India, in some very distant age, from lands west of the Indus. Whether the date and circumstances of their immigration will ever be ascertained, is extremely doubtful: but it is not difficult to form a plausible outline of their early site and progressive colonization.

The earliest seat of the Hindus, within the confines of Hindusthan, was, undoubtedly, the eastern confines of the Punjab. The holy land of Manu and the Puránas lies between the Drishadwatí and Saraswatí rivers,-the Caggar and Sursooty of our barbarous maps. Various adventures of the first princes and most famous sages occur in this vicinity; and the Áśramas or religious domiciles of several of the latter are placed on the banks of the Saraswatí. According to some authorities, it was the abode of Vyása, the compiler* of the Vedas and Puráñas; and, agreeably to another, when, on one occasion, the Vedas had fallen into disuse and been forgotten, the Brahmans were again instructed in them by Saraswata, the son of Saraswatí. One of the most distinguished of the tribes of the Brahmans is known as the Saraswata;' and the same word is employed, by Mr. Colebrooke, to denote that modification of Sanskrit which is termed generally Prakrit, and which, in this case, he supposes to have been the language of the Sáraswata nation, "which occupied the banks of the river Saraswatí."3 The river itself receives its appella

1 See Book III., Chapter VI., note ad finem.

2 As. Res., Vol. V., p. 55. †

3 Ibid., Vol., VII., p. 219.‡

tion from Saraswatí, the goddess of learning, under whose auspices the sacred literature of the Hindus assumed shape and authority. These indications render it certain, that, whatever seeds were imported from without, it was in the country adjacent to the Saraswatí river that they were first planted, and cultivated, and reared, in Hindusthán.

The tract of land thus assigned for the first establishment of Hinduism in India, is of very circumscribed extent, and could not have been the site of any numerous tribe or nation. The traditions that evidence the early settlement of the Hindus in this quarter, ascribe to the settlers more of a philosophical and religious, than of a secular, character, and combine, with the very narrow bounds of the holy land, to render it possible, that the earliest emigrants were the members, not of a political, so much as of a religious, community; that they were a colony of priests, not in the restricted sense in which we use the term, but in that in which it still applies in India, to an Agrahára, a village or hamlet of Brahmans, who, although married, and having families, and engaging in tillage, in domestic duties, and in the conduct of secular interests affecting the community, are, still, supposed to devote their principal attention to sacred study and religious offices. A society of this description, with its artificers and servants, and, perhaps, with a body of martial followers, might have found a home in the Brahmávarta of Manu, the land which, thence, was entitled 'the holy', or, more literally, 'the Brahman, region', and may have communicated to the rude, uncivilized, unlettered, aborigines the rudiments of social organization, litera

ture, and religion; partly, in all probability, brought along with them, and partly devised and fashioned, by degrees, for the growing necessities of new conditions of society. Those with whom this civilization commenced would have had ample inducements to prosecute their successful work; and, in the course of time, the improvement which germinated on the banks of the Saraswati was extended beyond the borders of the Jumna and the Ganges.

We have no satisfactory intimation of the stages by which the political organization of the people of Upper India traversed the space between the Saraswatí and the more easterly region, where it seems to have taken a concentrated form, and whence it diverged, in various directions, throughout Hindusthán. The Manu of the present period, Vaivaswata, the son of the Sun, is regarded as the founder of Ayodhyá; and that city continued to be the capital of the most celebrated branch of his descendants, the posterity of Ikshwáku. The Vishnu Purána evidently intends to describe the radiation of conquest or colonization from this spot, in the accounts it gives of the dispersion of Vaivaswata's posterity; and, although it is difficult to understand what could have led early settlers in India to such a site, it is not inconveniently situated as a commanding position whence emigrations might proceed to the east, the west, and the south. This seems to have happened. A branch from the house of Ikshwáku spread into Tirhoot, constituting the Maithila kings; and the posterity of another of Vaivaswata's sons reigned at Vaiśálí, in Southern Tirhoot, or Sarun.

The most adventurous emigrations, however, took place through the lunar dynasty, which, as observed above, originates from the solar; making, in fact, but one race and source for the whole. Leaving out of consideration the legend of Sudyumna's double transformation, the first prince of Pratishthána, a city south from Ayodhya, was one of Vaivaswata's children, equally with Ikshwáku. The sons of Purúravas, the second of this branch, extended, by themselves, or their posterity, in every direction: to the east, to Káśí, Magadhá, Benares, and Behar; southwards, to the Vindhya hills, and, across them, to Vidarbha or Berar; westwards, along the Narmadá, to Kuśasthalí or Dwáraká in Gujerat; and, in a north-westerly direction, to Mathurá and Hastinapura. These movements are very distinctly discoverable amidst the circumstances narrated in the fourth book of the Vishnu Purána, and are precisely such as might be expected from a radiation of colonies from Ayodhya. Intimations also occur of settlements in Banga, Kalinga, and the Dakhin: but they are brief and indistinct, and have the appearance of additions subsequent to the comprehension of those countries within the pale of Hinduism.

Besides these traces of migration and settlement, several curious circumstances, not likely to be unauthorized inventions, are hinted in these historical traditions. The distinction of castes was not fully developed prior to the colonization. Of the sons of Vaivaswata, some, as kings, were Kshatriyas; but one founded a tribe of Brahmans, another became a Vaiśya, and a fourth, a Śúdra. It is also said, of other princes, that they established the four castes amongst their sub

1

jects. There are, also, various notices of Brahmanical Gotras or families, proceeding from Kshatriya races;2 and there are several indications of severe struggles between the two ruling castes, not for temporal, but for spiritual, dominion, the right to teach the Vedas. This seems to be the especial purport of the inveterate hostility that prevailed between the Brahman Vasishtha and the Kshatriya Viśwámitra, who, as the Rámáyana relates, compelled the gods to make him a Brahman also, and whose posterity became very celebrated as the Kausika Brahmans. Other legends, again, such as Daksha's sacrifice, denote sectarial strife; and the legend of Parasuráma reveals a conflict even for temporal authority, between the two ruling castes. More or less weight will be attached to these conjectures, according to the temperament of different inquirers. But, even whilst fully aware of the facility with which plausible deductions may cheat the fancy, and little disposed to relax all curb upon the imagination, I find it difficult to regard these legends as wholly unsubstantial fictions, or devoid of all resemblance to the realities of the past.

After the date of the great war, the Vishnu Puráňa, in common with those Puráñas which contain similar lists, specifies kings and dynasties with greater precision, and offers political and chronological particulars to which, on the score of probability, there is nothing to object. In truth, their general accuracy has been incontrovertibly established. Inscriptions on columns

1 See Book IV., Chapters VIII. and XVIII., &c.

2 See Book IV., Chapter XIX.