4. KĀLIDĀSA IN CEYLON, 522.

SIR,-Whether a bee was ever enclosed in the petals of the lotus, into which it had entered in pursuit of honey, is very doubtful. But Mr. Grierson has quoted in the Indian Antiquary (xvi. 284) a very pretty couplet, in which the first line states that a bee was so caught, and the second that his wife, the female bee, 'adored the lord of day' to save him. For, as is well known, the lotus at dawn opens its petals.

It would be very interesting to know to whom this poetical idea first occurred, and whether the verse has any history on the continent of India. For in the island of Ceylon a similar one is connected with a very interesting story.

It is this. In 522 A.D. there was reigning in Ceylon an accomplished prince and poet, named Kumāra Dasa, the author of a Sanskrit poem still extant in its Sanna, called the Janakiharaṇa. He invited Kalidasa to his court. Both king and guest were enamoured of a certain lady, and one day on the wall of her chamber the king wrote the following riddle, with a promise of great reward to him who should solve it :

Wana tambarā mala no talā ronața wanī

Mala dederā paņa galawā giya sewanī.

That is: The forest bee got to the honey without hurting the flower, but (being caught in the flower as it closed) he got away with his life to the cool shades of the jungle only when (in the morning) the lily unfolded its petals.'

The poet coming soon after, being on a like love's errand bent, felt at once the allusion, and inscribed underneath the solution, which ran:

Siyat ambara siya tambarā siya sewenī

Siya sa purā nidi no labā un sewenī.

That is: The relation of the sun (the king, of the solar race) seeking the society of the lotus-eyed (beauty) enjoyed indeed her company, but sleepless was caught in her toils.'

When the king saw that his riddle had been solved, he enquired for the anonymous author of the solution. But the covetous beauty concealed his name, and on his next visit had him murdered by her attendants, and claimed both solution and reward as her own. Something, however, aroused the king's suspicion. He had her premises searched, and the murdered body was discovered

beneath the floor. The king ordered a pyre to be made as for the cremation of a king, and on the appointed day attended with all his court, and scarcely had the flames reached the body, when the king, overwhelmed with grief at the loss of his friend, to which he felt he had himself contributed, rushed into the burning mass, and was himself also first suffocated and then consumed.

As the story is only found in two very rare books (Alwis's Sidat Sangarawa, p. cli, and Knighton's History of Ceylon, p. 106), I have given an abstract of the whole of it. Neither of these authors gives the name or date of the book in which they found the legend. But it is referred to in the Pœrakum Bā Sirit (Parākrama Bahu Caritra), a work of the fourteenth century, as being then well known; and this at least is certain, that when it was first told, the common belief among Ceylon scholars was that Kalidasa belonged to the beginning of the sixth century of our era.

T. W. RHYS DAVIDS.

150

NOTES OF THE QUARTER.

(September, October, November.)

I. REPORTS OF MEETINGS OF THE ROYAL ASIATIC SOCIETY, SESSION 1887-88.

First Meeting, 21st November, 1887.-Sir THOMAS WADE, K.C.B., President, in the Chair.

There were elected as Resident Members: Macar David, Esq., Modan Gopal, Esq., Francis Hewitt, Esq., Sadder-uddin Khan, Rang Lal, Esq.; and as Non-Resident Members: the Very Rev. Dean Butcher, D.D., Syed Ali Bilgrami, E. G. W. Senathi Raja, Henry Cousins, Esq., Ernest A. Floyer, Esq., Spencer Pratt, Esq., Philip R. Valladares, Esq.

The Secretary, in the absence of the author, read an abstract of a paper by Dr. Edkins on "Foreign Elements in Early Japanese Mythology," in which it was argued that there were distinct traces of fire-worship and other Persian ideas in ancient Chinese history, and that the Japanese in borrowing from China had also adopted Persian ideas. Quotations were given from the legend of Izanagi and Izanami, and other myths, and the conclusion drawn that the Persian elements in Japanese religion were: 1. That the dual principle is made the basis of the universe; 2. That many powerful spirits were formed before the physical universe; 3. That things were created in the same order; 4. That the Japanese goddess Amaterasu is a form of the Persian Mith-ras; 5. That the great angels ruling the wind, fire, earth, water, wood, etc., resemble the Persian; 6. The purification ceremonies; 7. The dedication of white horses in their sun-temples.

Mr. SATOW said: I do not think any one who has carefully studied the early literature of Shintōism will deny that it contains

foreign elements, especially since the publication of Mr. Chamberlain's translation of the Kojiki in the tenth vol. of the Transactions of the Asiatic Society of Japan. He has pointed out the influence which Chinese ideas had in the composition of that book, and the Nihon Shoki, to which Dr. Edkins refers more than once, contains a much larger portion borrowed evidently from China. Since it is undoubted that the Japanese had no written language before the introduction of Chinese learning, it seems very natural that in committing to writing their legends, which to them were a part of history, they should, either wilfully or unconsciously, have copied their masters. Native Shintoists of the last two centuries have looked on the Nihon Shoki as corrupt, and they base their accounts of the primitive religion mainly upon the Kojiki and the rituals contained in the Engishiki. The last are almost entirely pure Japanese in style, and are probably among the oldest compositions in the language. They were used in religious services, but there seems to me to be no evidence that the myths of the Kojiki were ever chanted by priests as Dr. Edkins conjectures. In saying that the rituals are among the oldest specimens of the language, I must, however, add that the poems embedded in the text of the Kojiki, and some of those contained in the collection entitled Manyō Shu, are of equally great antiquity. Later on Shinto was greatly influenced by Buddhism and probably Tauism, but this is beside the present question. What Dr. Edkins has tried to do is to get at the earliest form of Shinto, and trace in it Persian elements. It is unfortunate, therefore, that he should have relied so much on the Nihon Shoki, which, as said before, is not so much Japanese as Chinese in tone.

One personal explanation I think myself entitled to make. Dr. Edkins asserts that I say the mirror is not found in Shinto temples unless they have been under the influence of Buddhism. He has slightly misunderstood me. What I did say was that the mirror hanging in front of Shinto temples was Buddhist, and it is evident, from my account of the emblem of the sun-goddess, that I never meant to assert that the mirror was Buddhist. As far as one can see, with the old Japanese the sword was the commonest emblem of the male sex, as the mirror was that of the female.

The identification of seven elements in the Persian religion and in that of the early Japanese is certainly ingenious; but I think it is erroneous to state that white horses are dedicated to the sungoddess. They are or were to be found at the temples of many

other deities, e.g. at the temple of Hachiman at Kamakura. I think it would not be difficult to point out as many fortuitous resemblances between Shinto and Judaism.

I have elsewhere given reasons for thinking that the origin of Shinto was ancestor-worship, and that the worship of fire, wind, and other powers of nature dates from after the introduction of Buddhism. I would not however be understood to mean that these portions of the Shinto practice are borrowed from Buddhism.

Everything goes to show that the Japanese islands were peopled long before the neighbouring state of Corea became civilized; whether they be a homogeneous people descended from a section of the race to which the Coreans belong, or whether they come from an amalgamation of settlers from Corea with a later immigration of Malays or Polynesians, is an open question. But whatever they knew they brought with them from their home on the Continent, and probably developed during a long period of isolation into the civilization they possessed at the time of the introduction of Chinese letters. No date earlier than about 300 or 400 A.D. can be regarded as authentic, and to assume, as Dr. Edkins does, that the Japanese chronology is to be implicitly accepted when they make Jimmu ascend the throne in 660 в c. seems to me somewhat extraordinary, seeing that a mere perusal of the tables of Japanese history from Jimmu downwards for about 1000 years, shows that the whole is incredible. That a person afterwards canonized as the Divine Warrior (Jimmu) did lay the foundations of the Japanese monarchy one can hardly doubt, since everything must have a beginning. But if anything is to be assumed, on the basis of the early history of the Japanese, it is that Jimmu reigned about the 1st century A.D. I will not say that it is much more trustworthy than the history of Britain before the Roman Conquest, but even if you accept the orthodox succession of sovereigns, at any rate you cannot swallow the chronology.

Mr. Dickins thought with Mr. Satow that the early history of Japan was quite unworthy of trust. The mythology, as we have it, was so mixed up with Buddhism and Taouism, that it was extremely difficult to eliminate the autochthonous elements from the mass, for even these had almost always been preserved with a foreign colouring. It struck him that the method lately applied by Mr. Chamberlain to the investigation of place-names might with profit be applied to that of the myth-names of primitive Japan. As an instance, simply by way of illustration, the case of