fame have remodelled some of the Hindu scriptures, and, especially, the Puráñas, cannot reasonably be contested, after dispassionately weighing the strong internal evidence, which all of them afford, of the intermixture of unauthorized and comparatively modern ingredients. But the same internal testimony furnishes proof, equally decisive, of the anterior existence of ancient materials; and it is, therefore, as idle as it is irrational, to dispute the antiquity or authenticity of the greater portion of the contents of the Puráñas, in the face of abundant positive and circumstantial evidence of the prevalence of the doctrines which they teach, the currency of the legends which they narrate, and the integrity of the institutions which they describe, at least three centuries before the Christian era. But the origin and development of their doctrines, traditions, and institutions were not the work of a day; and the testimony that establishes their existence three centuries before Christianity, carries it back to a much more remote antiquity, to an antiquity that is, probably, not surpassed by any of the prevailing fictions, institutions, or belief, of the ancient world.

The remainder of the third book describes the leading institutions of the Hindus, the duties of castes, the obligations of different stages of life, and the celebration of obsequial rites, in a short but primitive strain, and in harmony with the laws of Manu. It is a distinguishing feature of the Vishnu Puráňa, and it is characteristic of its being the work of an earlier period than most of the Puráñas, that it enjoins no sectarial or other acts of supererogation; no Vratas, occasional self-imposed observances; no holydays, no birthdays

g*

of Krishna, no nights dedicated to Lakshmí; no sacrifices or modes of worship other than those conformable to the ritual of the Vedas. It contains no Máhátmyas or golden legends, even of the temples in which Vishnu

is adored.

The fourth book contains all that the Hindus have of their ancient history. It is a tolerably comprehensive list of dynasties and individuals: it is a barren record of events. It can scarcely be doubted, however, that much of it is a genuine chronicle of persons, if not of occurences. That it is discredited by palpable absurdities in regard to the longevity of the princes of the earlier dynasties, must be granted; and the particulars preserved of some of them are trivial and fabulous. Still, there is an inartificial simplicity and consistency in the succession of persons, and a possibility and probability in some of the transactions, which give to these traditions the semblance of authenticity, and render it likely, that they are not altogether without foundation. At any rate, in the absence of all other sources of information, the record, such as it is, deserves not to be altogether set aside. It is not essential to its credibility, or its usefulness, that any exact chronological adjustment of the different reigns should be attempted. Their distribution amongst the several Yugas, undertaken by Sir William Jones, or his Pandits, finds no countenance from the original texts, further than an incidental notice of the age in which a particular monarch ruled, or the general fact that the dynasties prior to Krishna precede the time of the Great War and the beginning of the Kali age; both which events we are not obliged, with the Hindus, to

place five thousand years ago. To that age the solar dynasty of princes offers ninety-three descents, the lunar, but forty-five; though they both commence at the same time. Some names may have been added to the former list, some omitted in the latter; and it seems most likely, that, notwithstanding their synchronous beginning, the princes of the lunar race were subsequent to those of the solar dynasty. They avowedly branched off from the solar line; and the legend of Sudyumna,' that explains the connexion, has every appearance of having been contrived for the purpose of referring it to a period more remote than the truth. Deducting, however, from the larger number of princes a considerable proportion, there is nothing to shock probability in supposing, that the Hindu dynasties and their ramifications were spread through an interval of about twelve centuries anterior to the war of the Mahábhárata, and, conjecturing that event to have happened about fourteen centuries before Christianity, thus carrying the commencement of the regal dynasties of India to about two thousand six hundred years before that date. This may, or may not, be too remote; but it is sufficient, in a subject

1 Book IV., Chapter I.

2 However incompatible with the ordinary computation of the period that is supposed to have elapsed between the flood and the birth of Christ, this falls sufficiently within the larger limits which are now assigned, upon the best authorities, to that period. As observed by Mr. Milman, in his note on the annotation of Gibbon (II., 301), which refers to this subject: "Most of the more learned modern English protestants, as Dr. Hales, Mr. Faber, Dr. Russell, as well as the continental writers, adopt the larger

where precision is impossible, to be satisfied with the general impression, that, in the dynasties of kings detailed in the Puránas, we have a record which, although it cannot fail to have suffered detriment from age, and may have been injured by careless or injudicious compilation, preserves an account, not wholly undeserving of confidence, of the establishment and succession of regular monarchies, amongst the Hindus, from as early an era, and for as continuous a duration, as any in the credible annals of mankind.

The circumstances that are told of the first princes have evident relation to the colonization of India, and the gradual extension of the authority of new races over an uninhabited or uncivilized region. It is commonly admitted, that the Brahmanical religion and civilization were brought into India from without.1 Certainly, there are tribes on the borders, and in the heart of the country, who are still not Hindus; and passages in the Rámáyana, and Mahábhárata, and Manu, and the uniform traditions of the people themselves, point to a period when Bengal, Orissa, and the whole of the Dakhin were inhabited by degraded or outcaste, that is, by barbarous, tribes. The traditions of the Puránas

chronology." To these may be added the opinion of Dr. Mill, who, for reasons which he has fully detailed, identifies the commencement of the Kali age of the Hindus, B. C. 3102, with the era of the deluge. Christa Sangita, Introd., supplementary note.

1 Sir William Jones on the Hindus (As. Res., Vol. III.); Klaproth, Asia Polyglotta; Colonel Vans Kennedy, Researches into the Origin and Affinity of the Principal Languages of Asia and Europe; A. von Schlegel, Origines des Hindous (Transactions of the Royal Society of Literature).

confirm these views: but they lend no assistance to the determination of the question whence the Hindus came; whether from a central Asiatic nation, as Sir William Jones supposed, or from the Caucasian mountains, the plains of Babylonia, or the borders of the Caspian, as conjectured by Klaproth, Vans Kennedy, and Schlegel. The affinities of the Sanskrit language prove a common origin of the now widely scattered nations amongst whose dialects they are traceable, and render it unquestionable that they must all have spread abroad from some centrical spot in that part of the globe first inhabited by mankind, according to the inspired record. Whether any indication of such an event be discoverable in the Vedas, remains to be determined; but it would have been obviously incompatible with the Pauráńik system to have referred the origin of Indian princes and principalities to other than native sources. We need not, therefore, expect, from them, any information as to the foreign derivation of the Hindus.

We have, then, wholly insufficient means for arriving at any information concerning the ante-Indian period of Hindu history, beyond the general conclusion derivable from the actual presence of barbarous and, apparently, aboriginal tribes-from the admitted progressive extension of Hinduism into parts of India where it did not prevail when the code of Manu was compiled-from the general use of dialects in India, more or less copious, which are different from Sanskrit-and from the affinities of that language with forms of speech current in the western world—that a people who spoke Sanskrit, and followed the religion of the Vedas, came into