Charles Rockwell Lanman

“ This great seven-volumed quarto, whose steady progress through the press took some three and twenty years, is the Sanskrit Stephanus. Americans may well be proud of the fact that to Whitney belongs the distinguished honor of being one of the four "faithful collaborators" who, next to the authors, Boehtlingk and Roth, contributed most to this monumental work.
Of all his technical works, his "Sanskrit Grammar," with its elaborate supplement, "The Roots, Verb-forms, and Primary Derivatives of the Sanskrit Language," forms the crowning achievement. ”

“ He loses everything, even his kingdom, by gambling, and wanders, hungry and half naked, in the forest. He is transformed into a dwarf, and becomes charioteer of Rituparna, king of Oudh. Damayantī, at her father’s in Kundina, is led by certain tidings to suspect that Nala is at Oudh. By way of stratagem, she holds out hopes of her hand to Rituparna, if he will drive from Oudh to Kundina, some five hundred miles, in a single day, knowing well that only Nala’s skill in horsemanship (see 14) is equal to this task. Rituparna gets Nala to drive him thither through the air. ”

“ They mean that, even at this early age, Whitney showed the stuff which distinguishes the genuine man of science from the jobbers and pedlers of learning. They mean that, with him, the gift of independent and accurate observation was inborn, and that the habit of unprejudiced reflection upon what he himself saw was easily acquired. ”

“ Yudhishthira’s exploits aroused the ill-will of his cousins, and, to escape their plots, the Pāndu princes went away to the king of Panchāla, whose daughter, Draupadī, became their common wife. In view of this strong alliance with the Panchālas, Dhritarāshtra thought it best to conciliate the Pāndus. So he divided the kingdom, and gave Hastinā-pura to his sons, and to his nephews a district to the south-west, where they built Indra-prastha, the modern Delhi. Here the Pāndavas and their people lived happily under king Yudhishthira. ”

“ Salisbury, in May, 1850, that he was elected a member of the American Oriental Society. Mr. Salisbury was the life and soul of the Society, and, thanks to his learning, his energy, and his munificence, the organization had already attained to "standing and credit in the world of scholars." Like him, Mr. Whitney was a steadfast believer in the obligation of which the very existence of these assembled societies is an acknowledgment,—the obligation of professional men to help in "co-operative action in behalf of literary and scientific progress;" ”

“ Breadth and thoroughness are ever at war with each other in men, for that men are finite. The gift of both in large measure and at once,—this marks the man of genius. That the gift was Whitney's is clear to any one who considers the versatility of his mind, the variousness of his work, and the quality of his results. As professor of Sanskrit, technical work in grammar, lexicography, text-criticism, and the like, lay nearest to him ”

“ Dhritarāshtra, the elder, was blind, and so Pāndu became king, and had a glorious reign. He had five sons, chief of whom were Yudhishthira, Bhīma, and Arjuna. They are called Pāndavas, and are the types of honor and heroism. Dhritarāshtra’s hundred sons, Duryodhana and the rest, are usually called the Kuru princes, and are represented as in every way bad. After Pandu’s death, his sons are brought up with their cousins. The kingdom devolved on Dhritarāshtra, who in turn made his nephew Yudhishthira the heir apparent. ”

“ The men have come, and some, alas! are already gone, of whose achievements we may well be proud wherever we are. In the battles for the conquests of truth there are no distinctions of race. It needs no international congress to tell us that we belong to one great army. But to-night—as the very titles of these gathered societies show—Science has marshalled us, her fifties and her hundreds, as Americans. ”

“ The Story of Nala and Damayantī.
§1. The trend of Aryan migration in India has been from the extreme north. west to the south-east, across the region drained by the Indus and its affluents, and called the Panjāb or Land of the Five Rivers; and again south-east, down the valleys of the Jumna and Ganges. One prominent group of Aryan immigrant tribes was that of the Kosalas, Videhas, and Magadhas, who settled in the lower valley of the Ganges, east of its confluence with the Jumna, in the districts now named Oudh and Behar, the Palestine of Buddhism. ”

“ The prospect of losing such a man was matter of gravest concernment to all Yale College, and in particular to her faithful benefactor, Professor Salisbury. Within a week the latter had provided for the endowment of Mr. Whitney's chair upon the ampler scale made necessary by the change of the times; and the considerations which made against the transplanting of the deeply rooted tree had, unhappily for Harvard, their chance to prevail, and Whitney remained at New Haven. ”

“ Yudhishthira was challenged to play with Duryodhana, and accepted. The dice were thrown for Duryodhana by his uncle Çakuni. Yudhishthira loses everything — wealth, kingdom, brothers, wife. A compromise, however, is made, by which the Pāndavas give up their part of the kingdom for twelve years, and agree to remain incognito for a thirteenth. With Draupadī, they retire to the Kāmyaka forest, on the Saraswatī.
§7. For twelve years the Pāndu princes dwell in the wood. Many legends are told to divert and console them in their exile ”

“ It is fitting, then, that we pause, not merely to praise the departed, but also to consider the significance of a noble life, and the duties and responsibilities which so great an example urges upon us,—in short, the lesson of a life of service. ”

“ The kings express their sorrow, and the gods their delight. The gods give Nala the magic power of having fire and water whenever he wishes, and a wonderful skill in cookery. The wedding-feast is celebrated. Nala returns to Nishadha with his bride. They live happily, and have a son and daughter.—Here the extract in the Reader ends. ”

“ As for the joint edition of the Atharva-Veda, it is a most noteworthy fact that it has held its own now for thirty-eight years as an unsurpassed model of what a Vedic text-edition ought to be. His "Index Verborum to the Atharva-Veda," a work of wonderful completeness and accuracy, is much more than its name implies, and may not pass without brief mention, inasmuch as its material formed the basis of his contributions to the Sanskrit-German lexicon published by the Imperial Academy of Russia. ”

“ In 1857, the most onerous office of the Society, that of Corresponding Secretary, which from the beginning carried with it the duty of editing the publications, was devolved upon him; and he bore its burdens for twenty-seven years. Add to this eighteen years as Librarian and six as President, and we have an aggregate of fifty-one years of official service. The American Philological Association, too, is under deep obligation to Whitney. ”

“ Nala receives as reward perfect skill in dicing. His wife recognizes him by his magical command of fire and water, and by his cooking. He resumes his true form, plays again, and wins back all he had lost, and lives happy ever after. [1]
§17. When Brihadagwa had finished the story of Nala, Yudhishthira, pleased, asked him for perfect skill in dicing ”

“ Lines 11-13 belong together: 'Neither among gods nor Yakshas (sc. was) such a beauty seen before or heard of, nor also among other beings, (namely) mortals': bālā is added in apposition to the subject. ”

“ Physical courage, too, abounded, often with a daring impulse to meet bodily risk and danger, as when he climbed the so-called Look-off Pine, about one hundred and thirty feet high, a monarch overtopping the primeval forests of the Ontonagon River, and broke off its top as a trophy ”

“ Damayantī refuses to listen to the arguments in favor of the gods. She desires that the swayamvara be held in the usual form, and that the gods be present, and informs Nala that she intends to show openly her preference for him. All this Nala reports to the gods.
§ 15. Chap. 5. The gods and kings assemble. The four chief gods assume the appearance of Nala. Unable to distinguish the real Nala, the princess, distressed, prays to the gods, and they, in answer, resume their proper forms and peculiar attributes (see 1412N.) . Thereupon she chooses Nala. ”

“ Salisbury's judgment upon them illuminates his own character no less than that of his pupils wlien he says, "Their quickness of perception and unerring exactness of acquisition soon made it evident that the teacher and the taught must change places."
We have come to the transition period of Whitney's life. He is still a pupil, but already also an incipient master. "1850, Sept. 20. Sailed for Germany in the steamer Washington. Spent three winters in Berlin, studying especially with Dr. Weber, and two summers in Tübingen, Würtemberg, with Professor Roth." Thus runs the entry in the Fact-book. ”

“ On the Sind is Narwār; and local tradition connects this place with “King Nala” in a story whose leading features bear a striking resemblance to those of our poem. Finally, Nala is said, chap.xv., to have reached Oudh on the tenth day after quitting Damayantī, and this time suits the distance—some two hundred miles—very well. 8a. akṣapriyaḥ, u.f. akṣapriyas, 172: for ks, cf. Whitney 13 end. satyavādi, nom.s., 440. akṣapriya may mean, 1. 'dice-beloved, lucky at gaming,' or, 2. dice-loving, friend of dice, fond of gaming': on the whole, mg 2 is perhaps to be preferred. ”

“ Few places in this land have produced a proportionately greater number of distinguished people than has Northampton. Social advantages were thus added to those of birth, and to all these in turn the advantages of dwelling in a region of great natural beauty. ”

“ He labored, and other men shall enter into his labors. But it is this "faith, the assurance of things hoped for,"—πίστις ἐλπιζομένων ὑπόστασις,—which is one of the most vital attributes of the true scholar. ”

“ Lit. 'Now, her marriageable age having come, of slaves an adorned hundred, and a hundred of friends sat around her (tām) , as (they do) around Çacī.'
8. rājate, √rāj, 735. —sarva‿ābharaņa-bhūṣitā, 'adorned with all (her) jewels,' a dependent cpd (1265) , whose first member, sarvābharaņa, is itself a cpd, like sarvaguņa, see 112 N.
9. sakhī-madhye, see madhya 1. —ana-vadyāñgī, initial elided, 135: the cpd is the possessive form of a descriptive, 1297-8. —vidyut, 391. The Hindu epos often likens maiden beauty to the brilliantly flashing lightning of the rain-cloud. ”