tice, the disposition of property, and the multiplied regulations for an exact conformity to the innumerable precepts and ceremonies connected with a splendid system of idolatry, incontrovertibly prove, that when these shastrus were written, the Hindoos must have attained a considerable degree of civilization.

Notwithstanding these deserved encomiums, however, it must be confessed, that many of the Hindoo laws are exceedingly partial, and others diabolically cruel; and that, for want of humanity and probity, the administration of these laws was deeply tinged with injustice and cruelty. We infer this, partly from some of the laws themselves; but more particularly from the present state of things among the surviving Hindoo governments. Bribes are universally offered, as well to the judge on the bench, as to the petty constable of the village; and through every department of the native governments a system of oppres sion exists of which a subject of one of the states of Barbary alone can form an idea. The author has heard, that one of the Marhatta princes lately deceased, actually employed bands of robbers to plunder his own subjects, and that when they applied to him for redress, he either evaded investigation, or granted only a mock trial. If to all this want of probity in the administration of justice, the greatest cruelty in the infliction of punishments, and rapacity in perpetual exactions, we add domestic slavery, carried to a great extent, and the almost incessant internal feuds among different chiefs, we shall cease to wonder at whole districts under the native governments having been so often depopulated; and that famine, pestilence, and war, should have so frequently laid waste some of the finest countries on the earth.

1

When we look back to former times, when the shōōdrů was tried, and punished, for offences against the regulations of the cast, for not regularly bathing in the Ganges, for not presenting offerings to the manes of his ancestors, for neglecting an appointed atonement, or for not wearing the appropriate mark of his sect, we can easily account for the present degraded state of this class. The superintendence of the magistrate extending thus to the whole of a man's religious conduct, as well as to his civil actions, must, in addition to the fascinating powers of a religion, full of splendid shews, public feasts, and a thousand imposing ceremonies, have tended exceedingly to rivet the fetters of superstition.

k

It must have been a curious spectacle to see courts of justice take cognizance of a man's religious offences, (sins of omission and commission), as well as of his crimes against civil society. The pride and avarice of the bramhuns would often drag an offender before a court of justice, for having neglected those acts prescribed by the shastrus, from which they derived their honour and emolument. But how greatly must the sway of the bramhŭns have been encreased, when the inhabitants saw their countrymen brought before the magistrate and punished for the slightest acts of irreverence, or the most trivial injury, towards the sacred race; when they saw a neighbour's posteriors cut off, for having dared to sit on the

i During the reign of Manŭsinghů, a barber had made a mark on his fore. head like that of a bramhŭn; and in this situation the king bowed to him, supposing he had been a bramhŭn; but the barber returning the salaam (which a bramhun never does, even to a king), Manŭsinghŭ suspected that he was not a bramhŭn, and on enquiry found that he was a barber. He immediately ordered his head to be struck off.

* In Halhed's Code of Gentoo Laws, there is an article, commanding the magistrate to fine a man a pun of couries for killing an insect.

same seat with a bramhŭn; when they saw another's tongue slit, for having (when provoked) insulted a bramhun; when they saw an iron style thrust red hot into the mouth of another, for having (no matter how justly) said to a twice-born man thou refuse of bramhuns;' when they saw boiling oil dropped into the mouth and ears of another, for having dared to instruct a bramhun in his duty.'

The author offers this abridgement of native history, not as the utmost of what may be obtained by labour and patience, even from Hindoo materials; but as the best account which his leisure would allow him to collect, and he hopes the reader, from this sketch, will be able to form some idea of the government, laws, and social state of the Hindoos. He now concludes this chapter with an extract from Sir William Jones, respecting the origin of this singular people: "Thus has it been proved, by clear evidence and plain reasoning, that a powerful monarchy was established in Iran long before the Assyrian, or Pishdadi, government: that it was in truth a Hindoo monarchy, though if any chuse to call it Cusian, Casdean, or Scythian, we shall not enter into a debate on mere names; that it subsisted many centuries, and that its history has been engrafted on that of the Hindoos, who founded the monarchies of Uyodhya and Indru-prust'ha; that the language of the first Persian empire was the mother of the

"A once-born man, who insults the twice-born with gross invectives, ought to have his tongue slit; for he sprang from the lowest part of Brumba: if he mention their names and classes with contumely, as, if he say, 'Oh, dévü-düttů, thou refuse of bramhŭns,' an iron style, ten fingers long, shall be thrust red hot into his mouth. Should he, through pride, give instructions to priests concerning their duty, let the king order some hot oil to be poured into his mouth and his ears." Munoo.

Sungskritu, and consequently of the Zend and Parsi, as well as of Greek, Latin, and Gothic; that the language of the Assyrians was the parent of Chaldaic and Pahlavi, and that the primary Tartarian language also had been current in the same empire; although, as the Tartars had no books or even letters, we cannot with certainty trace their unpolished and variable idioms. We discover, therefore, in Persia, at the earliest dawn of history, the three distinct races of men, whom we described on former occasions, as possessors of India, Arabia, Tartary; and whether they were collected in Iran from distant regions, or diverged from it as from a common centre, we shall easily determine by the following considerations. Let us observe, in the first place, the central position of Iran, which is bounded by Arabia, by Tartary, and by India; whilst Arabia lies contiguous to Iran only, but is remote from Tartary, and divided even from the skirts of India by a considerable gulf; no country, therefore, but Persia seems likely to have sent forth its colonies to all the kingdoms of Asia. The bramhuns could never have migrated from India to Iran, bécause they are expressly forbidden by their oldest existing laws to leave the region which they inhabit at this day; the Arabs have not even a tradition of an emigration into Persia before Mahommed, nor had they indeed any inducement to quit their beautiful and extensive domains; and as to the Tartars, we have no trace in history of their departure from their plains and forests till the invasion of the Medes, who, according to etymologists, were the sons of Madai; and even they were conducted by princes of an Assyrian family. The three races, therefore, whom we have already mentioned (and more than three we have not yet found) migrated from Iran as from their common country; and thus the Saxon Chronicle, I presume from good authority, brings

the first inhabitants of Britain from Armenia; while a late very learned writer concludes, after all his laborious researches, that the Goths or Scythians came from Persia; and another contends with great force, that both the Irish and old Britons proceeded severally from the borders of the Caspian; a coincidence of conclusions from different media by persons wholly unconnected, which could scarce have happened if they were not grounded on solid principles. We may therefore hold this proposition firmly established, that Iran, or Persia in its largest sense, was the true centre of populations, of knowledge, of languages, and of arts; which, instead of travelling westward only, as it has been fancifully supposed, or eastward, as might with equal reason have been asserted, were expanded in all directions to all the regions of the world in which the Hindoo race had settled under various denominations: but whether Asia has not produced other races of men, distinct from the Hindoos, the Arabs, or the Tartars, or whether any apparent diversity may not have sprung from an intermixture of those three in different propor tions, must be the subject of a future inquiry."