The History of British India, Vol. II, by James Mill

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Part 1 of 6

Notes:

1. “The buildings are all base of mud, one story high, except in Surat, where there are some of stone. The Emperor’s own houses are of stone, handsome and uniform. The great men build not, for want of inheritance; but, as far as I have yet seen, live in tents, or houses worse than our cottages.” Sir T. Roe’s Letter to the Archbishop of Canterbury, Churchill, i. 803.
2. It is curious to observe how Plato traces this progress. He is endeavouring to account for the origin of society. Ιθι ὸη (η ν ὁεγω) τψ λογψ εξ αρΧης ποιωμεν πολιν’ ποιησει δ’αντην, ὡς εοικεν, ἡ ἡμετερα Χρεια. Πιως [Editor: illegible character]ἶ λλλα μ[Editor: illegible character]ν πρωιη γε κμ μεγιςη τωι χρειων, ὴ της τροφης πα ρασκευη, ὶευτερα ὶη οικησεως, τριτη εσθητος και των τοι[Editor: illegible character]των. Εςι ταντα. ζερε ὶη(ην ὶ’ εγω) πως ή πολις αρκε σει επι τοσαυ την παρασκευην; αλλοτι, γεωργος μεν ἑις ὁ ἶε οικο ῖεομος αλλος δε τις ὺφαντης. Plat. de Repub, lib. ii. p. 599.
3. Robertson’s Histor. Disquis. concerning India, p. 225.
4. Orme’s Hist, of Milit. Transac. of Indostan, i. 178.
5. The cave of Elephanta is not the only subterranean temple of the Hindus, exhibiting on a large scale the effects of human labour. In the isle of Salsette, in the same vicinity, is a pagoda of a similar kind, and but little inferior to it in any remarkable circumstance. The pagodas of Ellore, about eighteen miles from Aurungabad, are not of the size of those of Elephanta and Salsette, but they surprise by their number, and by the idea of the labour which they cost. See a minute description of them by Anquetil Duperron, Zendavesta, Disc. Prelim. p. ccxxxiii. The seven pagodas, as they are called at Mavalepuram, near Sadras, on the Coromandel coast, is another work of the same description; and several others might be mentioned. Dr. Tennant, who has risen higher above travellers’ prejudices in regard to the Hindus, than most of his countrymen, says, “Their caves in Elephanta and Salsette are standing monuments of the original gloomy state of their superstition, and the imperfection of their arts, particularly that of architecture.” Indian Recreations, i. 6. The extraordinary cavern, the temple of Pusa, near Chas-chou-fou, in China, which was visited by lord Macartney, and full of living priests, vies in wonderful circumstances with the cave of Elephanta. See Barrow’s Life of Lord Macartney, Journal, ii. 374. “However these gigantic statues, and others of similar form, in the caves of Elora and Salsette may astonish a common observer, the man of taste looks in vain for proportion of form, and expression of countenance.” Forbes’ Oriental Memoirs, i. 423. “I must not omit the striking resemblance between these excavations (Elephanta, &c.) and the sculptured grottos in Egypt,” &c. “I have often been struck with the idea that there may be some affinity between the written mountains in Arabia, and the excavated mountains in Hindustan.” Ibid. i. 448, 449. It is difficult to say how much of the wonderful in these excavations may be the mere work of nature: “Left Sullo, and travelled through a country beautiful beyond imagination, with all possible diversities of rock; sometimes towering up like ruined castles, spires, pyramids, &c. We passed one place so like a ruined Gothic abbey, that we halted a little, before we could satisfy ourselves that the niches, windows, ruined staircaise, &c. were all natural rock. A faithful description of this place would certainly be deemed a fiction.” Mungo Park’s last Mission to Africa, p. 75. “Between the city of Canton, and first pagoda, on the bank of the river, is a series,” says Mr. Barrow, “of stone quarries, which appear not to have been worked for many years. The regular and formal manner in which the stones have been cut away; exhibiting lengthened streets of houses with quadrangular chambers, in the sides of which are square holes at equal distances, as if intended for the reception of beams; the smoothness and perfect perpendicularity of the sides, and the number of detached pillars that are scattered over the plain, would justify a similar mistake to that of Mr. Addison’s doctor of one of the German universities, whom he found at Chateau d’Un in France, carefully measuring the free-stone quarries at that place, which he conceived to be the venerable remains of vast subterranean palaces of great antiquity.” Barrow’s Travels in China, p. 599. The conclusions of many of our countrymen in Hindustan will bear comparison with that of the German doctor in France. It is not a bad idea of Forster, the German commentator upon the travels of P. Paulini, that the forming caverns into temples must naturally have been the practice when men as yet had their principal abodes in caverns. Voyage aux Indes Orien. par le P. Paulini, iii. 115. Volney says, “Those labyrinths, temples, and pyramids, by their huge and heavy structure, attest much less the genius of a nation, opulent and friendly to the arts, than the servitude of a people, who were slaves to the caprice of their monarch.” Travels in Egypt, &c. i. 282.
6. Clavigero, Hist. of Mexico, book vi sect. 10.
7. Ibid. book vii. sect. 26.
8. Royal Commentaries of Peru, by the Inca Garcilasso de la Vega, book vii. ch. xxviii. Acosta likewise says, (see his Natural and Moral History of the Indies, book vi. ch. xiv.) that of these stones he measured one, at Tiagunaco, which was thirty-eight feet long, eighteen broad, and six in thickness; and that the stones in that building were not so large as those in the fortress at Cuzco. He adds, “And that which is most strange, these stones, being not cut, nor squared to join, but contrariwise, very unequal one with another in form and greatness, yet did they join them together without cement, after an incredible manner.” Acosta tells us, however, (Ibid.) that they were entirely unacquainted with the construction of arches. Humboldt, who could have no national partialities on the subject, is almost as lofty in his praises of the remains of the ancient architecture of the Mexicans and Peruvians. “An Mexique et au Perou,” says he, Tableaux de la Nature, i. 168, “on trouve partout dans les plaines elevées des moutagnes, des traces d’une grande civilization. Nous avons vu, à une hauteur de seize à dix-huit cent toises des ruines de palais et de bains.” The ruins which he saw of a palace of immense size, are mentioned at p. 158.
9. “Let us now speak,” says the President Goguet, Origin of Laws, part iii. book ii. ch. i. “of the bridge of Babylon, which the ancients have placed in the number of the most marvellous works of the East. It was near 100 fathoms in length, and almost four in breadth, &c..... While we do justice to the skill of the Babylonians, in conducting these works, we cannot help remarking the bad taste, which, at all times, reigned in the works of the eastern nations. The bridge of Babylon furnishes a striking instance of it. This edifice was absolutely without grace, or any air of majesty..... Finally, this bridge was not arched” The first chiefs in Iceland built no inconsiderable houses. Ingulph’s palace was 135 feet in length. Mallet. Introd. Hist. Denmark, vol. i. ch. xiii.
10. Herodot. Clio, 181. Major Rennel, who was obliged to trust to Mr. Beloe’s translation, was puzzled with the expression, “a tower of the solid depth and height of one stadium;” justly pronounces it incredible, and says, “Surely Herodotus wrote breadth and length, and not breadth and height,” (Geog. of Herodot. p. 359, 360,) which is precisely the fact, the words of Herodotus being και το μηχος και το ενρος The word ςερεος, too, here translated solid, as if the tower was a mere mass of brick-work, without any internal vacuity, by no means implies a fact so very improbable. Στερος means strong, firmly built, &c. This resemblance has been noticed by Humboldt (Essai Polit. sur la Nonv. Espagne,) p. 170, also that between the pyramids of Egypt, and the vast pyramids of which the remains are to be found in Mexico, p. 187. The palace of Montezuma bore a striking resemblance to that of the Emperor of China, p. 190.
11. Voyage de Sonuerat, liv. iii. ch. viii.
12. Buchanan’s Journey through Mysore, &c. ii. 70.
13. Id. Ib. i. 13. Sir James Mackintosh ingeniously remarks, that among the innumerable figures of men and monsters of all sorts exhibited at Elora, you perceive about one in ten thousand that has some faint rudiments of grace, those lucky hits, the offspring of chance, rather than design, which offord copies to a rude people, and enable them to make gradual improvements. “Rude nations,” (says Dr. Ferguson, Hist. of the Roman Republic, i. 18, ed. 8vo.) “sometimes execute works of great magnificence, for the purposes of superstition or war; but seldom works of mere convenience or cleanliness.” Yet the common sewers of Rome, the most magnificent that ever were constructed, are assigned to the age of the elder Tarquin. Polybius tells us, that the city of Ecbatana, in Media, which contained one of the palaces of the Persian kings, far excelled all other cities in the world, πγκτῳ και τ[Editor: illegible character] της θατασκενης πολυτελειΆ μεγα τι παρα τας αλλας δοκενηνοΧεναθ πολεις. With regard to the palace itself, he was afraid, he said, to describe its magnitude and magnificence, lest he should not be believed. It was seven stadia in circumference; and though all the wood employed in it was cedar or cypress, every part of it, pillars, cornices, beams, every thing was covered with plates of silver or gold, so that no where was a bit of wood visible; and it was roofed with silver tiles. Polyb. Hist. lib. x. 24.
14. Bryant’s Ancient Mythology, book v. p. 211. From p. 187 to 213, an ample and instructive collection will be found of instances to prove the passion of rude nations for erecting great buildings; and the degree of perfection in art which their works display. Priam’s palace, according to Homer, was a magnificent building. That remarkable structure, the labyrinth of Crete, was produced in a very early age. Mr. Ward assures us, “that of the Hindu temples none appear to be distinguished for the elegance of their architecture: they are not the work of a people sunk in barbarism; neither will they bear any comparison with the temples of the Greeks and Romans.” He adds, “We learn from the Ain Akb✓ree, however, that the entire revenues of Orissa, for twelve years, were expended in erecting a temple to the sun.” Introd. p. ix.
15. Knox’s Hist. of Ceylon, London, 1681.
16. See above, p. 3, 4. “Their knowledge of mechanical powers,” says Mr. Orme, “is so very confined, that we are left to admire, without being able to account for, the manner in which they have erected their capital pagodas. It does not appear that they had ever made a bridge of arches over any of their rivers, before the Mahomedans came amongst them.” Hist. of Mil. Trans. of Indostan, i. 7.
17. Buchanan’s Journey through Mysore, &c. i. 61.
18. Goguet, Origin of Laws, part iii. book ii. ch. i. He says, “it even appears to me demonstrated, that the Egyptians had not much more knowledge of architecture, of sculpture, and of the fine arts in general, than the Peruvians and Mexicans. For example, neither the one nor the other knew the secret of building vaults. What remains of foundery or sculpture, is equally clumsy and incorrect. I think this observation absolutely essential.” Origin of Laws, part iii. dissert. iii. Clavigero, however, asserts that the Mexicans did know the art of constructing arches and vaults, as appears, he says, from their baths, from the remains of the royal palaces of Tezcuco, and other buildings, and also from several paintings. Hist. Mex. book vii. sect. 53.
19. Chardin, Voy. en Perse, iii. 116. ed. 4to. Amsterd. 1735. On est frappé [à Ispahan] de l’elegante architecture des ponts; l’Europe n’offre rien qui leur soit comparable pour la commodité des gens de pied, pour la facilité de leur passage, pour les faire jouir sans trouble, le jour, de la vue de la riviere et de ses environs, et, le soir, de la fraicheur de l’air, Olivier, Voyage, &c. v. 180. La sculpture est nulle en Perse. . . . . . . . Mais l’architecture, plus simple, plus elegante, mieux ordonnée que chez les Turcs, est tout-a-fait adaptée au climat. Les plafonds et les domes sont d’une recherche, d’un fini, d’un precieux, d’une richesse qui etonne. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Les Persans ont poussé fort loin l’art de faire les voῦtes. . . . . Les toits de leurs maisons sont voῦtés, leur planchers le sont aussi. Ib. v. 298, 299. The skill in architecture of the Turks, a very rude people, is well known. “Perhaps I am in the wrong, but some Turkish mosques in Constantinople please me better than St. Sophia. — That of Validé Sultan is the largest of all, built entirely of marble; the most prodigious, and I think the most beautiful structure I ever saw. Between friends, St. Paul’s Church would make a pitiful figure near it.” Letters of Lady Mary Wortley Montague, Works, ii. 249, 250.
20. “No art in Hindustan is carried to the same degree of perfection as in Europe, except some articles in which the cheapness of labour gives them an advantage, as in the case of the fine muslins at Dacca.” Tennant’s Indian Recreations, i. 104. The people are in a state of gross rudeness, Buchanan informs us, “in every part of Bengal, where arts have not been introduced by foreigners; the only one that has been carried to tolerable perfection is that of weaving.” Journey through Mysore, &c. ii. 285.
21. Mr. Park tells us that the art of spinning, weaving, and dyein cotton, are familiar to the Africans. Travels, p. 17.
22. “A people,” says Mr. Orme, “born under a sun too sultry to admit the exercises and fatigues necessary to form a robust nation, will naturally, from the weakness of their bodies, (especially if they have few wants) endeavour to obtain their scanty livelihood by the easiest labours. It is from hence, perhaps, that the manufactures of cloth are so multiplied in Indostan. Spinning and weaving are the slightest tasks which a man can be set to, and the numbers that do nothing else in this country are exceeding.” He adds; “The hand of an Indian cookwench shall be more delicate than that of an European beauty; the skin and features of a porter shall be softer than those of a professed petit-maitre. The women wind off the raw silk from the pod of the worm. A single pod of raw silk is divided into twenty different degrees of fineness; and so exquisite is the feeling of these women, that whilst the thread is running through their fingers so swiftly, that their eye can be of no assistance, they will break it off exactly as the assortments change, at once from the first to the twentieth, from the nineteenth to the second. The women likewise spin the thread designed for the cloths, and then deliver it up to the men, who have fingers to model it as exquisitely as these have prepared it.” Orme, on the Gov. and People of Indostan, p. 409 to 413.
23. Clavigero, Hist. of Mexico, book vii. sect. 57.
24. See Gibbon (Hist. of the Decl. and Fall of the Rom. Emp. iv. 364), who says, “Yet it must be presumed, that they (the carpets and garments) were the manufactures of the provinces; which the barbarians had acquired as the spoils of war; or as the gifts or merchandise of peace.” But had they been the manufactures of the provinces, the Romans must have known them familiarly for what they were; and could never have been so much surprised with their own manufactures, transferred by plunder, gift, or sale to the barbarians, (of none of which operations, had they existed, could they have been altogether ignorant) as to make their historians think it necessary to place a minute description of them in their works.
25. Goguet, Origin of Laws, part iii. book vi. ch. i. art. 2. That diligent and judicious writer says, “Of all the arts of which we have to speak in this second part, there are none which appear to have been more or better cultivated than those which concern clothing. We see taste and magnificence shine equally in the description Moses gives of the habits of the high priest and the vails of the tabernacle. The tissue of all these works was of linen, goat’s hair, wool, and byssus. The richest colours, gold, embroidery, and precious stones, united to embellish it.” Ib. part ii. book ii. ch. ii. The following lofty description of the tissues of Babylon, by Dr. Gillies, (see the description of Babylon, in his History of the World) is not surpassed by the most strained panegyrics upon the weaving of the Hindus. “During the latter part of Nebuchadnezzer’s reign, and the twenty-six years that intervened between his death and the conquest of his capital by Cyrus, Babylon appears not only to have been the seat of an imperial court, and station for a vast garrison, but the staple of the greatest commerce that perhaps was ever carried on by one city. Its precious manufactures under its hereditary sacerdotal government remounted, as we have seen, to immemorial antiquity. The Babylonians continued thenceforward to be clothed with the produce of their own industry. Their bodies were covered with fine linen, descending to their feet: their mitras or turbans were also of linen, plaited with much art; they wore woollen tunicks, above which a short white cloak repelled the rays of the sun. Their houses were solid, lofty, and separated, from a regard to health and safety, at due distances from each other: within them the floors glowed with double and triple carpets of the brightest colours; and the walls were adorned with those beautiful tissues called Sindones, whose fine, yet firm texture was employed as the fittest cloathing for eastern kings. The looms of Babylon, and of the neighbouring Borsippa, a town owing its prosperity to manufactures wholly, supplied to all countries round, the finest veils or hangings, and every article of dress or farniture composed of cotton, of linen, or of wool.”
26. Bryant’s Ancient Mythology, iii. 425. It was from this city the spider (Arachne) for its curious web, was said to have derived its name. The poet Nonnus thus celebrates its manufactures:
Και ηνρε ποιχιλα πεπλα, τα περ’ παρα Τιγιὁος
Νηματι λεπ ταλεψ τεχνησατο Περσις Αραχνη.

Again:

Νηρενς μεν ταδε δωρα πολντροπα δωχε δε χ[Editor: illegible character]ρν
Περσικος Ευφρη της πολν δαιδαλ[Editor: illegible character][Editor: illegible character]ιμαΤ’ Αραηνης.

Nonnus, lib. xviii. p. 326, Edit. 1569; et lib. xlii. p. 747. See the brilliant description which Chardin gives of the exquisite skill of the modern Persians in the art of weaving; of the extraordinary beauty and value of their gold velvets. They make not fine cottons, he says, only for this reason, that they can import them cheaper from India. Chardin, Voyages en Perse, iii. 119. Olivier says; “Ils excellent dans la fabrication des etoffes de soie pure, de soie et coton, de soie et or ou argent, de coton pur, de coton et laine. A Yesd, à Cachan, à Ispahan, on travaille avec autant de goῦt que de proprieté les brocards, les velours, les taffetas, les satins, et presque toutes les etoffes que nous connaissons. Olivier, Voyage, &c. v. 304, 305, 306.

27. Ovid. We learn from Plato, that, when any fine production of the loom among the Greeks was represented as of the most exquisite fineness and beauty, it was compared to those of the Persians; την ζωνυ τ[Editor: illegible character] χι θονισχ[Editor: illegible character] ειναι μεν ἁαια [Editor: illegible character]ιΠερσιχαι Των πολντελων. Hippias Min. 255.
28. Orme, on the Government and People of Indostan, p. 409, &c. Tennant’s Indian Recrentions, p. 301. “The apparatus of the weaver is very simple; two rollers placed in four pieces of wood fixed in the earth; two sticks which traverse the warp, and are supported at each of the extremities, one by two strings tied to the tree under which the loom is placed, and the other by two other strings tied to the workman’s feet, which gives him a facility of removing the threads of the warp to throw the woof.” Sonnerat, Voyag. liv. iii. ch. viii.
29. “Perhaps their painted cloths are more indebted to the brilliancy of the colours, and the goodness of the water, than any skill of the artist, for that admiration with which they have been viewed.” Tennant’s Indian Recreations, i. 299. Chardin, who tells us how admirable the Persians are in the art of dyeing, adds that their excellence in this respect is principally owing to the exquisiteness of their colouring matters. Voyages en Perse, iii. 116.
30. Goguet, Origin of Laws, part ii. book ii. ch. ii. art. 1.
31. Ibid. “The linen manufactured by the Colchians was in high repute Some of it was curiously painted with figures of animals and flowers; and afterwards dyed like the linen of the Indians. And Herodotus tells us, that the whole was so deeply tinctured, that no washing could efface the colours. They accordingly exported it to various marts, as it was every where greatly sought after.” Bryant’s Anc. Mythol. v. 109. Herodotus, however, represents the people of whom he speaks, as in a state of great barbarity; μιξιν τε τ[Editor: illegible character]των των ανθρωπων ειναν εμφαανεα, καταπερ τοισι προβατοισι. Clio. cciii. The Chinese dye scarlet more exquisitely than any other nation. Lord Macartney says it arises “from their indefatigable care and pains, in washing, purifying, and grinding their colouring matters.” See Lord Macartney’s Journal, Barrow’s Life of Lord Macartney, ii. 516. The same expenditure of time and patience, commodities generally abounding in a rude state of society, are the true causes of both the fine dyeing and the fine weaving of the Hindus. Both Hindus and Chinese are indebted for all elegance of pattern to their European visitors.—Pour se qui est des arts mechaniques, celui ou les Persans excellent le plus, et ou ils nous surpassent peut-ètre, cest la teinture. Ils donnent à leurs étoffes des coulours plus vives, plus solides qu’on ne fait en Europe. Ils impriment cellos de coton et celles de soie avec une netteté et une tenacité surprenantes, soit qu’ils emploient des couleurs, soit qu’ils procédent avec des fuilles d’or et d’argent. Olivier, Voyage, &c. v. 303. Mr. Park informs us, that the negroes of Africa have carried the art of dyeing to great perfection. Travels in Africa, p. 281: see also his last Mission, p. 10. The arts in which the Hindus have any pretensions to skill are the very arts in which so rude a people as the Turks most excel. “Presque tous les arts sont dans l’enfance, ou sont ignorés chez eux, si nous en exceptons la teinture, la fabrication de diverses étoffes, celle des lames de sabre ct de couteau. Voyages dans l’Empire Ottoman, &c. par G. A. Olivier, i. 26.
32. “You frequently see a field, after one ploughing, appear as green as before; only a few scratches are perceptible, here and there, more resembling the digging of a mole, than the work of a plough.” Tennant’s Ind. Recr. ii. 78.
33. Ibid. 124, 275.
34. Tennant’s Ind. Recr. ii. 75. “You cannot, by any argument, prevail upon the listless owner to save his ears, his cattle, or his cart, by lubricating it with oil. Neither his industry, his invention, nor his purse, would admit of this, even though you could remove what is generally insurmountable—his veneration for ancient usage. If his forefathers drove a screeching hackery, posterity will not dare to violate the sanctity of custom by departing from their example. This is one instance of a thousand in which the inveterate prejudices of the Asiatics stand in the way of their improvement, and bid defiance equally to the exertions of the active, and the hopes of the benevolent.” Ibid. 76. This characteristic mark of a rude people, a blind opposition to innovation, is displayed by persons among ourselves, as if it was the highest mark of wisdom and virtue.—The waggon wheels are one piece of solid timber like a millstone. Tavernier, in Harris, i. 815.
35. Into Oude are imported a variety of articles of commerce from the northern mountains, gold, copper, lead, musk, cow-tails, honey, pomegranate seeds, grapes, dried ginger, pepper, red-wood, tincar, civet, zedoary, wax, woollen cloths, wooden ware, and various species of hawks, amber, rock-salt, assafœtida, glass toys. What is carried back is earthen ware. All this commerce is carried upon the backs of men, or horses and goats. Ayeen Akberry, ii. 33. Buchanan’s Journey, i. 205, 434. Capt. Hardwicke, Asiat. Res. vi. 330.
36. For this sketch of Hindu agriculture, the chief authorities are, a short treatise, entitled “Remarks on the Agriculture, &c. of Bengal;” Tennant’s Indian Recreations, particularly the second volume; and Dr. Buchanan’s Journey through Mysore, Canara, and Malabar. After describing the wretched state of agriculture in the neighbourhood of Seringapatam, Dr. Buchanan says; “I am afraid, however, that the reader, in perusing the foregoing accounts, will have formed an opinion of the native agriculture still more favourable than it deserves. I have been obliged to use the English words ploughings, weedings, and hoeings, to express operations somewhat similar, that are performed by the natives; and the frequent repetition of these, mentioned in the accounts taken from the cultivators, might induce the reader to imagine that the ground was well wrought, and kept remarkably clean. Quite the reverse, however, is the truth. Owing to the extreme imperfection of their implements, and want of strength in their cattle, a field, after six or eight ploughings, has numerous small bushes remaining as upright in it as before the labour, while the plough has not penetrated above three inches deep, and has turned over no part of the soil. ∗ ∗ ∗ The plough has neither coulter nor mould-board, to divide and to turn over the soil; and the handle gives the ploughman very little power to command its direction. The other instruments are equally imperfect, and are more rudely formed than it was possible for my draughtsman to represent.” Buchanan’s Journey through Mysore, &c. i. 126. In another place he says, “In every field there is more grass than corn. Notwithstanding the many ploughings, the fields are full of grass roots.” Ibid. p. 345. See also p. 15. Agriculture was almost universal among the American tribes. “Throughout all America, we scarcely meet with any nation of hunters, which does not practise some species of cultivation.” Robertson’s America, ii. 117. The agriculture of the Peruvians was apparently superior to that of the Hindus. Ibid. iii. 341.
37. Frezier (see his Voyage to the South Sea, p, 213, London edition, 1718) says, “The ancient Indians were extraordinary industrious in conveying the water of the rivers to their dwellings: there are still to be seen in many places aqueducts of earth and of dry stones, carried on and turned off very ingeniously along the sides of hills, with an infinite number of windings, which shows that those people, as unpolished as they were, very well understood the art of levelling.” There is something indicative of no little art in the floating gardens and fields which were on the lake of Mexico. (See the Description in Clavigero, Hist. Mex. book vii. sect. 27.) The cultivation of their fields, considering it was done by human, without the aid of animal labour, was remarkable, and their produce surprising. (Ibid. sect. 28.) The following passage from Garcilasso de la Vega deserves to be quoted as a monument of the labours of the Peruvians in agriculture: “They drained all wet moors and fens, for in that art they were excellent, as is apparent by their works which remain unto this day: And also they were very ingenious in making aqueducts for carrying water into dry and scorched lands.” (He explains how careful they were to water both their corn lands and pasture.) ∗ ∗ ∗ “After they had made a provision of water, the next thing was to dress, and cultivate and clear their fields of bushes and trees; and that they might with most advantage receive the water, they made them in a quadrangular form; those lands which were good on the side of hills, they levelled by certain alleys or walks which they made. To make these alleys they raised three walls of friezed stone, one before, and one of each side, somewhat inclining inwards, so that they may more securely bear and keep up the weight of the earth, which is pressed and rammed down by them, until it be raised to the height of the wall. Then next to this walk they made another, something shorter and less, kept up in the same manner with its wall; until at length they came to take in the whole hill, levelling it by degrees in fashion of a ladder, one alley above the other. Where the ground was stony, they gathered up the stones, and covered the barren soil with fresh earth to make their levels, that so no part of the ground might be lost. The first quadrangles were the largest, and as spacious as the situation of the place could bear, some being of that length and brendth as were capable to receive a hundred, some two hundred, or three hundred bushels of seed. Those of the second row were made narrower and shorter. ∗ ∗ ∗ ∗ In some parts they brought the channels of water from fifteen or twenty leagues distance, though it were only to improve a slip of a few acres of land, which was esteemed good corn ground.” Royal Commentaries of Peru, part i. book v. ch. i. The Mercurio Peruano describes extensive works for irrigation among the Peruvians, of which the vestiges are still to be seen. Mercur. Peruana, viii. 38. Acosta tells us, (Nat. and Mor. Hist. book iii. ch. xviii.) “The Indians do draw from these floods, that run from the mountains to the valleys and plains, many and great brooks to water their lands, which they usually do with such industry, as there are no better in Murcia, nor at Millan itself, the which is also the greatest and only wealth of the plains of Peru, and of many other parts of the Indies.”
38. Sonnerat, Voyag. liv. iii. ch. viii; Tennant’s Ind. Recr. i. 302. The country of the Seiks, a people confessedly barbarous, a well-informed author, Francklin, in his Memoirs of George Thomas, p. 65, 66, informs us, is highly cultivated, and their arts and manufactures are on a level with those of any other part of India. Les Tartares du Daghestan ont une coutume qu’ils observent soigneusement; sçavoir, que personne ne peut se marier chez eux, avant que d’avoir, planté en uu endroit marqué cent arbres fruitiers; ensorte qu’on trouve partout dans les montaignes du Daghestan de grandes forets d’arbres fruitiers. (Hist. Geneal. de Turtars, p. 313.) Zoroaster made the duties of agriculture part of his religion. “To sow grain with purity, is to fulfil the whole extent of the law of the Mazdeiesnans.” (Anquetil Zendav. ii. 610.) The Heruli, and Lombards, in their native wilds, cultivated flax, “which supposes,” says Gibbon, “property, agriculture, manufactures, and commerce.” (Gibbon, vii. 276.)
39. Exod. ch. xxviii. “I look upon engraving on fine stones,” says Goguet, (Origin of Laws, part ii. book ii. ch. ii. art. 3) “as the most remarkable evidence of the rapid progress of the arts in some countries. This work supposes a number of discoveries, much knowledge, and much experience.” He adds in a note, “It must be agreed, that the ancient Peruvians, whose monarchy had not subsisted above three hundred and fifty years, understood perfectly well the working of precious stones. (Hist. Gen. des Voyages, xiii. 578.)” Ibid.
40. Claverigo, Hist. of Mexico, book vii. sect. 51. Even the most rude of the American tribes seem not to have been without some knowledge of the art of working the precious stones. M. de la Condamine, speaking of the green stones, found in some places bordering on the Amazons River in South America, says (Voyage dans l’Interieur de l’Amerique Meridionale, p. 138), “La verité est qu’elles ne different, ni en couleur, in en dureté, du Jade Oriental; elles resistent a la lime, et on n’imagine pas par quel artifice les anciens Americains ont pu les tailler, et leur donner diverses figures d’ammaux, sans fer ni acier."—In the same place, he mentions another phenomenon of the art of the ancient Americans. “Ce sont,” says he, “des Emeraudes arroudies, polies, et percées de deux trous coniques, diametralement opposés sur un axe common, telles qu’on en trouve encore aujourd’hui au Perou sur les bords de la Riviere de St. Jago, dans la province d’Esmeraldas, a quarante lieues de Quito, avec divers autres monumens de l’industrie de ses anciens habitans.” The Persians of the present day are eminent lapidaries. Chardin, Voy. en Perse, iii. 115.—Olivier says, “Ils taillent assez bien les pierres precieuses, et les montent avec assez de gout. Olivier, Voy. &c. v. 304, &c. “At this place I had an opportunity of seeing their mode of smelting gold. Isaaco had purchased some gold in coming through Konkodoo, and here he had made it into a large ring. The smith made a crucible of common red clay, and dried it in the sun. Into this he put the gold, without any flux or mixture whatever. He then put charcoal under it and over it; and blowing the fire with the common bellows of the country, soon produced such a heat as to bring the gold into a state of fusion. He then made a small furrow in the ground, into which he poured the melted gold. When it was cold he took it up, and, heating it again soon hammered it into a square bar. Then heating it again he twisted it by means of two pair of pincers into a sort of screw, and, lengthening out the ends, turned them up, so as to perform a massy and precious ring.” Mungo Park’s Last Mission to Africa, p. 78.
41. Acosta, Nat. and Mor. Hist. of the Indies, book vi. chap. viii.
42. Forster’s Travels, ii. 282.—Les habitans de Kamschatka, d’une stupidité sans egale à certains égards, sont à d’autres d’une industrie merveilleuse. S’agit-il de se faire des vêtemens? leur addresse en ce genre, dit leur Historien, surpasse celle des Européens. Helvetius, de l’Homme, i. 304.—"In general, the ingenuity of all their (the Otaheitans’) works, considering the tools they possess, is marvellous. Their cloth, clubs, fishing implements, canoes, houses, all display great skill; their mourning dresses, their war head-dress and breast-plates, show remarkable taste; their adjustment of the different parts, the exact symmetry, the nicety of the joining, are admirable: and it is astonishing how they can, with such ease and quickness, drill holes in a pearl-shell with a shark’s tooth, and so fine as not to admit the point of a common pin.” Missionary Voyage, p. 330. Observe the same remarkable coincidence in patience, rudeness of tools, and neatness of execution, in the following description by Robertson of the state of the arts in Mexico. “The functions of the mason, the weaver, the goldsmith, the painter, and of several other crafts, were carried on by different persons. Each was regularly instructed in his calling. To it alone his industry was confined; and, by assiduous application to one object, together with the persevering patience peculiar to Americans, their artisans attained to a degree of neatness and perfection in work, far beyond what could have been expected from the rude tools which they employed. Their various productions were brought into commerce; and by the exchange of them in the stated markets held in the cities, not only were their mutual wants supplied, in such orderly intercourse as characterizes an improved state of society, but their industry was daily rendered persevering and inventive.” Robertson’s Hist. of America, iii. 286. Voltaire has a passage on this subject which shows philosophical discernment. “Il-y-a dans l’homme un instinct de mechanique que nous voyons produire tous les jours de très grands effets, dans des hommes fort grossiers. On voit des machines inventées par les habitans des montagnes du Tirol et des Vosges, qui etonnent les savans.” Voltaire, Essai sur les Mœurs et l’Esprit des Nations, Introd. p. 32.
43. Crauford’s Sketches, p. 328, 1st ed.
44. Sonnerat, Voy. liv. iii. chap. viii. “The Indian carpenter knows no other tools than the plane, the chisel, the wimple, a hammer, and a kind of hatchet. The earth serves him for a bench, and his foot for a holdfast. He is a month in performing what our workman will do in three days. Even after instruction he will not adopt our method of sawing. Placing his wood between two beams fixed in the ground, and sitting on a bench, a man employs three days, with one saw, to make a plank, which would cost our people an hour’s work.” Ibid. Among the Birmans the state of the more necessary and useful arts seems to be fully as much advanced as among the Hindus: in not a few cases more so. (See Mr. Syme’s Embassy to Ava.) The waggons more neat and commodious than the clumsy gauries or carts of India.
45. Forster’s Travels, i. 25. “Their artificers,” says Stavorinus, “work with so little apparatus, and so few instruments, that an European would be astonished at their neatness and expedition. Stavorinus, Voy. p. 412. See to the same purpose, Tennant, Indian Recreations, i. 301, 302, 303.
46. Fryer’s Travels, let. iii. chap. iii. They cut diamonds, he says, with a mill turned by men, the string reaching, in manner of our cutler’s wheels, to lesser that are in a flat press, where under steel wheels diamonds are fastened, and with its own bort are worn into what cut the artist pleases. Ibid.
47. The blacksmith goes from place to place carrying his tools with him. Beside his forge and his little furnace, a stone serves for an anvil, and his whole apparatus consists of a pair of pincers, a hammer, a mallet, and a file. They have not attained the art of polishing gold and silver, or of working gold in different colours. The goldsmith goes about with his tools, like the blacksmith. Sonnerat, Voy. hv. iii. chap. viii. The workmen in gold and silver are frequently only little boys, who sit every day in the bazaar or market waiting till they are called, when they go to your house, with their implements in a little basket, consisting of a very small anvil, a hammer, a pair of bellows, a few files, and a pair of pincers; a chaffing dish, or pan of embers, is then given to him with a model of what is to be made, and the material. He then sets about his work in the open air, and performs it with dispatch and ingenuity. Other tradesmen go to your home in the same manner, the shoemaker and tailor. Stavorinus, Voy. p. 412. It is remarkable how exactly this description of the state of the arts among the Hindus tallies with that among the Persians. Chardin informs us that every where in Persia, the artisans of all descriptions go to work in the houses of those who employ them—that they perform their work with the poorest apparatus, and, comparing the tools with the work, to a surprising degree of perfection. Chardin, Voy. en Perse, iii. 98.
48. Forster’s Travels, i. 80.
49. Bartolomeo’s Travels, book i. chap. vii.
50. Rennel’s Memoir, p. xxii.

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51. Sonnerat, Voy. liv. iii. ch. viii.
52. Hodges’ Travels in India. Mr. Hodges says, “I am concerned I cannot pay so high a compliment to the art of sculpture among the Hindoos as is usually paid by many ingenious authors who write on the religion of Bramah. Considering these works, as I do, with the eyes of an artist, they are only to be paralleled with the rude essays of the ingenious Indians, I have met with in Otaheite, and on other islands in the South Seas:” p. 26. He adds in the next page, that in point of carving, that is, the mere mechanical part, the ornaments in the Hindu temples are often beautiful. In another passage, too, p. 151, he speaks again of the same mechanical nicety, the peculiar sharpness of the cut in Hindu carvings. See to the same purpose, Tennant’s Indian Recr. i. 299.
53. Buchanan, Journey through Mysore, &c. iii. 391.
54. Clavigero, Hist. Mex. book vii. sect. 50. He adds, “The works of gold and silver sent in presents from the conqueror Cortez to Charles V. filled the goldsmiths of Europe with astonishment, who, as several authors of that period attest, declared that they were altogether inimitable. The Mexican founders made, both of gold and silver, the most perfect images of natural bodies. They made a fish in this manner, which had its scales, alternately, the one of silver and the other of gold, a parrot with a moveable head, tongue, and wings, and an ape with a moveable head and feet, having a spindle in its hand in the attitude of spinning.” Ibid. Garcilasso tells us, “that the Peruvians framed many figures of men and women, of birds of the air, and fishes of the sea; likewise of fierce animals, such as tigers, lions and bears, foxes, dogs, cats; in short, all creatures whatsoever known amongst them, they cast and moulded into true and natural figures of the same shape and form of those creatures which they represented. They counterfeited the plants and wall-flowers so well, that being on the walls they seemed to be natural; the creatures which were shaped on the walls, such as lizards, butterflies, snakes, and serpents, some crawling up and some down, were so artificially done, that they seemed natural, and wanted nothing but motion.” (Book vi. Chap. i.)
55. Tennant’s Ind. Rec. i. 299.
56. Dr. Tennant, at the place cited above, supports his own authority, by quoting the following passage of Sonnerat: “La peinture chez les Indiens est, et sera toujours, dans l’enfance; ils trouvent admirable un tableau chargé de rouge et de bleu, et dont les personages sont vêtus d’or. Ils n’entendent point le clair obscur, n’arrondissent jamais les objets, et ne savent pas les mettre en perspective; en un mot, leurs meilleures peintures ne sont que de mauvaises enlumineures.” (Voyages aux Indes, i. 99.) The Indian pictures, says Mandelsloe, are more remarkable for their diversity of colours, than any exactness of proportion. Harris’ Collect. of Voy. i. How exactly does this correspond with the description which Chardin gives us of the state of the same art among the Persians? En Perse les arts, tant liberaux que mechaniques, sont en general prêsque tous rudes et bruts, en comparaison de la perfection ou l’Europe les a portés...... Ils entendent for mal le dessein, ne sachant rien faire au naturel; et ils n’ont aucune connoissance de la perspective....... Pour ce que de la platte-peinture, il est vrai que es visages qu’ils representent sont assez ressemblans; ils les tirent d’ordinaire de profil, parce que ce sont ceux qu’ils font le plus aisément; ils les font aussi de trois quarts: mais pour les visages en plain ou de front, ils y reussissent fort mal, n’entendant pas à y donner les ombres. Ils ne sauroient former une attitude et une posture............. Leur pinceau est fin et delicat, et leur peinture vive et eclatante. Il faut attribuer à l’air du pays la beauté des couleurs. Voy, en Perse, iii. 284. La peinture est encore au berceau: les Persans n’ont fait aucun progrès dans cet art...... En general, leur manière de faire ressemble un peu à celle des Chinois: leur dessin est tres incorrect; ils ne connaissent pas la perspective: ils ne savent pas employer les ombres...... Cependant on voit sortir de leurs mains des ouvrages assez jolis; ils peignent assez bien les fleurs et les oiseaux de fantaisie; ils reussissent dans les arabesques; ils emploient tres bien l’or; ils font de tres beaux vernix..........Les couleurs que les Persans emploient, et qu’ils font eux-mêmes, ont tout l’éclat, toute la solidité, qu’on peut desirer. Ce sont eux qui nous ont fait connaître l’outremir. (Olivier, Voyage, v. 301.) It is remarkable to find the state of the fine arts in China so exactly the same. “Quoique les Chinois ayent une passion extraordinaire pour tous les ouvrages de peinture, et que leurs temples en soient ornez, on ne peut rien voire neanmoins de plus borné et de moins regulier. Ils ne scavent point menager les ombres d’un tableau, ni meler ou adoucir les couleurs........Ils ne sont pas plus heureux dans a sculpture, et ils n’y observent ni ordre, ni proportions. (Le Gentil. Voyage, ii. 111.) The painting of the Mexicans seems to have had the same perfections and imperfections with that of these eastern nations. The colours, Robertson (iii. 278) informs us, were remarkably bright, but laid on without any art, and without any regard to light and shade, or the rules of perspective. Clavigero, though the skill of the Mexicans in painting is not one of the points for which he most highly admires them, says, “We have seen, among the ancient paintings, many portraits of the kings of Mexico, in which, besides the singular beauty of the colours, the proportions were most accurately observed.” (Hist. Mex. book vii. sect. 49.) “Les Mexicains,” says Humboldt, “ont conservé un goῦt particulier pour la peinture et pour l’art de sculpter en pierre et en bois. On est étonné de voir ce qu’ils executent avec un mauvais couteau, et sur les bois les plus durs...... Ils montrent beaucoup d’aptitude pour l’exercise des arts d’imitation; ils en deploient une plus grande encore pour les arts purement mecaniques. Cette aptitude deviendra un jour tres precieuse, &c.” Humboldt, Essai Politique sur le Royaume de la Nouvelle Espagne, p. 9.
57. Indian Rec. i. 300.—Ces peuples n’ont aucune idee des accords. Leur chant commence par un bourdonnement sourd et fort has, apres lequel ils eclatent. Anquetil Duperron, Voyage aux Indes Orientales, Zendavesta, i. xxvi. Even Sonnerat himself informs us, that their music is bad, and their songs destitute of harmony. Voyages aux Indes, liv. iii. chap. viii.
58. Motte’s Journey to Orissa, (Asiat. An. Regist. i. Miscellaneous Tracts, p. 77.) “Their ideas of music, if we may judge from their practice, are barbarous.” Orme’s Hist. Milit. Trans. i. 3. The following passage from Garcilasso de la Vega is an important document in the history of music. It exhibits more nakedly the fact respecting its origin, than, perhaps, any other written monument; and it proves at the same time the power of expression which the art had attained. “In music,” says he, “the Peruvians arrived to a certain harmony in which the Indians of Colla did more particularly excel, having been the inventors of a certain pipe made of canes glued together, every one of which having a different note of higher and lower, in the manner of organs, made a pleasing music by the dissonancy of sounds, the treble tenor, and basse, exactly corresponding, and answering to each other; with these pipes they often played in concert.... They had also other pipes, which were flutes with four or five stops, like the pipes of shepherds; with these they played not in concert, but singly, and tuned them to sonnets, which they composed in metre, the subject of which was love, and the passions which arise from the favours or displeasures of a mistress..... Every song was set to its proper tune; for two songs of different subjects could not correspond with the same air, by reason that the music which the gallant made on his flute was designed to express the satisfaction or discontent of his mind, which were not so intelligible, perhaps by the words, as by the melancholy or cheerfulness of the tune which he played. A certain Spaniard, one night late, encountered an Indian woman in the streets of Cozco, and would have brought her back to his lodgings; but she cried out, ‘For God’s sake, sir, let me go, for that pipe which you hear in yonder tower calls me with great passion, and I cannot refuse the summons; for love constrains me to go, that I may be his wife, and he my husband.’ The songs which they composed of their wars, and grand achievements, were never set to the airs of their flute, being too grave and serious be intermixed with the pleasures and softness of love; for these were only sung at their principal festivals when they commemorated their victories and triumphs.” Royal Comment. book ii. ch. xiv. “The accounts of twenty-two centuries ago represent the Indians as a people who stood very high in point of civilization: but to judge from their ancient monuments, they had not carried the imitative arts to any thing like the degree of perfection attained by the Greeks and Romans; or even by the Egyptians. Both the Hindoos and the Chinese appear to have carried the arts just to the point requisite for useful purposes; but never to have approached the summit of perfection, as it respects taste or boldness of design.” Rennel’s Memoir, Introd. p. xxii. Our latest informants are the most intelligent. Mr. Ward (Introd. p. lxii.) assures us, “whatever may have been the case in other countries, idolatry in this has certainly not contributed to carry the arts of painting or sculpture to any perfection. The Abbé Dubois (p. 463) observes, “that the ornamental arts, such as painting, instrumental music, and the like, are extremely low in estimation. Hardly any but the low tribe of the Mushiers exercise the first of these; and music is nearly confined to the barbers and Pariahs; instrumental music wholly so. The small encouragement these two arts receive is, no doubt, owing to the little progress they have made. In painting, nothing can be seen but mere daubing, set off with bright colours and extravagant glare. And though all Hindus are great lovers of music, introducing it into all their civil and religious ceremonies, yet I can vouch that it is still in its infancy.”
59. Royal Comment. part ii. book ii. chap. xxx. Frezier (Voyage to the South Sea, p. 263) says of the same people, “They have a genius for arts, and are good at imitating what they see, but very poor at invention.”
60. See the Discourse, Asiatic Researches, i. 429. “Invented apologues!” as well might he tell us they invented language. And the “decimal scale!“ as if they were the only nation that had ten fingers! or, as if most nations had not been led, by the simple and very natural process of counting by the fingers, to denominate and distinguish numbers by comparison with that sum! The Scandinavians, Mallet informs us, counted up the unities to twelve, and denominated higher numbers by comparison with twelve, which, he justly remarks, is preferable to ten, as being more divisible into fractions. Mallet, Introd. Hist. Denmark, vol. i. chap. xiii. The Swedes and Icelanders, as well as Scotch, retain a memorial of this in their great hundred. From Mr. Park we learn that some of the negro tribes in Africa counted only five, the number of fingers on one of the hands, and then doubled; thus, instead of six, they said five and one; seven, five and two, &c. Park’s Travels in Africa, p. 17.
61. Molina, Civil Hist. of Chili, book ii. chap. x. The Persians claim the invention of this game; and as their game is radically different from that of the Hindus, it is probable they are both inventions. See Chardin, Voy. en Perse, iii. 62. Gibbon, vii. 276, marks a fact in the narrative of Paul Diaconus, expressive of the manners of the Heruli: Dum ad tabulam luderet, while he played at draughts, says Gibbon; but he might as well have said chess; for the word as much expresses the one as the other: And we know that, among the Scandinavians, a game very closely resembling chess was known. The ancient chronicles of the Scandinavians frequently present us with young warrions endeavouring to acquire the good opinion of their mistresses by boasting of their accomplishments, such as their skill at chess, their dexterity in swimming and skating, their talents in poetry, and their knowing all the stars by their names. Mallet, Introd. Hist. Denmark, chap. xiii. Mr. Barrow informs us that the chess of the Chinese is totally different from that both of the Hindus and Persians. Travels in China, p. 158. It has been therefore probably, in each of those cases, a separate invention. The idea that chess was invented by the Hindus was, we believe, first started by Hyde (de Relig. Vet. Pers. ii. 1.), and thereafter it has been taken for granted. The curious reader may see an interesting description of a game at chess by four Brahmens, in Moor’s Hist. of Capt. Little’s Detachment, p. 139. That there are books in India containing the doctrine of chess proves nothing. There are books in Ice-landic, on the art of poetry, but the Icelanders were not the inventors of poetry.
62. “Buchanan’s Journey through Mysore, &c. iii. 370. Dr. Tennant says; “Before the arrival of the Europeans, there was not a house in all India furnished with glass windows; even at present, when glass is so common here, I believe none of the natives have availed themselves of so obvious a remedy. Glass is considered by the Europeans as an indispensable requisite in the construction of every Bungalow at the upper stations: they have even introduced the use of it into the camp. Several officers carry, on their march, a frame of glass, which they fix in the windward door of their tents, during the hot winds, should the service call them into the field at that season.” Indian Recreations, i. 325. See, too, Voyage aux Indes, par le P. Paulini, ii. 403, 404. The Jews first discovered the art of making glass. Taciti Hist. lib. v. cap. vii.; Plin. lib. v. cap. xix; also lib. xxxvi. cap. xxvi.; Strabo, lib. xvi.; Josephus, Wars of the Jews, ii. 19. The Hindus seem to be considerably behind the perfection which the Japanese have attained in the useful arts. “As to all sorts of handicrafts,” says Kæmpfer, “either curious or useful, they are so far from having occasion for masters, that they rather exceed all other nations in ingenuity and neatness of workmanship, particularly in brass, gold, silver, copper. What skill they have in working and tempering of iron, is evident by the goodness and neatness of their arms. No nation in the East is so dextrous and ingenious, in making, carving, graving, gilding of servaas, which is a particular kind of a precious, blackish metal, made artificially of a mixture of copper with a little gold. They weave silken stuff so fine, so neat and equal, that they are inimitable even to the Chinese.” Kæmpfer, Hist. of Japan, Appendix, p. 62.
63. Works of Sir W. Jones, Discourse on the Chinese.
64. “It was long before mankind knew the art of writing; but they very early invented several methods to supply, in a good measure, that want. The method most commonly used was, to compose their histories in verse, and sing them. Legislators made use of this expedient to consign and hand down to posterity their regulations. The first laws of all nations were composed in verse, and sung. Apollo, according to a very ancient tradition, was one of the first legislators. The same tradition says, that he published his laws to the sound of his lyre, that is to say, that he had set them to music. We have certain proof that the first laws of Greece were a kind of songs. The laws of the ancient inhubitants of Spain were verses which they sung. Tuiston was regarded by the Germans as their first lawgiver. They said he put his laws into verses and songs. This ancient custom was long kept up by several nations.” Goguet’s Origin of Laws, i. 28. See the various authorities there quoted. The laws of the Druids were in verse. Henry, Hist. of Great Britain, i. 315.
65. “Le Dictionnaire Amarasinha est ecrit en vers Sanscrit, comme tous les anciens livres, et n’est pas divisé par chapitres comme les notres, mais par classes de noms....ainsi....classe Svarggavargga, c’est à dire classe des noms qui appartiennent au ciel; Manouchavargga, de ceux qui appartiennent à l’homme,” &c. Voyage aux Indes Orientales, par le P. Paulini, ii. 228. “Presque tous les livres Indiens sont ecrits en vers. L’astronomie, la medicine, l’histoire, tout se chante.” Ibid. p. 369. The same was the case with the ancient Germans; “Celebrant carminibus antiquis, quod unum apud illos memoriæ et annalium genus est, Tuistonem,” &c. Tacit. de Mor. Germ. cap. x.
66. Even Mr. Maurice, whose appetite for Hindu miracles is not easily overcome, could not digest the beauties of their historic muse. After an exhibition of some of these specimens in his history, he says, “I know not whether some of my readers may not be so insensible to the charms of the Indian historic muse as to rejoice that the Ramayan (only passages of it were then in an English dress) has not been translated; for certainly inflated accounts of the combats of giants, hurling rocks, and darting serpents at one another, and of monsters whose blood, spouting forth in torrents, is formed into considerable rivers, are not very consistent with the sober and dignified page of history.” Maurice, Hist. of Hindustan, ii. 100. “To the above list of absurdities we may add monsters with ten heads and a hundred hands, which continue to fight after all their heads are cut off, and mow down whole battalions.” Ibid. p. 248. “The minute accounts of incantations and combats of giants, that fill the Indian legends, however they may astonish the oriental literati, have no charm for the polished scholar of western climes, and are justly consigned to puerile reading.” Ibid. p. 251. Yet Sir William Jones could say, “The first poet of the Hindus was the great Valmic; and his Ramayan is an epic poem on the story of Rama (or rather of the three Ramas,) which in unity of action, magnificence of imagery, and elegance of style, far surpasses the learned and elaborate work of Nonnus.” See Asiat. Res. i. 258. We strongly suspect that Sir William Jones never read the poem; or more of it than scraps.
67. Of the Song of Solomon Voltaire, notwithstanding all his prejudices against the Jews, confesses “Après tout, ce cantique est un morceau precieux de l’antiquité. C’est le seul livre d’amour qui nous soit resté des Hebreux. Il y est souvent parlé de jouissance. C’est une eglogue Juive. Le style est comme celui de tous les ouvrages d’eloquence des Hebreux, sans haison, sans suite, plein de repetitions, confus, ridiculement metaphorique; mais il y a des endroits qui respirent la naïveté et l’amour. Voltaire, Diction. Philos. Mot Solomon. The criticism would in most respects exactly suit Sacontala.
68. Preface to Sir William Jones’s Translation of Sacontala.
69. The conformities in their religious system have already been remarked. All their doctrines, their narratives, and even the laws of which they were the promulgators, were delivered in verse. “They had made considerable progress,” says Dr. Henry, “in several branches of learning. We shall be confirmed in this,” he adds, “by observing the respectful terms in which the best Greek and Roman writers speak of their learning. Diogenes Laertius places them in the same rank, in point of ‘earning and philosophy, with the Chaldeans of Assyria, the Magi of Persia, and the gymnosophists and Brachmans of India. Both Cæsar and Mela observe, that they had formed very large systems of astronomy and natural philosophy; and that these systems, together with their observations on other parts of learning, were so voluminous, that their scholars spent no less than twenty years in making themselves masters of them, and in getting by heart that infinite multitude of verses in which they were contained.” Henry’s Hist. of Great Britain, ii. 5, and i. 153.
70. Preface to Sacontala.
71. “Wretched dramas,” Lord Macartney calls them. Barrow’s Life of Lord Macartney, ii. 286.

Garcilasso de la Vega, on the subject of the ancient Peruvians, says, “The Amautas, who were men of the best ingenuity among them, invented comedies and tragedies, which in their solemn festivals they represented before their king and the lords of his court.—The plot or argument of their tragedies was to represent their military exploits, and the triumphs, victories, and heroic actions of their renowned men.” Royal Commentaries of Peru, book ii. chap xv.

“Dramatic as well as lyric poetry,” says Clavigero, “was greatly in repute among the Mexicans.” He then describes their theatres, and adds, “Boturini says, that the Mexican comedies were excellent.” Clavigero, Hist. of Mexico, book vii. sect. 43. Carli (Lettres Americaines, i. 296) says, “Mais que direz vous si je vous assure que les Peruviens jouoient des comedies pendant ces fêtes, et qu’ils aimoient passionément ce plaisir. Cela est cependent vrai. La comedie faisoit donc un des plaisirs du Peru; mais la tragédie etoit préférée à Tlascala, dont le peuple etoit republicain. Chez un peuple independant on se plait à produire les tyrans sur la scene pour en inspirer la traine à la generation actuelle, qui la transmet à la suivante........... Mais on a aussi remarqué ce gout du théatre chez plusieurs peuples des iles du Sud.” But an art which is known to the islanders of the South Sea, is not a proof of high civilization. The people in the Birman empire are fond of dramatic entertainments; but these entertainments among them are very rude. Dr. Buchanan, Asiat. Res. vi. 305.
72. “The poets of the north” (to use the words of Dr. Henry) “were particularly famous in this period, and greatly caressed by our Angle-Saxon kings. ‘It would be endless,’ (says an excellent antiquary) ‘to name all the poets of the north who flourished in the courts of the kings of England, or to relate the distinguished honours and magnificent presents that were heaped upon them.’ The same writer hath preserved the names of no fewer than eight of those Danish, Norwegian, and Icelandic poets, who flourished in the Court of Canute the Great.—The poems of those ancient bards of the north are said to have produced the most amazing effects on those who heard them, and to have roused or soothed the most impetuous passions of the human mind. Revenga, it is well known, rages with the greatest violence in the hearts of warlike, fierce barbarians, and is of all their passions the most furious and ungovernable; and yet it is said to have been subdued by the enchauting power of poetry. Egil-Skallagrim, a famous poet of those times, had quarrelled with Eric Blodox, King of Norway; and in the course of that quarrel had killed the King’s son and several of his friends; which raised the rage of Eric against him to the greatest height. Egil was taken prisoner, and sent to the King, who was then in Northumberland. No sooner was he brought into the presence of the enraged Monarch, who had in his own mind doomed him to the most cruel tortures, than he began to sing a poem which he had composed in praise of his royal virtues, and conveyed his flattery in such sweet and soothing strains, that they procured him not only the forgiveness of all his crimes, but even the favour of his prince. The power of poetry is thus described in one of their most ancient odes: ‘I know a song by which I soften and enchant the arms of my enemies, and render their weapons of none effect. I know a song which I need only to sing when men have loaded me with bonds; for the moment I sing it my chains fall in pieces, and I walk forth at liberty. I know a song useful to all mankind; for as soon as hatred inflames the sons of men, the moment I sing it, they are appeased. I know a song of such virtue, that, were I caught in a storm, I can hush the winds, and render the air perfectly calm.’—Those ancient bards, who had acquired so great an ascendaut over the minds of their ferocious countrymen, must certainly have been possessed of an uncommon portion of that poetic fire, which is the gift of nature, and cannot be acquired by art.”—Henry’s Hist. of Great Britain, book ii. chap. v.
73. Mallet, Introd. Hist. Denmark, i. 13. The following is a very soft but correct delineation of the rude features of Hindu poetry. “The poetical expression of the Hindus perhaps offends by too great loftiness and emphasis. One may understand their books and conversation in prose; but it is impossible to comprehend those in verse, until diligent study has rendered them familiar. Quaint phrases, perpetual allegories, the poetical terminations of the words, contracted expressions and the like, render the poetical style obscure and difficult to be understood, excepting to those who are inured to it. One of the principal defects of the Hindu poets is that their descriptions are commonly too long and minute. For example, if they are describing a beautiful woman, they are never contented with drawing her likeness with a single stroke.........Such a mode of expression would not be strong enough for the gross comprehension of a Hindu. The poet must particularize the beauty of her eyes, her forehead, her nose, her cheeks, and must expatiate on the colour of her skin, and the manner in which she adorns every part of her body. He will describe the turn and proportion of her arms, legs, thighs, shoulders, chest, and in a word of all parts visible or invisible; with an accurate recital of the shape and form which best indicate their beauty and symmetry. He will never desist from his colouring till he has represented in detail every feature and part in the most laboured and tedious style, but at the same time with the closest resemblance. The epithets, in their poetical style, are frequent, and almost always figurative.—The brevity and conciseness of many modes of expression in the Hindu idioms does not hinder their style, upon the whole, from being extremely diffuse.—To give an exact idea of the different species of Hindu poesy would not be much relished by the greater number of readers, so different in their manner from ours. All their little pieces that I have seen are in general very flat.” Description, &c. of the People of India, by the Abbé Dubois, p. 267.
74. Mallet, ut supra. In the very subjects of their poems, as well as the style of them, the Scandinavian bards bore a great resemblance to the Hindu. Of the poetry of the Scalds, Mallet says, Ibid. ii. 183, “The same taste and mode of composition prevails every where: we have constantly allegories and combats; giants contending with the gods; Loke perpetually deceiving them; Thor interposing in their defence, &c.” The Scandinavians had not only striking poems, but treatises on the art of poetry. Id. Introduction to the Edda, p. xix. Clavigero says of the Mexicans, “The language of their poetry was brilliant, pure, and agreeable, figurative, and embellished with frequent comparisons to the most pleasing objects in nature, such as flowers, trees, rivers, &c.” Hist. of Mex. book vii. sect. 42.
75. The words of Sir William Jones are: Nobilissimum interea, et longissimum (voluminis enim permagni, prope dimidiam partem constituit) est sine ulla dubitatione vere epicum, et profecto nullum est ab Europeis scriptum poema, quod ad Homeri dignitatem, et quasi cœlestem ardorem propius accedat.” Works, ii. 502.
76. Tour to Sheeraz, by Ed. Scott Waring, pp. 158, 159, 160, 198.
77. Ibid. p. 150. The author adds, “I shall give one instance from an immense number, of the forced images of Persian historians; it would be disgusting to the reader to produce others:"—a style of which more than one instance would disgust must be a bad style indeed.—"Nous savons assez,” says Voltaire, “que le bon gout n’a jamais été connu dans l’Orient.—Otez aux Arabes, aux Persans, aux Juifs, le soleil et la lune, les montagnes et les vallées, les dragons et les basilics, il ne leur reste presque plus de poesie.” Voltaire, Essai sur les Mœurs et l’Esprit de Nations, tom. i. ch. v.
78. Tour to Sheeraz, ut supra, p. 235. To the imagination of the eastern poets, and above all, of the Hindus, may be aptly applied, in many of its particulars, the description of the Demoness, Imagination, in the enchanted castle of Hermaphrodix:
Sous les grands ares—d’ un immense portique,
A mas confus de moderne et d’antique,
Se promenoit un fantôme brillant,
Au pied leger, à l’œil etincelant,
Au geste vif, à la marche egarée,
La tête hante, et de clinquans parée.
On voit son corps toujours en action,
Et son nom est l’Imagination,
Non cette belle et charmante déesse
Qui présida dans Rome et dans la Gréce,
Aux beaux travaux de tant de grands auteurs,
Qui repandit l’eclat de ses couleurs;
Mais celle-la qu’ubjure le bon sens,
Cette etourdie, effarée, insipide,
Que tant d’auteurs approchent de si près.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Près d’elle étoit le Galimatias,
Monstre bavard caressé dans ses bras.
La Pucelle d’Orleans, Chant 17 me.
Gibbon well denominates the Koran, “an endless incoherent rhapsody of fable, and precept, and declamation, which seldom excites a sentiment or an idea, which sometimes crawls in the dust, and is sometimes lost in the clouds.” Chap. 1. p. 269. Yet it is a superior composition to any work among the Hindus.
79. Wilford, on Egypt and the Nile, Asiat. Res. iii. 296.
80. Rennel’s Memoir, Introd. p. xl.
81. “That no Hindu nation, but the Cashmirians, have left us regular histories,” says Sir W. Jones, “in their ancient language, we must ever lament.” Asiat. Res. iv. xvii. What he meant by excepting the Cashmirians, we know not. No history of them has ever been seen. “Although we have had recourse,” says Dr. Tennant, “to the Sanscrit records at Benares for several years, no history of the country has been found, which is the composition of a native.” Ind. Rec. i. 10. “Their poets,” says Mr. W. Chambers, “seem to have been their only historians as well as divines; and whatever they relate is wrapped up in this burlesque garb, set off, by way of ornament, with circumstances highly incredible and absurd, and all this without any date, and in no order or method, than such as the poet’s fancy suggested and found most convenient. Asiat. Res. i. 157. Such is the character of the Puranas, from which Mr. Wilford has exerted himself with such a waste of labour and credulity to extract some scattered fragments of history; or rather something, it is difficult to say what, on which some few historical inferences might be founded. “The department of ancient history in the East is so deformed by fable and anachronism, that it may be considered an absolute blank in Indian literature.” Wilks’s Mysore, Pref. p. xv. Mr. Dow’s prejudices went far: “We must not,” says he, (Preface to his Hist. of Hindostan) “with Ferishta, consider the Hindoos as destitute of genuine domestic annals, or that those voluminous records they possess are mere legends framed by the Bramins.” Yet it has been found that all which Ferishta said was true, and all that Col. Dow believed was false.—"Seriously speaking, the turn and bent of the imagination of the people of India are such, that they can in no wise be excited but by what is monstrous. Ordinary occurrences make no impression upon them at all. Their attention cannot be gained without the introduction of giants and pygmies. The Brahmans, therefore, having studied this propensity, availed themselves of it to invent a religious worship, which they artfully interwove with their own private interests.—This passion of the Hindus for the extraordinary and the wonderful must have been remarked by every one who has ever so little studied their character. It continually leads to the observation I have so frequently repeated, that as often as it was necessary to move their gross imagination, some circumstance, altogether extravagant, but coloured with the hue of truth, was required to be added to the simplicity of narrative or fact. To give them any idea of the marvellous, something must be invented that will overturn, or at least alter the whole order of nature. The miracles of the Christian religion, however extraordinary they must appear to a common understanding, are by no means so to the Hindus. Upon them they have no effect. The exploits of Joshua and his army, and the prodigies they effected by the interposition of God, in the conquest of the land of Canaan, seem to them unworthy of notice, when compared with the achievements of their own Rama, and the miracles which attended his progress when he subjected Ceylon to his yoke. The mighty strength of Samson dwindles into nothing, when opposed to the overwhelming energy of Bali, of Ravana, and the giants. The resurrection of Lazarus itself is, in their eyes, an ordinary event, of which they see frequent examples, in the Vishnu ceremonies of the Paheahdam.—I particularize these examples, because they have been actually opposed to me more than once by Brahmans, in my disputations with them on religion.” Abbé Dubois, p. 421.
82. Such is the opinion of some of the best Sanscrit scholars; for example, of Mr Wilkins. The same idea is encouraged by Sir William Jones, Asiat. Res. ii. 135. The good sense of Major Rennel rejected at an early period the notion of their historical truth. “The Mahabarat....supposed to contain a large portion of interesting historical matter: but if the father of Grecian poetry made so total a change in the story of Helen, in order to give a full scope to his imagination; what security have we that another poet may not mislead us in matters of fact.” Memoir, p. xlii. A mind of greater compass and force had previously said, “It were absurd to quote the fable of the Iliad or the Odyssey, the legends of Hercules, Theseus, or Œdipus, as authorities in matter of fact relating to the history of mankind; but they may, with great justice, be cited to ascertain what were the conceptions and sentiments of the age in which they were composed, or to characterize the genius of that people, with whose imaginations they were blended, and by whom they were fondly rehearsed and admired.” Ferguson, Essay on the Hist. of Civil Society, part ii. sect. 1.
83. Hist. of Persia, i. 273. Yet the Jewish scriptures tell us, that the deeds of the kings of Persia were written in chronicles of that kingdom; and Ctesias, who was at the court of Artaxerxes Mnemon, says he had access to volumes contained in the royal archives. The Persians had no historians before the æra of Mohammed; Kinneir’s Geog. Mem. of the Persian Empire, p. 49.—In Persia, there is now, as there has long been, a royal historiographer, whose business it is to record the glories of the reigning prince. Ibid.
84. Tour to Sheeraz, p. 152.
85. Richardson’s Dissertations, p. 47.
86. Richardson’s Dissertations, p. 47 to 60. He gives us the following as the account, by the Persian historians, of the conquest of Alexander. Bahman, the King, had married his own daughter. When he died, leaving her pregnant, he appointed her his successor, if she had no son; and regent, if she had one. The lady wished to reign; and being delivered of a son, concealed his birth. He was exposed, but found, and brought up by a dyer. When grown to manhood he joined the Queen’s army, which was marching against the Greeks, and performed prodigies of valour. The Queen sent for him; he was recognized, and the Queen resigned. He became King Darab. He marched against Philip of Macedou, and forced him to take refuge in a forest. Peace was granted, on Philip’s giving his daughter to Darab, and paying annually a thousand eggs of gold. Philip’s daughter ceased to please, and Darab sent ber back after she was pregnant. The child she brought forth was the famous Alexander. The son of Darab, who succeeded him, proved so bad a king, that the nobles of Persia advised Alexander to assert his right to the throne. Alexander refused the annual tribute. Darab, the younger, marched against him, and was conquered. After the battle he was assassinated in his tent by his attendants. But Alexander protested his ignorance of the crime, and Darab named him his successor, requesting him to govern Persia by Persian nobles, which he did. Ibid. In another passage (Ibid. p. 326) he acknowledges that no account is found in the Persian historians of the expedition of Cyrus the younger. The story of Alexander, as told by Sir John Malcolm, in his late history of Persia, is similar, though not the same. Mr. Gibbon says well, “The art and genius of history have ever been unknown to the Asiatics. ......And perhaps the Arabs might not find in a single historian, so clear and comprehensive a narrative of their own exploits as will be deduced in the ensuing sheets.” Gibbon, chap. li. Chardin, speaking of the ignorance of the Persians, in regard to geography and history, says, “On ne croiroit jamais que cette ignorance fut aussi outrée qu’elle l’est, et je ne l’auroit pu croire moimême, si je ne m’en etois convaincu par un long usage. .....Pour ce qui est de l’historie du pays, les livres qui en traitent ne sont clairs et sῦrs, et ne se suivent, que depuis la naissance de la religion Mahometane; de maniere qu’on ne se peut fier à rien de ce qui est rapporteé de siecles precedens, surtout en matière de chronologie, ou ces gens committent les plus grossieres erreurs, confondant les siecles, et mettant tout pêle-mèle sans se soucier du tems.—Toutes ces histoires, jusqu’au tems de Muhammed, sont des pieces ou fabuleuses ou Romanesques, remplies de mille contes ou il n’y a rien de vraisemblable.” Voyage en Perse, iii. 256. And Gibbon says, (Hist. of Decl. and Fail, ch. x. p. 442.) “So little has been preserved of Eastern history before Mahomet, that the modern Persians are totally ignorant of the victory of Sapor, an event so glorious to their nation."—"When the Romans had supplanted the Greeks, and extended their dominion over all Europe, they also engaged in endless wars with the Persian kings of the Ashkanian and Sassanian dynasties, for these Asiatic provinces. The events of these early periods are not well described in our histories, as we have no authentic records prior to the time of Mohammed: But the Greeks, who have histories which extend back 2000 years, have minutely described all the circumstances of these wars.” Travels of Mirza Abu Taleb Khan, translated by Charles Stewart, Esq. M. A. S. Professor of Oriental Languages, in the Hon. East India Company’s College, Herts. iii. 23.
87. See Wilford on Egypt and the Nile, Asiat. Res. iii. 295; and on the Chronology of the Hindus, Ibid. v. 241.
88. Hist. of Great Britain, ii. 4.
89. Strabo, lib. iv. p. 197.
90. Ammian. Marcell. lib. xv. cap. ix.
91. The high civilization, refined literature, beautiful language, profound philosophy, polished manners, and amiable morals of the Arabians, are celebrated in the highest strains, by M. de Boulainvilliers, Vie de Mahomet, p. 38; Ed. of Amsterdam, 1781. Pythagoras, after having studied the sciences of the Egyptians, travelled into Arabia to learn the philosophy of the Arabians. Porphyr. de Vit. Pythag.
92. Volney’s Travels in Egypt and Syria, ii. 434. “In two recent voyages into Egypt,” says Gibbon, (Hist. of Dec. and Fall, &c. ix. 448.) “we are amused by Savary, and instructed by Volney. I wish the latter could travel over the globe.” “The last and most judicious,” he calls him, “of our Syrian travellers.” Ibid. p. 224.
93. Volney, ut supra, p. 443.
94. Observations on the Religion, Laws, Government, and Manners of the Turks, p. 39. Most, if not all, the Arabian versions of the Greek authors, were done by the Christian subjects of the caliphs. See Gibbon, ch. iii. The same is probably the origin of the Turkish versions. What use, if any, they make of them, does not appear. Mr. Scott Waring says, “The science of the Persians is, I believe, extremely confined. They have translations of Euchd, Ptolemy, the works of Plato, Aristotle, Pythagoras, and some other of the Grecian philosophers, which few of them read, and fewer understand.” Tour to Sheeraz, p. 254.
95. Hist. of Decline and Fall, &c. ch. i. Mr. Forster mentions a Mussulman fellow-traveller, a disputant, who, says he, “unhappily for himself and his neighbours, had conned over some of those books of ingenious devices and quaint syllogisms, which are held in high note among the modern Mahometans, and have fixed among them a false distorted taste.” Travels in India, p. 106.
96. “There is generally a want of ardour in pursuit of knowledge among the Asiatics, which is partaken by the Afghauns; excepting, however, in the sciences of dialectics and metaphysics, in which they take much interest, and have made no contemptible progress.” Elphinstone’s Account of Caubul, p. 189.
97. The clearest account I have seen of this important fact, which Mr. Dugald Stewart (Elements of the Philosophy of the Human Mind, ii. 231,) appears not to have known that any body had noticed but M. Turgot, is in the following passage of Condillac. “Mais il faut observer, qu’une fois qu’un enfant commence à generaliser, il rend une idée aussi etendue qu’elle peut l’être, c’est-à-dire qu’il se hâte de donner le même nom à tous les objets qui se resemblant grossièrement, et il les comprend tous dans une seule classe. Les resemblances sont les premieres choses qui le frappent, parce qu’il ne sait pas encore assez analyser pour distinguer les objets par les qualités qui leur sont propres. Il n’imaginera donc des classes moins générales, que lorsqu’il aura appris à observer par ou les choses different. Le mot homme, par example, est d’abord pour lui une denomination commune, sous laquelle il comprend indistinctment tous les hommes. Mais lorsque dans la suite il aura occasion de connoitre les differentes conditions, il fera aussitôt les classes subordonnées et moins generales de militaires, de magistrats, de bourgeois, d’artisans, de laboureurs, &c.; tel est donc l’ordre de la generation des idées. On passe tout à coup de l’individu au genre, peur descendre ensuite aux differentes especes qu’on multiplie d’autant plus qu’on acquiert plus de discerniment; c’est-a-dire, qu’on apprend mieux à faire l’analyse des choses.” Cours d’Etude, i. 49, 50. Ed. à Parme, 1776. Vide note A. at the end of the volume.
98. Works of Sir Wm. Jones, i. 165. It may be remarked, that Sir William Jones, after all these praises, allows that the Vedanti doctrines are wild and erroneous. Asiat. Res. iv. 164, 165.
99. Elements of the Philosophy of the Human Mind, vol. ii. note B.
100. The words in which this important observation is expressed, are borrowed from a happy application of it by Mr. Stewart, in the same volume, p. 443.

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101. The passage is transcribed by Mr. Stewart, in the note quoted above.
102. Vide supra, vol. i. p. 315.
103. Stewart’s Elem. ut supra.
104. Another circumstance is always to be remembered. If the Brahmens are once informed of the European doctrine, they will take abundant care to make their own conform to it. “With respect to the real tenets of the Hindus, on subjects of theology, they are to be taken from their ancient books, rather than from the oral declarations of the most learned Brahmens of modern times, who have discovered that the opinions of Christians, concerning the nature of God, are far more rational than those currently entertained among them, and that the gross idolatry of the Hindus is contemned by the more intelligent natives of the western world. Bernier seems to have found occasion for the same remark in his time; for, after relating a conference between him and some learned pandits, in which the latter endeavoured to refine away the grossness of their image worship; ‘Voila (says he) sans ajouter ni diminuer la solution qu’ils me donnerent; mais, à vous dire le vrai, cela me sembloit un peu trôp bien concerté a la Chretienne, aux prix de ce que j’en avois appris de plusieurs autres pandits.’” (Grant’s Observations on the State of Society among the Asiatic Subjects of Great Britain, p. 73. Papers on India, ordered to be printed by the House of Commons, 15th June, 1813.) This supposed refinement, such as it is, Mr. Elphinstone found among the rude and uncivilized Afghauns. “Another sect in Caubul is that of the Soofees, who ought, perhaps, to be considered as a class of philosophers, rather than of religionists. As far as I can understand their mysterious doctrine, their leading tenet seems to be, that the whole of the animated and inanimate creation is an illusion; and that nothing exists except the Supreme Being, which presents itself under an infinity of shapes to the soul of man, itself a portion of the Divine essence. The contemplation of this doctrine raises the Soofees to the utmost pitch of enthusiasm. They admire God in every thing; and, by frequent meditation on his attributes, and by tracing him through all his forms, they imagine that they attain to an ineffable love for the Deity, and even to an entire union with his substance.” (An Account of the Kingdom of Caubul, by the Hon. Mountstuart Elphinstone, p. 207.) See, for an account of a similar sect in Persia, Malcolm’s Hist. of Persia, ii. 385.—How different is all this from the curious result of the refined and ingenious reasonings of Berkeley! And how shallow the heads that confound them!
105. See Mallet, Introd. Hist. Denmark, vol. ii. For additional illustrations we may refer to the maxims of Confucius and Zoroaster.
106. Colebrooke on the Sanscrit and Pracrit Languages, Asiat. Res. vol. vii.
107. Mr. Colebrooke still farther remarks, that the Hindus delight in scholastic disputation; and that their controversial commentaries on grammar exhibit copious specimens of it. Ibid.
108. Vide supra, p. 67–69.
109. Tout ce que le mauvais goῦt peut inventer pour fatiguer l’esprit, fait leur delices, et ravit leur admiration. Memoires du Baron de Tott sur les Turcs et les Tartares, i. 8.
110. The following remarkable passage in the celebrated letter of our countryman, and (but for one exception) admirable countryman, Sir Thomas More, to Martin Dorpius, affords at once a proof of the fact, and a judgment on the practice: “At nunc absurda quædam portenta, ad certam bonarum artium nata perniciem, et luculenter ab antiquis distincta, commiscuerunt; et veterum purissimas traditiones suis adjectis sordibus infecerunt omnia. Nam in Grammatica (ut omittam Alexandrum, atque id genus ahos; qui quamquam imperite, tamen grammaticam utcunque docuerant) Albertus quidam, grammaticam se traditurum professus, logicam nobis quandam, aut metaphysicam, immo neutram, sed mera somnia, mera deliria grammaticæ loco substituit: et tamen hæ nugacissimæ nugæ in publicas academias non tantum receptæ sunt, sed etiam plerisque tam impense placuerunt, ut is propemodum solus aliquid in grammatica valere censeatur, quisquis fuerit Albertistæ nomen assequutus. Tantum auctoritatis habet, ad pervertenda bonorum quoque ingeniorum judicia, semel ab ineptis tradita, magistris, dein tempore corroborata persuasio. Quo fit ut minus mirer, ad eundem modum in dialecticæ locum nugas plus quam sophisticas irrepsisse quæ cultoribus suis argutiarum nomine tam vehementer, arrident.” Caramuel says of the subtle doctor, Scotus, Vix ahibi subtilius scripsit quam cum de grammaticis modis significandi. Mr. Horne Tooke, however, on this remarks, that his De modis significandi should be entitled, An Exemplar of the subtle art of saving appearances, and of discoursing deeply andlearnedly on a subject with which we are perfectly unacquainted. Quid enim subtilus vel magis tenue quam quod nihil est? (Diversions of Purley, Introd. p. 12.)
111. Le Pere Paulini (Bartolomeo) Voyage aux Indes, ii. 201.
112. Mr. Gibbon quaintly says, “In Arabia as well as in Greece, the perfection of language outstripped the refinement of manners; and her speech could diversify the fourscore names of honey, the two hundred of a serpent, the five hundred of a lion, the thousand of a sword, at a time when this copious dictionary was entrusted to the memory of an illiterate people.” Hist. of Dec. and Fall, &c. ix. 240. The German professor Forster, who writes notes on the Voyage du Pere Paulini, says not ineptly on the passage quoted in the text, (Paulini, Voy. aux Indes, iii. 399.) “Ce n’est pas de cette manière la qu’on doit juger de la richesse d’une langue. On a coutume de dire que la langue Arabe est riche, parceque elle a je ne sais quel nombre de synonimes pour exprimer le mot epée. Un de ces synonimes, par example, signifie le meurtrier des hommes. Ce n’est la, dans la realité, qu’une expression metaphorique et figurée, telle qu’on en pent former dans toutes les langues tant soit pen cultivees. On pouvait de même trouver plus de trente noms pour exprimer le soleil dans les poetes Grecs; mais il n’est venu dans l’esprit de personne, de faire valoir cela pour prouver la richesse de la langue Grecque.” Our own sagacions, and in many respects highly philosophical Wilkins judges better when he names “significancy, perspicuity, brevity, and consequently facility,” among the perfections of a language; and says that the multitude of rules in the Latin “argues the imperfection of that language, that it should stand in need of such and so many rules as have no foundation in the philosophy of speech...............If these rules be not necessary to language, and according to nature, but that words may signify sufficiently, and in some respects better without them, then there is greater judgment showed in laying them aside, or framing a language without them.” Essay towards a Real Character, &c. p. 448. Another writer, who speaks with as much boldness, as he thinks with force on the subject of language says, “Persons too dull or too idle to understand the subject cannot, or will not, perceive how great an evil many words is; and boast of their copiæ verhorum, as if a person diseased with gout or dropsy boasted of his great joints, or big belly.” And again, “It cannot be too often repeated that superfluous variety end copiu, are faults, not excellencies. Simplicity may be considered poverty by perverted understandings, but it is always of great utility; and to true judges it always possesses beauty and dignity.” Philosophic etymology, or Rational Grammar, by James Gilchrist, p. 110, 170. If the Sanscrit is to be admired for its amplicated grammar, the Ethiopic should be admired for its 202 letters; Wilkins’ Essay towards a Real Character, p. 14.
113. Gl’indigeni Chilesi formano una sola nazione divisa in varie tribu, et tutti hanno la medesima fisconomia, e la medesima lingua chiamata da loro Chiledugu, che vuol dire lingua Chilese. Questa lingua è dolce, armoniosa, expressiva, regolare, e copiosissima di termini atti ad enunciare non solo le cose fische generali, o particulari, ma anche le cose morali, e astratte. Saggio Sulla Storia Naturale del Chili Del Signor Abate Giovanni Ignazio Molina, lib. iv. p. 334.
114. Marsden’s Hist. of Sumatra, p. 197, ed. 3d.
115. “It is so copious, polished, and expressive, that it has been esteemed by many superior to the Latin, and even to the Greek. It abounds,” says he, “more than the Tuscan, in diminutives and augmentatives; and more than the English, or any other language we know, in verbal and abstract terms: for there is hardly a verb from which there are not many verbals formed, and scarcely a substantive or adjective from which there are not some abstracts formed. It is not less copious in verbs than in nouns; as from every single verb others are derived of different significations. Chihua “is to do,” Chichihua “to do with diligence or often,” Chihuilia “to do to another,” Chihualtia “to cause to be done,” Chihuatiuh “to go to do,” Chiuaco “to come to do,” Chiuhtiuh “to be doing,” &c. Having mentioned the extraordinary variety with which the Mexicans express different degrees of respect, by adding adverbs and other particles to the names employed, Clavigero adds, “This variety, which gives so much civilization to the language, does not, however, make it difficult to be spoken; because it is subjected to rules which are fixed and easy; nor do we know any language that is more regular and methodical. The Mexicans, like the Greeks and other nations, have the advantage of making compounds of two, three, or four simple words; but they do it with more economy than the Greeks did; for the Greeks made use of the entire words in composition, whereas the Mexicans cut off syllables, or at least some letters from them. Tlazotti signifies valued, or beloved; Mahuitzic, honoured or revered; Tespixqui, priest; Tatli, father. To unite these five words in one, they take eight consonants and four vowels, and say, for instance, Notlazomahuitzteopixcatalzin, that is, my very worthy father, or revered priest, prefixing the No which corresponds to the pronoun my, and adding tzin, which is a particle expressive of reverence. There are some compounds of so many terms as to have fifteen or sixteen syllables.......In short all those who have learned this language, and can judge of its copiousness, regularity, and beautiful modes of speech, are of opinion, that such a language cannot have been spoken by a barbarous people.” Clavigero, Hist. of Mexico, book vii. sect. 41.
116. Henry’s Hist. of Great Britain, iv. 365.—"I know not a language spoken in Europe that hath words of more sweetness and greatness than theirs:” Penn’s Letter on the American Indians, in Clarkson’s Life of Penn, i. 385.
117. Laws of Menu, ch. i. 75.
118. Ib. 76.
119. Ib. 77.
120. Laws of Menu, ch. i. 78.
121. Laws of Menu, ch. i. 45.
122. Ibid. 49. See also Ib. xi. 143 to 146.
123. Wilford on Egypt and the Nile, Asiat. Res. iii. 310.
124. Transactions of the Royal Society of Edin. vol. ii.
125. Of which he has over all Europe been recognized as the author: Vide infra, p. 93, note 3.
126. Mr. Playfair has himself given us a criterion for determining on his notions of the Hindu astronomy, which is perfectly sufficient. He says, in the conclusion of his discourse (Edin. Trans. ii. 192), “These conclusions are without doubt extraordinary; and have no other claim to our belief, except that their being false were much more wonderful than their being true.” On this principle, the question is decided; for the wonder is little that they should be false, but mighty indeed were they true.
127. Asiat. Res. vi. 577.
128. Dr. Smith, with his usual sagacity, says, “There are various causes which render astronomy the very first of the sciences which is cultivated by a rude people; though from the distance of the objects, and the consequent mysteriousness of their nature and motions, this would seem not to be the case. Of all the phenomena of nature, the celestial appearances are, by their greatness and beauty, the most strikingly addressed to the curiosity of mankind. But it is not only their greatness and beauty by which they become the first objects of a speculative curiosity. The species of objects in the heavens are few in number; the sun, the moon, the planets, and the fixed stars. All the changes too which are ever observed in these bodies, evidently arise from some difference in the velocity and direction of their several motions. All this formed a very simple object of consideration. The objects, however, which the inferior parts of nature presented to view, the earth and the bodies which immediately surround it, though they were much more familiar to the mind, were more apt to embarrass and purplex it, by the variety of their species and by the intricacy and seeming irregularity of the laws or orders of their succession. The variety of meteors in the air, of clouds, rainbows, thunder, lightning, winds, rain, hail, snow, is vast, and the order of their succession seems to be most irregular and inconstant. The species of fossils, minerals, plants, animals, which are found in the waters and near the surface of the earth, are still more intricately diversified; and if we regard the different manners of their production, their mutual influence in altering, destroying, supporting one another, the orders of their succession seem to admit of an almost infinite variety. If the imagination, therefore, when it considered the appearances in the heavens, was often perplexed and driven out of its natural career, it would be much more exposed to the same embarrassment, when it directed its attention to the objects which the earth presented to it, and when it endeavoured to trace their progress and successive revolutions.” Essays by Dr. Adam Smith, p. 97, 98. Of the Persians, Mr. Scott Waring says, “Their perverse predilection for judicial astrology excites them to the study of astronomy, merely that they may foretell the conjunction of the planets; and when they are able to do this with any degree of accuracy, they are accounted men of considerable science. They have two descriptions of Ephemeris; the first containing the conjunction and opposition of the luminaries; and the second the eclipses, the longitude and latitude of the stars,” &c. Tour to Sheeraz, p. 254. The pages of the historian being little adapted to mathematical and astronomical discussion, I have inserted, by way of Appendix, an examination of the arguments for the antiquity and excellence of the Hindu astronomy; with which the friendship of the great mathematician to whom I have alluded has enabled me to elucidate the subject. See Append. No. 1. at the end of the chapter.
129. Playfair, on the Astronomy of the Brahmens, Trans. Roy. Soc. Edin. ii. 135.
130. Dr. Smith says, “Nature, according to common observation, appears a chaos of jarring and discordant appearances, into which philosophy endeavours to introduce order by representing the invisible chains which bind together all these disjointed objects. It thus soothes the imagination, and renders the theatre of nature a more coherent, and therefore a more magnificent spectacle, than otherwise it would appear to be. Mankind in the first ages of society have little curiosity to find out those hidden chains of events which bind together the seemingly disjointed appearances of nature. A savage has no inclination to amuse himself with searching out what seems to serve no other purpose than to render the theatre of nature a more connected spectacle to his imagination.” Essays, Hist. of Astron. p. 20, 21, 23.
131. Playfair, on the Astron of the Brahm. Trans. R. S. E. ii. 138, 139.
132. Goguet having mentioned the quipos of the Peruvians, says, “It is the same with the negroes on the coast of Juida. They know nothing of the art of writing, and yet they can calculate the largest sums with great facility by means of cords and knots, which have their own signification.” Hist. Gen. de Voyage, iv. 283, 373, and 393.” Origin of Laws, i. 224. We are informed by Herodotus, that the Egyptians, like the Brahmens, counted by shells; and at one time at least, the Greeks; but in an inverse order, the Greeks passing from left to right, the Egyptians from right to left. Herodot lib. ii. cap. 36.
133. Asiat. Res. ii. 115. The following is valuable from the pen of M. Delambre. M. La Place, qui avoit quelque intéret a soutenir la grande ancienneté de l’astronomie Indienne, et qui avoit d’abord parle des mouvemens moyens et des époques des Hindous de la maniere la plus avantaguese, a fini pourtant par croire et imprimer que leurs tables ne remontent pas au dela du 13me siècle. Mr. Playfair, en repondant à l’objection de M. de la Place, ne la detruit pas. Peu importe que Bailly ait affirmé plus ou moins directement et positivement la conjonction generale des plauètes, qui a determiné l’epoque; Ce qu’il falloit eclaircir est un fait. Les tables indiquent-elles en effet cette conjonction, l’epoque alors est fictive, et l’astronomie Indienne est beaucoup plus moderne. Les tables n’indiquent-elles pas cette conjonction, alors l’objection de M. de la Place tombe d’elle-mème. C’est ce que ne dit pas Mr. Playfair, et c’est ce que je n’ai pas le tems de vérifier. Mais quand même l’objection seroit sans force, il resteroit bien d’autres difficultés. Ce ne sont pas quelques rencoutres heureuses parmi une foule de calculs erronés ou incoherens, qui suffiroient pour prouver l’antiquité de l’Astronomie Indienne. La forme mysterieuse de leurs tables et de leurs méthodes suffiroit pour donner des soupçons sur leur veracité. C’est une question qui probablement ne sera jamais decidée, et qui ne pourroit l’etre que par de nouvelles decouvertes dans les ecrits des Hindoos.” Letter from M. Delambre, dated Paris July 21, 1814, published, Appendix, note D. of “Researches concerning the Laws, &c. of India, by Q. Craufurd, Esq.”
134. Asiat. Res. ii. 226–228.
135. Of that ignorance take the following specimens:—"The Bhagavat,” (says Mr. Davis, Asiat. Res. iii. 225) “when treating of the system of the universe, places the moon above the sun, and the planets above the fixed stars."—” The prince of serpents continually sustains the weight of this earth.” Sacontala, beginning of act v.—"Some of them” [the Brahmens of the present day] “are capable,” says Mr. Orme, Hist. of Indost. i. 3, “of calculating an eclipse, which seems to be the utmost stretch of their mathematical knowledge.”
136. Playfair, on the Astronomy of the Brahmens, Trans. R. S. E. ii. 140, 141. See to the same purpose, Colebrooke on the Indian and Arabian Divisions of the Zodiac, Asiat. Res. ix. 323, 376.
137. Asiast. Res. ii. 289.
138. The division of the zodiac among the Birmans as well as the Brahmens, resembles ours, the original Chaldean. “My friend Sangermano,” (says Dr. Buchanan, Asiat. Res. vi. 204,) “gave Captain Symes a silver bason on which the twelve signs were embossed. He conceived, and I think justly, that this zodiac had been communicated to the Burmans from Chaldea by the intervention of the Brahmens. And I find that in this conjecture he is supported by Sir W. Jones, (As. Res. ii. 306). Both, however, I am afraid, will excite the indignation of the Brahmens, who, as the learned judge in another place alleges, have always been too proud to borrow science from any nation ignorant of the Vedas. Of their being so proud as not to acknowledge their obligations I make no doubt; but that they have borrowed from the Chaldeans who were ignorant of the Vedas, Sir W. Jones himself has proved. Why then should he have opposed the sarcastic smiles of perplexed Pandits to the reasoning of M. Montucla, (As. Res. ii. 303, 289,) when that learned man alledged that the Brahmens have derived astronomical knowledge from the Greeks and Arabs. The expression of the Brahmens quoted by him as a proof, namely, ‘that no base creature can be lower than a Yavan or Greek,’ only exposes their miserable ignorance and disgusting illiberality."—On this pride, too great to learn (a sure sign of barbarity), it is also to be remarked, that a matrimonial connexion (among the Hindus the most sacred of all connexions) took place between Seleucus and Sandracottos. “On this difficulty,” says Mr. Wilford, “I consulted the pundits of Benares, and they all gave me the same answer; namely, that in the time of Chandragupta, the Yavanas were much respected, and were even considered as a sort of Hindus.” Asiat. Res. v. 286. What was to hinder the Brahmens from learning astronomy from the Greeks at that period? Mr. Wilford indeed says that a great intercourse formerly subsisted between the Hindus and the nations of the West. Ibid. iii. 297, 298. Sir William seems to have known but little of the intercourse which subsisted between the Hindus and the people of the West. Suetonius (in vit. Octav.) informs us, that the Indians sent ambassadors to Augustus. An embassy met him when in Syria, from king Porus, as he is called, with letters written in the Greek character, containing, as usual, an hyperbolical description of the grandeur of the monarch. Strabo, lib. xv. p. 663. A Brahmen was among those ambassadors, who followed Augustus to Athens, and there burnt himself to death. Strabo, Ibid. and Dio. Cass. lib. liii. p. 527. Another splendid embassy was sent from the same quarter to Constantine. Cedreni Annal. p. 242, Ed. Basil. 1566; Maurice, Hist. iii. 125. “I have long harboured a suspicion,” says Gibbon, “that all the Scythian, and some, perhaps much, of the Indian science, was derived from the Greeks of Bactriana.” Gibbon, vii. 294. A confirmation of this idea, by no means trifling, was found in China, by Lord Macartney and his suite, who discovered the mathematical instruments deposited in the cities of Pekin, and Nankeen, not constructed for the latitude of those places, but for the 37th parallel, the position of Balk or Bactria: Barrow’s China, p. 289. The certainty of the fact of a Christian church being planted in India at a time not distant from that of the apostles, is a proof that the Hindus had the means of learning from the Greeks.—We learn the following very important fact from Dr. Buchanan. The greater part of Bengal manuscripts, owing to the badness of the paper, require to be copied at least once in ten years, as they will, in that climate, preserve no longer; and every copyist, it is to be suspected, adds to old books whatever discoveries he makes, relinquishing his immediate reputation for learning, in order to promote the grand and profitable employment of his sect, the delusion of the multitude. As. Res. vi. 174, note. Anquetil Duperron, who had at an early period asserted the communication of Grecian science to the Hindus, (See Recherches Historiques et Philosophiques sur l’Inde) supported this conclusion at the end of his long life. “N’est il pas avoué,” says he in his notes to the French translation of Paulini’s Travels, iii. 442; “que, de tout terms, sans conquête, avec conquête, par terre comme par mer, l’Asie, l’Inde, et l’Europe, ont eu des relations plus ou moins actives; que les savans, les sages de ces contrées se sont visités, ont pu se faire part de leurs decouvertes; et qu’il n’est pas hors de vraisemblance que quelques uns auront fait usage dans leurs livres, même sans en avertir, des nouvelles lumières qu’ils avaient reçues de l’etranger? De nos jours, le Rajah d’Amber, dans ses ouvrages astronomiques, parle des tables de la Hire. Le Rajah Djessingue, aura profité des leçons du P. Boudier, qu’il avait appolé auprès de lui. Si l’astronome Brahme, avec lequel M. le Gentil a travaillé à Pondicherri, ecrit sur l’astronomie, sans abandonner le fond de ses principes, du systême Indien, il adoptera des pratiques qu’il aura remarquées dans son disciple, calculera, quoique Indou, à la Française, et donnera comme de lui, du pays, des resultats réellement tirés de ses rapports avec l’astronomie Française. Nier ces probabilités, c’est ne pas connâitre les hommes."—"Il y a differentes epoques dans les sciences Indiennes, dans la mythologie, les opinions religieuses de cette contrée. Les Indiens ont reçu ou imprunté diverses connaissances des Arabes, des Perses, en tel temps; des Grecs dans tel autre.” Ib. p. 451.
139. Elements of Geometry, &c. By John Leslie, Professor of Moral Philosophy in the University of Edinburgh, note xxxiv. All that can be said in favour of the mathematical science of the Hindus is very skilfully summed up in the following passage, by a mathematician of first-rate eminence, William Wallace, Esq. the Professor of Mathematics in the University of Edinburgh. “The researches of the learned have brought to light astronomical tables in India, which must have been constructed by the principles of geometry; but the period at which they have been formed has by no means been completely ascertained. Some are of opinion, that they have been framed from observations made at a very remote period, not less than 3,000 years before the Christian era; and if this opinion be well founded, the science of geometry must have been cultivated in India to a considerable extent, long before the period assigned to its origin in the West; so that many of the elementary propositions may have been brought from India to Greece. The Hindus have a treatise called the Surya Sidhanta, which professes to be a revelation from heaven, communicated to Meya, a man of great sanctity, about four millions of years ago; but setting aside this fabulous origin, it has been supposed to be of great antiquity, and to have been written at least two thousand years before the Christian era. Interwoven with many absurdities, this book contains a rational system of trigonometry, which differs entirely from that first known in Greece or Arabia. In fact, it is founded on a geometrical theorem, which was not known to the geometricians of Europe, before the time of Vieta, about two hundred years ago. And it employs the sines of arcs, a thing unknown to the Greeks, who used the chords of the double arcs. The invention of sines has been attributed to the Arabs, but it is possible that they may have received this improvement in trigonometry, as well as the numeral characters, from India.” Edinburgh Encyclopedia, Article Geometry, p. 191. The only fact here asserted which bears upon the question of the civilization of the Hindus, is that of their using the sines of arcs instead of the chords of the double arcs. Suppose that they invented this method. It proves nothing beyond what all men believe; that the Hindus made a few of the first steps in civilization at an early period; and that they engaged in those abstract speculations, metaphysical and mathematical, to which a semi-barbarous people are strongly inclined. The Arabians were never more than semi-barbarous. The Greeks were no better, at the early age when they were acquainted with the elementary propositions of geometry. If the Greeks or Arabians invented, in the semi-barbarous state, the mode of computation by the chords; what was to hinder the Hindus from inventing, while semi-barbarous, the mode of computing by the sines of arcs? This is upon the supposition that the mode of computing by sines, and the elementary propositions on which it depends, really are original among the Hindus. But this seems not to rest upon very satisfactory proof, when it is barely inferred from the use of chords by the Greeks; and the possibility alone is asserted of the Arabians having derived the knowledge from the Hindus.
140. Origin of Laws, i. 221.
141. Ibid. i. 224.
142. Ibid. Mr. Gilchrist renders it highly probable, that not only the digits, but the letters of the alphabet are hieroglyphics. Philosophic Etymology, p. 23.
143. Second Dissertation, Supplement to the Encyclopædia Britannica, p. 12. It is a comcidence well worth remarking, that Diophantus, a Greek mathematician of Alexandria, about 150 years after Christ, employed a like expedient. “The questions he resolves,” says Mr. Playfair, “are of considerable difficulty. The expression is that of common language abbreviated, and assisted by a few symbols.” (Ib. p. 13.) In a MS. of Diophantus, which Bombelli says he saw in the Vatican library, the Indian authors, he says, are often quoted. Nothing of this appears in the work of Diophantus, which was published about three years after the time when Bombelh wrote. Nor has any other work of Diophantus been produced. It is, besides, to be remembered, that the Greeks used the word Indian with great latitude. They applied it not merely to the people beyond the Indus; they applied it also to a people on the Euxine Sea; to a people in Ethiopia; in a general way, to all the people of the East. It is by no means clear that Diophantus would not apply it to the Arabians themselves. (See Appendix, No. II. at the end of the chapter.)
144. Laws of Menu, ch. ix. 245. “Since the era of Halhed and Sir William Jones,” says Mr. Scott Waring, “the existence of the precious manuscripts of Sanscrit learning has, like the chorus to a popular song, been echoed from author to author, who, though entirely ignorant of Sanscrit, have stamped with credibility a seemingly vague supposition; for what production have we yet seen to justify those extravagant praises.” Tour to Sheeraz, by Ed. Scott Waring, p. 5. Mr. Wilford, better acquainted with the Puranas than any other European, speaks of them with little respect. He talks of “the ignorant compilers of the Puranas, who have arranged this heterogeneous mass without method and still less judgment.” As. Res. vi. 471. M. Bernier, than whom no European had better opportunities of observing the actual and present attainments of the Brahmens, who observed with a penetrating and judicious spirit, and wrote before the birth of theory on the subject, says, “A pres le Purane quelque uns se jettent dans la philosophie ou certainement ils reussissent bien peu;—je l’ai deja dit, ils sont d’une humeur lente et paresseuse, et ne sont point animez dans l’esperance de parvenir a quelque chose par leur etude.” Suite des Memoires sur l’Empire du Grand Mogol, i. 184. “Leurs plus fameux Pendets,” says he, “me semblent tres ignorans.” (Ibid. p. 185.) Mentioning their accounts of the origin of the world, he says, “Il y en a aussi qui veulent que la lumiere et les tenebres soient les premiers principes, et disent la-dessus mille choses a vue de pays sans ordre ni suite, et apportent de longues raisons qui ne sentent nullement la philosophie, mais souvent la façon ordinaire de parler du peuple.” (Ibid. p. 187.) Though the Hindus abstain religiously from anatomy, they pretend to know most confidently anatomical facts. “Ils ne laissent pas d’assurer qu’il y a cinq mille veines dans l’homme, ny plus ny moins, comme s’ils les avoient bien contées.” (Ibid. p. 190.) After a review of their whole knowledge, which would be reckoned no incorrect outline, by the best informed of the present day, he adds, “Toutes ces grandes impertinences que je viens de vous racontor m’ont souvent fait dire en moi-meme que si ce sont la les fameuses sciences de ces anciens Bragmanes des Indes, il faut qu’il y ait eu bien du monde trompé dans les grandes idées qu’on en a conçues.” (Ibid. p. 193.)—"For some time a very unjust and unhappy impression appeared to have been made on the public mind, by the encomiums passed on the Hindoo writings. In the first place, they were thus elevated in their antiquity beyond the Christian Scriptures, the writings of Moses having been called the productions of yesterday, compared with those of the bramhŭns. The contents of these books, also, were treated with the greatest reverence; the primitive religion of the Hindoos, it was said, revealed the most sublime doctrines, and inculcated a pure morality. We were taught to make the greatest distinction between the ancient and modern religion of the Hindoos; for the apologists of Hindooism did not approve of its being judged of by present appearances. Some persons endeavoured to persuade us, that the Hindoos were not idolaters, because they maintained the unity of God; though they worshipped the work of their own hands as God, and though the number of their gods was 330,000,000. It is very probable, that the unity of God has been a sentiment amongst the philosophers of every age; and that they wished it to be understood, that they worshipped the One God, whether they bowed before the image of Moloch, Jupiter, or Kalēē; yet mankind have generally concluded that he who worships an image is an idolater; and I suppose they will continue to think so, unless in this age of reason common sense should be turned out of doors.—Now, however, the world has had some opportunity of deciding upon the claims of the Hindoo writings, both as it respects their antiquity and the value of their contents. Mr. Colebrooke’s essay on the védŭs, and his other important translations; the Bhŭgŭvŭt Gēēta, by Mr. Wilkins; the translation of the Ramayŭnŭ, several volumes of which have been printed; some valuable papers in the Asiatic Researches; with other translations by different Sŭngskritŭ scholars; have thrown a great body of light on this subject;—and this light is daily increasing.—Many an object appears beautiful when seen at a distance, and through a mist; but when the fog has dispersed, and the person has approached it, he smiles at the deception. Such is the exact case with these books, and this system of idolatry. Because the public, for want of being more familiar with the subject, could not ascertain the point of time when the Hindoo Shastrŭs were written, they therefore at once believed the assertions of the bramhŭns and their friends, that their antiquity was unfathomable.” (Ward on the Hindoos, Introd. p. xcix.) “There is scarcely any thing in Hindooism when truly known, in which a learned man can delight, or of which a benevolent man can approve; and I am fully persuaded, that there will soon be but one opinion on the subject, and that this opinion will be, that the Hindoo system is less ancient than the Egyptian, and that it is the most puerile, impure, and bloody of any system of idolatry that was ever established on earth.” (Ib. citi.)
145. Anquetil Duperron, who lodged a night at the house of a school-master, at a Mahratta village, a little north of Poona, gives a ludicrous picture of the teaching scene. “Les ecohers, sur deux files, accroupis sur leur talons, traçoient avec le doigt les lettres, ou les mots, sur une planche noire couverte de sable blanc; d’autres repetoient les noms des lettres en forme de mots. Car les Indiens, au lieu de dire comme nous, a, b, c, prononcent ainsi—awam, banam, kanam. Le maitre ne me parut occupe pendant une demi heure que la classe dura encore, qu’a frapper avec un long rotin le dos nud de ces pauvres enfans: en Asie c’est la partie qui paye; la passion malheureusement trop commune dans ces contrées, veille à la sureté de celle que nos maitres sacrifient a leur vengeance. J’aurois été bien aise de m’entretenir avec Monsieur le Pedagogue Marate, ou de moins d’avoir un alphabet de sa main; mais sa morgue ne lui permit pas de repondre a mes politesses.” (Zendavesta, Disc. Prelim. p. ccxxx.)
146. Papers on India Affairs, No. iii. ordered to be printed by the House of Commons, 30th April 1813.
147. There were in these times [the times of Aliverdi, nabob of Bengal] at Azimabad,” says the author of the Seer Mutakhareen, “numbers of persons who loved sciences and learning, and employed themselves in teaching and in being taught; and I remember to have seen in that city and its environs alone, nine or ten professors of repute, and three or four hundred students and disciples; from whence may be conjectured the number of those that must have been in the great towns, and in the retired districts.” Seer Mutakhareen, i. 705, 4to. Calcutta, 1789. N. B. This with regard to the Mussulmans of Bengal. The translator says, in a note, “The reader must rate properly all these students, and all these expressions: their only object was the Coran and its commentaries; that is the Mahometan religion, and the Mahometan law.” Ibid. A hint very different from those we are wont to receive from our guides in Hindu literature.—"In vain do some persons talk to us of colleges, of places of education, and books: these words in Turkey convey not the same ideas as with us.” Volney’s Travels in Syria and Egypt, ii. 443.—Chardin, who formed as high an opinion of the Persians as Sir William Jones of the Hindus, tells us, (Voyage en Perse, iii. 130,) “Le genie des Persans est porté aux sciences, plus qu’ à toute autre profession; et l’on peut dire que les Persans y reussissent si bien que ce sont, après les Chretiens Européens, les plus sçavans peuples du monde...... Ils envoyent les enfans aux colleges, et les elevent aux lettres autant que leurs moyens le peuvent permettre.” And at pages 137, 138, he adds, that schools are distributed in great numbers in Persia, and colleges very numerous.
148. “Inca Roca was reputed the first who established schools in Cozco, where the Amautas were the masters, and taught such sciences as were fit to improve the minds of Incas, who were princes, and of the chief nobility, not that they did instruct them by way of letters, for as yet they had not attained to that knowledge, but only in a practical manner, and by daily discourses: their other lectures were of religion, and of those reasons and wisdom on which their laws were established, and of the number and true exposition of them; for by these means they attained to the art of government and military discipline; they distinguished the times and seasons of the year, and by reading in their knots they learned history and the actions of past ages; they improved themselves also in the elegance and ornament of speaking, and took rules and measures for the management of their domestic affairs. These Amautas, who were philosophers, and in high esteem amongst them, taught something also of poetry, music, philosophy, and astrology,” &c. Garcilasso de la Vega, Royal Commentaries, book iv. ch. xix. This same Inca exhibited one stroke at least which will be reckoned high wisdom by some amongst us: “He enacted that the children of the common people should not be educated in the liberal arts and sciences, for that were to make them proud, conceited, and ungovernable; but that the nobility were those only to whom such literature did appertain, to render them more honourable, and capable of offices in the commonwealth.” Ibid. “There is nothing,” (says Acosta, book vi. ch. 27) “that gives me more cause to admire, nor that I find more worthy of commendation and memory, than the order and care the Mexicans had to nourish their youth.” He tells us they had schools in their temples, and masters to instruct the young “in all commendable exercises, to be of good behaviour,” &c.
149. Asiat. Res. i. 430, and iv. 169.
150. Middleton’s Life of Cicero, sect. 12. Considerable currency was obtained by a very learned work of a clergyman of the Church of England, Mr. Dutens, who undertook to prove that all the discoveries which the moderns have made in the arts and sciences, may be found distinctly broached in the writings of the ancients.

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Part 4 of 6

151. Anquetil Duperron gives us a remarkable instance of the disposition of the Brahmens to accommodate, by falsification, even their sacred records, to the ideas of Europeans. “Si je n’avois pas sçu que le commencement de l’Amerkosh contenoit la description du lingam, peut-etre m’eut il été impossible de decouvrir que mes Brahmes, qui ne vouloient pas devoiler le fond de leurs mysteres, paraphrasoient et pallioient plutot qu’ils ne traduisoient.” Zendav. Disc. Prelim. i. ccclxix. Dr. Buchunan found the propensity general, to deceive him in their accounts both of their religion and history. See Journey through Mysore, &c. ii. 76, 79, 80. “The Brahmens,” he says, “when asked for dates, or authority, say that they must consult their books, which may be readily done; but when I send my interpreter, who is also a Brahmen, to copy the dates, they pretend that their books are lost.” Ibid. i. 335. All information, he says, from the Brahmens, usually differs most essentially as derived from different individuals. Ibid. ii. 306. See an account of the imposition practised by his pundits upon Captain Wilford, by Lord Teignmouth, in the Introduction to his Life of Sir William Jones; also an account by Mr. Wilford himself, Essay on the Sacred Isles in the West, Asiat. Res. viii. 253.—In a letter to a friend Sir W. Jones said, “I can no longer bear to be at the mercy of our pundits, who deal out the Hindu law as they please, and make it at reasonable rates, where they cannot find it ready made.” Life of Sir W. Jones, by Lord Teignmouth, 4to. Ed. p. 307.—Colonel Wilkes accuses the Hindu author of the Digest of Hindu Law, translated by Mr. Colebrooke, of substituting a false principle of law for a true one, out of “a courtesy and consideration, for opinions established by authority, which is peculiar to the natives of India.” Histor. Sketches, p. 116.
152. He might have got proofs, equal to those with which they presented him, of Plato’s having been acquainted with the circulation of the blood; viz. because when speaking of that fluid he uses the word περιμγεσθαι, which signifies to be carried round.—It is worthy of remark, that the philosopher, of whom Sir William heard, and whose works contained such important discoveries, was called Yavan Acharya, that is Gentile or Greek. By the argument of Sir William, we might believe that the Greeks anticipated Newton. When Copernicus, dissatisfied with the received account of the heavenly motions, addressed himself to discover a new arrangement, we are told that “he examined all the obscure traditions delivered down to us, concerning every other hypothesis which the ancients had invented. He found in Plutarch, that some old Pythagoreans had represented the earth as revolving in the centre of the universe, like a wheel round its own axis; and that others of the same sect, had removed it from the centre, and represented it as revolving in the ecliptic, like a star round the central fire. By this central fire he supposed they meant the sun,” &c. Dr. Ad. Smith, Essay on Hist Astron. p. 51. We might prove that Parmenides had a just conception of the figure of the globe. Plato informs us that, according to that inquirer, Το ολον ιτι
Παντοθεν ενκνκλθ σφαιρας εναλιγκιον ογκψ,
Μεσσοθν ισοπαλις ισοπαλις παντη τ[Editor: illegible character] γαρ [Editor: illegible character]τε τι μει ςον
Οντε βεβαιοτερον πελει.
Plat. Souphista, p. 171
Herodotus mentions the opinion of a naturalist, even in his days, whoBOOK II. CHAP. 9. supposed that the ocean flowed round the earth, (a bold step towards the conception of its right figure,) τοο ωχεανον γην περι περι πασαν ρεειν, lib. ii. sect. 22. Dr. Vincent, giving an account of the knowledge possessed by the ancients of the globular form of the earth, and of the saying of Strabo, that nothing obstructed the passage from Spain to India by a westerly course, but the immensity of the Atlantic ocean, has the following note; “Aristotle seems the author of this supposition, as well as of most other things that are extraordinary in the knowledge of the ancients. See Bochart, Phaleg. 169. Συναπιειν τον περι τας Ἡρακλει[Editor: illegible character]ς ςχλας τοπον τψ περι την Ἡρακλεει[Editor: illegible character]ς ςηλας τοηον τψ περι την Ινδικην. The parts about the pillars of Hercules join to those about India. This is a nearer approach still; but both suppositions arise from the contemplation of the earth as a sphere.—Aristotle has also preserved the opinion of the Pythagoreans, who made the sun the centre of our system, with the earth and the other planets revolving round it, which is the hypothesis adopted by Copernicus, and established by Newton. Strabo, likewise, who left the phenomena of the heavens, and the form of the earth, to the mathematicians, still thought the earth a sphere, and describes our system agreeably to the theory which was afterwards adopted by Ptolemy; but he adds the idea of gravitation in a most singular manner. Σφαιροδης μεν ἑ Κοσμοςκαι ἑ Ουρανος Ἡ ΡΟΠΗ δ’επι το μεσον των βαρεων......ἑ δ’ ονραννος περιφρεται περι περι τε αυτην και περι το αξονονα, απ’ ανατολης επι δυσινLib. ii. 110. The earth and the heaven are both spherical; but the tendency is to the centre of gravity. The heaven is carried round itself, and round its axis from east to west. I barely suggest the extent of ancient knowledge on these questions; those who wish to gratify their curiosity may consult Stobæus, tom. ii. cap. 25, Ed. Heeren, Gotting. 1792, 1794; and Diogenes Laertius in Anaximander, Pythagoras, and Zeno, lib. vii. sect. 155.” Periplus of the Erythræan Sea, part ii. 517.—Sir William Jones tells us, in his Discourse on the Hindu zodiac, that the pundit Ramachandra had a correct notion of the figure of the earth.—So had the elder Hermes, of whom it was one of the established maxims, that the earth was oviform, and hence the oval form of many of the oldest temples of Egypt. The earth was called Brahma’s egg. See Asiat. Res. i. 360. Or Ramachandra, like a common fortune-teller, might only repeat to Sir William what he had learned from Sir William.—Europeans will arrive in time to think justly respecting the Hindus: Thus speaks Dr. Buchanan; “No useful science have the Brahmens diffused among their followers; history they have abolished; morality they have depressed to the utmost; and the dignity and power of the altar they have erected on the ruins of the state, and the rights of the subject.” Asiat. Res. vi. 166.
153. Laplace has remarked, that the mean motions of the lunar orbit are quicker in the Indian tables, than in those of Ptolemy: which indicates that the former tables were constructed posterior to those of the Greek astronomer. This argument is at least as strong as any of those by which the antiquity is supported.
154. “If it be insisted, that a hint or suggestion, the seed of their knowledge, may have reached the Hindu mathematicians immediately from the Greeks of Alexandria, or mediately through those of Bactria, it must at the same time be confessed that a slender germ grew and fructified rapidly, and soon attained an approved state of maturity in Indian soil. More will not be here contended for: Since it is not impossible, that the hint of the one analysis may have been actually received by the mathematicans of the other nation: nor unlikely; considering the arguments which may be brought for a probable communication on the subject of astrology.” (Dissertation, p. xxii.) This is an important admission which Mr. Colebrooke was too well informed to overlook, and too honest to conceal. His partialities, however, lead him to a very useless effort of extenuation. Why call the knowledge which the Hindus derived of the Diophantine methods, a hint? What should confine it to a hint? Why make use of the word hint? when it is perfectly clear that if they had the means of receiving a hint, they had the means of receiving the whole. The communication was full and complete between the Hindus and the Greeks, both of Bactria and of Egypt; and the Hindus had the means of receiving from the Greeks all those parts of their knowledge, which the state of civilization among the Hindus enabled them to imbibe. Of the exaggerating language of Mr. Colebrooke, on the other side, about the growing and fructifying of the germ, and its attaining a state of approved maturity in Indian soil, we shall speak by and bye.
155. He had stated long ago, “That astronomy was originally cultivated among the Hindus, solely for the purposes of astrology: That one branch, if not the whole of their astrological science, was borrowed from the Arabians: And that their astronomical knowledge must, by consequence, have been derived from the same quarter.” (Asiat. Res. ix. 376.) And on the present occasion he says; “The position that astrology is partly of foreign growth in India; that is, that the Hindus have borrowed, and largely too, from the astrology of a more western region, is grounded, as the similar inference concerning a different branch of divination, on the resemblance of certain terms employed in both. The mode of divination, called Tájaca, implies by its very name its Arabian origin: Astrological prediction, by configuration of planets, in like manner, indicates even by its Indian name a Grecian source. It is denominated Hórá, the second of three branches which compose a complete course of astronomy and astrology: and the word occurs in this sense in the writings of early Hindu astrologers. ....The same term hórá occurs again in the writings of the Hindu astrologers, with an acceptation—that of hour—which more exactly conforms to the Grecian etymon. The resemblance of a single term would not suffice to ground an inference of common origin, since it might be purely accidental. But other words are also remarked in Hindu astrology.” &c. (Algebra, &c. from the Sanscrit, Dissert. Notes and Illust. p. lxxx.)
156. Ibid. p. xxiv.
157. Algebra, &c. from the Sanscrit, Dissert. Notes and Illust. pp. x. and xvi.
158. Dr. Hutton says, that Diophantus “knew the composition of the cube of a binomial. ....In some parts of book vi. it appears that he was acquainted with the composition of the fourth power of the binomial root, as he sets down all the terms of it; and from his great skill in such matters, it seems probable that he was acquainted with the composition of other higher powers, and with other parts of Algebra, besides what are here treated of ....Upon the whole, this work is treated in a very able and masterly manner, manifesting the utmost address and knowledge in the solutions, and forcing a persuasion that the author was deeply skilled in the science of Algebra, to some of the most abstruse parts of which these questions or exercises relate. However, as he contrives his assumptions and notations, so as to reduce all his conditions to a simple equation, or at least a simple quadratic, it does not appear what his knowledge was, in the resolution of compound or affected quadratics.” Mathematical Dictionary, Art. Diophantus.
159. “Algebra;” &c. ut supra, Dissert. p. xiv.
160. Suppl Encycl. Brit. Dissert Second, p. 4.
161. Ib. p. 14
162. “Any thing proposed to us which causes surprise and admiration, gives such a satisfaction to the mind, that it indulges itself in those agreeable emotions, and will never be persuaded that its pleasure is entirely without foundation.” (Hume, Treatise of Human Nature, i. 53.
163. To this good effect, if to no other, the embassy of Lord Macartney, and the writings to which it has given occasion, have largely contributed. See Barrow’s two works, Travels in China, and Life of Lord Macartney, and above all, that important document, a volume of the Laws of China, translated by Sir George Staunton. No one has more approximated to a correct judgment of the Chinese, than De Guignes. See Voyage.
164. Many of the observations of Mr. Barrow upon the panegyrical accounts of the Chinese by the popish missionaries are very applicable to the flattering accounts which travellers have been so found of giving us of the Hindus. “In the same breath that they extol the wonderful strength of filial piety, they speak of the common practices of exposing infants; the strict morality and ceremonious conduct of the people are followed by a list of the most gross debaucheries; the virtues and the philosophy of the learned are explained by their ignorance and their vices: if in one page they speak of the excessive fertility of the country, and the amazing extension of agriculture, in the next thousands are seen perishing with want; and whilst they extol with admiration the progress they have made in the arts and sciences, they plainly inform us that without the aid of foreigners they can neither cast a cannon nor calculate an eclipse.” Barrow’s Travels in China, p. 31.
165. One of the chief circumstances from which Sir William Jones drew conclusions respecting the high civilization of the Hindus, was the supposition that they never went abroad, a supposition which is now well known to have been erroneous. See Asiat. Res. vi. 531, and i. 271.
166. The writings of Mr. Miller of Glasgow, of which but a small part was then published, and into which it is probable Sir William had never looked, contained the earliest elucidations of the subject. The suggestions offered in his successive productions, though highly important, were but detached considerations applied to particular facts, and not a comprehensive induction, leading to general conclusions. Unfortunately the subject, great as is its importance, has not been resumed. The writings of Mr. Miller remain almost the only source from which even the slightest information on the subject can be drawn One of the ends which has at least been in view during the scrutiny conducted in these pages, has been to contribute something to the progress of so important an investigation. It is hoped that the materials which are here collected will be regarded as going far to elucidate the state of society in all the leading nations of Asia. Not only the Hindus, the Persians, the Arabians, the Turks, and Chinese of the present day, but the Hindus, Arabians, and Persians of ancient days, the Chaldeans, the Jews, and even the ancient Egyptians, may all be regarded as involved in the inquiry; and to these, with the sole exception of the wandering Tartars and the Hyperborean hordes, may be added the second-rate nations; the inhabitants of the eastern peninsula, and of the plains and mountains of Tibet. It is surprising, upon a close inspection, how extensively all these various nations, notwithstanding the dissimilarity in some of the more obvious appearances, resemble one another, in laws and institutions of government, in modes of thinking, in superstition and prejudices, in arts and literature, even in the external forms of manner and behaviour, and as well in ancient, as in modern times.
167. Essay on the Poetry of Eastern Nations. Voltaire exclaimed, on reading Rousseau’s panegyrics. “Jamais n’avais-je tant d’envie de marcher à quatre pattes.”
168. Sir W. Jones, Asiat. Res. ii. 3.
169. Ibid. p. 9.
170. Ibid.
171. Sir W. Jones, Asiat. Res. ii. p. 14.—"On this occasion, as well as on many others, the sober historian is forcibly wakened from a pleasing vision; and is compelled with some reluctance, to confess that the pastoral manners, which have been adorned with the fairest attributes of peace and innocence, are much better adapted to the fierce and cruel habits of a military life.” Gibbon, Decline and Fall, ch. xxvi. p. 342.
172. In the same discourse Sir William further remarks; “That we have none of their compositions in prose before the Koran, may be ascribed, perhaps, to the little skill which they seem to have had in writing, to their predilection in favour of poetical measure, and the facility with which verses are committed to memory; but all their stories prove that they were eloquent in a high degree, and possessed wonderful powers of speaking without preparation, in flowing and forcible periods.” (Asiat, Res. ii. p. 14.) “Who,” says Dr. Ferguson, “would from mere conjecture suppose, that the naked savage would be a coxcomb and a gamester; that he would be proud and vain, without the distinctions of title and fortune; and that his principal care would be to adorn his person, and to find an amusement? Even if it could be supposed that he would thus share in our vices, and in the midst of his forest vie with the follies which are practised in the town; yet no one would be so bold as to affirm that he would likewise in any instance excel us in talents and virtue; that he would have a penetration, a force of imagination and elocution, an ardour of mind, an affection and courage, which the arts, the discipline, and the policy of few nations would be able to improve. Yet these particulars are a part in the description which is delivered by those who have had opportunities of seeing mankind in their rudest condition: and beyond the reach of such testimony, we can neither safely take, nor pretend to give information on the subject.” Ferguson’s Essay on the History of Civil Society, part ii. sect. 1.
The extreme inaccuracy and fluctuation of the ideas of European scholars with respect to civilization, are curiously exemplified in their opinions of the Asiatic nations. Gibbon says, “The cavalry of Scythia was forced to yield to the admirable swiftness and spirit of the Arabian horses; their riders were skilled in the evolutions of irregular war; and the northern barbarians were astonished and dismayed by the inhuman ferocity of the barbarians of the south. A Gothic soldier was slain by the dagger of an Arab; and the hairy, naked savage, applying his lips to the wound, expressed a horrid delight, while he sucked the blood of his vanquished enemy.” Gibbon, Hist. of the Dec. and Fall, &c. iv. 413. Of the various nations subject to the Persian sceptre, many of them still higher in civilization than the most civilized portion of the Arabians, the same author thus expresses himself: “It was here,” says he, “in a place where the opposite banks cannot exceed 500 paces, that Xerxes imposed a stupendous bridge of boats, for the purpose of transporting into Europe 170 myriads of barbarians.” Ibid. iii. 9. Of the Syrians and Egyptians, who still more nearly than the Arabians resembled the Hindus, and were acquainted with more of the arts which attain their perfection in civilized life, he says, “The use of their ancient dialects, by secluding them from the commerce of mankind, checked the improvements of these barbarians.” Ibid. i. 62. (N. B. The same cause operated among the Hindus, and still more powerfully, to the production of the same effects) Mr. Halhed says, that the Jews, at the time of the Mosaic institutions, “were very little removed from a state of barbarism, gross in their conceptions, illiterate in their education, and uncultivated in their manners.” Preface to Code of Gentoo Laws, p. xvii. And yet these institutions are not only superior to the institutions of the Hindus; they are in a high degree superior to the institutions of any other nation in Asia. But with the circumstances of Jewish society, we become, through the medium of our religion, early and familiarly acquainted. No European is early; hardly any is ever familiarly acquainted with the other nations of Asia. No blind propensity therefore excites to admiration in the one case: several do so in the other. Among the authors who have followed Sir William Jones in his track of eulogy and admiration, it may be suspected, from the limited information of some, that they were unacquainted with the facts of uncivilized life, and wherever man exhibited the attributes of humanity believed he must there be civilized; ignorant of the intense exercise which is given to several of the human faculties even among savages, and of the strength which those faculties must hence acquire.
173. None of them has confessed the existence of this motive with more frankness than Le Gentil, Voy. ii. 98. “Avant que j’eusse perdu mon clocher de vue, les François etoient mes heros.....Quant à moi, je suis gueri de mes prejugés, et je m’applaudis en secret de m’etre detrompé.—Col. Dow boasts of being actuated by the same sentiments and scruples not to call Goths, or worse than Goths, all those who are not so: “In love with our own times and country,” says he, “we are apt to consider distant ages and nations, as objects unworthy of the page of the historian......Some men of genius have entertained sentiments upon that subject, too narrow and confined for the Goths of a much darker age. Had the translator of the following history thought so meanly of the affairs of the East,” &c. Dow’s Hindostan, Preface.
174. The account which Robertson gives of the causes which led to exaggerated conceptions in the mind of the Spaniards, respecting the civilization of the Mexicans, applies in almost every particular to those of the English and French respecting the Hindus. “The Spaniards,” says he, “when they first touched on the Mexican coast, were so much struck with the appearance of attainments in policy and in the arts of life, far superior to those of the rude tribes with which they were hitherto acquainted, that they fancied they had at length discovered a civilized people in the New World. This comparison between the people of Mexico and their uncultivated neighbours, they appear to have kept constantly in view, and observing with admiration many things which marked the pre-eminence of the former, they employed, in describing their imperfect policy and infant arts, such terms as are applicable to the institutions of men far beyond them in improvement. Both these circumstances concur in detracting from the credit due to the descriptions of Mexican manners by the early Spanish writer. By drawing a parallel between them and those of people so much less civilized, they raised their own ideas too high. By their mode of describing them, they conveyed ideas to others no less exalted above truth. Later writers have adopted the style of the original historians, and improved upon it.” Hist. of America, iii. 320.
175. “Le voyageur racontant ses avantures, cherche dans l’admiration de ceux qui l’ecoutent, un dedommagement aux dangers qu’il a courus; il enfle la narration: Le sçavant, qui s’est donné beaucoup de peine pour apprendre des langues etrangeres et lointnines, s’extnsie sur la beauté des ouvrages qu’il est parvenu à entendre.” Anquetil Duperron, Note, No. ii. Supplement aux Recherches, &c. sur l’Inde.
176. “The administration of justice has been almost universally, by the Mogul conquerors of Indostan, devolved upon the Hindus, the office of Duan being generally conferred upon one of that people.” Orme on the Government and People of Indostan,” p. 443. “Although the Mogul Tartars under Tamerlane and his successors have at last rendered themselves lords of almost the whole of it (India); yet the original inhabitants have lost very little of their original character by the establishment of these strangers amongst them.” Orme, Hist. of Milit. Transact in Indostan, i. 2.
177. It seems to have been a rash and foolish assimilation of the conquest of Hindustan by the Moguls to the overwhelming of the Roman empire by the northern nations, that alone could have suggested so gratuitous a supposition as that of the degradation of the Hindus from an improved to a barbarous state of society by the calamities of conquest. The two cases are totally dissimilar. By the successive inundations of the barbarians, the ancient inhabitants of the Roman provinces were well nigh swept from the face of the earth. Every where they were stript of the possession of the land, and commonly reduced to the state of bondsmen and slaves. The ancient institutions entirely gave way, and were replaced by a set of institutions altogether new. The language of the conquerors in most places entirely supplanted; in all it so much altered, the language of the people subdued or exterminated, as to impose upon it a different structure. Another circumstance is never to be forgotten. To such a degree of barbarity were the inhabitants of the Roman provinces degraded, by the long continued effects of a detestable government, that the invaders had really not much to accomplish to reduce them to the same level with themselves. This was abundantly seen in the state of the Greeks of the eastern empire; who, upon their very first subjugation to the Turks, exhibited a condition not greatly different from that in which they grovel at the present day. The conquest to which, with greatest propriety, that of the Hindus by one tribe of Tartars might be compared, would be the conquest of the Chinese by a similar tribe of Tartars. There is no reason to think that the one was a conquest of a more destructive nature than the other. If the Moguls did not adopt the religion and institutions of the Hindus, it was because the religion and institutions of the Hindus admitted of no participation, and because the Moguls had already embraced a more enlightened faith. See Francis’s Minute, p. 30: also the treatise of Mr. Grant, on the Character of the Hindus, printed by order of the House of Commons in 1813.
178. Asiat. Res. i. 258.
179. Essay on Vicramaditya and Salivahana, by Capt. Wilford, Asiat. Res. ix. 117 to 120.
180. If we examine the chronological table of the Hindu kings, presented us by Sir William Jones, we shall find Vicramaditya placed at an era posterior to the Mussulman conquests.

/ Years.
From Chandragupta to the end of the Maurya race (As. Res. ii. 139) / 137
From the beginning to the end of the Sunga (Ibid. p. 140.) / 112
From the ditto to ditto of the Canna (Ibid.) / 345
From ditto to ditto of Andra (ending with Chandrabija) (p. 141) / 456
From Chandrabija to Vicramaditya (Ibid. p. 142) / 396
From Chandragupta to Vicramaditya / 1446
Now Seleucus, who was contemporary with Chandragupta (Asiat. Res. iv. xxvi.), began to reign about 300 years before Christ. By this chronology, therefore, Vicramaditya began to reign about 1146 years after Christ.

181. Essay on Vicramaditya, and Salivahana, by Captain Wilford, Asiat. Res. ix. 132, 133.
182. Essay on Vicramaditya, and Salivahana, by Capt. Wilford, Asiat, Res. ix. 158, 159.
183. Ibid. p. 149.
184. Essay on Vicramaditya, and Salivahana, by Captain Wilford, Asiat. Res. ix. 147, 148, 149.
185. Ibid. p. 149.
186. Mr. Wilford presents us also with the history which the Brahmens have manufactured for placing Mahomed among the great men of Hindustan. It is of much importance, to elucidate the accounts, which are given by the Hindus, not only of the actions, but of the very persons and existence, of their pretended heroes. I should otherwise have been well pleased to omit a story, tainted with that indelicacy, which, even when they are inventing, and have the circumstances at their own selection, marks the writings of an uncultivated people. “The Hindus say, that the son of a certain King of India, being disgusted with the world, turned pilgrim, and went to Mocsheswarast’hana (or Mecca). In his way thither, and in Arabia, he stopped at the house of a Brahmen, who received him kindly, and ordered his daughter to wait on him as usual. Whilst asleep, the cloth with which his loins were covered was accidentally defiled. When he awoke, he took it off, and concealed it in a corner of the house, in some hole, and out of the sight of the damsel, as he thought. Being from home, to perform his ablutions, in consequence of this nocturnal defilement, the damsel came at the usual hour; and her courses suddenly making their appearance, she was much distressed, and looking every where for some cloth, she spied the bundle—in short she conceived. He departed for Mecca: and some months after, the parents of the damsel and herself were thrown into the greatest confusion, as may be imagined. The holy man was considered as the author of their disgrace; though the damsel exculpated him: Yet she could not account for her present situation. She was, like Hagar, turned out of the house into the wilderness with her son: where they were miraculously preserved, both being innocent. Some years after the holy man returned, unconscious of his having been the cause of so much uneasiness to the family of the hospitable Brahmen. After much abuse, the matter was explained; but the son of the damsel could not be admitted to share with his relatives, or even to remain in their communion. He was, however, honourably dismissed with his mother, after they had given him a suitable education, and rich presents; and they advised him to shift for himself, and to set up a new religion, as he could not be considered as a member of the old one, on account of his strange birth, or rather conception. When advanced in years, he wished to see his paternal relations and India; and to persuade them to conform to his new doctrine; but he died in his way thither, at Medina, near Candáhár. This Medina is Ghazni, called emphatically the second Medina, from the great number of holy men entombed there: and it is obvious that the Hindus have confounded Muhammed with Sultan-Mahmood, whose sumptuous Mausoleum is close to that city. Thus we see, that the account they give of Muhammed is a mere rhapsody, retaining some of the principal features of the history of Ishmael, Hagar, Muhammed himself, and Sultan-Mahmood.—This Samvat, or era, of Maha’bhat (Muhammed), was early introduced into India, and the Hindus were obliged to use it, as they do now in all their civil transactions; and thus Muhammed became at least a Sambatica or Santica. According to the rules laid down by the learned in India, Muhammed is certainly a Saca and Saceswara, and is entitled to the epithet of Vicrama. He is a Saca, or mighty chief; and, like other Sacas, he killed his millions; he is Saceswara, or the ruler of a sacred period, still in use in India. For these reasons, the Pandits, who assisted Abul-Fazil, did not scruple to bestow the title of Vicramaditya upon him; and even to consider him as the real worthy of that name; and in order to make the era, or at least the time of Vicramaditya’s appearance coincide with the era of Mohammed, they have most shamefully distorted the chronology of the appendix to the Agni-purana. Mr. Wilford, Asiat. Res. ix. 159, 160, 161. See a still more extraordinary attempt to foist the story of Jesus Christ, borrowed from the spurious gospels, into the Puranas; and to make Christ at one time Chrishna, at another time Salivahana, at another time Buddha. Essay on the Origin and Decline of Christianity in India, by Captain Wilford, Asiat. Res. x.
It would thus appear that Vicramaditya is a sort of an appellative, and is applied to any character, whether real or imaginary, whom it suited the Brahmens to erect into a hero; and whether it was originally the name of some Hindu prince who had greatly distinguished himself, or of pure invention, it is altogether useless to inquire. That this name has been attached to a particular era, in one of the numerous Hindu modes of dating, establishes nothing. What we do not know is—for what cause they adopted such an era: What we do know is—that they would very naturally apply to it the appellative Vicramaditya, whatever the cause. And no one can doubt the absurdity of supposing that the cause was a particular prince, contemporary at once with Solomon, with Jesus Christ, with Sapor, and with Mohammed.
What the Brahmens fable, about an universal monarchy, and the celestial glory of this or that pretended hero, can therefore be regarded as no evidence of the facts which they assert. The propensity of the Hindus to exaggeration is every where displayed. “The officers of government here,” says Dr. Buchanan, “had the impudence to inform me, that according to Chica Deva Raya’s valuation of the country which belonged to Nandi Raj, it contained 32,000 villages.....The account here given seems to be one of those gross exaggerations common in India, and is entirely contradicted by the accounts which I received from the revenue office at Seringapatam.” Journey through Mysore, &c. ii. 97. In other places the native officers told him lies, contradicted by the very facts presented to their and his eyes, at the moment of delivering them. “Among the natives, however,” he remarks, “similar departures from the truth are common.” Ibid. p. 136, 137. Vicramaditya is indeed, expressly, at times asserted, not to have been King of all India, but only of a certain portion of it in the west. “The author of the Vicrama-Upac’hyana says, that he was a powerful prince, in the west of India, and possessed of the countries which we find, afterwards, constituting the patrimonial territories of the Balahara, which included Gurjjarasht’ra (or Gujjarat) with some adjacent districts.” Essay on Vicramaditya, &c. by Captain Wilford, Asiat. Res. ix. 149.
187. The word Hindustan is in this work generally used to signify, comprehensively, the land of the Hindus, from Cape Comorin to the farthest boundary of the country which they inhabited. It is necessary to mention, that in the oriental books, it has often a more limited signification, being appropriated to that part of the land of the Hindus, which is north of the river Nerbudda
188. See the inscription found at Monghir, and translated in the Asiat. Res. i. 123. That found at Buddal, Ibid. p. 130.—That found at Tanna, Ibid. p. 357.—Those from the Vindhya mountains, Ibid. ii. 168, 169.—That on the staff of Feeroz Shah, Ibid. p. 382.—That respecting a grant of land in Carnatic, Ibid. iii. 40–47.—That found in the district of Gorakhpur, Ibid. ix. 410.—That found at Chitradurg, Ibid. p. 418, 419, 420.—That found at Curugode, Ibid. p. 436, 437, 438.—Those found at Nedigal and Goujda, Ib. p. 447.
189. See the inscriptions translated in the Asiat. Researches, i. 360, 123, 125; iii. 48, 52; ix. 406, 418. The inscription, cut on a stone, upon the hill of Belligola, in front of the great Jain image, bears a similar testimony. “In the year of the Saca 1290 (A. D. 1367).....be success and glory to the honourable monarch, the sovereign and destroyer of envious princes, lord of foreign king, whose name is Buccaraya.” (Asiat. Res. ix. 270.)
190. Asiat. Res. i. 360.
191. The inscription on the Lāt (staff) of Feerōz Shah, celebrates the monarch, in whose honour it has been erected, “for having achieved conquest in the course of travelling to holy places—as resentful to haughty kings, and indulgent to those whose necks are humbled—making Ariaverta [the land of virtue or of respectable men] once more what its name signifies, by causing the barbarians to be exterminated. —Visala Deva, son of the fortunate Vella Deva, king of Sacambari, the situation of which the translator does not know, most eminent of the tribe which sprang from the arms of Brahma—boasts of having rendered tributary the region of the earth between Himavat (the Imaus of ancient geographers) and Vindhya (the range of hills which passes through the provinces of Bahar, Benares) and exhorts his descendants to subdue the remainder."—No proof, all this, of the peaceful state of Hindostan. The inscription continues—"May thy abode, O Vigraha, sovereign of the earth, be fixed, as in reason it ought, in the bosoms, akin to the mansions of dalliance, of the women with beautiful eyebrows, who were married to thy enemies."—The abuse of an enemy’s wives is no great proof of a generous or civilized conqueror. The inscription then deifies this same Rajah. “Art thou not Vishnu himself? Art thou not he who slept in the arms of Lacshm, whom thou didst seize from the ocean, having churned it?"—Are epithets of extravagant praise to the deity surprising, when they are thus heaped upon a mortal? (As. Res. ii. 382.) The account of the Sacas affords important proof of the glory that was attached by the Hindus to the shedding of blood. The Cali yug is divided into six Sacas, so called from six glorious monarchs. Of these, three have made their appearance; three are yet to come. To become a Saca, each of these monarchs must have first killed 550,000,000 of a certain mighty tribe of heretics, called Sacas. The first of these blood-thirsty sovereigns was Judishter, whose period was 3044 years; the second Vicramaditya, whose saca lasted only 135 years; the third, Salivahana, whose period is to last 18,000 years; the fourth Nandada, 10,000 years; the fifth Nargarjuna, 400,000 years; for the sixth, will re-appear the Antediluvian Bah, whose period will be 821 years, at which period a general renovation of the world will take place. Wilford, Asiat. Res. ix. 82.
192. Rennel’s Memoir, p. 1.
193. Sonnerat, Voy. liv. iii. ch. ii. Their very laws and religion encourage a spirit of restlessness, and warfare; “Fully performing all duties required by law, let a king seek to possess regions yet unpossessed.” (Laws of Menu, ch. ix. 251.) This gives implicit encouragement to a spirit of conquest. The gloss of Culluca, the commentator, inserts the words with justice, a saving clause; but even then, the practical effect of the law is but too visible.
194. In the Bhagavat, (See Maurice, Hist. of Hindustan, ii. 395,) Creshna says, he does not vaunt, “though he carried away Rokemence from so numerous an assemblage of monarchs.” When Creshna fought with the seven bulls of Koosele, great numbers of rajahs and rajpoots were collected to see the conflict. Ib. p. 402. Bhoom Assoor had collected the daughters of 16,000 rajahs. Ib. p. 405. Rajah Doorjoodhen, sovereign of Hastanapoor, had a daughter who was courted by rajahs and rajpoots from every quarter. Ib. 413. Twenty thousand and eight hundred rajahs of eminence were held in confinement by Jarasandha, and released upon his destruction by Creeshna and Rama. Ib. p. 433. When Creeshna carried away Rokemenee, Jarasandha said, “This is surely most astonishing, that, in the presence of so many crowned heads as are here assembled, this cowherd should make so bold an effort.” Ib. p. 394.
195. Hetopadesa, in Sir William Jones’s Works, vi. 43.
196. Ib. p. 44.
197. Ibid. p. 51.
198. Asiat. Res. i. 123.
199. Ibid.
200. Asiat. Res. i. 123. The third stanza of this inscription, omitted by Mr. Wilkins, but translated by Sir W. Jones, affords additional proof that these conquests were but an irruption: “By whom, having conquered the earth as far as the ocean, it was left as being unprofitably seized.” Ibid. p. 142. In the inscription on the pillar near Buddal, found by Mr. Wilkins, is described a race of princes who originally, it is said, ruled over “but one quarter, and had no authority in other regions;” but one of the line, “being a virtuous prince, became supreme over every country without reserve, and the three worlds were held in subjection by his hereditary rank.” The dominions of his son and successor extended from Reva Jauak, to the father of Gowree, and to the two oceans, &c. and all this country, the prince Sree Dev Pal rendered tributary. Ibid. p. 134. Yet Sir W. Jones says, that this race of princes were all along only prime ministers to the House of Devu Pal: p. 142. Nothing can be more contradictory to the text; but it is necessary for Sir William’s theory that the kings of Gaur, of whom Devupal was one, should be the lords paramount of India. Sir William, when he had a theory, seems to have had eyes to see nothing but what made in its favour. An additional proof of the small kingdoms of Hindustan is found in the inscription (As. Res. i. 133, stanza xiii.) “The king of Gowr” (Bengal) “for a long time enjoyed the country of the eradicated race of Oothal” (Orixia,) “of the Hoons” (Huns,) “of humbled pride, of the kings of Draveer” (a country to the south of the Carnatic,) “and Goojar” (Goozerat,) “whose glory was reduced, and the universal sea-girt throne.” Another grant of land (Ib. p. 357) affords evidence to the same purpose: a number of kings are actually named in the royal grant. As. Res. iii. 48.

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201. See Gentoo Code, passim.
202. Halhed’s Gentoo Code, ch. iii. sect. 6. p. 106, 107.
203. Laws of Menu, ch. vii. p. 154, 155. Even Robertson, though a firm believer in the universal monarchy, is forced to allow that it had not yet existed in the time of Alexander. “In the age of Alexander, though there was not established in it any powerful empire, resembling that which in modern times stretched its dominion from the Indus almost to Cape Comorin, it was even then formed into monarchies of considerable extent.” Robertson’s Disq. concerning ancient India, p. 21. But the times of Alexander, and times long antecedent, are the times fixed upon by the Brahmens, for this perpetually asserted, but never ascertained empire. To what modern times does Robertson allude? for he himself gives it as true information, that in the tenth century, there were four kingdoms in the north part alone of India. “The first was composed of the provinces situated on the Indus, and the rivers which fall into it; the capital of which was Moultan. The capital of the second kingdom was Canoge, which, from the ruins of it remaining, appears to have been a very large city. The third kingdom was Cachemire. Massoudi, as far as I know, is the first author who mentions this paradise of India, of which he gives but a short description. The fourth is the kingdom of Guzerate, which he represents as the greatest and most powerful; and he concurs with the two Arabian travellers, in giving the sovereign of it the appellation of Balhara.” Ibid. Note xxxvii. p. 332.
204. The inconsistencies of the believers in the great empire of Hindustan are miserable. Mr. Maurice tells us that Bali, “if that name imply not rather a dynasty of princes than an individual monarch,” [a shrewd suspicion] “was the puissant sovereign of a mighty empire, extending over the vast continent of India; that under Rama, the next in succession, there is every appearance of its having remained unbroken; that Judishter is generally acknowledged to have been the sovereign of all India.” Maurice, Hist. ii. 511. Yet both Mr. Maurice and Sir W. Jones believe Rama to be the Raamah of Scripture, the son of Cush, Genesis, ch. x. ver. 7, in whose days it was impossible that any considerable part of India could be peopled. See Sir W. Jones, Asiat. Res. ii. 401, and Mr. Maurice, Hist. iii. 104. Bali, the Baal, and Bel, of other eastern nations, who is also said to have been the first king of Assyria, was not a name of any particular person, but a title assumed by many, and those of different nations. It is in fact a title of the sun. (See Bryant’s Myth.) Judishter, too, it is remarkable, was the cotemporary of Rama, both being heroes in the war of the Mahabarat. For the performance of the Raisoo yug, it was not necessary, as they pretend, to conquer all princes, since at Judishter’s yug, the father of Cansa, whom Creeshna, after the death of Cansa, seated on the throne of Mathura, was not conquered by Judishter. Nay it is remarkable that this yug was celebrated while Judishter was yet a dependent upon Doorjoodhen, before the war of the Pandoos. Even after the war of the Mahabharat, when they assure us, for certain, that Judishter was king of all India, Ogur Sein, the grandfather of Creeshna, was reigning at Mathura; Creeshna and the Yadavas were all flourishing. See the Mahabharat, translated by Halhed; Maurice, History of India, ii. 463.
205. “In so far as the Hindu superstition tends to estrange mankind by creating artificial sources of mutual aversion and disgust; so far certainly does it counteract the real interests of society. Let it not be urged that the practical effects of the artificial separation of the Asiatics are not greatly felt in society; or that a Brahmin or Rajah will as readily supply the wants of the poorer classes as he would those of his own. The fact is otherwise; the Brahmin considers his order as in some measure a different race of beings; and imagines that the lower ranks are incapable of the same sensibility to suffering: he regards them as a race whose feelings are deadened by the meanness of their intellect, and therefore not entitled to the same share of compassion. That this is the idea of the princes and civil magistrates throughout India, their own conduct sufficiently evinces; hence the severity of their government, the rigour of their punishments, and their universal indifference to the comfort, and even the lives of their subjects.” Tennant’s Indian Recreations, i. 121.
206. Wilkins’ Hetopadesa, p. 161.
207. Ibid. p. 82.
208. Ibid. p. 160.
209. Ibid. p. 166.
210. Ibid. p. 176. The following maxim, among many others in the book, is a proof of the idle and useless life of the rajahs, who devolved all business upon their ministers, and wallowed in sensuality and sloth. “The sovereign being a vessel for the distribution of happiness, and not for the execution of affairs, the minister, who shall bring ruin upon the business of the state is a criminal.” (Ibid. p. 142.) The last article of the following character of a good minister is an abundant proof of the rapacious nature of the government; “A king should engage for his minister one who is a native of his own country; pure in all his ways and cleanly in his dress; not one who is an outcast, addicted to idle pleasures, or too fond of women; but one of good repute, who is well versed in the rules of disputation, is of a firm mind, and expert in raising a revenue.” Ibid. p. 179. See also the Inscription respecting a Royal Grant, Asiat. Res. iii. 48.
211. Wilkins’ Hetopadesa, p. 242.
212. Buchanan’s Journey through Mysore, &c. ii 410.
213. Another remarkable circumstance. The fisherman informs the officers he gives them his present to purchase wine; on which they cry, “Oh! now thou art our beloved friend.—Good wine is the first object of our affection.—Let us go together to the vintners.” Sacontala, act v.

Halhed’s Gentoo Code, ch. xv. sect. 2.
214. Ibid.
215. Ibid. xxi. 10.
216. The self-abasement of the Hindus, before their kings, is decisive proof of a merciless government. “The sovereign, although but a child, is not to be despised, but to be respected as a man; or as a mighty divinity who presideth in human form.” Wilkins’ Hetopadesa, p. 117. “They performed prostration to their princes, falling down with eight members, as they expressed their abject and grovelling mode of approach.” Ibid. note 137. “Plus un gouvernement est despotique, plus les ames y sont avilies et degradées; plus l’on s’y vante d’aimer son tyran. Les esclaves benissent à Maroc leur sort et leur Prince, lorsqu’il daigne lui-mème leur couper le cou.” Helvetius de l’Homme, i. 318.
217. Halhed’s Gentoo Code, ch. xvi. sect. 1.
218. Wilford, on the Chronology of the Hindus, Asiat. Res. v. 284. There is a passage in Quintus Curtius which would lead us to conclude that India was not thickly inhabited in the times of Alexander. Speaking of Alexander’s march into the interior of India, after the overthrow of Darms, he says; “Ad magnam deinde, ut in eu regione, urbem pervenit.” (Curt. lib. ix. cap. 1.) Not a syllable escapes from this author indicative of a populous country. He styles the inhabitants, “Barbari—operum militarium rudes.” Ibid. cap. viii. The names of the separate nations which Alexander found in India are numerous.
219. Orme, on the Government and People of Hindustan, p. 434, 435, 436. “Quelques missionaires, tels que le P. de Magistris, le Danois F. Schwartz, le P. Jean de Brito, dans une relation manuscrite que j’ai entre les mains, accusent les rois payens d’exercer des oppressions intolerables envets leurs sujets. M. Anquetil du Perron tâche de justifier les souverains. ∗ ∗ ∗ Je pourrais demontrer avec une historique evidence que M. Anquetil ne connait pas l’Inde. ∗ ∗ ∗ Il est certain qu’il se commettait de grands abus dans l’exercise de l’autorité royale, et je pense que ce fut là la principale cause de la chῦte des rois de Maduré, de Maïssour, de Tanjaur, et de Marava. Quoique ces rois fussent tous payens, de la premiere noblesse, et indigénes, sans cesse ils se faisaient la guerre reciproquement, et presque tous vexaient le peuple.” Voyage aux Indes Orientales par le P. Paulin, de S. Bartelemy, i. 87. M. Anquetil Duperron, in a note, (Ibid. iii. 365,) falls into a curious coincidence with, and confirmation of, the above passage of Paulin, at the same time that he is controverting it:—"Le missionaire n’a pas lu l’histoire de l’Inde, n’est pas meme aut fait de ce qui se passe tous les jours. Quoique le caractere propre de l’Indien soit la douceur, l’humanité, on voit encore dans cette contrée, comme ailleurs, des querelles entre les princes naturels Indiens, des querelles dans les familles; les chefs Marattes sont presque toujours divisés, et en guerres. Le Tanjaur, le Maduré, le Maissour, le Samorin, Narsingue, le Canara, offraient la mème spectacle lorsque la puissance des Rajahs étoit dans sa vigueur; il en est de mème de ceux de Bengale, du reste de l’Indoustan.” Bernier, who had no theory on Indian affairs, but who displays more personal knowledge of the country than almost any other European, thus describes the Rajahs. Ce sortes de rois barbares n’ont aucune veritable generosité, et ne sont guere retenus par la foi qu’ils ont promise, ne regardant qu’à leurs interets presents, sans songer meme aux malheurs qui leur peuvent arriver de leur perfidie, et de leur brutalité. Revol. des Etats Mogol. p. 174. “The ryots have every reason to dread the prevalence of the Mahratta power; of that power, which yields them up to the tyranny and oppression of their chiefs; which affords no protection to its subjects; which is perpetually at war with its neighbours; and which has, in effect, laid waste the greatest part of Hindostan.” Sir H. Strachey, Report as Judge of Circuit, Fifth Report of the Committee on India Affairs, 1810, p. 568, sect. 17. La politique de leurs princes doit tenir de leur gouvernement.—d’une main on les voit signer une traité, et de l’autre ils jurent la perte de celui avec lequel ils font alliance. Anquetil Duperron, Zendavesta, cxvii. “The annals of Persia,” says Mr. Scott Waring, “contain little more than a uniform tale of wretchedness and misery, of murder and treachery; and the mind, wearied and disgusted with this uniformity of vice, is hurried away to a contemplation of similar causes and events.” Tour to Sheeraz, p. 267.
220. There can be no rational doubt that what by European eyes has been seen to be the detail of government, in the hands of the Hindus, though under Mogul principals, was a fair picture of what had been the detail of government under Hindu principals; administration in the hands of Mogul magistrates being, according to all testimony, less oppressive than administration in the hands of Hindus. The same intelligent and unexceptionable witness, Mr. Orme, goes on to say: “Imitation has conveyed the unhappy system of oppression which prevails in the government of Indostan throughout all ranks of the people, from the highest even to the lowest subject of the empire. Every head of a village calls his habitation the Durbar, and plunders of their meal and roots the wretches of his precinct; from him the Zemindar extorts the small pittance of silver, which his penurious tyranny has scraped together: the Phousdar seizes upon the greatest share of the Zemindar’s collections, and then secures the favour of his Nabob by voluntary contributions, which leave him not possessed of the half of his rapines and exactions: the Nabob fixes his rapacious eye on every portion of wealth which appears in his province, and never tails to carry off part of it: by large deductions from these acquisitions, he purchases security from his superiors, or maintains it against them at the expense of a war.—Subject to such oppressions, property in Indostan is seldom seen to descend to the third generation.” Orme, on the Government and People of Indostan, p. 450, 451. The following is another stroke in the formation of the same picture. “The Havildar plunders the village, and is himself fleeced by the Zemindar; the Zemindar by the Phousdar; the Phousdar by the Nabob or his Duan. The Duan is the Nabob’s head slave: and the Nabob compounds on the best terms he can make, with his Subah, or the throne.—Wherever this gradation is interrupted, bloodshed ensues.” Ibid. p. 402. “In every city, and in every considerable town, is appointed a guard, directed by proper officers, whose duty it is to coerce and punish all such crimes and misdemeanours as affect the policy of that district, and are at the same time of too infamous or of too insignificant a nature to be admitted before the more solemn tribunal of the Durbar. These ministers of justice are called the Catwall; and a building bearing the same name is allotted for their constant resort. At this place are perpetually heard the clamours of the populace: some demanding redress for the injury of a blow or a bad name; others for a fraud in the commerce of farthings: one wants assistance to take, another has taken a thief; some offering themselves as bondsmen; others called upon for witnesses. The cries of wretches under the scourge, and the groans of expiring criminals, complete a scene of perfect misery and confusion. After these employments of the day, parties are sent from the Catwall to patrole and watch through the town by night. In such governments, where the superiors are lost to all sense of humanity, the most execrable of villanies are perpetrated by this institution, designed to prevent them. The Catwall enters into treaty with a band of rubbers, who receive from hence the intelligence necessary to direct their exploits, and in return pay to it a stipulated portion of their acquisitions: besides the concessions necessary to secure impunity when detected, one part of the band is appointed to break into houses, another assaults the traveller upon the road, a third the merchant upon the rivers. I have seen these regulated villains commit murders in the face of day, with such desperate audacity as nothing but the confidence of protection could inspire.” Ibid. p. 452, 453.
221. They have always allowed themselves to be conquered in detail, just as the tribes of Gauls and Germans, by the Romans. Gaul, however, cost Julius Cæsar himself five years to subdue; and it several times carried fire and sword to the gates of Rome. The Gauls must have known much more of the art of war than the Hindus. See the fine generalship of Vercingetorix described by the conqueror himself in the 7th book of his commentaries; and analysed by Guischardt, Memoires Militaires sur les Grecs et les Romains, ch. xvi.—"The most remarkable of these new states were the Polygars of Chittledroog, Raidroog, Harponelly, Tarrikera, with many others of inferior note, whose united efforts might have opposed a respectable barrier to Mohammedan encroachment, if united efforts could be expected from restless savages, perpetually occupied by intestine quarrels.” (Wilks’ Hist. Sketches, p. 63.) Wilks say, (p. 23) that the Hindu character exhibits but few shades of distinction, wheresoever found. It follows, that no where is it far removed from the savage state.
222. To some persons it may be of use to hear, that the sober good sense of Major Rennel makes him reject the theory of union. “History gives us the most positive assurances, that India was divided into a number of kingdoms or states, from the time of Herodotus, down to that of Acbar.” (Rennel’s Mem. Introd. p. xxxii.)
223. Witness, Nepaul, and the strong districts along the Malabar coast, where the reign of the Hindu princes had been not at all or very little disturbed. For an account of Nepaul, see the history of Col. Kirkpatrick’s embassy; and of the Malabar coast, among other works, Voyage de P. Paulin; Sonnerat; and Anquetil Duperron; above all, the Journey of Dr. Buchanan, through Mysore, Canara, and Malabar.—"Mr. Wilford states, in the ninth volume of the Asiatic Researches, that the kings of Behar or Megadha were for many ages the sovereigns or lords-paramount of India. If such was the case, their descendants must have degenerated exceedingly; for at the period of the Mohammedan invasion, the Raja, instead of heading his army, in defence of his country and religion, shamefully absconded, leaving his capital, then a celebrated seat of Hindu learning (whence its name of Behar) so destitute, that it was taken by a detachment of 200 men, who put a number of the unopposing Brahmens to the sword, and plundered all the inhabitants.” (Hist. of Bengal, by Charles Stewart, Esq. p. 40.) Mr. Stewart speaks with judgment. Every thing in the state of India, as it was originally found by the Mahommedans, bears testimony against the fiction of a great monarchy, great prosperity, and great civilization.
224. “Quæ anus,” says Cicero, “tam excors inveniri potest, quæ illa quæ quondam credebantur apud inferos portenta extimescat?” (De Nat. Deor. lib. ii. cap. 2.)
225. Goguet, Origin of Laws, part ii. book i. ch. iv. art. 8.
226. In all parts of India, where things have not been altered by the influence of the Mahomedan government, the Hindus are found collected in villages, not in detached habitations; “a custom,” says Millar, (English Gov. i. 70,) “introduced by necessity in times of extreme barbarity and disorder.”
227. Rennel’s Memoir, p. 6.
228. Buchanan’s Journey through Mysore, &c. ii. 434. “It is a fact, that there is not a road in the country made by Hindoos, except a few which lead to holy places.” A View of the History, Literature, and Religion of the Hindoos, &c. By the Rev. W. Ward, one of the Baptist Missionaries at Serampore, Introd. p. lviii.
229. Tennant’s Indian Recreations, ii. 13, 14, 323.
230. Forster’s Travels, i. 74.—Tennant’s Indian Recreations, ii. 69.
231. See some observations on Dow, by Mr. Edward Scott Waring, Tour to Sheeraz, p. 15.
232. Speaking of the Mohamedan governments in the Deccan, Colonel Wilks says: “These princes had arrived at that stage of civilization in which gorgeous and awkward splendour covered the most gross political darkness.” (Historical Sketches, p. 65.)
233. See the Analysis of Tooril Mull’s System of Finance, in British India Analysed, i. 191. These copper pieces were called pulsiah or feloos, sixteen of which were reckoned equal to a Tunkah of base silver; a sort of coin, or rather medal, sometimes struck, at the pleasure of the king, not for use, but to make presents to foreign ambassadors, and others. “Trade must, therefore,” says the author, “have been carried on chiefly by barter; the rents for the most part paid in kind."—In the Deccan, a gold and silver coin was known earlier; which the same author thinks must have been introduced by the intercourse of the Persians and Arabians, to whom the use of coin had been known nearly a thousand years before. (Ibid. p. 194.) See an instructive dissertation on this point in “Researches on India,” by Q. Craufurd, Esq. i. 36–80. Yet this author, p. 80–84, is a firm believer in the great riches of India.
234. Agatharchides gives the most magnificent description of the riches of the Sabians. “Their expense of living rivals the magnificence of princes. Their houses are decorated with pillars glistening with gold and silver. Their doors are crowned with vases and beset with jewels; the interior of their houses corresponds with the beauty of their outward appearance, and all the riches of other countries are here exhibited in a variety of profusion. (See the account extracted and translated, in Vincent’s Periplus, part i. p. 33. See also Strabo, lib. xvi. p. 778.) In the barbarous state of the ancient Russian court at Moscow, there was the highest degree of magnificence and splendour. The Earl of Carlisle, giving an account of his embassy, says, that he could see nothing but gold and precious stones, in the robes of the Czar, and his courtiers.—The treasure of Sardanapalus was a thousand myriads of talents of gold, at the lowest estimation, 44, 174,999,760l. (Herodot. lib. ii. cap. 150; Athenæi Deipnosop. lib. xii.; Gibbon sur la Monarchie des Medes, Miscel. Works, 8vo. Ed. iii. 68.)—"What is said to be given by David (1 Chron. xxii. 14, 15, 16, and xxix. 3, 4, 5,) and contributed by his princes, xxix. 6, 7, 8,) toward the building of the temple at Jerusalem, if valued by the Mosaic talents, exceeded the value of 800,000,000l. of our money.” (Prideaux, Connexion of the History of the Old and New Testament, i. 5. Edit. 5th.) The Arcadian who was sent ambassador to the court of the king of Persia, in the days of Agesilaus, saw through the glare of eastern magnificence. 耉 δε Αντοχος απηγγειλε προς τθς μυριθς, ο’τι βασιλευς αρτοκοπ[Editor: illegible character]ς, και οψοποι[Editor: illegible character]ς, και οινοχο[Editor: illegible character]ς, και θυρωρ[Editor: illegible character]ς παμπλ[Editor: illegible character]θεις, εχι ανδρας δε, άι μαχοινΤ’ αν Ελληρι, απανν ςθτων [Editor: illegible character]κ αν εφη δυνασαι ιδειν. προς δε τ[Editor: illegible character]τοις, και το των χρηματων πληθος αλαζονειαν όι γε δοκειν ειναι επφη• επει και τθν ύμν[Editor: illegible character]μενην αν χρυσ[Editor: illegible character]ν πλατανον [Editor: illegible character]χ κανην εφη ειναι τετδιγι γκρεχειν. Xenophontis Græcorum, &c. lib. vii. sect. 1, near the end.)
235. Francklin’s Life of George Thomas, p. 103.
236. Orme, on the Government and People of Indostan, p. 420. The exquisite ignorance and stupidity of the Mysoreans in the art of war, while yet a purely Hindu people, is strongly remarked by Orme, i. 207. In the following description appears the simplicity of the fortification of Hindu towns; “A place that hath eight cose in length and breadth, and on the skirts of which, on all the four sides, is a ditch, and above the ditch, on all the four sides, a wall or parapet, and on all the four sides of it are bamboos, and on the east or north side thereof, a hollow or covered way, such place is called Nigher, or a city; in the same manner, if it hath four cose in length and breadth, it is called Gherbut, or a small city.” Gentoo Code, ch. xiv. See also Motte’s Journey to Orissa, As. An. Reg. i. 51, 67.—"The fortifications of places of the first order formerly consisted, and in many places still consist, in one or two thick walls, flanked with round or triangular towers. A wide and deep ditch is on the outside; but as the Hindus are unskilful in the construction of bridges, they always leave a causeway from the gate of the town over the ditch.” The Abbé Dubois, p. 543.—See a curious testimony to the imperfection of the military art among the Mahrattas, (Broughton’s Letters from a Mahratta Camp, p. 107, 108); and another, still more remarkable, to the wretched pusillanimity of the rajpoots, those boasted descendants of the supposed magnanimous Cshatriyas, a pusillanimity, which, according to Mr. Broughton, forfeits their title even to pity, while “possessing so many advantages, they voluntarily bend their necks to one of the most galling yokes in the world.” Ibid. p. 133.
237. Asiat. Res. i. 354.
238. Ibid. iv. 159.
239. Craufurd’s Sketches. Sir William Jones says, “We may readily believe those who assure us, that some tribes of wandering Tartars had real skill in applying herbs and minerals to the purpose of medicine;” the utmost pretended extent of the medical science of the Hindus. As. Res. ii. 40. See Tennant’s Indian Recreations, for some important details, i. 357; Buchanan’s Journey through Mysore, &c. i. 336.—"Medicine,” says the last intelligent observer, “in this country has indeed fallen into the hands of charlatans equally impudent and ignorant.” Ibid. “There are not indeed wanting several persons who prescribe in physic, play upon a variety of musical instruments, and are concerned in some actions and performances which seem at least to suppose some skill in nature or mathematics. Yet all this is learned merely by practice, long habit, and custom; assisted for the most part with great strength of memory, and quickness of invention.” (Shaw’s Travels, speaking of the people of Barbary, p. 263.) The good sense of Colonel Wilks has made that instructive writer use the following terms: “The golden age of India, like that of other regions, belongs exclusively to the poet. In the sober investigation of facts, this imaginary era recedes still farther and farther at every stage of the inquiry; and all that we find is still the empty praise of the ages which have passed.....If the comparative happiness of mankind in different ages be measured by its only true and rational standard, namely, the degree of peace and security which they shall be found collectively and individually to possess, we shall certainly discover, in every successive step towards remote antiquity, a larger share of wretchedness to have been the portion of the human race.....The force of these observations, general in their nature, is perhaps more strongly marked in the history of India than of any other region of the earth. At periods long antecedent to the Mohammedan invasion, wars, revolutions, and conquests, seem to have followed each other, in a succession more strangely complex, rapid, and destructive, as the events more deeply recede into the gloom of antiquity. The rude valour, which had achieved a conquest, was seldom combined with the sagacity requisite for interior rule; and the fabric of the conquered state, shaken by the rupture of its ancient bonds, and the substitution of instruments, clumsy, unapt, and misapplied, either fell to sudden ruin, or gradually dissolved.” Historical Sketches of the South of India, by Lieut. Col. Mark Wilks, p. 1, 2.
240. The barbarians from Germany and Scythia quickly learned the discipline of the Roman armies, and turned their own arts against the legions. See Gibbon, vii. 377. The Hindus have never been able, without European officers, to avail themselves of European discipline.
241. The monastery of Bangor, demolished by Adelfrid, the first king of Northumberland, was so extensive, that there was a mile’s distance from one gate of it to another, and it contained two thousand one hundred monks, who are said to have been there maintained by their own labour. (Hume’s England, i. 41.) “Les Etrusques, predecesseurs des Romains, et les premiers peuples de l’Italie sur lesquels l’histoire jette quelque lueur.....paroissent avoir devancé les Grecs dans la carriere des sciences et des arts, bien qu’ils n’aient pas pu, comme leurs successeurs, la parcourir toute entiere. Les poetes ont placé au milieu d’enx l’age d’or sous le regne de Saturne, et leurs fictions n’ont voilé qu’à demi la verité.—Comme nous ne savons pas même le nom des ecrivains Etrusques ou Tyrrheniens, et que ces peuples ne nous sont connus que par quelques fragmens d’historiens Grecs et Latins, ils resteront toujours enveloppés d’une grande obscurité. Cependant nous avons une indication de leur puissance, dans les murailles colossales de Volterra; de leur gout, dans les vases qui nous sont restés d’eux; de leur savoir, dans le culte de Jupiter Elicius, auqucl ils attribuerent l’art qu’ils connurent et que nous avons retrouvés, d’eviter et de diriger la foudre.” Simonde de Sismondi, Hist. des Rep. Ital. Introd. p. iii. These Tuscans cannot have been advanced beyond the stage of semi-barbarism; and yet here are proofs of a progress in the arts, with which the Hindus have nothing to compare.—The Afghauns use a water-mill for grinding their corn. “It is also used in the north of India, under the Sireenugger hills; but, in general, no water-mills are known in India, where all grain is ground with the hand.” Elphinstone’s Caubul, p. 307.
242. The Hindus are often found to be orderly and good servants at Calcutta, Madras, &c. This is but a fallacious proof of civilization. Hear Lord Macartney in his account of Russia. “All the inhabitants of Siberia, Casan, and the eastern provinces of Russia, to the sea of Kamschatka, who are not Christians, are confounded under the general name of Tartars. Many of these come to the capital in order to procure employment, either as workmen or domestics, and are exceedingly sober, acute, dextrous, and faithful.” Barrow’s Life of Lord Macartney, ii. 26. “Calmack servants are greatly esteemed all over Russia, for their intelligence and fidelity.” Mr. Heber’s Journal, in Clarke’s Travels in Russia, p. 241. “I recollect,” adds Dr. Clarke, “seeing some of them in that capacity among English families in Petersburg. The most remarkable instance ever known of an expatriated Calmuck, was that of an artist employed by the Earl of Elgin, whom I saw, (a second Auacharsis, from the plains of Scythia) executing most beautiful designs among the rums of Athens. Some Russian family had previously sent him to finish his studies in Rome, where he acquired the highest perfection in design. He had the peculiar features, and many of the manners, of the nomade Calmucks.” Ibid. The negroes, when properly treated, make faithful, affectionate, and good servants.—But it is more than doubtful whether the Hindus do in reality make those good servants we have heard them called. Dr. Gilchrist says (Preface to his Hindostanee Dictionary, printed at Calcutta, 1787, p. 27)—and Lord Teignmouth repeats, (Considerations, &c. on communicating to the Natives of India the Knowledge of Christianity p. 82) “that he cannot hesitate about beheving the fact—that among a thousand servants of all descriptions whom he had trusted and employed, he had the luck to meet with one only whom he knew to be upright in his conduct.” By the author of that interesting little book, entitled, Sketches of India, or Observations descriptive of the Scenery, &c. in Bengal, written in India in the years 1811, 1812, 1813, 1814, p. 13, we are told that when you are travelling in India, “An object of attention which must excite peculiar attention in every honourable mind, is the thefts and depredations which are apt to he committed at every bazar or market, and indeed whenever opportunity offers, both by your own servants and the boatmen, Astonishing as this may seem, it is an undoubted fact that these people pillage every step they take; and, to escape the just indignation of the sufferers, shelter themselves under the name of their innocent master, to whom these poor wretches are often afraid to refer.”
243. Forster’s Travels, ii. 135.
244. Gibbon, i. 342.
245. οι δε βασιληιοι δικαςαι κεκριμενοι ανδρες γ;νοται Περσειν, ες [Editor: illegible character] αποθανισι, η σφι παρευρεθη τι αδικον μεχρι τ[Editor: illegible character]τιων. [Editor: illegible character]ε τοισι τικαζ δικζ[Editor: illegible character]σι και εξηγηται τιν πατριων θεσμιν γινονται και παντα ες τ[Editor: illegible character]τ[Editor: illegible character]ς ανακεεται ειρομεν[Editor: illegible character] ών τ[Editor: illegible character] Καμβνσεω, ύπεκρινοντο αντ[Editor: illegible character] [Editor: illegible character]τοι, . . . . . . . τΨ βασιλευοντι Περσειν εόειναι ποιεειν τα αν βουληται. Herodot. Hist. lib. iii. cap. xxxi. This, Sir Wiliam Jones would have said, is a despotism limited by law; and thus the government of the ancient Persians stood upon a foundation resembling that of the Hindus.
246. Gibbon, Hist. Decl. and Fall, &c. vii. 304. Some ancient sculpture in the vicinity of Shahpoor in honour of Sapo the First, “represents a king, seated in state, amid a group of figures standing before him, one of whom offers two heads to the monarch’s notice. If we wanted other evidence, this alone would mark the state of civilization to which a nation had advanced, that could suffer its glory to be perpetuated by a representation of so barbarous a character.” Sir John Malcolm, Hist. of Persia, i. 254. No historical writings in ancient Persia: none in Hindustan.
247. Lord Macartney’s Journal, Barrow’s Life of Lord Macartney, ii. 279. In reading this passage, one seems to be reading an account of Hindu religion, temples, and sculpture.
248. Lord Macartney’s Journal, Barrow’s Life of Lord Macartney, ii. 357.
249. Barrow’s China, p. 585. A large portion of the country, wet, swampy ground, the rich alluvion of rivers, which might be easily gained; if the Chinese had but the skill. Ibid. p. 70, 83, 208, 533.
250. Barrow’s Life of Lord Macartney, ii. 357.
251. Barrow’s China, p. 513.
252. Ibid. p. 43.
253. Ibid. p. 561, 499.
254. Barrow’s Life of Lord Macartney, ii. 363.
255. Lord Macartney remarks that the Chinese had a very limited knowledge of mathematics and astronomy, “although from some of the printed accounts of China one might be led to imagine that they were well versed in them.” “Their affectation of the science of astronomy or astrology (for they have but one word in their language to express both,) induced them at a very remote period to establish a mathematical college or tribunal, the duty of which is to furnish to the nation an annual calendar, somewhat like our Poor Robin’s Almanack, with lists of all the lucky and unlucky days of the year, predictions of the weather, directions for sowing and reaping, &c. This branch entirely belongs to the Chinese doctors, who are chosen for the purpose from among the most celebrated philomaths of the nation.” Ibid. p. 481; See too Barrow’s China, 284, 291, 292, 295, 323.
256. Barrow’s China, p. 311, 512.
257. Barrow’s China, p. 101–330.
258. Ibid. p. 306, 323.
259. Similar traces are found in the following character of the Persians, drawn by a recent observer, Mr. Scott Waring, Tour to Sheeraz. “Mean and obsequious to their superiors and to their equals, if they have a prospect of advantage; but invariably arrogant and brutal in their behaviour towards their inferiors; always boasting of some action they never performed, and delighted with flattery, though they are aware of the imposition. I have repeatedly heard them compliment a person in his hearing, or in the presence of some one who would convey this adulation to his ears; and the instant that he has departed, their praises have turned into abuse:” p. 101. “Not the least reliance is to be placed on their words or most solemn protestations."....."They conceive it their duty to please; and to effect this, they forget all sentiments of honour and good faith."....."The Persians have but a faint notion of gratitude, for they cannot conceive that any one should be guilty of an act of generosity, without some simster motive:” p. 103. “Philosophers have held it for a maxim, that the most notorious liar utters a hundred truths for every falsehood. This is not the case in Persia; they are unacquainted with the beauty of truth, and only think of it when it is likely to advance their interests."...."The generality of Persians are sunk in the lowest state of profligacy and infamy; and they seldom hesitate alluding to crimes which are abhorred and detested in every civilized country in the universe.” The following is an important observation. (Voyage dans l’Empire Othoman, l’Egypt, et la Perse, par G. A. Olivier, v. 120.) “En Europe, il y a un espace immense entre les habitans des grandes villes et ceux des campagnes, entre l’homme bien élevé et celui qui ne l’est pas. Eu Perse, nous n’avons pas trouvé que cet espace fut bien grand: la classe pauvre des villes diffère tres-peu, pour l’esprit, les connaissances et les mœurs, de l’habitant des campagnes, et il n’y a pas non plus un grande difference, dans les villes, entre les riches et les pauvres. C’est presque partout la même conduite, la même allure, la même maniere de s’exprimer; ce sont les mêmes idées, et j’oserais presque dire la même instruction. Ici l’habitant des campagnes, celui-la même qui se trouve toute l’année sous la tente, et qui conduit ses troupeaux d’un pâturage à un autre, nous a paru plus delié, plus rusé, plus poli, plus instrut, que le cultivateur Européen un peu eloigné des grandes villes.”
260. Turner’s Embassy to Tibet, book i. ch. iv.
261. Ibid.
262. Turner’s Embassy to Tibet, book ii. ch. ii. The agriculture is promoted by artificial irrigation, the water being conveyed to the fields through hollow cylinders, formed of the trunks of trees. Ibid. book i. ch. vi.
263. Ibid.
264. Ibid. book ii. ch. ii.
265. Narrative of a Voyage to Cochin-China in 1778 by Mr. Chapman, in the Asiatic Annual Register for 1801, Miscellaneous Tracts, p. 85.
266. Ibid. p. 72. Of China, Mr. Barrow says, “There are no inus in any part of this vast empire; or, to speak more correctly (for there are resting-places,) no inhabited and furnished houses where, in consideration of paying a sum of money, a traveller may purchase the refreshments of comfortable rest, and of allaying the calls of hunger. The state of society admits of no such accommodation. What they call inns are mean hovels consisting of bare walls, where, perhaps, a traveller may procure his cup of tea, for a piece of copper money, and permission to pass the night; but this is the extent of the comforts which such places hold out.” Barrow’s China, p. 241. Such is the description of the Indian choultries; empty buildings into which the travellers may retire, but into which he must carry with him every accommodation, of which he stands in need. “The Kans, or Caravanseras,” says Volney, speaking of another Asiatic country, Syria, “afford only cells for the accommodation of travellers, with bare walls, dust, and sometimes scorpions. The keeper gives the lodger a key and a mat, and he must find every thing else himself.” Travels in Egypt, &c. ii. 420. “In the inland towns and villages of Barbary, there is, for the most part, a house set apart for the reception of strangers, with a proper officer (the Maharak, I think they call him) to attend it. Here persons are lodged and entertained, for one night, in the best manner the place will afford at the expence of the community.” Shaw’s Travels, Pref. p. ii.
267. Chapman’s Voyage, ubi supra, p. 73, 76. Sir George Staunton says, Embassy of Lord Macartney, i. 389: “The Cochin-Chinese seemed sufficiently dexterous and attentive, though with scarcely any principles of science, to make, on any substances which promised to be of use or comfort to them in private life, such trials and experiments, as were likely to produce beneficial results. In the culture of their lands, and in the few manufactures exercised amongst them, they were not behind nations where the sciences flourish.” “Though these people possessed not scientifically the art of reducing the metallic ore into the metal, they had attained the practice, for example, of making very good iron, as well as of manufacturing it afterwards, into match-locks, spears, and other weapons. Their earthenware was very neat. Their dexterity appeared in every operation they undertook:” p. 387.
268. Symes’ Embassy to Ava, ii. 326.—The following, too, are abundantly similar to corresponding features in the character of the Hindus. The Birmans, in some points of their disposition, display the ferocity of barbarians, and in others all the humanity and tenderness of polished life. They inflict the most savage vengeance on their enemies. As invaders, desolation marks their track; for they spare neither sex nor age. But at home they assume a different character. Ibid.
269. Ibid.
270. Ibid. iii. 96.
271. See Description of the Kingdom of Assam, &c. Asiat. An. Register for 1800, Miscellaneous Tracts, p. 43.
272. See Description of the Kingdom of Assam, &c. Asiat. An. Register for 1800, Miscellaneous Tracts, p. 43.
273. Ibid.
274. Ibid. p. 45.
275. Ibid.

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276. See Description of the Kingdom of Assam, &c. Asiat. An. Register for 1800, Miscellaneous Tracts, p. 47, 48.
277. Goguet, Origin of Laws, part iii. book vi. ch. ii. He adds, “I should be greatly tempted to compare this nation with the Chinese. I think a good deal of resemblance and conformity is to be perceived between one people and the other.” Ibid. Had the Hindus been then as fully described as they are now, he would have found a much more remarkable similarity between them and the Egyptians.—Exaggeration was long in quitting its hold of Egypt. At the time of the Arabian conquest, in the seventh century, “We may read,” (says Gibbon, ix. 446) “in the gravest authors, that Egypt was crowded with 20,000 cities or villages: that exclusive of the Greeks and Arabs, the Copts alone were found on the assessment, six millions of tributary subjects, or twenty millions of either sex, and of every age: that three hundred millions of gold or silver were annually paid to the treasury of the Caliph.” He adds in a note, “And this gross lump is swallowed without scruple by d’Herbelot, Arbuthnot, and De Guignes. They might allege the not less extravagant liberality of Appian, in favour of the Ptolemies; an annual income of 185, or near 300 millions of pounds sterling; according as we reckon by the Egyptian or the Alexandrian talent.” If this be wonderful, what is to be said of the lumps swallowed by the admirers of the Hindus? Voltaire remarks, “Que les Egyptiens tant vantés pour leurs lois, leurs connaissances, et leurs pyramides, n’avaient presque jamais été qu’un peuple esclave, superstitieux et ignorant, dont tout le merite avait consisté à elever des rangs inutiles de pierres les unes sur les autres par l’ordre de leurs tyrans; qu’en bátissant leurs palais superbes ils n’avaient jamais su seulement former une voῦte; qu’ils ignoraient la coupe de pierres; que toute leur architecture consistait à poser de longues pierres plates sur des piliers sans proportion; que l’ancienne Egypte n’a jamais eu une statue tolerable que de la main des Grecs; que ni les Grecs ni les Romains n’ont jamais daigné traduire un seul livre des Egyptiens; que les elemens de geometrie composés dans Alexandrie le furent par un Grec, etc. etc.....on n’aperçoit dans les lois de l’Egypte que celles d’un peuple très borné.” Voltaire, Supplement à l’Essai sur les Mœurs, &c. Remarque Premier
278. Essay on the History of Astronomy, p. 27.
279. Rennel’s Geography of Herodotus, p. 305. The Major, who is here puzzled with a mistranslation of 600, for 360, corrects the hyperbolical statement of the amount of the tribute, though he doubts not it was great. Herodot. lib. iii. cap. 94, 95. It is by no means impossible, or perhaps improbable, that Cyrus subdued part of India. Herodotus, who knew India, says that his General, Harpagus, subdued one part of Asia, and he another, παν τθνος καταςρεφομενος, και ονδεν ΰαριεις. . . . παντα τα της ηπειρον ύποχειρια εποιησατο. Herodot.lib. i. cap. 147. Justin says that Cyrus, having reduced Asia, and the East in general, carried war into Scythia: lib. i. cap. 8. Xenophon says expressly, ηρξε δε κακτριων και Ινδιν. Cyri Institut. lib. i. cap. i. The Persian historians describe the Persians, in the early ages, as chiefly occupied by wars in Turan and India.
280. The notices relating to the conquests of Alexander and his successors in India are collected in Robertson’s Disquisition concerning Ancient India, and Gillies’ History of the World. Strabo and Arrian are the authorities from whom almost every thing we know of the transactions of the Greeks in India, is borrowed.
281. A curious history of the Greek kingdom of Bactria has been compiled by Bayer, entitled, Historia regni Græcorum Bactriani. In this, and in Strabo, lib. xi. Diod. lib. xv. and Justin, lib. xli. the only remaining memorials of this kingdom are to be found. The progress of the barbarians by whom it was destroyed has been traced by De Guignes, Mem. de Literat. xxv. 17, and Hist. de Huns, Passim. Herodotus says that those of the Indians, whose mode of life most resembled that of the Bactrians, were the most warlike of all the Indians, (lib. iii. cap. 102) which would seem to indicate a nearer affinity between the Hindus, and their Bactrian neighbours, than is generally supposed. There is some confusion however in this part of Herodotus, nor is it easy to know whether he means the people called Indians on the Euxine Sea, or those beyond the Indus, when he says they were like the Bactrians. He distinguishes them from the Indians living προς νοτον ανεμον, by saying they were contiguous to the city Caspatyrus and the Pactyan territory, and lying προς βορεον ανεμον (lib. iii. cap. 102) but (cap. 93 of the same book) he says that the Pactyan territory is contiguous to Armenia, and the countries on the Euxine Sea. Yet in another place (lib. iv. cap. 44) he says that Scylax setting out from the city Caspatyrus, and the Pactyan territory, sailed down the Indus eastward to the sea. And Rennel places Caspatyrus and Pactya towards the sources of the Indus, about the regions of Cabul and Cashmere. Rennel’s Mem. Introd. p. xxiii. Rennel’s Herodot. sect. 12.
282. What is known to us from the Greek and Roman authors, of the Parthian empire, is industriously collected in Gillies’ History of the World; from the oriental writers by D’Herbelot, Biblioth, Orient. ad verba Arschak, Arminiah. See also Gibbon, i. 316.
283. In Gibbon, vols. vii. viii. ix. the reader will find a slight sketch, correctly but quaintly given, of this portion of the Persian history. Gibbon’s first object unfortunately was to inspire admiration of the writer; to impart knowledge of his subject only the second. The results of the Persian records (if such they may be called) are carefully collected in D’Herbelot, Bibliotheque Orient. under the several titles.
284. Gibbon, ix. 364; D’Herbelot, Bibliotheque Orient. ad verb.
285. Polyb. Hist. lib. x.; M. de Guignes, Hist. des Huns, tom. ii.; Gibbon’s Roman Empire, iv. 367.
286. The rise and progress of the power of the Turkish horde may be collected from Abulghazi, Hist. Genealogique des Tartars; De Guignes, Hist. des Huns; and D’Herbelot, Biblioth. Orient. Mr. Gibbon, vii. 284, throws a glance at the leading facts.
287. See D’Herbelot, Biblioth. Orient. ad verb. Thaher, Soffar, et Saman; Gibbon, x. 80; De Guignes, Hist. des Huns, i. 404—406.
288. D’Herbelot, Biblioth. Orient. ad verb. Buiah.
289. D’Herbelot, Biblioth, Orient. ad verb. Sebecteghen, Mahmoud, Gaznaviah; Ferishta, by Dow, i. 41, 2d Ed. in 4to.
290. The origin and progress of the Indo-Scythæ are traced in D’Anville sur l’Inde, p. 18, 45, and 69, &c. His authorities are drawn from Dionys. Perieget. 1088, with the Commentary of Eustathius, and Cosmas, Topograph. Christ. lib. ix.
291. Ferishta, (apud Dow, Hist. of Hindost. i. 40—42;) D’Herbelot, Bibl. Orient. ad verb. Mahmoud.
292. Ferishta, ut supra, p. 42—44; D’Herbelot, ut supra.
293. Ferista, ut supra, p. 47—50; D’Herbelot, ut supra.
294. Viz. of the Hegira; 1011, A. D.
295. Ferishta, ut supra, p. 51—58; D’Herbelot, ut supra.
296. It may be necessary once for all to state, that in this sketch of Mahomedan history, the distances are given generally as in the native historians. Their very inaccuracies (here they do not mislead) are sources of information.
297. D’Herbelot, ut supra; Ferishta, p. 56—60. Ferishta says, that the taste of the sovereign for architecture being followed by his nobles, Ghizui soon became the finest city in the East. Ibid. p. 60. So that the grandeur, and riches, and beauty, he so lavishly ascribes to some of the Hindu cities, get an object of comparison, which enables us to reduce them to their true dimensions. The architecture of the Mahomedans was superior to that of the Hindus.
298. This incorrect expression, which refers to the fourth avatar, shows the carelessness and ignorance of Ferishta and the Persian historians, in regard to the Brahmenical faith.
299. D’Herbelot, misled by some of the Persian historians, makes Sumnaut the same with the city of Visiapore in Deccan. Biblioth. Orient. ad verbun Soumenat.
300. Ferishta says “some crores of gold.” Dow says in a note, at the bottom of the page, “ten millions,” which is the explanation of the word crore. Mr. Gibbon says rashly and carelessly, that the sum offered by the Brahmens was ten millions sterling. Decl. and Fall. x. 337.
301. Ferishta apud Dow, Mahmood I.; D’Herbelot, Bibl. Orient. adverb. Mahmoud.
302. Ferishta mentions a city to which he came (the place not intelligibly marked,) the inhabitants of which came originally from Chorasan having been banished thither with their families, for rebellion, by an ancient Persian king. See Ferishta, Dow, i. 117.
303. Hist. of Bengal, by Charles Stewart, Esq. sect. iii.
304. This fact; the passage of an army from Tartary, through Tibet into Bengal (if real) is of no small importance. Ferishta gives us no further intelligence of the place; and it is in vain to inquire. Chitta may perhaps correspond with Kitta or Kitay, or Catay, which is one of the names of China, but is also applied by the Persian historians to many parts of Tartary; to the country, for example, of the Igoors; to the kingdom of Koten, south from Cashgar, &c. See D’Herbelot, Biblioth. Orient. articles Igurs, Cara Calhai, Tarikh Khatha, Kholan. — Mr. Stewart, (See Hist. of Bengal, p. 62,) says, that the invasion which is here spoken of by Ferishta was an invasion of Orissians only, not of Moguls.
305. Ferishta. Mr. Stewart says, that in his MSS. the name is Bagora.
306. Mr. Stewart has greatly softened the account of the insolence of Kei Kobad.
307. It is written Khuliji by Major Stewart.
308. Written Deogire, by Col. Wilks, and declared to be the Tagara of Ptolemy. The author of the Tibcat Nasiri says, that Alla left Corah on pretence of a hunting party, and passing through the territories of many petty rajahs, too feeble to think of opposing him, he came upon Ramdeo by surprise. Ferishta, i. 231. The proofs of the division and subdivision of India into a great number of petty states meet us at every step in its authentic history.
309. This is the first mention which we find of any of the tribes to whom the term Mahrattor, or Mahratta, is applied, by the Moslem historians. From this statement we can only conjecture, that some district in Deccan, inhabited by the description of Hindus to whom this name was applied, was overrun, and nominally parcelled out by Cafoor.
310. Wilks, Hist. of Mysore, p. 6.
311. The neighbouring Rajahs, says Ferishta, hastened to the assistance of the Rajah of Warunkul; another proof of the division into petty sovereignties.
312. Besides several chests, of jewels, pearls, and other precious things, the gold alone amounted to about one hundred millions sterling. Col. Dow thinks this not at all incredible: Hist. of Hindost. i. 276: and Col. Wilks (Hist. of Mysore, p. 11) seems to have little objection.
313. According to Wilks, what is here called Malabar was not the district which is now called by that name, but the hilly belt along the summit of the Ghauts, from Soonda to Coorg. Hist. of Mysore, p. 10.
314. A circumstantial history of the Bahmenee sovereigns was composed by Ferishta; and to Jonathan Scott we are indebted for an instructive translation of it. The above sketch of the origin of the Bahmenee dynasty is drawn partly from Ferishta’s Deccan, translated by Scott; partly from his history of Delhi, translated by Dow. The facts are very shortly mentioned, or rather alluded to, by Lieut.-Col. Mark Wilks, (Historical Sketches of the South of India, ch. i. where the reader will also find all that research has been able to procure of Hindu materials, and all that sagacious conjecture has been able to build upon a few imperfect fragments of the history of the ancient Hindu governments in the south of India.
315. Such is the account of Ferishta. Mr. Stewart, (Hist. of Bengal, sect. iv.) follows other authorities, who represent Bengal as now erected into a Mahomedan kingdom, perfectly independent.
316. The two dynasties of Gaur are spoken of occasionally by the Oriental historians under the title of the Afghaun and Patan government of India; Afghaun and Patan, as also Abdauly, and several others, being names, applied to the whole or a part of the people who inhabit the chain of mountains from Heart, to the mouths of the Indus.
317. By Ferishta, as translated by Dow, he is called Shabiani, ii. 100.
318. This district, which gave its name to the Rohillas, a people considerable in the history of British India, is said by Major Stewart, on his Persian authorities, to have been the original seat of the Afghauns, whose mountainous country (Roh signifies a mountainous country; and Rohillas, mountaineers or highlanders) extended, according to the same authorities, in length from Sewad and Bijore to the town of Sia, in Bukharest, and in breadth from Hussin to Rabul. Stewart’s Bengal, p. 127.
319. What relates to Bengal, in these transactions, is extracted minutely by Mr. Stewart, (Hist. Bengal, sect. 5.)
320. This is a stage of civilization to which the Hindus had not arrived.
321. For the succeeding sketch of the history of the Mahomedan sovereignties in Deccan, Ferishta’s History of Deccan, translated by Captain Jonathan Scott, and Wilk’s Historical Sketches of the South of India, have been the principal guides.
322. Called Bisnagar, in the common maps, and Vijeyanuggur by Col. Wilks. Bijanuggur was but a modern power, in the south of India, and had risen upon the ruins of the Rajahship of Warunkul. Historical Sketches, by Col. Wilks, ch. i.
323. Col. Wilks thinks that the whole of the south of India, (i. e. India to the south of the Kistna) had for a considerable space of time been comprised in the empire of Vijeyanuggur. Ibid. p. 20. After the ruin of the Rajahship of Warunkul, when was the time for such an aggrandisement?
324. Ayeen Akberry, ii. 2.
325. Written also Brampore, and Boorhanpore.
326. Ferishta’s History of Deccan, by Scott, i. 400–403. Umber was one of the adventurers from Abyssinia, of whom so many sought, and obtained, their fortunes in Deccan, during the existence of the Afghâun dynasties.
327. Ibid. p. 339, 340; and 409, 410.
328. The fall of Dowlatabad is somewhat differently related by Dow in his history of Nizam Shah, p. 151. We have here followed the account of Ferishta. Scott’s Deccan, i. 402.
329. We meet with boasts, in the Oriental historians, of kings, whose administration of justice was so perfect, that a purse of gold might be exposed on the highways, and no man would touch it. Never was justice better administered in India than under the reign of Shah Jehan; yet knowing more of the circumstances of his reign, we know better what the general enlogies of the Oriental historians mean. Bernier, describing his situation at the time of his arrival at the court of Shah Jehan, speaks of “le peu d’argent qui me restoit de diverses rencontres de voleurs.” Hist. des Estats du Grand Magol, p. 5.
330. For these transactions of Aurungzebe and Emir Jumla, see Bernier, ut supra, p. 22–32, and the reign of Shah Jehan, chap. v. in Dow.
331. Dow, who follows his Persian authority, says, the malady was paralysis and strangury, brought on by excesses in the haram; Bernier the physician speaks of it in the following terms: “Je ne parlerai point ici de sa maladie, et je n’en raporteray pas les particularitez. Je diray seulement qu’elle estoit peu convenable à un vieillard de soixantedix ans et plus, qui devoit plῦtot songer a conserver ses forces qu’à les ruiner comme il fit.” Ut supra, p. 33.
332. Bernier had not heard of the attempt of Morâd upon the life of Aurungzebe. It is here stated upon the Persian authorities of Dow. Bernier, ut supra, p. 109–114. Dow’s Shah Jehan, ch. iii. Hist. of Hindostan, vol. iii.
333. This account of the fate of Mahomed is given by Mr. Stewart, (Hist. Bengal, p. 276) on the authority of the Muasir Alumgiery, and varies from the account of Ferishta, who says he died in Gualior.
334. Dow, (Hist. of Aurungzebe, chap. iv.) places the Emperor’s illness after the famine. But Bernier, who was on the spot, and mentions the arrival of ambassadors from the Khan of the Usbecks first among the events succeeding the termination of the civil war, says, that those ambassadors, who remained somewhat more than four months, had not departed from Delhi when the Emperor was taken ill. Bernier, Evenemens Particuliers des Etats du Mogul, p. 10.
335. Bernier, ut supra, p 87.
336. The Pousta is thus described by the physician, Bernier. Ce pousta n’est autre chose que du pavot écrasé qu’on laisse la nuit tremper dans de l’eau; c’est ce qu’on fait ordinairement boire à Goualeor, à ces princes ausquels on ne veut pas faire couper la teste; c’est la premiere chose qu’on leur porte le matin, et on ne leur donne point à manger qu’ils n’en ayent beu une grande tasse, on les laisseroit plῦtot mourir de faim; cela les fait devenir maigres et mourir insensiblement, perdans pen à peu les forces et l’entendement, et devenus comme tout endormis et étourdis, et c’est par là qu’on dit qu’on s’est defait de Sepe-Chekouh, du petit fils de Morad, et de Soliman meme. Bernier, Hist. de la derniere Revolut. des Estats du Grand Mogul, p. 170. It is said, that when the gallant Soliman was, by the treachery of the Rajah of Serinagur, delivered into the cruel hands of Aurungzebe, and introduced into his presence, when every one was struck with the noble appearance of the graceful and manly youth, he entreated that he might be immediately beheaded; and not reserved to the lingering destruction of the pousta; when the hypocritical Aurungzebe forbade him to fear, adding, that he was cautious, but not cruel. Bernier, Ibid. p. 169. Dow, Reign of Aurungzebe, ch. iv.
337. Bernier, (Evenemens Particul. des Etats du Mogul, p. 88–101) speaks of these Portuguese as infamous buccaneers; and their own historian, Faria de Sowza, countenances the assertion, which might have been founded upon the reports of enemies. The Portuguese followed their merchandize as their chief occupation, but, like the English and Dutch of the same period, had no objection to plunder, when it fell in their way.
338. Dow, Reign of Aurunzebe, ch. vi.
339. Mheerut, or Mharat, the name of a district, which under the Deccanee sovereigns was part of the province of Dowlutabad, may in former ages, says Mr. Jonathan Scott, have given name to a larger division of Dekkan, and the original country of the Mahrattas. Scott’s Deccan, Introd. p. x. Ibid. i. 32. The Mahratta language extends along the coast from the island of Bardez to the river Tapti. Orme, Histor. Frag. p. 57. It is said by Col. Wilks (Hist. Sketches, p. 6) that “from Beder the Mahratta language is spread over the whole country to the northwestward of the Canara, and of a line which, passing considerably to the eastward of Dowletabad, forms an irregular sweep until it touches the Tapti, and follows the course of that river to the western sea—but that in the geographical tables of the Hindus, the name of Maharashtra, and by contraction Mahratta dasum (or country) seems to have been more particularly appropriated to the eastern portion of this great region, including Baglana, part of Berar and Candeish: the western was known by its present name of Coucan.”
340. Aurungzebe’s Operations in Dekkan, translated by Scott, p. 6.
341. Aurungzebe’s operations in Dekkan, a translation from a Persian manuscript, by Jonathan Scott, p. 6;—Appendix A. to Lord Wellesley’s Notes on the Mahratta war;—East India Papers, printed by the House of Commons, 1804, p. 255. Lord Wellesley seems to have followed Scott. Ekogee, as he is called by Mr. Orme and others, is written Angojee in Mr. Scott’s translation, p. 32. The history and origin of the family is related with considerable variations, by Col. Wilks, on Mahratta authorities. (Hist. Sketches, chap. iii) But if Hindu authority were better than Persian, (and it is far inferior) the facts are not worth the trouble of a critical comparison. It is of some importance to state what is related (ibid.) by Wilks, that Shahjee went second in command in the army of the King of Beejapore which proceeded to the conquest of the Carnatic in 1638; that he was left provincial governor of all the Beejapore conquests in Carnatic, when the general in chief returned to the capital; that his first residence was at Bangalore, but that he afterwards seems to have divided his time between Colar and Balapoor. Wilks infers from some grants of laud by Shawjee, of which the writings still remain, that he affected independence of the declining government which he had served. The acquisition of Tanjore was made, as the Colonel thinks, not by Shawjee, but after his death by Ekojee his son; and his accomplice was not the Rajah or Folygar of Mudkul, but the Naik of Madura, which however appears to have been called Mudkul by the Persian historians. Naik and Polygar were Hindu names of governors of districts, who, as often as they dared to assume independance, affected the title of Rajah. Naik was a title of inferior dignity to Polygar.
342. The mountainous districts, lying between the provinces of Agra and Guzerat, and forming part of the provinces of Malwa and Ajmere, were inhabited by a race of warlike Hindus, named Rajpoots, who, from pride of superior prowess, claimed to be of a higher caste than the mass of other Hindus. They had been divided into three principal Rajahships; that of Abnir or Ambeer, called afterwards Jeypore and Jyenagur, on the borders of Agra; that of Jodepore or Marwar, south west from Abnir, approaching the centre of Ajmere; and lastly that of Chitore, called also Odeypore, from another city, lying further south. Of these Rajahs the most powerful had been the Rajah of Chitore, whose distinctive title was Rana. Jesswint Sing, the Rajah of Judpore, having married the daughter of the last Rana, had merged those two kingdoms of Rajapoots into one. Mr. Orme seems not to have been aware of the marriage of Jesswint Sing, and of its effects; as he mentions with some surprise, that the name of the Rajah of Chitore no where appears in the history of the present transactions. Bernier, Revol. p. 52, 56; Dow. Reign of Shah Jehan, ch. v. p. 212; Scott, ut supra, p. 10; Memoirs of Eradut Khan, p. 18; Rennel’s Memoir, Introd. p. cxxxii. To the above nations of Rajapoots should also be added those of Boudela, or Bundelcund, a district between the provinces of Agra and Malwa, extending from Jeypore, by Gualior and Callinger, as far as Benares. Memoirs of Eradut Khan, p. 17: Rennel, ut supra, p. cxxxii.
343. Scott, ut supra, p. 11–17. Mr. Orme, from scattered reports, has stated the circumstances differently. Historical Frag. p. 17, &c.
344. Not without suspicion of poison.—Mr. Scott’s author, who probably wished to spare Aurungzebe, says, by his moonshee, or secretary (p. 17). Mr. Orme says, by order of Aurungzebe (p. 27). But the Rajah was worn out with age and laborious services; and the only poison, perhaps, was the anguish of disgrace. He is praised by the Mahomedan historians as the most eminent, in personal qualities, of all the Hindus they had yet known; acomplished in Persian and Arabian learning. His successor, of whom more will be heard hereafter, was celebrated for his astronomical learning, and for the observatory which he erected at Jeypore. Memoirs of Eradut Khan, p. 18. Note (1) by Scott.
345. Wilks, (p. 80) says nine, upon what authorities he, as usual, omits to state.
346. This expedition into the Carnatic is noticed by Scott, ut supra, p. 32; by Orme, Hist. Frag. p. 82–87. Col. Wilks, however, (ch. iii. ut supra,) has given the most distinct account, and is here followed.
347. Orme’s Hist. Frag. p. 9 to 11, 79 to 81.
348. Ibid. p. 133, 134. Wilks says he died in 1680, (ubi supra, p. 91).
349. Orme’s Hist. Frag. p. 68–72.
350. Scott’s Operations of Aurungzebe in Deccan, p. 53. Orme, ut supra, p. 100–105, and 119–121.
351. Scott, ut supra, p. 54–64; Orme Hist. Frag. p. 134–152.
352. Scott, ut supra, p. 65–73.
353. The greatest part of Carnatic had belonged to the rajahs of Beejanugger, in the flourishing state of that empire. After the reduction of that state by the Mahomedan powers of Deccan, it was divided between the states of Golconda and Beejapore. Aurungzebe’s Operations in Deccan, Scott, p. 73, 74, 75. Orme, p. 119–130.
354. Scott, ut supra, p. 77–80; Orme, p. 230–234. Wilks (p. 215) says it was taken in 1698.
355. For the last seven years of the reign of Aurungzebe, the author of Aurungzebe’s operations in Deccan, by Scott, (p. 73–123,) is our principal authority. The age of Aurungzebe is stated on the authority of Golam Hussein Khan (Seer Mutakhareen, i. 2). Mr. Scott’s author mentions not the age. Both writers miscalculate the length of the reign (which began in August 1658, and ended in February 1707); the one calling it more than fifty, the other more than fifty-one years.
356. The reign of Shah Aulum is related by two Persian noblemen, both cotemporary with the events, Eradut Khan, (Mem. p. 11–64,) and Golâm Hussein Khan, Seer Mutakhareen, p. 1–23.
357. This was the highest office in an Indian government, and seldom bestowed unless on some great emergency. Scott, Memoirs of Eradut Khan, p. 46.
358. Chief paymaster; an office of great trust and dignity. Ibid.
359. Sir John Malcolm writes it Grant’h. Sketch of the Sikhs, p. 25.
360. Golâm Hussein, (Seer Mutakhareen, i. 87–93) who gives a pretty detailed account of the origin of the Seiks; and Scott, (Hist. of Aurungzebe’s Successors, p. 142) who gives an abridged one, agree pretty exactly in the facts. Eradut Khan (Mem. p. 61) describes the reduction of Daber. Some general remarks are found in a paper of Mr. Wilkins, in the first vol. of the Asiatic Researches. The more detailed account of Sir John Malcolm, (Sketch of the Sikhs, p. 1–85,) taken from Seik authorities, differs widely in the history of Nannuk; but though the inaccurate Persians are not much to be trusted, the fabling Seiks, making every thing miraculous in the origin of their sect, are still less.
361. Eradut Khan, (Memoirs, p. 65–67,) and Golam Hussein Khan, (Seer Mutakhareen, i. 23–36, agree in the general points of this struggle for the crown; the former describing it like an eye-witness, but not a very curious one; the other from report merely, but not without diligence and criticism.
362. The Memoirs of Eradut Khan finish with the reign of Jehandar Shah. He describes the scenes with the knowledge of an eye-witness, but with little favour to Jehandar Shah or Zulfeccar, the victims of the severity or cruelty of the prince under whom he wrote, and whom it was adviseable not to offend. Golam Houssein is more candid and more discerning. Seer Mutakhareen, i. 42–63.
363. Before the departure of Hussun, the marriage of the Emperor was celebrated with the daughter of Maharaja Ajeet Sing, stipulated for, in the conditions lately imposed by Hussun upon the Rajah. She had been conveyed from her father’s palace to that of Hussun, as her adopted father, who graced her nuptials with a magnificence which surpassed all that hitherto had been seen in Hindustan.
An indisposition of the Emperor, rather inconvenient at the time of a marriage, cured by a medical gentleman of the name of Hamilton, is said to have been the cause of obtaining the first phirmaun of free trade, for the East India Company. Scott’s Successors of Aurungzebe, p. 139.
364 £ 3,500,000.
365 £ 1,500,000.
366 £ 15,000,000.
367 £ 1,000,000.
368£ 11,000,000.

In all, if we believe our authorities, £32,000,000.

369. Aurungzebe’s Successors, by Scott, p. 214.
370. The most valuable of the details respecting the invasion of Nadir are furnished us by Golam Hussein, (Seer Mutakhareen, i. 325–344.) Scott, as usual, gives chiefly an abridgement of the Seer Mutakhareen, but here, enriched with some particulars from the known historians of Nadir. An interesting account of the march of the Persian army back, and its operations in Bucharia, and Karisme, to which Nadir immediately proceeded, is given us by an eye-witness, Khojeh Abdulkurreem, a Cashmerian of distinction, who accompanied him from Hindustan, and whose narrative has been translated for us by Mr. Gladwin. Khojeh Abdulkurreem differs from Scott, in the day of the conqueror’s departure from Delhi, which he makes the 4th of May. Memoirs of Khojeh Abdulkurreem, p. 1. A curious letter of Nadir Shah himself, giving an account to his son of his march towards Delhi, of the battle, and of his intention not to seize the crown of Mahomed, has been translated by Sir John Malcolm. (Asiat. Res. x. 539.)
371. For the circumstances of Nizam ul Mulk’s resumption of his government in Deccan, see Seer Mutakhareen, iii. 3, 8.
372. Memoirs of Khojeh Abdulkurreem, p. 183.
373. Seer Mutakhareen, (iii. 20–26); Memoirs of Khojeh Abdulkurreem, (p. 183–185). Scott gives a very short and unsatisfactory abridgement of the passage in the Seer Mutakhareen; Aurungzebe’s Successors, p. 218.
374. Memoirs of Khojeh Abdulkurreem, p. 204.
375. Seer Mutakhareen, (iii. 38–52); Memoirs of Khojeh Abdulkurreem, p. 186, 203–207. Life of Ahmed Shah, king of the Abdallees, who are also called Duranees, from the custom of wearing a pearl in one of their ears, translated from the Persian by Henry Vansittart, published in Gladwin’s Asiatic Miscellany.
376. The Seer Mutakhareen is the great authority for this reign; Mr. Scott giving little more than an abridgment of the narrative in that work. Some curious facts are contained in the memoirs of Khojeh Abdulkurreem. Frazer’s Nadir Shah; and the history of that ferocious conqueror, translated into French by Sir Wilham Jones, are to be consulted for the details on the Persian side. In Frazer there is an abridgment of the Mogul history, from Aurungzebe to Mahomed Shah, which is given in a still more abridged form by Holwell in his “Interesting Historical Events.” Frazer’s materials were imperfect.
377. Seer Mutakhareen (iii. 79). Mr. Scott speaks of a vigorous resistance on the part of the Governor (p. 225); but Golâm Hussun says, there was no fighting; and so does Kojeh Abdulkurreem (p. 236).
378. The Jaats or Jauts, inhabiting the mountainous region, from the Chumbul and Jumna eastward, to the Jeypoor Rajahship on the west; and from twenty coss to the southward of Agra, to the province of Delhi on the north, were known as a formidable predatory tribe from the earliest period of the Mohamedan history. The original seat of the Jaats appears to have been near the Indus, in the lower part of Multan. Their chief, or one of their chiefs, was received into the service of Jehandar Shah, and behaved with gallantry in the war between that Prince and Feroksere. Upon the ascendancy gained by the latter Prince, the Jaat retired with his plunder to his fortress of Bhurtpore. This chief was succeeded by his son, who was obliged to become tributary to the Rajah of Jeypoor. To him succeeded his brother, who contrived to throw off his dependance upon the Rajpoot; and, first of his race, assumed the title of Rajah. During the weakness of Mahomed Shah’s administration, he spread his incursions to the very walls of Agra, and left to his son and successor, Sooraje Mull, a considerable kingdom. His power, and vicimty to the capital, rendered him an object of consequence; and the Vizir had attached him to his interests by placing him among the Omrahs of the empire, and other favours. See an account of the Jaats, Asiat. An. Reg. 1802; Characters, p. 12. Also “A Sketch of Rajehpootaneh,” translated from the Persian, in “Tracts, &c.” by William Francklin, a small volume, published in 1811.
379. The Seer Mutakhareen is followed in the text. Francklin (Hist. of Shah Aulum, p. 4) says, 1755.
380. Seer Mutakhareen, iii, 137.
381. The term Nabob, as equivalent to Subahdar, is very modern in Hindustan; and is said to have begun with Sujah Dowlah. Formerly it was not applied to the Subahdar or governor of the Subah, but to the Subahdar’s deputy, or locum tenens; the literal meaning of the word being deputy. The new use of the term is thus accounted for in the Seer Mutakhareen (iii. 167): When the Prince Alee Gohur was on the visit just mentioned, to Sujah ad Dowlah, and received the compliments of that Governor, he addressed him by the title of brother Nabob, which being reckoned an elegant compliment, passed into conversation, when the name was afterwards currently applied to him, and also to other governors.
382. The events of Aulumgeer’s and the preceding reign are found in considerable detail in the Seer Mutakhareen (iii. 62–192), which is abridged by Scott, Hist. of Aurungzebe’s Successors, p. 224–246. The principal facts are noticed, but in certain respects somewhat differently, by Francklin, life of Shah Aulum, p. 7–27.
383. For these facts, the reader will find the original authors faithfully quoted and extracted, in the Universal History, ii. 352, 354; iv. 309, 393; v. 123. Modern Part, 8vo. Ed. In exploring the Persian and Arabian Authorities, the authors of the Universal History are not the worst of our guides.
384. Vide supra, p. 223.
385. Mr. Grant remarks that Kirkpatrick’s account of Nepaul exhibits a form of government, state officers, civil, and military, nearly the same as were established in Hindustan, under the rule of the Moguls. Grant’s Observations on the Hindus, p. 41. But Kirkpatrick’s account is very imperfect, and he appears to have supplied his want of information, by ideas borrowed from what he knew in other parts of India. Besides, the Nepaulians, as well as the Mahrattas, were in a situation to borrow from the Mahomedans.
386. The Persian version was translated by Major Davy; and edited, with a preface and other additions, by Mr. White, the Arabic Professor at Oxford, in 1783.
387. The Hedaya, or Guide; a commentary on the Mussulman Laws: Translated by order of the Governor-General and Council of Bengal, by Charles Hamilton, in 4 vols. 4to. Preliminary Discourse, by the translator, p. lxxxiii.
388. Hedaya, ii. 614.
389. Hedaya, ii. 615.
390. Ibid. 620.
391. “The moderation of the tribute imposed by all Mahomedan conquerors, and the simplicity of their method of collecting it, accounts for the surprising facility with which they retained possession of their conquests. The form of their government was despotic: but in fact it was not oppressive to the mass of the conquered people. In general they introduced no change, but in the army, and in the name of the sovereign.” Francis, Plan for a Settlement of the Revenues of Bengal, par. 9. “The gentiles (Hindus) are better contented to live under the Mogul’s laws than under Pagan princes, for the Mogul taxes them gently, and every one knows what he must pay, but the Pagan kings or princes tax at discretion, making their own avarice the standard of equity; besides, there were formerly many small Rajahs, that used upon frivolous occasions to pick quarrels with one another, and before they could be made friends again, their subjects were forced to open both their veins and purses to gratify ambition or folly.” Hamilton’s New Account of the East Indies. ii. 26.
392. Sir Thomas Roe, speaking of even the Mogul Emperor and his court, says, “Experience had taught me that there was no faith among these barbarians.” Journal in Churchill’s Voyages, i. 799. Contrasting the opposition he met with, when he had not, and the obsequiousness when he had something to give, he says, “This made me sensible of the poor spirits of those people. Asaph Khan [the minister] was become so much our friend, in hopes to buy some trifles, that he would have betrayed his own son to serve us, and was my humble servant.” Ibid. Sir Thomas Roe said it was better not to send ambassadors to the Mogul’s court, but to employ the money in bribing. “Half my charge,” said he, “shall corrupt all this court to be your slaves.” Letter to the E. I. Company, Ibid. p. 809.
393. Vide supra, p. 13, 14
394. Laws of Menu, ch. i. 14. See the passage quoted at length, supra, vol. i. p. 425.
395. Laws of Menu. ch. i. 14.
396. Ibid. 15.
397. Laws of Menu, ch. i. 15.
398. Ibid. 16.
399. Ibid. 17
400. Ibid. 18.
401. Laws of Menu, ch. i. 19.
402. Not only are consciousness and the five perceptions regarded as separate existences, and separate products of creative power, but various other operations of the mind, and even states of the affections. Thus, among the other creations, it is said, that the Creator “gave being to devotion, speech, complaceny, desire, and wrath.” (Laws of Menu, ch. i. 25.)
403. Ibid. ch. ii. 2.