Bhagavad-Gítá or the sacred lay ; a colloquy between Krishna and Arjuna on divine matters : an episode from the Mahabharata

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to a wonderful extent. Of these, four are in the Bibhothéque Impériale at Paris, all in the Devanagari character ; seven in the Library of the East India House; one in the British Museum ; while another was presented by Colebrooke to Schlegel, and is now, I believe, in the Royal Library at Berlm. Not only is the likeness between these very striking, but it is even further extended to those MSS. which the Brahman Babiiraéma employed for his edition of Calcutta, and those from which Wilkins and Galanos made their translations at Benares.* Wherever the MSS. differ, Schlegel and Lassen have made and defended a discreet choice, and in almost all cases I am content to follow m

their footmarks.

The following are the principal points of difference between the Bonn Edition, the various MSS., and the other Editions :—

1. Most of the MSS., and the Calcutta Edition, have a long prelude, consisting of an incantation formed of verses from the poem itself (descriptive of spirit), and of a dhydna, or pious meditation, of much later date. These are very properly omitted,

* For an account of the native commentaries, of which the principal belong to the fourteenth century, and for further particulars as regards the MSS., we must refer the

curious to the able and lengthy prefaces of Schlegel and Lassen to the Bonn Edition of 1846.