person as No. 12 in the former or No. 19 in the latter. For the name of the individual and of the father is the same in both cases. There is only the prefix svámi, "lord," in the former, which makes no difference, and the date 192 in the one case and 197 in the other. The final date of the Sâhs therefore is that of No. 17 (p. 28, vol. vii. B.B.R.A.S.), which is 250, for the figure resembling the letter sa stands really for 50, as I have shown in my paper1 on the Valabhî dates. This date in the era of the Saka kings is 328. About that time then, i.e, about nine years after his accession, the Sâhs must have been conquered by Gautamiputra. If, on the contrary, we should take the era to be Vikrama's, Nahapâna's date would be about 60 B.C., i.e. he reigned 62 years before Krishnarâja; which, it will be seen, does not agree with the evidence of the caves, the Sâtavâhana dynasty having been in possession of Nâsik in A.D. 2. In the same manner, the final date, which, according to Mr. Newton and Mr. Fergusson, is 235 A.D. on the hypothesis that the era is Vikrama's, but which really should be 196 A.D. in conformity with my reading of the dates, is so remote from Gautamiputra's 319 A.D., that he can in no sense be said to have exterminated the " race of Khagârâta." The Vikrama era will therefore not do. The objection brought by Mr. Fergusson against the Saka is that if the dates were referred to it, the Sâhs would overlap the Guptas by a considerable period. But this period has now been reduced to about ten years, the Guptas being supposed to have come into power in 319 A.d. And a difference of ten years in the uncertain condition of our chronology is almost nothing. Besides, there is nothing to show that the Guptas obtained possession of the countries over which the Sâhs ruled in 319, or immediately after. Thus the date 319-340 A.D. for Gautamiputra, and the Saka era for the Sâh dates, alone appear to be consistent with what we find in the cave inscriptions about that monarch and the Sâtavâhana dynasty. The dates in Ushavadâta's inscriptions therefore, viz. 42, 41, and 40, would be 120, 119, and 118 A.D. respectively.

The other inscriptions show that in the early centuries of the Christian era Buddhism was flourishing in this part of India. Mendicant priests from all quarters assembled at Trirasmi during the rains, and held what is called their vass; and laymen made presents to

1 B.B.R.A.S. vol. x. p. 72.

them, especially of garments, during the robing month. For this purpose it was usual for persons who possessed the means, to deposit sums of money out of the interest of which the garments were given. The followers of Buddhism appear to have belonged principally to the artisan and labouring classes. Brahmanism was not in a condition of decline. Ushavadâta made as many presents to Brahmans as to the Buddhists; and in these Buddhistic cave inscriptions they are spoken of with reverence. Gautamiputra also takes pride in calling himself the protector of Brahmans, and credit is given to him for averting the confusion of castes, i.e. destroying the effects of foreign inroads on Brahmanism and the system of castes and re-establishing them.

Inscription No. 15 is dated in the ninth year of a king named Virasensa, who is called an Abhira or cowherd. The Purâņas place a dynasty of that name after the Ândhrabhṛityas, and it was one of the many that ruled over the country, contemporaneously it would appear. They must have come into power after 416 a.d., and, according to the Vâyu Purâņa, ruled for 67 years. The Abhiras do not seem to have been very powerful kings, and possessed only this part of the country. The traditions about a Gauli rajya current in the Nâsik and Khândes districts not unlikely refer to them.

THE ETHNOLOGICAL SECTION.

ADDRESS

BY

PROFESSOR RICHARD OWEN, C.B., PRESIDENT.

WITH diffidence and misgiving I have yielded to the wish of our President, my esteemed friend and colleague, Dr. Birch, to undertake the honourable and responsible office of President of the Ethnological Section of the Congress of Orientalists, now assembled in London. These feelings naturally arise from consciousness of the slight relation of my habitual studies to the immediate objects of the present distinguished Assembly. Some results of ethnological observations in Egypt, submitted this year to the Anthropological Institute, and previous reports to the British Association, on lower, probably older, more Eastern races, form the narrow ground for a claim to be regarded as a fellow labourer in the work which so many more eminent ethnologists have here met together to promote. But if my help in your great aim be small, my grateful sense of the value of your consideration, and more especially of your teachings, is deep and genuine.

In presence of the distinguished founder of this Congress, Professor Léon de Rosny, I am at once reminded of the vast debt which physical ethnology owes to the bold yet true views originating in

French intellect and on French ground, whereby first was broken down the barrier that had arrested our estimate and conception of past time in connexion with the existence of the human race and the origin of its varieties. The name of Boucher de Perthes is wedded imperishably with this discovery; and that of the late estimable and indefatigable Ed. Lartet is closely associated therewith, through his confirmation and expansion of the insight of the philosopher of Abbeville into the true meaning of the geological and palæontological phenomena of his neighbourhood. Worthy successors have these great names found in living French ethnologists, of whom De Quatrefages and Paul Broca may be cited as types. To acknowledge the value of the labours, researches, genius of the philologists of Germany would be too hard for me were I to aim at adequacy. Ethnologists feel their indebtedness thereto at almost every doubtful point in the track of inquiry, more especially when it leads eastward. I am happy to believe that no country has more willingly discounted the German claims for such indebtedness than England, or has with more pleasure made a home welcome and acceptable to the distinguished linguistic philosophers who may honour another than the Fatherland, as a notable one has done this island, in choosing it for a continuous residence and field of research and instruction. But there is a mighty Empire to the east of Germany, whose services to ethnological science are perhaps less known and appreciated in England. Every conquest in the heart of Asia by Russian valour, endurance, and military skill has also borne its scientific fruit, has been attended by the peaceful victories of ethnology; more especially as regards the linguistic evidences which lie at the foundation of the dark problems of beginnings and affinities of races. A vocabulary or grammar of some Finnish or other dialect speedily follows the track of the invading force. Some score of established varieties of speech budding out of Finnish roots have been the fruit of painstaking researches of a people in whom the faculty of easy acquisition of foreign languages seems innate. The philological works of a Castrèn, Sjögren, Scheffren, Wiedemann, Middendorf, crown those names with honour; their contributions enrich almost each successive volume of the Transactions of the Imperial Academy of Sciences of Petersburg-a mine of wealth which amply rewards the exploration of the ethnological student. One wishes that such a scientific staff

could have followed the track of our victorious troops in Abyssinia and Ashantee, and the example of Russia we may hope to be followed in future manifestations of the power of Great Britain among remote, primitive, and little known races of mankind. That example has been followed-rather, I should say, anticipated-by distinguished scholars, warriors, administrators in our great Indian Empire. The contributions to ethnology which enrich the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society amply attest the sympathy of the rulers of India with the aims of science. The like testimony will be found in the valuable and original memoirs published by cognate associations in the capital cities of India. To the present centralized administration of India, ethnology is indebted for the issue of descriptions and photographs of the various races, castes and outcasts, traders, labourers, soldiers, outlaws, etc., natives of the vast territories of that mighty conquest. It is known to ethnologists, and partly explicable by the physiologist, that the portrait artist cannot perfectly succeed with the face of a race different from his own race. In the most finished and costly illustrations of voyages and travels by European experts, with aid from Governments, the portraits of aborigines proclaim almost as well as the title-page the nation of the artist. A Papuan, e.g., will have a French, German, or English cast of physiognomy, according as he has sat to a limner of one or other country. Formerly honoured by conversing on this matter with the Prince Consort, His Royal Highness was pleased to show me a collection of ethnological photographs, which, at his instance, and for that reason, had been made for him by officers capable of practising the wonderful art in remote lands. A like encouragement has been held out to the accomplished officers of the Indian Service, and already the result rises to five 4to. volumes (1872) on The People of India, edited by J. Forbes Watson, M.D., and John William Kay, K.C.S.I., F.R.S., with instructive notices of the subjects of the photographs. This great work and priceless contribution to Eastern ethnology has been brought out in its present elegant form at the India Office, under the auspices of the late Minister for India, his Grace the Duke of Argyll, with whose name may be associated, as a recipient of the acknowledgments of ethnologists, that of the late Secretary for India, my colleague in this Congress, and esteemed friend, the President of the Archæological Section.