of undying popularity which vibrates only to the touch of a master. It may be impossible for us to explain the power of a truly great man, and he may never whisper to us "wherein his great strength lieth." But, in the two charac teristics unquestioning faith in his own creations, by which he sees in himself the highest realization of truth, and his sympathy with nature in all her forms of beauty — we see enough to account for that wonderful sway his songs have held over the cultivated intellects of successive generations; for all, when they return to him with the disposition of children, find a kindred spirit, ready to believe whatever satisfies imaginative curiosity, and delighting in everything which is lovely in nature. ARTICLE IX. AMERICAN ORIENTAL SOCIETY. THE publication of the Proceedings of the American Oriental Society has been unusually delayed, as has also that of the Second Part of Vol. x. of the Journal. The Society, however, still flourishes; and a notice of some of the recent communications of which an abstract is given in the Proceedings may interest our readers. At the meeting in May 1875, a paper was read by Prof. T. O. Paine, of Elmwood, Mass., on "the Way Collection of Egyptian Antiquities in the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston," in which some remarkable inscriptions were translated and commented upon. Egyptology has had few cultivators in this country; and it is gratifying to find so enthusiastic a student of the subject as Professor Paine turning to account the materials for its study which our collections supply. His interesting paper will appear in the next number of the Journal, soon to be issued. At the same meeting, the Rev. Selah Merrill presented a short, but carefully prepared essay on "The Condition of Woman in Assyria," as illustrated by the cuneiform inscriptions. Dr. A. O. Treat, of the North China Mission, exhibited and described a curious praying-machine in use among the Mongols, which enables the devotee to offer prayers with great velocity, by a manual operation, while walking, riding, talking, or smoking. At the meeting in November 1875, perhaps the most interesting communication was from the Rev. S. I. J. Schereschewsky, of Peking, on "The Versions of the Scriptures in the Chinese Language," with remarks on a proposed Mongolian version on which he is himself engaged. There were also papers by Prof. Avery and Prof. Whitney, of special interest to Sanskrit scholars. At the meeting in May 1876, Prof. Paine presented a communication on "the Holy Houses, or the Hebrew Tabernacle, the Temple of Solomon, and the Later Temple," giving some of the results of the studies of this subject which have occupied him for many years. These results will be embodied in a new, greatly enlarged, and improved edition of his work on "Solomon's Temple," etc., originally published in 1861. Prof. Whitney read a paper on "The Classification of the Forms of the Sanskrit Aorist," and another on “ Ζεύ = dyaùs, and other Points relating to Sanskrit Grammar as presented in M. Müller's Recent Volume of Chips."" We แ 1 American Oriental Society. Proceedings, May and Nov. 1875, and May 1876. New Haven. 8vo. pp. xxiv. would call special attention to this latter paper, as in it Prof. Whitney takes up in detail the four points belonging to Sanskrit grammar on which Prof. Müller, expressly or by implication, charges him with gross ignorance or carelessness. The prestige of Müller's name is such that many will assume that in a matter of this kind accusation by him is conviction. One, however, who has carefully followed this controversy, or other controversies in which Prof. Müller has been engaged, cannot have failed to observe that, through haste or carelessness, combined perhaps with some constitutional infirmity, he often gives a representation of the facts of a case which is far from being justified by the facts themselves. In the present instance 1 As a recent instance of a striking character one may take a mysterious allusion thrown out by Müller in the German translation of volume four of his Chips ("Essays," p. 337). Speaking of his proposal to submit the differences between himself and Professor Whitney to a tribunal of arbitration (Schiedsgericht), he says: "A similar procedure, as Mr. Whitney may perhaps know, not long ago had the best result; and it is only from personal considerations that I have made no use of the permission given me to make public the verdict of the three umpires (Schiedsrichter)." This statement seemed so adapted to give a very false impression, even to the few who knew something of the affair referred to, that the editor of the Literarisches Centralblatt, Professor Zarncke of Leipzig, felt compelled to come forward (in the Lit. Centralblatt for Jan. 1, 1877, col. 31) and explain the matter. It appears that Müller, feeling aggrieved by a criticism on his Rig-Veda by Professor Weber of Berlin (Lit. Centralblatt for Nov. 1, 1873), sent to the same journal a reply so violent that Zarncke was unwilling to publish it (particularly as it would have to be followed by a not less violent rejoinder from Weber), and strongly urged its withdrawal. In accordance with the wishes of Messrs. Müller and Weber, and with the ready consent of Zarncke, the reply and rejoinder were shown to three cminent scholars. But before any word of answer came back from either of them, Müller yielded to Zarncke's request, and consented to take back the occasion of the trouble. Upon this, Zarncke had only to seal up and lay away all the documents relating to the affair. The three scholars consulted had never conferred with one another; what they said, whether orally or in writing, was, as Zarncke remarks, intended for him alone, and was mainly of the most confidential nature; no eye but his, as he expressly declares, has ever seen a word that they wrote. Zarncke concludes his exposition thus: "If, then, the above-cited words of Müller admit of being interpreted by the uninitiated as signifying that an actual tribunal had been set up to judge the difference between him and A. Weber, that it had rendered a verdict in any form whatever relating to the substance of the matter involved or indeed any verdict at all—and that, above all, permission had been given to M. Müller to publish such a verdict, the preceding exposition will show how erroneous such an interpretation would be. On the other hand, I never concealed the fact either from A. Weber or M. Müller (nor required them to keep it private), that those gentlemen certainly seemed to agree in one point, namely, in disapproving of my course, and in blaming me for having accepted without alteration that review, the bearing of which was, in fact, offensive. If Prof. Whitney shows clearly-if one who is no Sanskrit scholar may venture to judge that the charges referred to, so far as they are of the slightest importance, rest on nothing better than misconceptions or erroneous statements on Muller's part. As the publications of the American Oriental Society are probably seen by few of our readers, while the charges of Prof. Müller have the wide circulation of his popular works, it seems but a matter of justice to so distinguished a representative of the best American scholarship as Prof. Whitney to indicate the substance of his reply. The first point noticed relates to two Sanskrit words in the Atharva-VedaPrâtiçâkhya (i. 33), which admit equally well of being read in two ways. Prof. Whitney had read them in one way (Journ. Amer. Or. Soc. vii. 361), overlooking the fact that another reading and rendering was possible. Müller, in a note in his Sanskrit Grammar (§ 57), suggested the other reading as the right one, which Prof. Whitney in a later note on the passage (Journ. Amer. Or. Soc. x. 158) adopted, giving the credit of the correction to Müller. Here it might be thought the account was closed; but Müller, taking the matter up again (Chips, iv. 519), and representing it as one of "the principal bones of contention" between himself and Prof. Whitney (Chips, iv. 528, 530), sends the latter, as if he were a a school-boy, to a very simple rule" in his Sanskrit Grammar, and tells him that "before criticizing Sanskrit grammars, it would be useful to learn at least the phonetic rules." Now, the fact is that the rule which Müller cites with such parade has absolutely nothing to do with the case in hand; and that, instead of proving Prof. Whitney's ignorance, he has given a signal illustration of his own carelessness. It is only in keeping that on the same page Müller ascribes to Prof. Whitney a statement respecting the Prâtiçâkhyas precisely the opposite of that which he has really made, and then undertakes to correct him. 66 As to the second point (Chips, iv. 490), Prof. Whitney is misrepresented -an essential part of the sentence quoted being omitted; and his criti one chooses metaphorically to call these expressions of opinion, given without concert, a verdict, he may do so; but then it must not be forgotten that the point of it was directed against me, and that it had not the remotest reference to the substance (das Materielle) of Weber's review."-For a few out of many similar contrasts between the facts of a case and Müller's representation of them, one may compare p. 432 of Vol. iv. of the Chips (American ed.) with the re*traction to which he was compelled, p. 505; or what he says p. 517 (comp. p. 505) about "the whining and whimpering assurance made by the American professor that he never in his life said anything personal or offensive" with what Prof. Whitney actually said (Contemp. Rev. xxv. 729); or the extraordinary misrepresentation in Chips, iv. pp. 478, 479; or his contradictory and very inaccurate accounts of the matter referred to on pp. 510-514, with the Zur Klarstellung of Weber in the Indische Studien, xiv 409. cism of Müller's translation of a passage of the Rig-Veda is not answered, but evaded, as any one will see who compares his Oriental and Linguistic Studies, i. 136-138, with Müller's Chips, iv. 490 f. He did not charge Müller, as is represented, with "a real grammatical blunder"; still less has he been guilty of one himself. In the criticism referred to, he is complaining of the want of proportion in Müller's notes; that, although professing to give "a full account of the reasons which justify the translator in assigning such a power to such a word, and such a meaning to such a sentence," he occupies excessive space with comparatively unimportant matters, while leaving the most serious difficulties unnoticed. Thus, in the first verse of the first hymn in his translation he gives a rendering exposed to strong and apparently fatal objections, pointed out by Prof. Whitney, on the ground of the resulting want of sense or gross incongruity, and which also involves a construction that he himself speaks of (in the Chips) as "anomalous" and "ungrammatical." Here Prof. Whitney had observed that he offers not a word of justification for taking as a nominative plural a form (tasthúshas) which should normally be either an accusative plural or a genitive or ablative singular, while he indulges in a note of more than eleven pages on the adjective in the same line translated "red." Müller now cites one passage from the Rig-Veda where a like anomalous form (as he thinks) occurs, refers to Kern for some examples which he regards as similar in the Epic literature, and, instead of meeting Prof. Whitney's objections to the meaning given to the sentence, accuses him of betraying such "ignorance of Sanskrit grammar" as would have led a scholar in former times, "after such a misfortune," "to take a vow of silence or go into a monastery"; because, forsooth, he had called that "an extremely violent and improbable grammatical process" which Müller himself describes as "anomalous" and "ungrammatical"! Müller further excuses himself for not remarking on this grammatical anomaly, because Benfey has been for years preparing a grammar of the Vedic dialect" (not even yet published, while Müller's translation appeared in 1869), and he "purposely left the grammatical questions to him"! But what if Benfey should take a different view of this case? And he had taken a different view of it; for he translates (Orient u. Occident, 1862, i. 13) die wandelt UM DIE STEHENDEN, understanding the form in question as an accusative plural. So Grassmann, takes it in his Wörterbuch zum Rig-Veda (Leipz. 1873), col. 1602. Ludwig, in his recent translation of the Rig-Veda (Prag, 1876), ii. 6, makes it ablative singular,―den vOM FESTSTEHNDEN hinweg wandelden,- agreeing with Prof. Whitney's view of the passage. As to the third point, Prof. Whitney (Or. and Ling. Studies, i. 266) had criticized certain long Sanskrit compounds used by Müller in a series of synonymes for "surd" and "sonant" as being "of his own making," and "to be found in no Sanskrit grammarian." If this was intended, or . |