To the monstrous period of years, which the legends of the Hindus involve, they CHAP. I. ascribe events the most extravagant and unnatural. Even these are not connected in chronological series; but are a number of independent and incredible fictions. This people, indeed, are perfectly destitute of historical records.* Their ancient literature affords not a single production to which the historical character belongs. The works in which the miraculous transactions of former times are described, are poems. Most of them are books of a religious character, in which the exploits of the gods, and their commands to mortals, are repeated or revealed. In all, the actions of men and those of deities are mixed together in a set of legends more absurd and extravagant, more transcending the bounds of nature and of reason, less grateful to the imagination and taste of a cultivated and rational people, than those which the fabulous history of any other nation presents to us. The Brahmens are the most audacious, and perhaps the most unskilful fabricators, with whom the annals of fable have yet made us acquainted.+ The people of Hindustan and the ancient nations of Europe came in contact Contact beat a single point. The expedition of Alexander the Great began, and in some Hindus, and with a ready belief; it conveys uncommon pleasure; the faculty of inventing is thus encouraged; and fables are plentifully multiplied. It may be regarded as in some degree remarkable, that, distinguished as all rude nations are for this propensity, the people of the East have far surpassed the other races of men in the extravagance of their legends. The Babylonians, the Arabians, the Syrians, the Egyptians, have long been subject to the contempt of Europeans, for their proneness to invent and believe miraculous stories. Lucian deems it a sarcasm, the bitterness of which would be universally felt, when he says of an author, infamous for the incredible stories which he had inserted in his history, that he had attained this perfection in lying, though he had never associated with a Syrian. (Quom. Cons. Hist.) The scanty fragments which have reached us of the histories of those other nations, have left us but little acquainted with the particular fables of which they compose their early history. But our more intimate acquaintance with the people of southern Asia has afforded us an ample assortment of their legendary stores. * “There is no known history of Hindoostan (that rests on the foundation of Hindu materials or records) extant, before the period of the Mahomedan conquests." Rennel's Memoir, Introduction, xl. The Hindus have no ancient civil history, nor had the Egyptians any work purely historical. Wilford, on Egypt and the Nile, As. Res. iii. 296. + If the authority of a Sanscrit scholar be wanted to confirm this harsh decision, we may adduce that of Captain Wilford, who in his Discourse on Egypt and the Nile, As. Res. iii. 29, thus expresses himself: "The mythology of the Hindus is often inconsistent and contradictory, and the same tale is related many different ways. Their physiology, astronomy, and history, are involved in allegories and enigmas, which cannot but seem extravagant and ridiculous; nor could any thing render them supportable, but a belief that most of them have a recondite meaning; though many of them had, perhaps, no firmer basis than the heated imagination of deluded tween the the ancient nations of Europe. BOOK II. sense ended, their connexion. Even of this event, so recent and remarkable, the Hindus have no record; they have not a tradition that can with any certainty be traced to it. Some particulars in their mythological stories have by certain European inquirers been supposed to refer to the transactions of Alexander, but almost any part as well as another of these unnatural legends may with equal propriety receive the same destination.* The information which we have received of the Grecian invasion from the Greeks themselves is extremely scanty and defective. The best of their writings on the subject have been lost, but we have no reason to suppose that their knowledge of the Hindus was of much value. The knowledge of the modern Europeans continued very superficial and imperfect after they had enjoyed a much longer and closer intercourse with them than that of the Greeks. In fact, it was not till they had studied the Indian languages that they acquired the means of full and accurate information. But the Greeks, who despised every foreign language, made no exception in favour of the sacred dialect of the Hindus, and we may rest satisfied that the writings of Megasthenes and others contained few particulars by which our knowledge of the Brahmenical history could be improved. † From the scattered hints contained in the writings of the Greeks, the conclu fanatics, or of hypocrites interested in the worship of some particular deity. Should a key to their eighteen Puranas exist, it is more than probable that the wards of it would be too intricate, or too stiff with the rust of time, for any useful purpose." "The Hindu systems of geography, chronology, and history, are all equally monstrous and absurd." Wilford on the Chronol. of the Hindus, As. Res. v. 241. Another Oriental scholar of some eminence, Mr. Scott Waring, says, in his Tour to Sheeraz, p. iv. "that the Hindu mythology and history appear to be buried in impenetrable darkness." * Dr. Robertson (Disquis. concerning Anc. India, note viii. p. 301) says, "That some traditional knowledge of Alexander's invasion of India is still preserved in the northern provinces of the Peninsula is manifest from several circumstances." But these circumstances, when he states them, are merely such as this, that a race of Rajahs claim to be descended from Porus, or rather from a prince of a name distantly resembling Porus, which European inquirers conjecture may be the same. The other circumstance is, that a tribe or two, on the borders of ancient Bactria, are said to represent themselves as the descendants of some Greeks left there by Alexander. The modern Hindus, who make it a point to be ignorant of nothing, pretend, when told of the expedition of Alexander, to be well acquainted with it, and say, "That he fought a great battle with the Emperor of Hindoostan near Delhi, and, though victorious, retired to Persia across the northern mountains: so that the remarkable circumstance of his sailing down the Indus, in which he employed many months, is sunk altogether." Major Rennel, Memoir, p. xl. + It affords a confirmation of this, that the Greeks have left us no accounts, in any degree satisfactory, of the manners and institutions of the ancient Persians, with whom they had so extended an intercourse; or of the manners and institutions of the Egyptians, whom they admired so much, and to whom their philosophers resorted for wisdom. sion has been drawn that the Hindus, at the time of Alexander's invasion, were CHAP. I. in a state of manners, society, and knowledge, exactly the same with that in which they were discovered by the nations of modern Europe; nor is there any reason for contradicting this opinion. It is certain that the few features of which we have any description from the Greeks bear no inaccurate resemblance to those which are witnessed at present. From this, from the state of improvement in which the Indians remain, and from the stationary condition in which their institutions first, and then their manners and character, have a tendency to fix them, it is no unreasonable supposition that they have presented a very uniform appearance from the visit of the Greeks to that of the English. Their annals, however, from that era till the period of the Mahomedan conquests, are a perfect blank. the ancient Hindus. With regard to the ancient history of India we are still not without resources. Resources for The meritorious researches of the modern Europeans, who have explored the in- history of the stitutions, the laws, the manners, the arts, occupations and maxims of this ancient people, have enabled philosophy to draw the picture of society which they have presented through a long revolution of years. We cannot describe the lives of their Kings, or the circumstances and results of a train of battles. But we can show how they lived together as members of the community, and of families; how they were arranged in society; what arts they practised, what tenets they believed, what manners they displayed; under what species of government they existed; and what character as human beings they possessed. This is by far the most useful and important part of history; and if it be true, as an acute and eloquent historian has remarked, "that the sudden, violent, and unprepared revolutions incident to barbarians, are so much guided by caprice, and terminate so often in cruelty, that they disgust us by the uniformity of their appearance, and it is rather fortunate for letters that they are buried in silence and oblivion,"* we have perhaps but little to regret in the total absence of Hindu records. † * Hume's Hist. of England, i. 2. + Tout homme de bon entendement, sans voir une histoire, peut presque imaginer de quelle humeur fut un peuple, lorsqu'il lit ses anciens statuts et ordonnances; et d'un meme jugement peut tirer en conjecture quelles furent ses loix voyant sa maniere de vivre. Etienne Pasquier Recherches de la France, liv. iv. ch. 1. The sage President de Goguet, on a subject remarkably similar, thus expresses himself: "The dates and duration of the reigns of the ancient kings of Egypt are subject to a thousand difficulties, which I shall not attempt to resolve. In effect it is of little importance to know the number of their dynasties, and the names of their sovereigns. It is far more essential to understand the laws, arts, sciences, and customs of a nation, which all antiquity has regarded as a model of wisdom and virtue. These are the objects I propose to exa2 Book II. State of human nature, in a great country, of men. Whatever theory we adopt with regard to the origin of mankind, and the first peopling of the world, it is natural to suppose, that countries were at first inhabited by a very small number of people. When a very small number of inabited by a people inhabit a boundless country, and have intercourse only with themselves, small number they are by necessary consequence barbarians. If one family, or a small number of families, are under the necessity of providing for themselves all the commodities which they consume, they can have but few accommodations, and these imperfect and rude. The exigencies of life are too incessant, and too pressing, to allow time or inclination for the prosecution of knowledge. The very ideas of law and government, which suppose a large society, have no existence. In these circumstances men are, unavoidably, ignorant and unrefined; and if much pressed with difficulties, they become savage and brutal.* mine, with all the care and exactness I am capable of." Origin of Laws, Part I. Book I. ch. i. art. 4. * There is a remarkable passage in Plato, at the beginning of the third book De Legibus, in which he describes the effects which would be produced on a small number of men, left alone in the world, or some uncultivated part of it. He is describing the situation of a small number of persons left alive by a food which had destroyed the rest of mankind—Οι τοτε περιφύγοντες την φθοραν σχεδόν ορείοι τινες αν είεν νομείς, εν κορυφαίς που σμικρα ζωπυρα του των ανθρωπων γενους διασεσωσμένα Και δη τους τοιουτους γε ανάγκη που των αλλων απείρους είναι τεχνων, και των εν τοις αςεσι προς αλλήλους μηχανών. Ούκουν οργανα τε παντα απολλυσθαι, και ει τι τεχνες ην εχομενον σπουδαίας ευρημενον, η πολιτικής, η και σοφίας τίνος έτερας, παντα ερρειν ταύτα εν τῷ τοτε χρόνῳ φησομεν. (Plat. p. 804.) The Hindus appear to have had similar opinions, though without the reasons. "We read in the Mahad-himalaya-c'handa, that after a deluge, from which very few of the human race were preserved, men became ignorant and brutal, without arts or sciences, and even without a regular language." Wilford on Egypt and the Nile, Asiat. Res. iii. 394. There is nothing more remarkable in the traditions of nations, than their agreement respecting the origin of the present inhabitants of the globe. The account of the deluge in the religious books of the Jews may very well be taken as the archetype of the whole. On this subject I willingly content myself with a reference to a book of singular merít, The Analysis of Ancient Mythology by Jacob Bryant, in which, after making ample allowance for some forced etymologies, and much superstition, the reader will find an extent of learning, a depth of research, and an ingenuity of inference, unrivalled among the inquirers into the early history of the human race. Sir William Jones, who regretted that Mr. Bryant's knowledge of Oriental literature had not enabled him to bring evidence more largely from its stores, and that he had not pursued a plan more strictly analytical, has prosecuted the same inquiry, in a series of discourses, addressed to the Asiatic Society, on the Hindus, the Arabs, the Tartars, the Persians, the Chinese, &c., and on the Origin, and Families of Nations; and by a different plan, and the aid of his Oriental literature, has arrived at the same conclusions. All inquirers have been struck with the coincidence between the story of Noah, and that of the Hindu primeval Sire Satyavrata. We may suspect that there has been a little Brahmenical forcing to make it so exact as in the following passage:-Mr. Wilford says; "It is related in the Fadma-Purán, that Satyavrata, whose miraculous preservation from a general deluge is told at If we suppose that India began to be inhabited at a very early stage in the CHAP. I. peopling of the world, its first inhabitants must have been few, ignorant, and rude. Uncivilized and ignorant men, suddenly transported, in small numbers, into an uninhabited country of boundless extent, must wander for many ages before much improvement can take place. Till they have multiplied so far as to be assembled in numbers large enough to permit the benefits of social intercourse and of some division of labour to be experienced, their circumstances seem not susceptible of amelioration. We find, accordingly, that all those ancient nations, whose history can be most depended upon, trace themselves up to a period of rudeness. The families who first wandered into Greece, Italy, and the eastern regions of Europe, were confessedly ignorant and barbarous. The influence of dispersion was no doubt most baneful where the natural disadvantages were the greatest. In a country overgrown with forest, which denies pasture to cattle, and precludes husbandry by surpassing the power of single families to clear the land for their support, the wretched inhabitants are reduced to all the hardships length in the Matsya, had three sons, the eldest of whom was named Jyapeti, or Lord of the Earth. The others were C'harma, and Sharma, which last are, in the vulgar dialects, usually pronounced C'ham, and Sham, as we frequently hear Kishn for Crishna. The royal patriarch (for such is his character in the Puráns) was particularly fond of Jyapeti, to whom he gave all the regions to the north of Himalaya, in the snowy mountains, which extend from sea to sea, and of which Caucasus is a part. To Sharma he allotted the countries to the south of those mountains: But he cursed C'harma; because when the old Monarch was accidentally inebriated with a strong liquor made of fermented rice, C'harma laughed; and it was in consequence of his father's imprecation that he became a slave to the slaves of his brothers." (Asiat. Res. iii. 312, 313) The following statement by the same inquirer is confirmed by a variety of authorities:-" The first descendants of Swayambhava (another name for Satyavrata) are represented in the Puranas, as living in the mountains to the north of India toward the sources of the Ganges, and downwards as far as Serinagara and Hari-dwar: But the rulers of mankind lived on the summit of Meru towards the north; where they appear to have established the seat of justice, as the Puranas make frequent mention of the oppressed repairing thither for redress." Wilford on Chron. of Hind. As. Res. v. 260. "The Mexicans," (says Clavigero, Hist. of Mexico, b. vi. sect. 1.) "had a clear tradition, though somewhat corrupted by fable, of the creation of the world, of the universal deluge, of the confusion of tongues, and of the dispersion of the people; and had actually all these events represented in their pictures (their substitute for writing). They said, that when mankind were overwhelmed with the deluge, none were preserved but a man and woman, named Coxcox and Xochiguebzal, who saved themselves in a little bark, and landing upon a mountain, called Colhuacan, had there a great many children, who were all born dumb; but that a dove, at last, from a lofty tree, imparted to them languages, all, however, differing so much that they could not understand one another." |