A preceding essay on Indian philosophy contained a succinct account of the Carma-mímánsá. The present one will be devoted to the Brahma-mímánsá; which, as the complement of the former, is termed uttara, later, contrasted with púrva, prior, being the investigation of proof deducible from the védas in regard to theology, as the other is in regard to works and their merit. The two together, then, comprise the complete system of interpretation of the precepts and doctrine of the védas, both practical and theological. They are parts of one whole. The later mímánsá is supplementary to the prior, and is expressly affirmed to be so: but, differing on many important points, though agreeing on others, they are essentially distinct in a religious as in a philosophical view.

Buddha Gáya was probably, at one time, the centre of religion in India, and the residence of a powerful king. I am informed by the mahanta of the Sannyásís, who now possesses the great convent at the place, that when his predecessor Chétan Gírí came, which may be perhaps one hundred and twenty years ago, it was entirely overrun with bushes and trees; and the sect of Buddha, in its vicinity, may be considered as completely extinct. A few persons, indeed, come occasionally from distant countries to visit its ancient monuments. Last year (1811) a man of some rank, with several attendants, came from a country called Tamsa-dwíp-mahá-amarapura-paigú, sent by Mahá-dharma-rájá, in the sixty-seventh year of his age, a Cshatriya of the family of the sun. This is, no doubt, the king of the Burmas; and hence we infer that the old man, since the year 1795, when I visited his capital, has been induced to set up the doctrine afresh. In the year 1795 the priests of Buddha were seriously alarmed at the influence which the Bráhmans had then acquired.

There was a time, when to treat of the small-pox must have been a task truly painful; when, alas! little more could be done than to trace its devastations and its horrors: but, thanks to heaven and the perseverance of the benevolent, those days are long past, and the subject can at length be viewed in a very different light. Relieved from the distressing office of but too frequently having to offer a vain consolation to a virtuous mother sorrowing for the loss of a darling child, medical men can now speak of the disease with far other feelings; with the same satisfaction, to use a metaphor, that is felt in painting the blessings of an honourable peace, which have succeeded to a long and disastrous war; or the joy of a private family, which has finally risen into comfort and security, through a protracted struggle of domestic affliction.

In submitting these notices to the attention of the Society, the object is to bring under its view the internal revenue economy of a Hindu village that has never been under the direct control of any European officer of the East-India Company, in order to exhibit a fair specimen of ancient usages in the south of India, and to shew with accuracy, the proportion of the produce of the soil customarily taken in kind, in latter times, as land revenue, the rights of the parties paying revenue, and those of the individual who, by grant from the sovereign, is entitled to collect that revenue.

Leaou-tun-hing, inspector-general of Keang-nan province, presents an address to point out the expediency of early inquests in cases of homicide.

Amidst the great number and variety of imprisonments on criminal accusations, the most important are those which relate to the privation of life. Entering into a conspiracy to kill; killing with malicious intention; killing in an affray; causing death by driving a person to desperation; and killing by culpable negligence, constitute the real or proper cases. The cases of false imprisonment for homicide are where wounds are inflicted after death, to be made the grounds of a false accusation; and where the body is consumed or made away with for the same purpose. In all cases the most speedy investigation is of great importance, since from the nature of the wounds or hurts much evidence may be gathered with respect to the intention or disposition of the person that inflicted them; and from their old or new appearance, an inference may be drawn regarding the truth or falsehood of the accusation. Whenever the district magistrates met with a case of homicide, did they, in every instance, proceed without delay to the inquest of the body, while the wounds or hurts wrere yet fresh and unchanged, they might with more ease and certainty elicit the truth; at the same time that the guilty persons, being confronted at once with the magistrate before they had time to collect themselves, would be more likely, through fright, to betray their offence. Hence it may be deduced, that early inquests are the best, key to the elucidation of homicides. But the magistrates of districts, bearing on their shoulders the responsibility attached to such cases, appear always desirous to suppress them. As soon as a report or accusation is made, they purposely contrive delays, instead of proceeding immediately in person to the inquest, or they perhaps send a clerk into the town or village to compel the guilty person, by the agency of money, to make it up with the relations of the deceased, where it happens that these are very poor and needy.

The great interest which now attaches to the geography of the Burmese empire and to its relations with the Chinese, seems to call for as much information as can by any means be procured on these subjects from different quarters. In the Chinese library of the East-India Company at Canton is a MS. map, chiefly compiled from the labours of the missionaries; and as its extreme accuracy can be vouched for with respect to those parts of the empire through which Lord Amherst's embassy passed, it is entitled to a degree of credit, which is not hastily to be awarded to Chinese maps in general. An exact copy has been taken from this map of the western part of Yun-nan province. Our latest geographical knowledge of the Burmese country is contained in a map recently published at Calcutta, with the permission of the Bengal government; and as that portion which relates to the Chinese frontier was likely to have been obtained from Burmese sources, it may be worth while to compare it with the Chinese map. As far as relates to the names of places, the Chinese character is the only sure guide within their own territory. Little accuracy can be expected from, or stress laid on, the names written by one set of strangers, the English, and obtained by them through the mouths, or the writing, of another set of strangers, the Burmese. Notwithstanding this difficulty, however, it will perhaps be found that a considerable degree of correspondence exists between the two maps.

This piece of biography may truly be considered one of the most remarkable productions of oriental literature.

Nana Farnevís became at a very early period the bosom friend of his sovereign Madhu Rao, entitled the Great. This young prince succeeded his father in the year 1761, shortly after the fatal battle of Paniput, which seemed to threaten the downfall of the Mahratta power in Hindustan. He was then only in his seventeenth year, and Nana but nineteen. The latter had been hitherto brought up to the study of the Védas and Sástras, but had as yet engaged little in the duties of a public office, which his father had filled till Nana was fifteen, and which was now occupied by his uncle Babu Rao. The office to which I have alluded was hereditary, and had been held for three generations by Nana's family. It was that of Farnevís or Fard-nevis (literally, record-writer), but its duty was more especially to keep the accounts of the Peshwa's public receipts and disbursements. A situation, which brought those who filled it so constantly in contact with the Peshwa, was favourable to the development of those qualities which the youthful prince Madhu Rao discovered in his juvenile secretary. An attachment grew up between them, terminating only in the Peshwa's death, an event which occurred in 1774, at the early age of twenty-eight.

On the last occasion on which we met, I was permitted by your indulgence to read a piece of autobiography of Nana Farnevís, one of the most eminent persons who have become familiarly known to us since our first connexion with India. I stated that a vast number of the private and confidential papers of that extraordinary personage had fallen into my hands previously to my quitting India; and that a small, but interesting portion of them, had been translated by me and brought to this country. These translations have been submitted to two or three of the most distinguished members of our Society; and they have been pleased to express a wish that some of them might bebrought to the notice of the Society, and explained by a narrative of the circumstances that led to their being written. The letters commence with the public life of Nana Farnevís in 1761, and end with the fall of his power as minister to the Peshwa in 1796. They form valuable materials to elucidate his conduct during his long and arduous official career; but they are the more remarkable for the insight they afford us into the secret springs which seem to have regulated the behaviour of his illustrious master and sovereign Madhu Rao the Great, who, as I have before mentioned, asended the throne in his sixteenth, and died in his twenty-eighth year.

The composition of an Indian court of justice, conformably with the ancient Hindu institutions, being very imperfectly understood, and many erroneous notions having become prevalent on this subject, it appears to deserve a more full investigation than it has yet undergone; and, with this view, I submit to the Society the result of a careful perusal of original authorities of Hindu law relating to that point.

The late rebellion of the Muhammedan Tartars against the Emperor of China, by whose predecessor, Kien-Lung, they were subdued, in the year 1759, has given a fresh interest to regions which still remain very imperfectly known to Europeans. Père L'Amiot,* whom thirty years residence at Peking has rendered very capable of affording useful information relating to China and its dependencies, having placed at my disposal some notes concerning the above-mentioned countries, I proceed to subjoin a few extracts from them:

It having been my intention for some time to visit a few of the ruined cities whose decay has converted realms into desarts, and strewed the path of the shepherd with fragments of arches and pillars that once arose in majesty over heroic warriors, I set out in September 1826, for the purpose of examining the remains of the once celebrated city of Ahwuz, lying on the banks of the noble river Karun.

I have the honour to return you Sir James Mackintosh's interesting memoir. It possesses (like every thing which comes from the pen of that gifted and ingenious writer) the highest interest; and the ideas which are so luminously developed in it have the more merit, if we consider, that, at the period when this memoir was published, philosophical notions on the study and nature of languages were rarer and more novel than they are at present.

“Soon after my arrival in Nipál (now six years ago), I began to devise “means of procuring some accurate information relative to Buddhism: “for, though the regular investigation of such a subject was foreign “to my pursuits, my respect for sci ence in general led me cheerfully “to avail myself of the opportunity afforded, by my residence in a “Bauddha country, for collecting and transmitting to Calcutta the “materials for such investigation. There were, however, serious “obstacles in my way, arising out of the jealousy of the people in “regard to any profanation of their sacred things by an European, and “yet more, resulting from the Chinese notions of policy adopted by this “government. I nevertheless persevered; and time, patience, and “dexterous applications to the superior intelligence of the chief minister, “at length rewarded my toils.

The remains of ancient sculpture, called by Europeans the Seven Pagodas, on the Coromandel Coast, thirty-five miles south of Madras, have long attracted the attention of those who feel an interest in Hindu Archæology; and, so long ago as the year 1788, formed the subject of a paper in the first volume of the Asiatic Researches. The author, Mr. William Chambers, wrote from memory, after an interval of twelve years from the period at which he had visited the scene which he described, His account, unaccompanied as it was by drawings or fac similes of the inscriptions, could therefore scarcely be expected to be sufficiently minute to answer any further purpose than that avowed by himself, of exciting public attention, and “giving rise to more accurate observations, and more complete discoveries on the same subject.” In the fifth volume of the Asiatic Researches, published in 1798, there is a more descriptive account of these temples and excavations, written by Mr. Goldingham, a gentleman of well-known talent, on whose observations, as they were recorded on the spot, we may with confidence rely. Mrs. Graham is indeed a later writer on the subject: but her remarks are desultory, and her information imperfect, as might be expected from the opportunities presenting themselves to a casual and hasty visitor. In Bishop Heber's narrative three pages are devoted to a notice of Maha-Bali-poor. (Pages 216–218, vol. iii.) But the author merely follows the legends of the place, and evidently aims at nothing more than a record in his journal of his impressions on a cursory visit. The testimony, however, which this lamented prelate bears to the degree of skill displayed in these sculptures must, from his acknowledged taste, be looked upon as peculiarly valuable; and it is gratifying to one who has taken much interest in them to find, that he considered “some of the porticoes, temples and bas-reliefs as very beautifully executed,” and pronounced “the general merit of the work as superior to that of Elephanta.”

In all ages the ascendancy of the hierarchy is observable; it is a tribute paid to religion through her organs. Could the lavish endowments and extensive immunities of the various religious establishments in Rajast'han be assumed as criteria of the morality of the inhabitants, we should be authorized to assign them a high station in the scale of excellence. But they more frequently prove the reverse of this position; especially the territorial endowments, often the fruits of a death-bed repentance, which, prompted by superstition or fear, compounds for past crimes by posthumous profusion, although vanity not rarely lends her powerful aid. There is scarcely a state in Rajpootana in which at least one-fifth of the soil is not assigned for the support of temples, their ministers, the secular Brahmans, bards, and genealogists. But the evil was not always so extensive; the abuse is of modern growth.

The accompanying drawings of some of the sculptures in the cave temples of Ellora were made in the year 1813 ; since which time, until very recently, they have been in the possession of the Honourable Lady Hood (now Mrs. Stewart Mackenzie), for whom they were executed : and I have availed myself of that lady's permission to make them public through the medium of the Royal Asiatic Society.

It being deemed desirable that some explanation should accompany the interesting drawings, particularized in the preceding article on ancient Hindu sculptures from the Cave Temples of Ellora, made by Captain Grindlay, I hasten to fulfil the wishes of the council.

There are two modes by which they might receive illustration: one, supposing them to contain an astronomical allusion, as suggested by Dr. B. G. Babington; the other, from an allegory in the Hindu theogonies. A knowledge of the relative position of these sculptures in the Cave Temple would materially influence my decision on this point, as regards the two plates to which I shall chiefly confine my observations, viz. one, (No. 1) which I designate “The Fable of Dacsha Prajapáti, or Máhádéva, Dacsha, and Nanda;” the other (No. 2) Víra-Bhadra.” If these sculptures are contiguous to each other in the cave, then I have no doubt they represent the fable of the sacrifice of Sati, the consort of Máhádéva, and the formation of the giant Víra-Bhadra, to revenge her death by that of Dacsha: though even this allegory may possibly conceal an astronomical period.