Polyglotta, M. Rémusat has given the world an interesting critique, in his Mélanges Asiatiques (tome i. p. 267), in which he traces these tribes to Central Asia; thus approaching the land of the Getae or Yuti. Now the Yutis and Yadus have much in their early history to warrant the assertion of more than nominal analogy. The annals of the Yadus of Jaisalmer state that long anterior to Vikrama they held dominion from Ghazni to Samarkand: that they established themselves in those regions after the Mahabharata, or great war; and were again impelled, on the rise of Islamism, within the Indus. As Yadus of the race of Sham or Syam (a title of Krishna), they would be Sama-Yadus; in like manner as the Bhatti tribe are called Shama-bhatti, the Ahsham Bhatti of Abu-l Fazl. The race of Joude was existing near the Indus in the Emperor Babur’s time, who describes them as occupying the mountainous range in the first Duab, the very spot mentioned in the annals of the Yadus as their place of halt, on quitting India twelve centuries before Christ, and thence called Jadu or Yadu-ka-dang, the ‘hills of Jadu or Yadu.’ The peopling of all these regions, from the Indus to remote Tartary, is attributed to the race of Ayu or Indu, both signifying the moon, of which are the Haihayas, Aswas (Asi), Yadus, etc., who spread a common language over all Western Asia. Amongst the few words of Hindu-Germanic origin which M. Rémusat gives to prove affinity between the Finnish and Samoyede languages is “Miel, Mod, dans le dialecte Caucasien, et Méd, en Slave,” and which, as well as mead, the drink of the Scandinavian warrior, is from the Sanskrit Madhu, a bee [honey]. Hence intoxicating beverage is termed Madhva, which supplies another epithet for Krishna, Madhu or Madhava. [These speculations possess no value.]
[74]. Origin of Laws and Government.
[75]. Literally ‘the giver of food.’