Samvat, which dates from B. c. 57. The age of Kátyáyana is unknown; but as he flourished between the date of Pánini, in about 1100 B. C., and that of Bhartrihari, in 57 B. C., there is every probability in favour of the opinion that he was one of the disciples of Buddha.

29. But this identification of the two greatest grammarians of the Sanskrit and Páli languages rests upon other grounds besides those mentioned above. Colebrooke, Wilson, and Lassen, have all identified the commentator on Pánini with Vararuchi, the author of the "Prákrit Grammar," called Prakrita-prakása, or Chandrika. Of Vararuchi nothing more is known than that his work is the oldest Prákrit grammar extant, and that his body of rules includes all that had been laid down by earlier grammarians regarding the vernacular dialects.

30. This identification is still more strikingly confirmed by the fact that Kachháyano is not a name but only a patronymic,* which signifies the son of Kachho, and was first assumed by the grammarian himself. If, therefore, Vararuchi Katyayana is not the same person as Kachháyano, he must be posterior to him and of the same family. We shall thus have

*Turnour's Mahawanso, Introduction, p. xxvi. where the original passage of the Rupasiddhi is given. See also Csoma de Koros, in Prinsep's Journal, vii. p. 144, where the fact is confirmed; as the Tibetans call the Grammarian Kátyáhi-bu-that is, the son of KATYA.

two Kátyáyanas of the same family living much about the same time, each of whom compiled a Páli or Prákrit grammar; a conclusion which is much more improbable than that the two were one and the same person.

31. I have been thus particular in stating all the evidences in favour of this supposition, as the probable identity of the two great grammarians seems to me to offer an additional reason for considering Sákya Muni as one of the chief benefactors of his country. For I believe that we must not look upon Sákya Muni simply as the founder of a new religious system, but as a great social reformer who dared to preach the perfect equality of all mankind, and the consequent abolition of caste, in spite of the menaces of the most powerful and arrogant priesthood in the world. We must regard him also as a patriot, who, in spite of tyrannical kings and princes, had the courage to incite his countrymen to resist the forcible abduction of their wives and daughters by great men. To him the Indians were indebted for a code of pure and practical morality, which inculcated charity and chastity, performance of good works, and abstinence from evil, and general kindness to all living things. To him also I believe they owe the early refinement and systematic arrangement of their language in the selection of the learned

* See the fifth of the "Seven Imperishable Precepts, imparted by Sákya to the people of Vaisáli."-Turnour in Prinsep's Journal, vii. p. 991.

Kátyáyana as the compiler of the Sanskrit and Páli grammars.

32. As the champion of religious liberty and social equality, Sakya Muni attacked the Bráhmans in their weakest and most vulnerable points; in their impious assumption of all mediation between man and his Maker, and in their arrogant claims to hereditary priesthood. But his boldness was successful; and before the end of his long career he had seen his principles zealously and successfully promulgated by his Brahman disciples SARIPUtra, Mangalyána, ANANDA, and KÁSYAPA, as well as by the Vaisya KÁTYÁYANA and the Sudra UPÁLI. At his death, in B.C. 543, his doctrines had been firmly established; and the divinity of his mission was fully recognized by the eager claims preferred by kings and rulers for relics of their divine teacher. His ashes were distributed amongst eight cities; and the charcoal from the funeral pile was given to a ninth; but the spread of his influence is more clearly shown by the mention of the numerous cities where he lived and preached. Amongst these are Champa and Rájagriha on the east, Srávasti and Kausambi on the west. In the short space of forty-five years,

he

Sákya began his public career at thirty-five years of age, and died at eighty. Mahomed was born in 569 A. D.: announced his mission in 609 at forty years of age, and died in 644, when he was seventy-five. In A. D. 640, or in thirty-one years from the announcement of his mission, the arms and the religion of Mahomed had spread over the ancient empires of Egypt, Syria, and Persia.

this wonderful man succeeded in establishing his own peculiar doctrines over the fairest districts of the Ganges; from the Delta to the neighbourhood of Agra and Cawnpore. This success was perhaps as much due to the early corrupt state of Bráhmanism, as to the greater purity and more practical wisdom of his own system. But, rapid as was the progress of Buddhism, the gentle but steady swell of its current shrinks into nothing before the sweeping flood of Mahomedanism, which, in a few years, had spread over one half of the civilized world, from the sands of the Nile to the swampy fens of the Oxus.

33. The two most successful religious impostures which the world has yet seen, are Buddhism and Mahomedanism. Each creed owed its origin to the enthusiasm of a single individual, and each was rapidly propagated by numbers of zealous followers. But here the parallel ends; for the Korán of Mahomed was addressed wholly to the "passions" of mankind, by the promised gratification of human desires both in this world and in the next; while the Dharma of Sakya Muni was addressed wholly to the "intellect," and sought to wean mankind from the pleasures and vanities of this life by pointing to the transitoriness of all human enjoyment. Mahomed achieved his success by the offer of material or bodily pleasures in the next life, while Sákya succeeded by the promise of eternal deliverance of the soul from the fetters of mortality. The former propagated his religion by the merciless edge of the sword; the latter

by the persuasive voice of the missionary. The sanguinary career of the Islamite was lighted by the lurid flames of burning cities; the peaceful progress of the Buddhist was illuminated by the cheerful faces of the sick in monastic hospitals,* and by the happy smiles of travellers reposing in Dharmsálas by the road-side. The one was the personification of bodily activity and material enjoyment; the other was the genius of corporeal abstinence, and intellectual contemplation.†

* Mahawanso, p. 249. Upatisso, son of Buddha Dás, builds hospitals for cripples, for pregnant women, and for the blind and diseased. Dhatusena (p. 256) builds hospitals for cripples and sick. Buddha Dás himself (p. 245) ordained a physician for every ten villages on the high road, and built asylums for the crippled, deformed, and destitute.

+ There is a curious coincidence also in the manner of death of the two teachers. According to the Buddhists, Máro, the Angel of Death, waited upon Sákya to learn when it would be his pleasure to die. The Musulmáns assert the same of Muhammad. Azrail, the Angel of Death, entered the chamber of the sick man to announce that "he was enjoined not to interfere with the soul of God's prophet, without an entire acquiescence on his part."See Price's Muhammadan History, vol. i. p. 16.