Elements of South-Indian Palæography, from the Fourth to the Seventeenth Century A.D. c3.4

c3.4

ceremonies is worth little more, though in this case religious prejudices can hardly interfere. Thus for the Soma many different plants are used. The Brahmans on the Coromandel Coast take the '*Asclepias Acida*', those of Malabar the '*Ceropegia Decaisneana*' or '*Ceropegia Elegans*'. How different in appearance these three plants are, may be readily seen by a comparison of the figures of them given by Wight in his "Icones" ii., 595 ("Ascl. Acida") and his "Spicilegium Neilgherriense" pl. 152 and 155. (The Parsees must originally have used the same plant as the Brahmans did, now they use quite a different one. *cfr.* Haug's "Essays", p. 239). Which then, if any of them, is the original Soma? And this loss of tradition must (apart from the obvious development of rites) have begun very early; for otherwise, it is impossible to account for the variations in the details of the same ceremony as described, *e. g.* by the different Çrautasūtras. Thus we find, in the Cayanas, that Āpastamba directs the construction of the altars in a different way to that prescribed by Bodhāyana. So again the great difference in the way of uttering the Vedic accents and the singing of the Sāma Veda, must strike every one who hears them. These differences, at all events, cannot be original; for they occur among followers of the same Çākhā of the Veda. The Açoka tree of S. India is the '*Guatteria longifolia*'; that of the North, the '*Jonesia açoka*'. Tradition is worthless all over the East in exactly the same way. Once, when crossing in a boat from the Nubian bank of the Nile to the temple of Philae, I asked the native boatman what he knew of the temple? He replied directly: "It is the Castle of Ans Alwujūd". This personage is the hero of a popular Arabic fairy-tale! Had the boatman been a native of India, he would have answered: "Rāma's (or the Pāṇḍava's) palace", and backed up his story with an endless legend. What I have here said about the worthlessness of local traditions in the East has been, long ago, asserted in respect of other countries. See, *e. g.* Volney, "Egypt and Syria" (Engl. transl. of 1788) ii., p. 243. Von Hahn, "Sagwissenschaftliche Studien", pp. 58 ffg. F. W. Ellis wrote, about sixty years ago, of "the mist of fiction with which the Indians contrive to envelop every historical fact", but not even his recognized authority seems to have had much effect, as yet.