the more liberal products of the intellect,-philosophy and literature properly so called,-we meet with compositions not less extensive, questions not less curious, and, notwithstanding the admirable labours of the Colebrookes and the Wilsons, not less new. Philosophy does not detach itself from religion, it is true, with so much ease in India as in the west. With some exceptions, it reposes upon revelation, and holds out to the pursuit of truth the same recompense that religion promises to faith. But although chained down to the two terms of its developement, Hindu philosophy does not treat with the less freedom every question which ancient wisdom embraced in its researches: in the past, the origin of the world; in the present, the faculties and passions of man; in the future, his destiny and that of the universe, and above all, his relations with the Supreme Intelligence whence every thing has emanated and to which every thing returns. This is the inexhaustible topic of those profound philosophical speculations, in which the facts of every science are mixed and compounded together,—natural philosophy and psychology, natural history and metaphysics; but in which, at the same time, a modern analyzer cannot restrain his admiration at its grandeur of thought and its originality of invention.

"Those habits of meditation, which suppose, at the same time that they develope, the most powerful faculties of the intellect, have not exclusively occupied the sages of India; and in transporting them into their ideal sphere of abstraction, they did not become cold and insensible to the sight of the emotions of the human soul, which awakens, amongst every people, the sentiment of poetry. The Hindus have been as much poets as philosophers; possibly, they may have been philosophers only because they were poets. Amongst them, every idea becomes animated with the hues of poetry; every discourse is, as it were, a hymn. A rich and flexible language lends to the strains of the poet an inexhaustible supply of images and forms of expression. Nature and grandeur in thought, splendour and simplicity in diction, are some of the characteristics of this brilliant poetry, whose beauties are more easily felt than they can be defined. It comprehends the most varied kinds, from the expression of the abstract ideas of the Védas, to those jeux d'esprit, which would possess little merit in themselves, even if they were not the melancholy' proof of the decay of a literature. The epic, the drama, and the ode have their place in it; and the genius which has produced so many works, some of which may pass with the most polished nations as master-pieces, has given, in some measure, the fullest pledge of its energy, by laying down with critical precision the laws of these different modes of composition, and demonstrating that if a fortunate instinct suggested them, an ingenious analysis could appreciate and explain them.

"Amidst these ample stores, we lament one defect, the absence of a history of the nation whose glory they will perpetuate. We are, indeed, ignorant to a certain extent, of the political history of ancient India, and it is rather by an act of faith that we consider it to be very ancient; for amongst so many works -the fruit of the most exalted imagination, the boldest meditations, the most practised ratiocination, we have not yet met with any historical compositions, and we know not in what age we are to place these monuments of the existence of a people, who have preserved so inexplicable a silence respecting themselves., These various and striking proofs of a long and learned cultivation want the very evidence of their antiquity,-their date. The toil of ages can alone have accumulated these gigantic cosmogonies, these immense poems, these profound treatises upon philosophy and legislation; but when did the labour

begin! The work, which has been continued till nearly our own time, and almost under our own eyes, was it of yesterday, or does it reach back, as the brahmins contend, to the first ages of the world? When such questions can be started concerning the history of a nation, critical speculation may claim the utmost latitude; but it must likewise be admitted that its boldness loses much of its merit. Scepticism has, however, attacked the fabulous history of India with an ardour equal to the frigid obstinacy with which the brahmins assert its truth; and, since their long mythological periods attribute to the Hindu civili zation an incredible antiquity, there has been a reluctance to acknowledge that they possess anything ancient. Because the brahmins exacted too much from the easy credulity of the people to whom they prescribed laws, the suspicious minds of some Europeans have denied them every thing. Good sense, how ever, which condemns the habitual exaggerations of the oriental mind, and which still admires its poetry and the boldness of its conceptions, should place bounds to scepticism; because it is impossible to prove that the Védas came from the lips of Brahma himself, we are not to affirm that they are a recent work, destitute of authenticity or value. Who knows, when the entire mass of Hindu literature shall have become accessible to the researches of erudition, that it will not be possible to discover historical facts which may clear up our doubts? Until that time, cautiousness, which is in all matters a merit, is in this a duty; and it is not too much to require of the critic that he should hear and learn before he passes judgment.

"The historian, by the aid of numerous and decisive documents, will recog nize the ancient India of the Mahábhárata and the Ramáyána, in India, as it appeared at the beginning of the eleventh century, the date of the Musulman invasion. Fourteen centuries prior to that period, he will find it in the description of it brought to Greece by the companions of Alexander; and he may thence affirm that the language, the religion, the philosophy, in short, the social system of which the brahminical writings are the product and image, existed four centuries at least before our era, and what is a remarkable fact, that this system could not have differed much from that which we still find established throughout the whole of India.

"Beyond that period, it is true, both national and foreign documents leave the historian in the deepest obscurity. But this gloom may not be altogether impenetrable to the light of philology and criticism. Thus, the invasion of Alexander should be the fixed point from whence to trace back into antecedent ages, with a view of ascertaining, if not the date of the formation of the brahminical society, at least proofs of its antique existence. It is natural to ask, whether a nation which had attained, three hundred years before our era, so high a degree of culture, must not have previously traversed many ages of efforts and attempts: for, if we are authorized to concede to the vivacity of oriental genius the gift of almost spontaneous production, and of being able to overleap at a single bound the interval between infancy and mature age, its cannot be denied that nations require long essays of experience before they can unite and establish themselves, and that the material developement of societies is everywhere subject to laws which are almost invariable, the regular action of which allows us in some degree to conjecture the length of time it has been ins existence. The language, in particular, must be examined, that expressions so much more simple than thought as it is more ancient; we must ascertain whether its forms teach us any thing respecting its age, and what place it occupies in the family to which it belongs: then the question, changing its position, should embrace all the dialects allied to Sanscrit, and convert itself to a pro

blem of comparative philology and ethnography. Beyond India, an ancient dialect, still but slightly known, that of the books of Zoroaster; in India, two dialects, which may be said to be derived from the Sanscrit, the Pali and the Pracrit, would become the subject of curious observations and highly interesting comparisons. The ancient language of Bactriana, the Zend, similar in its structure to the Sanscrit, and the dialects derived from it, but ruder and less polished, will carry the historian back to the most ancient date that can be obtained in the development of these fine tongues. A comparative analysis of the Zend and the Sanscrit will promote his inquiries into their formation, and will almost reveal to him the secret. The striking resemblance of these two dialects will lead him to the conclusion, that the people by whom they were spoken, must heretofore have composed one and the same nation; and this important fact, illustrating and binding as it were together various dispersed and ill-understood traditions, will impart a strong degree of probability to the hypothesis which makes the colony, which conquered the northern portion of Hindustan, doubtless at a very remote time, descend from the country near the Oxus, and from the western side of the mountains in which it takes its rise.

“Did this privileged race find the territory of India vacant, or did they wrest it from its ancient possessors? If they established themselves there by conquest, has every vestige of the conquered been effaced? Far from it; the hypothesis which attributes the civilization of India to conquerors from the north-west here finds a new fact to support it. Beneath the apparent unity of the Hindu society, the observer can easily discover the variety of the elements of which it is compounded. The unity is in the religious and civil institutions which an enlightened race was able to establish; the variety consists in the tribes, and almost nations, who have been forced to submit to them. What are the castes, which are degraded to the lowest rank of the social hierarchy, but the relics of a vanquished people? Is not the difference of their complexion, their language, their very manners, which distinguishes them in so marked a manner from the brahminical caste, the most evident proof that they belong to another race? And to select but one of the num berless traits of this distinct originality, how are we to explain the co-existence in the same country of two systems of tongues so radically dissimilar as the Sanscrit of the brahmins and the dialects which prevail exclusively in the south of India? If the latter were the product of one of those alterations which, we know, the Sanscrit has no more escaped than any other language which has existed for a length of time, we must doubtless consider that they were posterior to the arrival of the brahmins in the Deccan. But these dialeets differ from the Sanscrit both in terms and in grammatical forms; and thence the conclusion is inevitable, that they were anterior to the introduction of Sanscrit into the south of India; history, therefore, must admit them as indisputable proofs of the existence of a people anciently established in the largest portion of the Indian peninsula."

The learned professor then expatiates upon the vast field which this view of the subject exhibits, and the impossibility of realizing his grand prospects in the present condition of our knowledge of Hindu literature. He recommends the students to apply with zeal and constancy to the study of the Sanscrit, laying aside, for the present, vain and ambitious attempts at a history of Hindu literature..." Still," he observes, "if our course be consecrated to philology, we will not therefore banish the study of facts and ideas. We will not close our eyes upon the most brilliant light that has come from the east, and we will Asiat Journ.N.S.VOL.13. No.49. F

endeavour to comprehend the grand spectacle presented to us. We will study India, with its philosophy and its myths, its literature and its laws, in its language: nay it is more than India, it is a page of the origin of the world, that we will attempt to decypher. Think not that we would suggest this noble object in the vain hope of procuring for our labours a popularity which they cannot enjoy. We are deeply convinced that, in the same proportion as the study of words (if it be possible), without that of ideas, is frivolous and worthless, that of words, considered as the visible symbols of thought, is solid and fruitful. There can be no genuine philology without philosophy and without history. The analysis of the processes of language is also a science of observation; and if it be not the very science of the human mind, it is at least that of the most surprising faculty, by the aid of which it is enabled to develope itself."

i

TRANSLATION FROM HAFIZ.
GHUZUL IN

اغران توك شيرازي

WOULD she accept this heart's control,
Shiraz's fair, whose love I woo;
Oh! I would give for yon dark mole,
Samarkand and Bokhara too.

Boy, freely pour thy goblet's store;
Nor vainly hope, midst Irem's glades,
For Rocnabad's enchanting shore,

Or Mosella's embowering shades.

Alas! the fair, whose spells of art
With tumults soft our city sway,

Have ravished quiet from my heart

As Turkmans seize their plundered prey.

In charms arrayed, each lovely maid

Disdains our soul's imperfect glow:

Can artful dyes their beauty aid,

Or borrowed moles, or pencil's flow?

Tell me of wine, of minstrel-strain,
Nor seek to scan the future's gloom;
For, fool or wise, alike, in vain

Would solve the dark enigma's doom. '
But well I ween of beauty's power,
Since even Zuleikha owned its flame,
When love, in that resistless hour,

Rent from her brow the veil of shame.
Then, oh, adored! let maxims sage
And reason's rules thy youth inspire:
For wisdom loves the words of age;
Its voice is dearer than desire.

I chide not even thine insult's sting;

Nay, heaven forbid! I praise thee still :

But can those lips of ruby fling

The scorpion's bane, whence sweets distill!
Thy verse is done; thy pearl is strung;
Then sweetly, Hafiz, number these ;
Since heaven upon thy string has hung

The cluster of the Pleiades!

ON THE INVASION AND DEFENCE OF INDIA.

SINCE the extension of our territorial acquisitions in India, the apprehension of seeing them ravished from our grasp by foreign invasion, has, from time to time, been a source of public anxiety. Circumstances have lately led to a suspicion that the politics of Russia aimed at the execution of such an enterprize, and opinions have been divided as to its practicability. The preponderance of sentiment, however, was against the success of the undertaking; but since Captain Burnes has returned from his visit to the countries lying between India and the Caspian Sea, and has declared that the invasion of India, on that quarter, would be facilitated by the navigableness of the Amoo Daria (Oxus) and other local circumstances, the apprehensions of those who believe the feasibility of an invasion of India have been considerably increased.

That India may be successfully invaded, is proved by historical records. It has been invaded and conquered four several times in the last eight centuries. This fact, however, ought not to suggest the idea of the facility of such an enterprize, for, eonsidering the allurements which the supposed riches of that country have always offered to military adventurers, and the almost continually disturbed state of its internal governments, whilst the west of Asia, during that period, was the theatre of frequent revolutions, brought about by military force, the rarity of the attempts to conquer India should rather lead to the conclusion, that that country, besides numerous other advantages, is defended by nature, more than any other, against the attacks of external enemies by land.

This fact becomes still more evident, when we observe that the continental frontier of India extends nearly 2,000 miles. From the Tipperah hills, near the Bay of Bengal, to the banks of the Sutlej, it stretches more than 1,200 miles, and from that river to the eastern mouth of the Sind, upwards of 700 miles. Were such an extent of frontier to be defended only by artificial means and political combinations, the riches of the whole world would not suffice.

But the entire north-eastern boundary is rendered impassable for an army by the highest mountain-range on the globe, the Himalaya chain; and from that quarter, the invasion of an enemy is quite out of the question. The inhabitants of the range itself may descend and lay waste a small portion of the extensive plains which stretch along its base, but they are not numerous enough to effect their conquest. From the countries lying on the other side of the range, no army can penetrate into India. The passes over the mountains are so high and impracticable, that even single travellers can only pass them with great danger and frequent loss of life. Besides, numerous armies cannot even approach these passes, on account of the scarcity of provisions in the sterile and thinly-populated countries which, on the elevated table-land of Asia, bound the north-east of the Himalaya range in all its extent. Thus India is most effectually defended by nature from foreign invasion in the greatest portion of its continental frontier.