In the year 1837, Dr. A. Burn transmitted to Mr. James Prinsep, then Secretary of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, transcripts and facsimiles of four Copper Plate Inscriptions. “These plates,” he said, “were found in the town of Kaira, about ten years ago. The river Watrua runs close to the walls on the north-west side, and was the cause of the discovery, by washing down the walls and earth. They had been handed about the country among the natives for translation, it being supposed they were connected with some deposit of treasure. At last they were brought to me by a fakir, of whom I purchased them.”

This work belongs to a class of Buddhist books called Prajná Páramitá. It was translated first into the Chinese by Kumára-jíva (A.D. 405), who was brought into China from Thibet. “The King of Tsin had sent an army into that country with directions not to return without the Indian whose fame had spread amongst all the neighbouring nations. The former translations of Buddhist works were to a great extent erroneous. To produce them in a form more accurate and complete was the task undertaken by Kumára-jíva. More than eight hundred priests were called to assist him; and the king himself, an ardent disciple of the new faith, was present at the conference, holding the old copies in his hand as the work of correction proceeded. More than three hundred volumes were thus prepared.” (Edkins).

This Sútra consists of about two hundred and fifty characters. It is repeated in the course of the daily worship of the Buddhists, by rote, as a mantra would be repeated (according to Colebrooke, pp. 8, 9, Relig. of Hindoos,) by the Hindoos. In its composition it resembles, or appears to resemble, the sacred writings of the Brahmans. No author's name is attached to it. It does not even begin with the usual preface “thus have I heard” (evam mayá śrutam). But we have mentioned in it the Rishi to whom it was communicated, and the Devatá from whom it proceeded. In this particular, at any rate, it strongly resembles the Vedic model. And when we recollect that the later Buddhists attempted in every possible way to absorb the system of the Brahmans in their own, yielding so far as they dared to popular superstitions, we shall not wonder in finding so many similarities, in externals at least, between the two religions.

It is only in the ninth and tenth books of the Rig Veda that there is any very distinct and prominent reference made to a future life. It is true that the Ṛbhus, on account of their artistic skill, are said to have been promised, and to have attained, immortality and divine honours (i. 161, 2; iv. 35, 3, 7, 8); but this is a special case of deification, and does not prove that ordinary mortals were considered to survive after the termination of their earthly existence. There are, however, a few other passages which may be understood as intimating a belief in a future state of blessedness. Thus (i. 91, 1) it is said, that “by the guidance of Soma the sage ancestors of the worshippers had obtained treasures among the gods;” and again, in v. 18, “Soma, becoming abundant to (produce) immortality, place for us excellent food in the sky.”

English translations from Oriental languages are not easily made attractive to the general reader, unless they convey some startling novelty of idea or treatment, a position which they are not often calculated to realise. If literal, they are for the most part verbose or unmeaning; if adaptations to suit the supposed taste of the home public, they become subject to the rules of ordinary criticism, and have seldom the requisite stamina to pass creditably through the ordeal. I have always thought that the true charm of Sa'dí and Háfiz rests more in the language than in the morals or poetry; consequently, that our English versions, however ably executed, are far from doing justice to the original. The airs are for a full orchestra, and we hear them on a piano or street organ. And if the Persian intellect be, as I believe, one which places sound above import, so also may we esteem that of other Eastern nations, whose poets are humble imitators of the Persians. These remarks apply with especial force to the romantic and fanciful schools of poetry, whether expressed after the fashion of an ode, a ballad, or a sonnet. I use intelligible terms, though all may not precisely correspond with the technical requirements of the Asiatic Muse.

Colebrooke, in his celebrated essay “On the Vedas, or Sacred Writings of the Hindus” (As. Researches, vol. viii.; Misc. Essays, vol. i.), was the first to direct general attention to the now familiarly known passage of the Jyotisha relative to the position of the solstices in the Hindu lunar zodiac, and to derive from it a date for use in determining the doubtful chronology of the earliest period of literary productiveness in India. His conclusion is expressed as follows: “Hence it is clear, that Dhanishṣhâ and Aslesha are the constellations meant; and that, when this Hindu calendar was regulated, the solstitial points were reckoned to be at the beginning of the one, and in the middle of the other: and such was the situation of those cardinal points in the fourteenth century before the Christian era” (Misc. Essays, vol. i., pp. 109–110). He had a little before (ibid., p. 106) declared that he “inclined to think, that the ceremonies called yajña, and the prayers to be recited at those ceremonies [namely, the prayers constituting the sanhitâs of the three older Vedas], are as old as the calendar.”

Having been led from the interest which has attached to Mr. Colebrooke's opinion, on the subjects discussed in Professor Whitney's paper, to examine the very copious memoranda on Hindu astronomy, which are in my possession, I think I am in a position to clear up some of the points which have given rise to this controversy. It seemed to be so improbable that Mr. Colebrooke should have taken such pains to identify the constellations named in the passage of the Jyotish, and have so pointedly referred to the double observation of the solstices as determining the epoch of the observation, while he was really grounding his opinion on the position of another asterism, that I thought the subject merited a closer scrutiny.

The following brief remarks on the Agricultural and Commercial Statistics of Ceylon, past and present, may not be without interest to the Members of the Committee of Agriculture and Commerce of the Royal Asiatic Society.

First. In respect to the present great staple of the colony. In 1809, according to the records of the Local Government under the Dutch régime, the production of coffee in the island, both for consumption and export, was about 250,000 Ibs. From that period the production continued steadily to increase; but it was in 1836, when the equalization in England of the duty on East and West India Coffee took place, that European capital and skill were brought to bear, and that to a large extent, in reference to the cultivation of the berry. Prior to the equalization of the duties, the import duty on Ceylon coffee in England had been 9d. per Ib. In 1836 the duty was reduced to 3d. per Ib., or 28s. per cwt.; and as the demand for the article continued undiminished, an equal rise of the price of coffee in bond simultaneously took place, the price to the consumer remaining much as before, and the importer reaping the benefit.

In the fourth volume of my Sanskrit Texts I have collected the principal passages of the Vedic Hymns which refer to the origin of the universe, and to the characters of the gods Hiraṇyagarbha, Viṣvakarman, Vishṇu, Rudra, and the goddess Ambikâ; and have compared the representations there given of these deities with the later stories and speculations on the same subjects which are to be found in the Brâahmaṇas, and in the mythological poems of a more modern date. In the course of these researches, I have also introduced occasional notices of some of the other Vedic deities, such as Aditi, Indra, Varuṇa, etc.

In a passage which I have already quoted in my former paper on the Vedic mythology (p. 59) Yâska, the author of the Nirukta, informs us (vii. 5) that previous writers of the school to which he himself belonged (the Nairuktas) reduced the deities mentioned in the Vedas to three—viz., “Agni, whose place is on the earth, Vâyu or Indra, whose place is in the air, and Sûrya, whose place is in the sky;” and asserted that “these deities had severally received many appellations in consequence of their greatness, or of the diversity of their functions, as the names of hotr, adhvaryu, brahman, and udgâtr, are applied to one and the same person [according to the particular sacrificial office which he happens to be fulfilling].” In the preceding section (vii. 4) Yâska goes still further and declares that “owing to the greatness of the deity, the one Soul is celebrated as if it were many. The different gods are separate members of the one Soul.”

The name of this celebrated astronomer is written either Âryabhaṭa or Âryabhaṭṭa, but generally with one ṭ only. In an old manuscript of the Brahma Sphuṭa Siddhânta of Brahmagupta, copied in Samvat 1678, or A.D. 1621, the name occurs about thirty-three times, and is invariably written Âryabhata; and a double ṭ cannot be introduced without violating the Âryâ metre.

I. The Malagasy belongs unquestionably to the stock of languages which have been denominated Malayo-Polynesian, and more particularly to the great Western Branch, which comprehends the languages of the lank-haired races of the Indian Archipelago and the Philippines, and which we shall call Malayan (from the most predominating language in that part of the globe), to distinguish it from the Eastern Branch, which may be called Maorian (from the Maori of New Zealand), the geographical term Polynesian haying the disadvantage of not excluding the languages of the crisp-haired races. The Malagasy bears the greatest analogy to the Toba dialect of the Batak in pronunciation (III), and many salient points in its grammatical structure may be pointed out (IV) to prove its affinity to Javanese, Batak, Malay, Dayak, and other Malayan tongues.

It is now about two years since Sir H. Rawlinson published his discovery of the Assyrian Canon, that is to say, of a list of annual functionaries in the kingdom of Assyria, extending over a period of about two hundred and seventy years of the duration of that great empire. This is the most valuable contribution towards the recovery of ancient Asiatic chronology which has been made since the time when Selden deciphered and published the contents of the Parian Chronicle, in the reign of Charles the First; and there is every reason to believe that by means of this document, in conjunction with the well-established dates of the early portion of the Babylonian Canon, we shall be enabled, not only to fix with certainty the dates of the reigns of thirteen kings of Assyria, reaching as early as the year B.C. 907; but also, with much probability, to recover the exact date of the rise of the first Chaldean dynasty in Assyria; or, in other words, the commencement of the era of Ninus and Semiramis. Sufficient time has now elapsed for a full investigation of the contents and bearing of this valuable document, and three eminent Assyrian scholars, viz., Sir H. Rawlinson in England, Dr. Hincks in Ireland, and Monsieur Oppert in Paris, after careful and independent examination, have published their comments upon it. They are as yet undecided as to what was the exact nature of the functions of these annual officers, whether military, civil, or priestly.

The purpose of the writer of this paper is, to call the attention of Oriental Scholars to the state of our knowledge of the Malay language, and especially to the dictionaries to which we must have recourse in studying it. An Englishman naturally turns to Marsden, and there can be, little doubt that he will find it a valuable help in his labour. But the scholars of Holland, who have continued to study Malay, not only complain that Marsden's Dictionary has become antiquated, but that it cannot be relied on in a number of cases, being occasionally faulty both in the pronunciation which it teaches and in the signification which it attaches to the words. Marsden himself honestly admitted that he did not study the language until after his return to Europe, and that he had compiled his work from vocabularies made by persons who, having studied for merely practical purposes, had collected words without knowing either their orthography or correct pronunciation; hence we find in it a great many words which are never met with by readers of Malay books. Notwithstanding this defect, the work of Marsden has become the basis of the dictionaries published in Holland and Batavia, and Dutch lexicographers have worked upon it without noticing its deficiency, literally copying its gravest errors.

At the meeting of the Royal Asiatic Society, on the 21st Nov., 1864, I undertook the task of establishing the identity of the Xandrames of Diodorus Siculus and Quintus Curtius, the undesignated king of the Gangetic provinces of other Classic Authors—with the potentate whose name appears on a very extensive series of local mintages under the bilingual Bactrian and Indo-Pali form of Kraṇanda.

At the last Anniversary Meeting of the Society I announced the discovery among the Assyrian collections in the British Museum of a certain number of clay tablets, bearing legends, both in Assyrian and Phoenician; and I promised at an early period to publish these Bilingual readings in the Society's journal, in order to afford those critics of the late Sir G. Lewis's school, who still disbelieve, or affect to disbelieve, in Cuneiform decipherment, an opportunity of testing the general accuracy of the phonetic system, now accepted amongst Assyrian scholars, by comparing the signs which they suppose to be unknown with those of a known alphabet and language.