forms, the greater part of which, however, have little existence except in grammars. How far this fact favours the idea that all beyond the elements existing in Hindi, Gujaráti, Maráthi, &c. was an artificial sacerdotal literature elaborated by Bralımans and analogous to the Egyptian hieroglyph, or to what extent the language may have been spoken, is not the point. A language: polished in forms, but teeming with the vilest words, must be estimated at its value, as a mark of civilisation. Cities are another mark. But what evidence have we that in ancient times their streets exhibited any better sanitary arrangements than at present? Mere amount of population would be rather a doubtful mark, when we remember a Nineveh, or a Memphis of old, and the recent information of a city rivalling the population of London, in the heart of Africa. In the advance of knowledge, the establishment of schools, and the readiness of Indian youth to attend them, we recognise a truer pledge of civilisation, than all that is on record of the dreary past. All honour be to the Government, and to Christian Societies as civilisers; and approbation likewise be awarded to the students who choose the true means of being civilised, and civilisers of their country.

We have no idea of following the footsteps of our authors through their histories. A historical essay is not our aim. Nor do we overlook the fact stated by General Vans Kennedy and others, that the Hindus have no history." Whence, then, it may be asked, the accounts-few and meagre as they are-of ancient India, which are given? From cave temples, inscriptions, grants, and other records of the past, detached facts can be gathered. From the heroic poems or Itihases, though exceedingly unsafe as historical guides, grains of truth can doubtless be extracted, as of Greece from Homer, of Africa and Italy from Virgil, and of ancient Britain from extant poems of Welsh bards. But would any, by going to such a source of evidence, pretend to redeem early British history from the value of fable? As little can the Hindus do this. Nor do they attempt it in any way more plausible than by deducing the four primal castes from the mouth, breast, central region, and feet of Brahma. Unless we are content to accept their Brahma and other deities as historical characters, as true gods, we cannot accept their account of their castes as historical. We may analyse some of their earlier compositions,Manu, for instance, as Mr. Elphinstone has done,-and to some extent deduce pictures of the state of society. We may form astronomical allusions, as the time of the rising and setting of certain constellations; on the principle of the precision of

the equinoxes, approximate, as Mr. Bentley did, the ages of the books containing such allusions, and as Sir Isaac Newton long before had done with Hesiod, Homer, and others. This can connect only a few remote points in ancient India's historic chart. The authors before us cannot be said to have attempted this, nor is it our theme to tell how much or how little success other writers have had in this walk. Something remains to be done in eliciting a few facts from the Vedas, now in course of translation, and in giving connexion and prominence to the facts already elicited.

In Dr. Allen's remarks on the diseases of India, there might be room for much discussion, even were his account more scanty than it is. He speaks mainly of leprosy. "Elephantiasis" he thinks improperly called leprosy, though by and by he calls it "leprosy and dropsy combined.' The cases of it in Western India are perhaps too few to decide the question of its fatality. Dr. Kitto, who had seen it in Persia, and thinks it to have been the disease of the Patriarch Job, quotes a description of it, which represents patients as living under it for many years, though it does not follow that it is ever so shaken off as to leave a sound constitution. A few days since a Hindu of high caste exhibited to us his hand, in which white leprosy was spreading, in the hope that we might be able to effect a cure. We have never heard any complaints of pain attending this leprosy. With the ordinary black leprosy of India, it is otherwise occasional inflammations occur, and mortifications of fingers and toes. We have pretty frequently conversed with the patients, who seemed under no apprehension of sudden death from their repulsive disease. It may be right to state, as an example worthy of imitation, that Government, through the highly laudable efforts of Colonel W. Lang, have erected at Rajkote a commodious leper hospital for Katiawar.

We quite agree with the author's estimate that the average of human life in India is ten years less than in Europe. When he goes on to attribute this, not to climate, but modes of life, what a field of philanthropy is spread before the missionary, the educationist, and the physician! The Court of Directors are moving in the proper line, by issuing queries to medical officials in various provinces respecting the country, people, mode of life, and other particulars, though we may reasonably ask why other officials might not also have been called on to furnish information.

We pass Dr. Allen's Natural History of India with noticing. the strange mistakes, made by many, on a subject of little importance, and on which no peculiar obscurity need exist,-the

Katiawar lion. We once heard a gentleman, who had been at Calcutta, and thought "he had seen, and sure he ought to know," declare there were no lions in India. Whether his geography of India included Katiawar, or went beyond Bengal, we cannot say; but in some books, French, and even English, a similar statement is made. In other instances the noble animal is represented as maneless, and perhaps for this reason he is classed with tigers. Dr. Allen endorses the statement that he is maneless. He, we presume, never visited the Province; but he might easily have seen skins of the species. If he had, as we have, seen any ofa fullgrown lion, he would have said the Province does possess the lion, and that animal, when suffered to become old enough, does acquire a mane. If, however, they continue to be hunted as they have been, they are not unlikely to become extinct in a few years. Then it is possible the error may be perpetuated.

Regarding the immigration of the Hindus into India, Dr. Allen states that "the first inhabitants entered the country from the West, or North-west, and at some subsequent period, another nation, from the same source, invaded and conquered them, introducing a higher state of civilisation, with the system of religion called Hinduism or Brahmanism."

Doubtless this is true. But is it the whole truth? Was there but one immigration into India after its occupation by the aborigines? Manu says: "The following classes of Kshatriyas, by their omission of holy rites, and by seeing no Brahmans, have gradually sunk among men to the lowest of the four classes: Paundras, Odras, and Dravidas; Cámbojas, Yavanas, and Sakás; Páradas, Pahlavas, Chinas, Kirátas, Daradas, and Khasas." Some of these are undoubtedly of origin foreign to India, and some of them are probably identifiable with names now current in India; but all are called degraded Kshatriyas, and thus to the whole Kshatrya race an origin exterior to India is ascribed. Wilson (Dict.) explains these names thus: Paundra, Bengal; Odra, Orissa; Dravida, outcaste tribe; Camboja, a foreign tribe like the Yavanas, a country in the North of India; Yavan, Baktria, Greece, &c.; Sakás, the Saco or Scythians; Párada, not given; Pahlav or Pahrav, Parthian; China, China; Kirátas, the Cirate of Arrian; Khasa, a country to the North of India. Thus races, partly included now in India, and partly foreign, and northern as well as western, are called by the common name of Kshatriyas. To this we feel inclined to add such facts as Colonel

* Chap. 10, shlok. 43, 44.

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Todd's identification of various names, Jeth, Jud, Jut, Jat, Káthiá, &c. with the Scythian name of Getal or Goth; and the fact that as early as the time of Ptolemy, a large portion of Northern and Western India was called, as in his Geography, Indo-Scythia." We shall not urge more fanciful coincidences, as of the snake-race of Scythian conquerors with Shesh Nág, the Serpent King of Pátála or Tartarus, on whose head the earth is represented as resting. But the conclusion that the Hindus proper were derived from the North as well as from the Westfrom Tartary, as well as Asia (perhaps. Iran or Elam),-seems one that cannot be rationally resisted.

But

Passing over long periods, and extended portions of these histories, we find Dr. Allen adducing the opinion of Mill, that the Mussulmans are superior to the Hindus, and partially controverting it by saying "they did not communicate any of their superiority to the Hindus, and as little did Hinduism absorb them." Notwithstanding the tempting topic thus introduced, we wait only to contrast the character of these systems with that of Christianity. The Mussulmans overran India as a torrent, and sprinkled the land with a small proportion of adherents to their creed, as the torrent may streak the soil over which it sweeps with its debris. as the torrent leaves no greenness behind it, as little has Mohamedism made the Hindu desert rejoice. It possessed power but not benignity. Under the former attribute Hindus bowed and fell; but in the absence of the latter Hinduism never became assimilated. It is curiously and instructively interesting to contrast Mohamedism in India and in Persia with the Gothic system in Europe, imperfectly Christianised as it was. Christianity, though verging towards Romanism, still had power, for it still had life; and the Goths, while conquering and reducing to fragments the vast empire that lay before them, soon began to feel themselves melted down and recast in a new mould. Christianity in national subjugation could achieve religious conquests. Mohamedism, victorious in Persia, could thrust its dogmas on the Zoroastrians by armies, and by plunder. In India, farther from its centre, its energy was less, and while it could rear an empire, it could not give light; for its own glare was but a portentous meteor, and not a celestial radiance. Hinduism, on the other hand, wanted life and love, evidence and reason. Then, "its strength was to sit still." It had power, but lifeless power, as a mountain ridge that stretches immoveably across the way. It taught no doctrine of love to other nations. It did not announce one God of all flesh; and all it had

as now,

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power to do was to mutter imprecations, retire into its wretched temples, and conceal its corrupting books. Christianity could inoculate the conquerors of the nations with its principles, but it could not make rapid visible conquests like the Saracens in Persia; for it works not by violence, its action is not that of a machine pulverising the rock, but that of heat extracting its metals. It will be of no avail to speak of Portuguese in India, or Spaniards in Mexico, acting on a contrary principle. They were not obeying Christ's injunctions, as the Arabs in their military proselytism were obeying those of Mohamed; nor was theirs genuine Christianity;-they only forged its signature to false credentials.

Dr. Allen's view of the caste system, as it stands related to the Honourable Company's army, is thus expressed: "In respect to caste, which has so much influence in religious and social intercourse among the Hindus, the English have shown some indulgence in the army to the superstitions and prejudices of the natives, and these in their turn have yielded somewhat to the wishes of their masters, and to the exigences of their own circumstances (italics ours). The more important rules of caste, pertaining to eating, drinking, and intermarriages, are carefully observed in the army. These usages are also regarded in free and social intercourse,' -if that can be said to exist, where a lady cannot be visited, nor an invitation to dinner made or accepted," but give way to more important matters when on duty, and in the immediate inspection and order of their superiors."

In immediate connexion with this may be placed Mr. Morris's account of the mutiny at Vellore, in 1806 :

"In the midst, however, of the quiet that prevailed, the dwel lers in British India were startled by the news of an alarming outbreak near Madras. Very early in the morning of the 10th July 1806, while it was still dark, the sepoys stationed at Vellore, a town 84 miles west of Fort St. George, arose and murdered the greater part of the European officers and soldiers who were in that place. Silently and secretly they assembled on the parade ground; marched to the European barracks; surrounded them; placed before the door a field piece; and frequently fired on the unarmed men within. The English soldiers could not return the fire, for they had no powder; and were unable to charge out against their common foes. Some of the rebels had gone to watch the houses of the officers, and to murder all who left them, and by these Colonel Fancourt, who commanded, was mortally wounded. Others went to secure the powder magazine; and a third party entered the houses of the English, and killed all on whom they