Philosophy; Science, Literature, and Fine Arts of the Hindoos.
Questions of an abstract and metaphysical nature being intimately connected with the theology of the Hindoos, have at all times received a large share of attention from those among them who were most distinguished by acuteness and originality of mind. The existence of a Supreme Being; the mode of his existence; his creative power and agency; the nature of matter, whether created, uncreated, or merely illusive; the nature of mind, its capability of separate existence, its various faculties, and the laws according to which it exercises them; its volitions, whether free or necessitated; the distinctions between truth and falsehood, virtue and vice, whether essential and eternal, or only conventional and temporary;—these and kindred speculations form the great bulk of Hindoo philosophy. In such matters where there was no proper recognition of any infallible authority to which the final appeal could be made, unanimity, or even the least approach to it, was impossible, and hence a great number of different schools have arisen, sometimes agreeing, but far more frequently at variance with each other in regard to fundamental principles. These schools, if their subdivisions and ramifications are included, are very numerous; but Mr. Colebrooke, who is the highest authority on the subject, has limited those which seem entitled to special notice to the following six:—1. The prior Mimansa, founded by Jaimani. 2. The latter Mimansa or Vedanta, attributed to Vyasa. 3. The Nyaya, or logical school of Gotama. 4. The atomic school of Kanada. 5. The atheistical school of Kapila. 6. The theistical school of Patanjali. This number may be still further reduced; for the first and second, the third and fourth, and the fifth and sixth, properly form only three separate schools, distinguished by the respective names of the Vedanta, the Nyaya, and the Sankhya. Premising that all these schools have professedly one common object in view—to teach the art of attaining happiness by setting the soul free from corporeal incumbrances—we proceed to give a very summary account of them; an account all the more summary from its being given under the conviction, that while it is difficult to make it intelligible, it is scarcely possible to make it interesting.
The Vedanta is considered as the orthodox school, because it professes to teach nothing that is not contained expressly or inferentially in the Veda, and constantly endeavours to strengthen the reasonings employed by appealing to its texts. Indeed the prior or Purva Mimansa is rather a theological than a philosophical school, since its main object is to apply the art of reasoning to the Hindoo scriptures, and ascertain the duties which they enjoin. The latter or Uttara Mimansa is the only Vedanta philosophical school properly so called. Vyasa, the alleged compiler of the Vedas, is claimed as its founder. Were this claim good it would carry back its origin to twelve or fourteen centuries before the Christian era. This, however, seems to be a common Hindoo exaggeration, since the writings in which this system is first explained under its present form are not earlier than the sixth century B.C., and none of the numerous treatises and commentaries written in defence or explanation of it appeared more than 900 years ago. The Vedanta system is pantheism in its plainest and most absolute form. It sets out with the important doctrine that “God is the omnipotent and omniscient cause of the existence, continuance, and dissolution of the universe;” and then deprives the doctrine of all its importance by confounding him with his creatures. Individual souls, though created by an act of his will, have no separate existence. They issued from him like sparks from a flame, and being still portions of his substance, will return, and be finally absorbed by it. The separate activity of the soul is more apparent than real; for, though it acts conformably to its own volitions, these are only links in a chain of causes extending backwards to infinity.
The soul when struck off from the divine substance is “deposited in a succession of sheaths enveloping one another like the coats of an onion.” In the first sheath intellect is associated with the five senses; in the second mind; and in the third the organs of sense and the vital faculties are added. The fourth sheath is the gross external body, which is shuffled off at death, while the other three constitute a subtile body which is not affected by death, and accompanies the soul through all its transmigrations to its ultimate absorption. Preparatory to these transmigrations, the soul enveloped in its three sheaths goes to the moon, and being there clothed with an aqueous body, falls in rain. In this form it is absorbed by some vegetable, and is thence transferred, apparently by being used as food, into an animal embryo. The number of subsequent changes which it undergoes before final liberation by absorption depends on its deeds.
On the subject of matter there is some difference of opinion among the Vedantis. They all hold that it is not eternal, and that it is entirely a creation of the divine will; but they are not agreed whether it is in itself a real substance or merely a semblance and illusion. Those of the former opinion say, that the Supreme Being having created matter from his own essence, formed the world out of it, and left it to make its varied impressions on the mind; those of the latter opinion cannot admit the creation of matter, because they deny that matter exists, and maintain that the thing to which we give the name, instead of possessing inherent qualities, is nothing more than a series of impressions produced directly and immediately by divine agency. This latter view, with all its absurdities, is adopted by the great majority of the Vedantis, and hence their prevailing creed must be first, that the Supreme Being has divided himself into an infinite number of portions, and then by giving to each of these portions a consciousness of individual and separate existence, has deluded them with a host of imaginary beliefs. As human souls, according to this hypothesis, always remain integral parts of the Divinity, it necessarily follows that the Supreme Being must, while producing these delusions, share in them, and consequently be at once the deceived and the deceiver. Where all appearances are thus at variance with fact, an universal ignorance must prevail, and it is therefore easy to understand why the Vedanta school attach so much importance to knowledge as the effectual means of working out the soul’s liberation. In fact, the great object must be to unlearn as well as learn—unlearn by suppressing all natural beliefs, and learn by assuming that every thing is the very opposite of what it seems. The individual, whatever he imagines himself to be, has no separate existence, and all the world around him is illusion. Brahm, the Supreme Being, is the one only existence, and therefore so long as a man entertains any idea of his own individuality he is in ignorance. It is only when he has succeeded in identifying himself with Brahm, and in getting “rid of the habit of making himself even a subject of thought,” that he becomes truly enlightened. The magnitude of the object at which he is thus to aim contrasts curiously with the means which he is instructed to employ in order to accomplish it. Meditation will do something, but much more may be expected from postures, and mutterings, and suppressions of breath.
The Niyaya school deals much more in dialectics than in metaphysics; and aims rather to furnish a system of rules for the investigation of truth, than to give a dogmatical exposition of the truth itself. It consists, as has already been observed, of two leading branches, headed respectively by Gotama and Canade, and so closely connected that the one is usually considered to be the complement of the other. The agreement, however, is not so much in the subjects of which they treat as of the principles recognized in the treatment of them. Gotama’s text, forming a system of logic, or what may be called the philosophy of reasoning, consists of a collection of sutras or aphorisms, divided into five books, on which his disciples have written many volumes of commentaries; Canade’s text, consisting also of sutras, similarly commented upon, assumes the existence of eternal atoms, by the aggregation of which a transient world has been constructed, and his system has therefore been designated by the names both of the atomic theory and the philosophy of individuality.
Gotama, confining himself chiefly to the investigation of truth, and the different kinds of evidence by which it is established, enumerates sixteen logical categories in the following order:—1. Proof; 2. The object of proof; 3. Doubt; 4. Motive; 5. Instance or example; 6. Demonstrated truth; 7. Regular argument or syllogism; 8. Proof by negation or reductio ad absurdum; 9. Determination or certainty; 10. Thesis or discussion; 11. Controversy; 12. Objection; 13. Fallacy; 14. Perverse construction or sophism; 15. Futility or evasion; 16. Confutation. This list is very complete, and shows that Gotama had viewed his subject in all its principal bearings, but the heads are too numerous to be here separately explained, and a few must therefore be selected for illustration.
Proof or evidence is of four kinds—perception; inference, obtained either by analysis in ascending from the effect to the cause, or by synthesis in descending from the cause to the effect, or by analogy; comparison, and affirmation or testimony. The objects of proof are classed under twelve heads, each of which is discussed at length. Full scope is thus given for the enunciation and explanation of the peculiar views by which the Niyaya school is characterized. The objects of proof, indeed, must necessarily include all the possible subjects of knowledge, and accordingly we find in the enumerated list of them the soul, the body, the senses and the objects of them, the will, merit and demerit, reward, transmigration, and liberation. In treating of the soul as one of the objects of proof, not only is a full exposition given of its nature, and faculties, but the existence of God as the one Supreme Soul, the seat of eternal knowledge, the Maker and Disposer of all things, is asserted, and his relations to other existences are explained. Here, however, many startling propositions are advanced, and the infinity and eternity ascribed to the Supreme Soul are virtually withdrawn, by asserting that they are shared by all other souls, since soul by its very nature is not only immaterial, but also infinite and eternal. In treating of the body the existence of matter naturally falls under consideration. The view taken is, that it is real, not illusive, and that the atoms of which it is composed, though aggregated and moulded into bodily shapes in time, existed from eternity. The cause of the aggregation and moulding is left in doubt, and it is difficult to say whether it is meant to be regarded as the result of divine agency or of properties originally inherent in themselves. The discussion of the subject of matter, and of the objects formed out of it, involves many points which properly belong to physics, and which will therefore be noticed when Canade’s branch of the Niyaya school is considered. The only other category possessing particular interest is the seventh. Gotama’s syllogism differs from that with which we are familiar, in being composed not of three but of five members, placed thus:—the proposition, the reason, the example, the application, the conclusion. The following specimen has been given:—1. The mountain burns; 2. For it smokes; 3. That which smokes burns, as the kitchen fire; 4. Accordingly the mountain smokes; 5. Therefore it burns. If the first two terms be omitted, the other three will form the common European syllogism. The effect will be the same if the last two terms be omitted, and starting from the third, as before, the process is continued backwards from the third to the second, and from the second to the first. What the Hindoos construct as one is thus in fact two syllogisms, which, teaching no more than the one, only double the labour without giving any compensation. The example introduced into the third term cannot be considered as an improvement, since the extraneous fact, so far from making the proposition clearer, tends rather to cumber and perplex it. The best thing that can be said for the Hindoos syllogism is, that it is an exact imitation of the process which the mind naturally pursues. Setting out with a particular proposition, it arrives by analysis at a general truth; and then assuming the general truth, descends from it by synthesis to the particular proposition.
Canade, who was a pupil of Gotama, has been contented to follow his master in his leading doctrines, and is entitled to the honour of a founder chiefly on account of the larger development which he gave to some of them. On the subject of logic, in treating of the objects of the senses, which Gotama has ranked as the fourth of his objects of proof, he enumerates six categories or predicaments—substance, quality, action, community, particularity, and intimate relation or aggregation. There are nine different substances—earth, water, light, air, ether, time, place, soul, and mind. Material substances are composed of simple indivisible and eternal atoms, which of course were never created, and cannot be annihilated. The forms, however, which have been produced by their aggregation is transient. How this aggregation was effected, whether by native affinities in the atoms themselves, or by a creative power in the Supreme Being, is not distinctly explained. The atomic theory of Canade is not cumbered with some of the difficulties which perplexed Democritus and Epicurus, and obliged them not only to set their atoms in motion, but to give them a slanting direction in order that they might meet and form aggregates. By endowing the atoms themselves with peculiar properties he gave them, as it were, a power of choice, by which those of kindred nature approached each other of their own accord and amalgamated, while those of an opposite nature mutually repelled each other, and, of course, when brought accidentally into juxtaposition refused to coalesce. In a few points Canade made some approach to modern discoveries in physics. Contrary to Aristotle, who made levity and gravity separate principles, the one being a tendency to rise and the other to descend, Canade regarded levity as only the absence of gravity. He also held that there are seven primary colours, erroneously giving white and black a place among them. He was more correct in regard to sound, and distinctly taught that it is propagated by undulations, sent wave after wave in all directions from a central point. The Niyaya school, agreeing in many fundamental points with the Vedas, occupies an intermediate place between the Vedanta school, which claims to be orthodox, and the Sankhya school, which is stigmatized as heterodox; of this last some account must now be given.
The Sankhya school, as mentioned above, forms two leading branches, distinguished by the names of atheistical and theistical. These very names would seem to imply that a wide and deep gulf lies between them, and that the points which they hold in common dwindle into insignificance when compared with the momentous truth on which they differ. It can only be by a misnomer, or an extraordinary abuse of terms, that those who believe and those who deny a God can be classed as belonging to the same school of philosophy. Capila, the founder of the atheistical branch, having endeavoured in vain to find the final liberation, which was his highest aim, by acting in accordance with the Vedas, became convinced that the fault was not so much in him as in them, and resolved to supply their deficiencies. With this view he promulgated six books of sutras. These, or others which bear his name, are still extant, but are so oracular and obscure as to be unintelligible without the aid of the commentaries which have been written on them. One of them, a work in verse, called the Sankhya Karika, is the chief source from which a knowledge of Capila’s system is derived.
Capila’s fundamental position is, that final deliverance can only be gained by true and perfect knowledge, which consists in discriminating the principles, perceptible and imperceptible, of the material world, from the sensitive and cognitive principle, the immaterial soul. True knowledge is derived from three great sources—perception, inference, and affirmation or testimony; and comprehends twenty-five first principles:—1. Nature or Prakrite, the root or plastic origin of all, eternal matter, undiscrete, destitute of parts, not produced but productive, the universal material cause; 2. Intelligence, the first production of nature, increase and prolific; 3. Consciousness, giving the sense of self-existence, and said to be a product of intelligence; 4 to 19, said to be products of consciousness, include five rudimentary perceptions, and eleven organs of sense and action; 20 to 24 are the five elements—space, air, fire, water, and earth. The 25th and last principle is soul, which is said to be multitudinous, individual, sensitive, unalterable, and immaterial, neither produced nor producing.
By the union between nature and the soul creation is effected; and in order to satisfy the longing of the soul for fruition or liberation, it is invested with a subtile person, such as was described in treating of the Vedanta school—a person unconfined, and free from all hinderance, but incapable of enjoyment until invested with a gross corporeal body. The corporeal creation, consisting of souls lodged in gross bodies, comprehends, besides man, thirteen orders of beings, eight superior and five inferior. The superior are gods and other spirits; the inferior are animals, plants, and inorganic substances. Besides the subtile and the gross corporeal there is an intellectual creation, consisting of the affections of the intellect, its sentiments and faculties. These are very numerous, and form four classes distinguished from each other by their tendency to obstruct, disable, content or perfect the understanding. The obstructions—error, conceit, passion, hatred, and fear—are explained under sixty-four divisions. Disabilities arising from defect or injury of organs, as blindness, deafness, &c., are of twenty-eight kinds. The contentment of the intellect has its source in a total or partial omission of exertion producing some degree of tranquillity, but inadequate to work out final deliverance. The perfection of the intellect has eight sources. Three of these are merely preventive of evil. The remaining five are reasoning, oral instruction, study, friendly intercourse, and external and internal purity.
In the Sankhya, as in all the other Hindoo philosophical schools, much attention is paid to three essential qualities or modifications of nature, distinguished by the names of goodness, passion, and darkness. Not merely living but inanimate beings also are affected by them. Thus, when fire ascends, and man acts virtuously, it is by goodness; when the tempest rages, and man is hurried into vice, it is by passion; and when heavy bodies descend, and man is affected by stolidity or sorrow, it is by darkness. These three qualities, though opposites, are represented as concurring to the same purpose, just as in a lamp, oil, wick, and flame concur in the production of light. It is difficult in the extreme to reconcile the discrepancies of the Sankhya school, and give its doctrines a systematic form. Nature (prakrite) and soul (atma) appear at first to be two real substances, equally distinct, independent and eternal. Nature by an inherent property puts forth certain principles, and soul by an inherent property uses these principles as a means of obtaining a knowledge of nature. Ultimately, however, when this knowledge has been attained, the soul, which has been made individual by its connection with a corporeal body, is released, and the connection between the individual soul and nature is dissolved. What then? “As a dancer, after exhibiting herself to the spectator, retires, so does nature retire, after manifesting herself to the soul.” On this the soul is finally liberated. This liberation has been not inappropriately termed by Cousin “absolute nihilism,” since the perfect knowledge which gives the liberation amounts to nothing more than a denial of individual existence, expressed by the soul in such terms as these, “I have nothing, and am nothing: I do not exist.”
Capila, while he admits the separate existence of souls, and represents intellect as employed in moulding matter into its various forms, distinctly denies that there is any Supreme Being by whose will the universe was produced. “Such a Being,” he says, “if detached from nature and unaffected by consciousness and the other principles, would have no motion, and if enchained in nature would not have the power to create.” By this dogma he has earned the unenviable title of atheist, and is distinguished from his pupil Patanjali, who founded the second branch of the Sankhya school, and ranks as a theist, because he holds that distinct from other souls there is One who is infinite, eternal, and omniscient, and therefore truly God. He is, however, a god only in name, inasmuch as he is “indifferent to actions good or bad, and their consequences, and to the ephemeral thoughts of man, which are but as dreams.” It might hence be supposed that a Supreme Being thus sitting aloof from his creatures, and beholding all their movements as an unconcerned spectator, would be neglected by them in their turn, and never become the object of serious thought. This inference, though reasonable, would be erroneous, for Patanjali and his followers plume themselves on devotion. There is thus a marked distinction between the practices of the so-called atheistical and theistical sects. The former, professing to aim only at the liberation of the soul from the bonds of nature, is occupied chiefly with abstruse reasonings on the nature of mind and matter; whereas the latter, aiming at absorption into the Supreme Being, gives the first place to devotional exercises and yoga or mental abstraction. By means of this yoga, which has procured for those who practise it the name of yogis, the adept raises himself far above the ordinary condition of humanity. All knowledge past and future is revealed to him, and he is able even to divine the thoughts of others. But his knowledge, wonderful as it is, is surpassed by his power. He possesses the strength of an elephant, the courage of a lion, and the swiftness of the winds. All the elements are subject to his control, and yield obedience to him. The air supports him as he wings his flight through it; he floats in water, and penetrates without resistance into the solid earth. All worlds are seen by him at a glance, and whatever he desires he has only to will and it is accomplished. These wonderful gifts are attained by comparatively simple means—prescribed postures, suppressions of breath, mortification, and profound meditation. There may be fanatics who have deluded themselves into the belief that they may thus succeed in acquiring miraculous powers, or even that they have acquired them; but the greater number of the yogis are mere pretenders, and have no scruple in endeavouring to gain a reputation by gross imposture. In this way the Patanjali branch of the Sankhya school, though in some respects the better of the two, has suffered in character.
The Hindoo presents many striking resemblances to the Greek philosophy. The professed object of Pythagoras was to teach how the soul might be freed from all incumbrances and assimilated to the divinity. In undergoing this process it was subjected to numerous purgations and transmigrations, and finally returned to its original source by a kind of absorption. The prohibition of animal food, except for sacrifice—the tenderness not only to animals but to plants as beings possessed of life—the long course of probation undergone by students, and followed by a mysterious initiation—are common to both philosophies, and evidently indicate not accidental coincidence but real affinity. In the same way the logical systems of Gotama and Canade are closely allied to that of Aristotle. It is not impossible, however, that the resemblances might have been produced not directly by communication with one another, but indirectly from a more primeval source; hence some have imagined that Egypt, which stood as it were half way between India and Greece, when the commerce of Europe and the East was carried on across the Isthmus of Suez, furnished both of them with the dogmas in which they so remarkably agree. It would be presumptuous to decide positively between those competing claimants, but the presumption of originality is certainly in favour of the Hindoos, and Mr. Colebrooke seems justified in asserting that in this instance they were “the teachers and not the learners.”
It was at one time supposed that the Hindoos were entitled to take still higher ground in science than in mental philosophy, and that in astronomy in particular they were thousands of years in advance of all other nations. In the year 1687, M. de la Loubere, sent by Louis XIV. on an embassy to Siam, procured a copy of the rules of the Brahmins for the calculation of eclipses. These were submitted to the celebrated Cassini, who succeeded in unravelling them, and finding them accurate, hastily inferred that they must be as ancient as they professed to be. In 1772 a much more complete set of tables and rules was brought by M. le Gentil, from Trivatore, on the Coromandel coast. Two other sets of tables had been obtained by the Jesuits at an earlier date, but had been lost sight of from having been deposited in the Marine Depôt of Charts and Plans at Paris. From these four sets of tables, Bailly composed his Astronomie Indienne et Orientale, and startled the world by claiming for them an antiquity which could not be reconciled with the history of the human race as recorded in the Sacred Volume. Bailly’s view was adopted and maintained with equal zeal and ability by Professor Playfair, who, however, saw reason subsequently to modify his support of it in consequence of its rejection by La Place and Delambre, and the thorough examination to which it was subjected by some writers in the Asiatic Researches. The result at which they arrived was, that the earliest date in the Indian tables was assumed in order to correspond with a supposed conjunction of the heavenly bodies. La Place, whose authority on such a subject is decisive, says, “the Indian tables have two principal epochs, one 3102 years before our era, the other 1491. These epochs are connected by the motions of the sun, the moon, and the planets, in such a manner, that departing from the position which the Indian tables assign to the stars at the second epoch, and returning to the first by means of these tables, we find the general conjunction which is supposed at that epoch.” He then adverts to Bailly’s opinion that the “first epoch was founded on observations,” and adds in opposition to it, “I consider it as very probable that it (the first epoch) has been imagined in order to give a common origin in the zodiac to the celestial motions. Our latest astronomical tables, improved by a comparison of theory with a great number of very precise observations, do not allow us to admit the supposed conjunction in the Indian tables.” His conclusion is:—“The whole structure of the tables, and especially the impossibility of the conjunction which they suppose, prove that they have been formed, or at least rectified in modern times.”
Still, after exaggeration is duly curtailed, it seems impossible to deny that the Hindoos had made some progress in astronomy in the fourteenth century before the Christian era. Their division of the belt of the heavens corresponding to our zodiac into twenty-seven equal portions, called lunar houses, and each marked by a group of stars or constellations, could not have been made when astronomy was in its infancy, and yet is admitted on all hands to be as early as 1442 B.C. Parasara, the first Hindoo astronomer of whose writings any portion remains, must have flourished about the same date. Unfortunately, however, the part of astronomy which is most interesting in a scientific point of view has been almost entirely neglected by the Hindoos. They give no theory, and confine themselves to the calculation of eclipses and other changes in the heavens, thus degrading astronomy from its proper place, and making it subservient to the dreams and impostures of astrologers. “The Brahmin,” says Professor Wallace, “seated on the ground with his shells before him, repeats the enigmatical verses which are to guide his procedure, and from his little tablets of palm leaves takes out the numbers which are to be employed in it. He obtains his result with certainty and expedition; but having little knowledge of the reason of his rules, and no wish to be better informed, he is perfectly satisfied if, as it usually happens, the actual commencement and duration of the eclipse agree within a few minutes with his prediction. Beyond this his inquiries do not extend; and his observations, if he make any, go no further than the determination of a meridian line, or the length of the day at the place of his residence.”1
The most complete ancient astronomical work of the Hindoos is the Surya Sidhanta, fabled by the Brahmins to have been communicated by divine revelation above two millions of years ago, but now believed to be not older than the fifth or sixth century. From the practice of veiling everything in mystery, and making all kinds of knowledge subservient to Brahminical priestcraft, the information furnished by the Surya Sidhanta, and a commentary upon it called Tika, is unsatisfactory and obscure; but there is enough to show that some of the leading facts in astronomy were well understood. Among these may be mentioned the precession of the equinoxes, the rate of which estimated at 54" annually (it is only 50") led them to calculate a complete revolution of the equinoctial points and fix it at about 24,000 years—the revolution of the moon on her axis only once in a month, and the necessary consequence that she presents always the same side to the earth—and the globular form of the earth itself, which they hang in space, but erroneously imagine to be the centre of the universe.
The claim of the Hindoos to original discovery is better established in regard to mathematics than in regard to astronomy. The Surya Sidhanta contains a very rational system of trigonometry. The circle is divided in the same manner as by the Greeks into 360 equal parts, each of which is subdivided into 60, as still practised. The common adoption of this division is remarkable, as there is nothing in the nature of the circle itself to suggest it, unless it be that in an early age the number of days in the sun’s annual revolution may have been roughly estimated at 360. In another arrangement, also arbitrary, the superiority of the Hindoo to the Greek mathematicians is apparent. The Greeks divided the radius of the circle into sixty equal parts, but did not in this division express any relation between the radius and the circumference. The Hindoos, on the contrary, in a manner peculiar to themselves, adopt a common measure and unit for both, and by means of it express the relation between them with considerable nicety. The circumference, divided as has been seen into 360 equal parts, gives at the rate of 60 of these parts to a degree, 21,600 minutes. The radius, supposed to be in like manner calculated in minutes, is found by the Hindoos to contain 3438. The proportion of the radius to the circumference is thus said to be as 3438 to 21,600, or 1 to 3.14136. This proportion is as near an approximation to the truth as can be made when no lower subdivision than minutes is employed, and is the proportion according to which the Hindoo trigonometrical tables are framed. It appears, however, that the Brahmins, while considering this proportion as sufficiently accurate for practical purposes, were aware of the error in it, and supposed the true ratio to be that of 1 to 3.1416. This, it is almost needless to observe, is the greatest accuracy attainable when the calculation is not carried further than four decimal places. The use of sines in framing tables, and not of chords, as practised by the Greeks, is a striking distinction in favour of the Indian trigonometry, and the rule for computing them justifies the remark of Professor Playfair, that “it has the appearance, like many other things in the science of those eastern nations, of being drawn up by one who was more deeply versed in the subject than may at first be imagined, and who knew much more than he thought it necessary to communicate.” On the same point Professor Wallace observes, “He who first formed the idea of exhibiting in arithmetical tables the ratios of the sides and angles of all possible triangles must have been a man of profound thought and of extensive knowledge. However ancient, therefore, any book may be in which we meet with a system of trigonometry, we may be assured that it was not written in the infancy of the science. Hence we may conclude that geometry must have been known in India long before the writing of the Surya Sidhanta.”
In arithmetic the Hindoo claim to the invention of the decimal notation is generally acknowledged. The advantage which this discovery gave them over the Greeks is very striking, and is particularly manifested in the Lilavati, a work on arithmetic and practical geometry, written by Bhascara Acharya in the twelfth century. This treatise not only gives the fundamental rules of arithmetic, but applies them to the subjects of interest, barter, mixtures, combination, permutation, progression, indeterminate problems, and the mensuration of surfaces and solids. In algebra, Hindoo superiority, in respect both of priority of discovery and general excellence, is very decided. Arya Bhatta, who is proved to have lived as early as the fifth century, and may probably have been a contemporary of Diophantus, who wrote the first Greek work on algebra, and flourished about A.D. 360, was able to resolve equations containing several unknown quantities, and had a general method of resolving indeterminate equations of at least the first degree. Apparently in regard to both of these, and certainly in regard to the latter, he was far in advance of Diophantus. Indeed, Arya Bhatta’s general method, called in Sanskrit cutta, and declared by Professor Wallace to be a “refined process,” was not known in Europe till 1624. The work of Arya Bhatta does not exist, and what is known of it is learned from quotations by Brahma Gupta, who lived in the sixth century, and Bhascara Acharya, already mentioned. Their works, translated from the Sanskrit, have been published by Mr. Colebrooke. Those of Bhascara consist of the Lilavati, of which some account has been given above, and the Bija Ganita, devoted expressly to algebra. From this treatise it appears that the Hindoos at a very early period had made as near an approach to the general solution of indeterminate problems as was made to the time of La Grange. In attempting to solve equation of the higher orders they had not been successful, but they had learned to apply algebra to astronomy and geometry, and had, as Mr. Colebrooke expresses it, “hit upon some matters which have been re-invented in modern times.”
In discussing the date of Hindoo discoveries in algebra, Playfair and Delambre take opposite sides. Playfair says, “It is generally acknowledged that Diophantus cannot have been himself the inventor of all the rules and methods which he delivers; much less is Arya Bhatta to be held the sole inventor of a system that was still more perfect than that of Diophantus. Indeed, before an author could think of embodying a treatise of algebra in the heart of a system of astronomy, and turning the researches of the one science to the purposes of the other, both must be in such a state of advancement, as the lapse of several ages and many repeated efforts of invention were required to produce.” Delambre endeavours to take off the force of this observation by saying, that when an author has created a new science among a people considerably advanced in civilization, men of genius will not be long in acquiring the new notions, in order to extend and multiply their application. There is something in this, but Delambre makes too much of it, and Professor Wallace seems to place the matter on its proper footing, when, after advertising to the fact “that algebra made little or no progress among the Arabians, though an ingenious people, and particularly devoted to the study of the sciences, and that centuries elapsed from its first introduction into Europe before it reached any considerable degree of perfection,” he concludes that “this branch of arithmetic may have existed among the Hindoos, in one form or another, long prior to the time of Arya Bhatta.”
Under the head of science many other branches of knowledge, in addition to those which have been considered, are included; but the proficiency which the Hindoos have made in them is in general so small that it is scarcely entitled to a separate notice. Were an exception to be made, it would be in regard to one or two branches of physics. In referring to Canade’s work on this subject, his theories of gravity, colour, and sound, were mentioned as superior to those which were received in Europe at the same period. It may be added, that in botany and chemistry, not so much as speculative sciences, but as practical arts available in medicine, some considerable progress had been made. Their knowledge of simples was extensive, and Europe has, in several instances, been indebted to them for their application to purposes previously unknown. From Hindoos was first learned the use of cowitch as a vermifuge, and the benefit of smoking datura in asthma. Their chemical skill is chiefly displayed in mineral and metallic preparations, obtained by processes, for the most part peculiar to themselves, and employed with much boldness in curing disease. Among these preparations may be enumerated sulphuric, nitric, and muriatic acid; oxides of copper, iron, lead, tin, and zinc; sulphuret of iron, copper, mercury, antimony, and arsenic; sulphate of copper, zinc, and iron; and carbonates of lead and iron. By cinnabar, in the form of fumigations, they produced speedy and safe salivation; and they were the first who administered mineral substances internally, employing not only mercury in this manner, but preparations of arsenic in intermittent fevers. Though precluded by their religious creed from acquiring a knowledge of anatomy by dissection, they performed various surgical operations, many of them with instruments invented by themselves. Inoculation they had long practised before it was superseded by vaccination. In general, however, both their surgery and medicine were merely empirical, and even proper rules of art have always been considered subordinate to astrology and magic. The supposed efficacy of mystical verses and charms have brought rational remedies into disrepute, and in waiting for lucky hours and days, diseases which might be removed by instantaneous applications, gain strength, and become fatal.
The literature of the Hindoos is a subject of such boundless extent that it is impossible to do more than glance at a few of its leading features. One of its most remarkable peculiarities is the language in which the far greater part of it is written. Sanskrit must at one time have been a vernacular tongue, but has long ceased to be spoken by any except the learned, and by them is spoken only as Latin used to be in Europe, when modern tongues were considered too rude and imperfect to serve as proper vehicles of thought. How Sanskrit, after being once a living, became a dead language, is a point still involved in mystery—a mystery all the more perplexing from the impossibility of discovering in Indian history any period corresponding to that of the great irruption which overthrew the Roman empire, broke it up into separate kingdoms, changed the whole face of Europe, and gave it, instead of one dominant language, a number of languages more or less engrafted upon it, but still so different from it, and from each other, that those who spoke them had no longer any common medium of oral communication. If Sanskrit was ever spoken, some exterminating process similar to that of our northern invaders must have been necessary, either to root out the races who spoke it, or so completely revolutionize them as to banish it from their lips and memories. This extinction of Sanskrit is the more wonderful when we consider the extent of the area over which its sway must have extended. Not only must it have penetrated far to the West, before the languages of Greece and Rome could have been so deeply imbued with it as they are now known to be, but the whole inhabitants of India, including races which have little else in common, must have either spoken it as their mother tongue, or been brought into such immediate contact with it as to borrow a large part of their speech from it. The five northern languages of India, those of the Punjab, Kanoje, Mithila or North Behar, Bengal, and Gujarat, do not differ more from Sanskrit than Italian from Latin; and of the five languages of the Deccan, while two of them, those of Orissa and Maharashtra, are so full of Sanskrit words that their existence as languages would be destroyed by expunging them, the other three, the Tamul, Telugu, and Carnata, though so different in structure as to indicate a distinct origin from Sanskrit, have incorporated many of its words in the same way as English has borrowed from Latin.
While Sanskrit might thus have been expected to hold its ground in consequence of the vast area over which it was spoken or understood, it had a strong additional security for its permanence as a living language from the exclusive use of it in all branches of knowledge, sacred and profane. Even when the selfishness and ambition of the Brahmins succeeded in excluding the other classes from access to the Veda, it might have been expected that the language in which they were written would still be kept alive among the great body of the people, by the numerous legends, hymns, and poems embodied in it, and made familiar to them from their earliest years by being rehearsed in ordinary life and at public festivals. Another guarantee for permanence was given in the excellence of the language itself, which is pronounced by Sir William Jones, perhaps with some degree of hyperbole, to be “more perfect than the Greek, more copious than the Latin, and more exquisitely refined than either.” All these circumstances, however, have proved unavailing, and the Sanskrit, banished from the tongues of Hindoos, owes its preservation not to them but to the literary treasures which it contains.
Almost everything among the Hindoos that deserves the name of literature is composed in verse; and therefore, without stopping to take any notice of their prose, we pass at once to their poetry. In forming an estimate of it it is necessary to remember that for poetical compositions, when viewed through the medium of translation, great allowance ought to be made. Homer and Virgil, if known only through the translations of Pope and Dryden, would not be thought worthy of a tithe of the encomiums which all who read them in the original are ready to pronounce upon them; and there is no ground to suppose that any of the translators from the Sanskrit have performed their task so well as Pope and Dryden. Where the two languages vary so much in structure as English and Sanskrit, and not merely the whole train of thought, but all the figures that can be used in the way of ornament and illustration, differ so widely, a translator cannot hope to do much more than give the sense. The reader consequently knows nothing of the melody of the versification, nor of the facility of forming compounds, which are said to give Sanskrit compositions a peculiar charm and add greatly to their richness, and is hence apt to be startled if not offended by combinations which cannot but seem to him unnatural. Presented only with the bare ideas, stripped of everything that adorns them, he peruses a work designed by its author merely to captivate the imagination, as if it were some grave didactic treatise in prose, and thus feels somewhat like the mathematician, who after reading one of the finest passages of the Aeneid contemptuously asked, What does it prove? In common fairness we should endeavour to believe in the existence of graces and excellences which we know must have evaporated in the process of translation; and then, though we may still hesitate to speak in such rapturous terms as zealous orientalists employ, we will be ready to admit that there have been Hindoo poets truly worthy of the name.
The earliest form of Hindoo verse is to be found in the Vedas. In general it is of a very prosaic description, and never makes an approach to the dignity of poetry except in the hymns. Even these display little vigour of thought or fancy, and no felicity of diction, and deserve the character given by Mr. Colebrooke to the Vedas generally—their “general style is flat, diffuse, and no less deficient in ornament than abundant in repetitions.” Next in antiquity to the Vedas is the heroic poem or epic of the Ramayana. It has for its subject the conquest of Ceylon, by Rama, and was written by Valmiki, who, though believed by the Hindoos to have been contemporary with the events which he celebrates, evidently belongs to a much later period. The leading details are as follows:—Dasaratha, King of Kosala, resided in his capital of Ayodhya, the ancient name of the modern Oude. There surrounded by eight counsellors, such as Menu describes, he “shone resplendent as the sun irradiating the world.” One thing was wanting to complete his happiness—he had no son. To obtain one he had recourse to the aswamedha, or horse-sacrifice, which, when duly performed, never fails, and on this occasion proved more than successful, inasmuch as four sons were born to the king by his three wives, Kausalya, the first and favourite wife bearing two, Rama and Lakshman. Rama, thus regarded as the heir, was in his sixteenth year when a rishi, named Viswamitra, asked permission to take him with him to his hermitage in the hills, for the purpose of expelling rakshasas, or demons, who were haunting him, and polluting his sacrifices. The king offers to go in person, but refuses to send Rama, “my Rama,” begotten “by me, an old man,” and “dearer to me than life itself.” Viswamitra, offended, gives such portentous signs of wrath, that the king repents of his refusal, and all his four sons set out for the hermitage. As Rama is the destined hero, Viswamitra makes him proof against all fatal casualties, endues him with supernatural strength, and presents him with celestial weapons. The encounter then takes place, and the rakshasas are destroyed. After this exploit the young princes are conducted by Viswamitra to Mithila, situated four days’ journey from Ayodhya. Janaka, the king, had a most lovely daughter, called Sita, whom he had promised to give to the man who should lift and bend his bow. This was no ordinary feat, for when it was sent for it required an eight-wheeled carriage, drawn by 800 men, to transport it. Rama, however, accomplished it. Lifting the bow with one hand, he snapped it in sunder with a noise like the crash of a falling mountain, and Sita became his bride. Three other princesses of the court were given to his brothers. The nuptials were celebrated with the greatest splendour, and the happy pairs were welcomed with acclamations on arriving at Ayodhya.
Dasaratha was preparing formally to acknowledge Rama as his successor, when a serious difficulty arose. Kaikeyi, the second wife, claimed the throne for her son Bharata. She had at one time obtained a promise from the king of any two boons she should ask, and was determined to use it in enforcing her son’s claim. Accordingly, the first boon she asked was the banishment of Rama for fourteen years, and the second a public acknowledgment of Bharata as heir-apparent. Dasaratha could not refuse. Rama and Sita depart as exiles for the forest, and the king sits for six days pining and bewailing the banishment of his favourite son. On the seventh day a crime or rather misfortune of his youth rises to his remembrance, and believing it to be the cause of his present affliction, he narrates it at length to Kausalya. While hunting in the woods on the banks of the Surayu or Gogra, he heard a sound which he supposed to be made by an elephant in drinking, and let fly an arrow, which mortally wounded a youth who had come to draw water. His parents were living as recluses in the neighbourhood, and he was their only support. The king, horror-struck at hearing a moan, hastens to the spot. The youth, though his life-blood was flowing, recognizes the king, and is only anxious to save him from the consequences of being the innocent cause of his untimely end. His father’s curse he knows to be irresistible, and he therefore begs Dasaratha to deprecate it by being himself the bearer of the dismal news. The father on hearing them is unable wholly to restrain his curse, and tells the king that he too shall one day sorrow for a son. The parents of the youth burn themselves on his funeral pile. The king, after divulging his secret, takes affectionate leave of Kausalya, and dies, exclaiming, “Ah, Rama! ah, my son!”
After Dasaratha’s obsequies had been performed with great pomp, but without any suttee, none of the wives except Kausalya expressing any wish to burn along with him, the council, summoned by Vasishta, the principal Brahmin, invite Bharata to occupy the vacant throne. He generously declines to usurp the rights of his brother Rama, and being told that as he refuses to reign it is his duty to find the lawful sovereign, he sets out in quest of him with a splendid retinue of soldiers and attendants. He meets with numerous adventures, and at length discovers Rama living with Sita and his brother Lakshman in the forests of the Deccan. The interview is affecting, and gives occasion to the utterance of many noble and generous sentiments. Rama refuses to accept a throne, which he could not occupy without breaking his father’s vow. Bharata remonstrates, and not succeeding, has recourse to a curious device. He had brought a pair of golden shoes with him, and asks Rama to put them on and then return them. This done, Bharata says he will go back to Ayodhya, “not to reign, but to live without the city as a devotee, waiting till the fourteen years of Rama’s exile should expire, meanwhile committing the kingdom to thy shoes.”
After Bharata’s departure, Rama incurred the hostility of the natives by barbarously cutting off the nose and ears of a princess who had presumed to make love to himself and his brother. She vowed revenge, and finding that in open warfare Rama could not be matched, called in the aid of sorcery, in which she appears to have been all but omnipotent, and bewitched her brother Ravana, the demon King of Lanka or Ceylon, to become enamoured of Sita, Rama’s lovely wife. Ravana, who had extended his power into the Indian peninsula, and ruled it like a cruel tyrant, had first recourse to force, but experienced the same reverses as his sister, and saw the necessity of having recourse to stratagem. Accordingly he took with him an assistant sorcerer disguised as a deer. Rama was fond of the chase, but, aware of the wiles of his enemy, took what he deemed a sufficient precaution against them, by committing Sita, while he was absent on his hunting excursions, to the protection of his brother Lakshman. One day the wily deer exposed itself to Rama’s arrow, and being wounded, exclaimed in a voice resembling Rama’s, “Oh, Lakshman, save me!” Sita, hearing the cry, begged Lakshman to flee to the rescue. Ravana’s object was now gained. Assuming the dress of an ascetic, he came upon Sita sitting alone in tears, bewailing the supposed disaster which had befallen her lord. Thrown off her guard by Ravana’s disguise, she hails him as a “holy Brahmin,” and not only entertains him hospitably, but opens her whole heart and recounts the history of her life. Suddenly Ravana throws off his disguise, and announcing himself as the demon monarch of the earth, “at whose name heaven’s armies flee,” seizes her shrieking, and carries her aloft through the sky to Ceylon.
Rama, determined on recovering her, but knowing the power of the enemy with whom he had to deal, sought to strengthen himself by alliances. Strange to say, the woods of Dandaka, where he then dwelt, were inhabited, not by human beings, but by demons and monkeys. At the head of the latter was the monkey-king, Sugriva, who cordially espoused Rama’s cause, and placed a mighty army of quadramanous subjects at his disposal. Their general, Hanuman, was a host in himself. After ascertaining by emissaries that Sita was confined in a palace in Ceylon, he proceeded with Rama at the head of the allies to Cape Comorin, overcame all the difficulties of the passage by bridging the straits, defeated the armies of demons sent to oppose them, and saw Ravana himself. Sita was thus recovered. Rama was doubtless overjoyed, but his joy was alloyed by a suspicion which haunted him. Considering the
kind of hands into which Sita had fallen, was it possible that she could have maintained her purity unsullied? He could not satisfy himself on this point till he had subjected her to the ordeal of a blazing fire. She passed through it unscathed. Lest any suspicion might still have lurked, Brahma and the other gods attested her fidelity, and Rama again received her with all his former affection. The fourteen years of exile had now expired, and the whole party returned to Ayodhya. Bharata, faithful and generous as ever, at once resigned the government, but Rama, aware that he was not what he seemed to be, but of divine origin, in fact an incarnation of Vishnu, disdained to rule, and returned to heaven, his native seat.
The absurdities, incongruities, and extravagances which occur throughout the poem are so glaring as to be seen at a glance; and it is therefore less important to notice them than to advert to some of the many passages which are conceived and expressed in the spirit of genuine poetry. The descriptions of natural scenery are in general excellent, being distinguished both by beauty and accuracy, and many of the metaphors borrowed from it are striking and appropriate. Domestic feelings, particularly the attachment of husband and wife, and parent and child, are sometimes exhibited in their purest and most interesting form, and it would be difficult to find incidents more affecting than those which are presented where Dasaratha relates the death of which he had been the unhappy but innocent cause, when roaming the forest as a hunter “in youth’s delicious prime.” Seldom, too, have noble and generous sentiments received more emphatic utterance than at the interview between Rama and Bharata, while the latter declares his determination not to accept a throne which he could not occupy without usurping a brother’s rights; and the former cheerfully resigns these rights, because he could not avail himself of them without injuring his father’s memory. It would be easy to furnish extracts in illustration of all these enumerated excellences; but in order not to exceed due bounds our extracts must be few and brief. They are taken from Dasaratha’s account of the tragical death of the youthful devotee; and, in order to come as near as possible to the spirit of the original, are borrowed from the admirable translations which Mr. Griffith has published under the title of Specimens of Indian Poetry.
The day on which Dasaratha set out on the hunting excursion which terminated so fatally is thus described:—
“A day of summer rain time, filling my young soul with love;
The great sun had dried the earth-dews with his hot beams from above,
And in highest heaven turning, journeyed on his southward road,
Racing towards the gloomy region, the departed’s sad abode;
Balmy cool the air was breathing, welcome clouds were floating by,
Humming bees with joyful music swell’d the glad wild peacock’s cry.
After the rash arrow was shot and the king had seen the unhappy youth expire, he proceeds to be the bearer of the dismal tidings to the parents, who were sitting helpless and sightless, waiting the return of their boy, and wondering what could detain him. Dasaratha’s feelings, and the scene which awaited him, are thus described:—
“Sadly, slowly I approached them, by my rash deed left forlorn;
Crushed with terror was my spirit, and my mind with anguish torn;
At the sound of coming footsteps, thus I heard the old man say,
‘Dear son, bring me water quickly, thou hast been too long away,
Bathing in the stream, or playing, thou hast stayed so long from home;
Come, thy mother longeth for thee; come in quickly, dear child, come!’
The dreadful truth being made known, the half-distracted father, hanging over the dead body, and as if forgetting the irreparable calamity which had befallen him, speaks thus:—
“Come, dear child, embrace thy father, put thy little hand in mine,
Let me hear thee sweetly prattle some fond play-word of thine;
and then recalled to a sense of the reality, exclaims—
“Ah! who’ll read me now the Vedas, filling my old heart with joy?
Who, when evening rites are over, cheer me, mourning for my boy?
Who will bring me fruits and water, roots and wild herbs from the wood?
Who supply the helpless hermit, like a cherished guest, with food?
Can I tend thine aged mother till her weary life is done?
Can I feed her, soothe her sorrow, longing for her darling son?”
The Mahabharata, the other great Sanskrit epic, though not believed to be so ancient as the Ramayana, bears the impress of a venerable antiquity. It is of enormous length, consisting of more than 100,000 verses, and contains various episodes, which, both from the nature of their subjects and the internal evidence they furnish of having been written by different authors and at distant periods, ought to be viewed as separate poems. Tradition makes Vyasa, the supposed compiler of the Vedas, the author of the whole; but there is in the poem itself an acknowledgment that not more than a fifth part of it was composed by him, and that its present form was given it by Sauti, who received it from Vyasa by a third hand. Without attempting to fix a precise date, the most competent authorities are agreed that both the Ramayana and the Mahabharata were well known in India in the second century before our era.
The subject of the Mahabharata, or, as the word means, Great Battle, is the war waged between the Pandus and Curus, two branches of what is called the Lunar race. The prize contended for was the right to rule in Hastinapura, a territory understood to be situated north-east of Delhi. In the course of the contest all the leading princes of India become engaged as allies. Krishna, now the most popular of Hindoo deities, because fabled to have been an incarnation of Vishnu, takes part with the Pandus, and performs exploits which make him the great hero of the poem. The origin of the war is thus explained. The King of Hastinapura having been afflicted with leprosy, was obliged to abdicate. The five Pandus were his sons, but the government—perhaps because they were too young to undertake it—was given to their uncle, the father of a hundred Curus. The cousins were brought up together at court under the guidance of a learned Brahmin named Drona, who was admirably qualified for the office, from being not only learned in the Vedas, but perfectly acquainted with all the accomplishments in which young princes ought to be instructed. Accordingly, he taught them “to rein the steed, to guide the elephant; to drive the chariot, launch the javelin, hurl the dart, wield the battle-axe, and whirl the mace.” When Drona deemed his pupils sufficiently expert, he proposed that a public trial of their skill should be made, and accordingly a splendid tournament was held for this purpose. Many noble feats were performed, but Arjuna, the third of the Pandus and Drona’s favourite pupil, far outstripped all the others. Next to him, however, were Yudisthira, his eldest, and Bhima, his second brother. The Curus had early conceived the idea of usurping the rights of their cousins, and, when mortified at the inferior position which they had held in the tournament, made an atrocious attempt to extirpate the whole race of Pandus, by setting fire to the house in which they resided. It was generally believed that they had accomplished their object; for, when the bodies of five males and one female were discovered among the ruins, they were at once concluded to be those of the Pandus and their mother. This, however, was a mistake. The persons who had perished were a woman of low caste and her five sons who chanced to be passing the night in the house. All the Pandus had made their escape. Being aware of the deadly hate with which they were pursued, they allowed the belief of their death to remain uncontradicted, and sought an asylum in the woods. Here they continued to live, subsisting on the produce of the chase, till they accidentally learned that the King of Panchala, situated somewhere between Delhi and the Punjab, was about to hold a swayambara, in other words, was inviting visitors to his court, with the view of selecting from among them a husband for his daughter Draupadi, whose surpassing loveliness was the theme of all tongues.
The information respecting the swayambara had been given to the Pandus by a party of Brahmins, who were on the way to share in the festivities of the occasion. On being invited, the Pandus resolved to accompany them; and, assuming the character of mendicants, took up their residence at Panchala, in the house of a potter. The king had many years before given mortal offence to Drona. They had once been sworn friends, and Drona, presuming on ancient intimacy, made his appearance at the court of Panchala. Having announced himself without ceremony, he had the mortification to find that the king, elated with the new dignity which the throne had conferred upon him, was no longer disposed to treat him as an equal, or even recognize him as an acquaintance. Drona departed in wrath, and the King of Panchala, aware how fearful the vengeance of a Brahmin might prove, was anxious, in wedding his daughter, to choose a son-in-law on whose aid he might rely. It would seem that, notwithstanding the rumoured destruction of the Pandus, the king believed some of them to be still alive; for he desired above all things to give his daughter to a Pandu. The race was famous for prowess, and he was convinced that with a Pandu to defend him, he might set even Drona at defiance. But how was a Pandu to be obtained? The king, as the best way of answering this question, had recourse to the following device:—He caused a ponderous bow to be made by magic art, and set up for a mark a plate of metal which revolved on an axle, feeling assured that none but a Pandu would have strength to wield the one and hit the other.
On the day fixed for the swayambara a magnificent scene presented itself. Within a vast area, inclined by a deep ditch and lofty walls, myriads from all quarters were assembled. Around the king, who was mounted on his throne, sat neighbouring potentates on seats emblazoned with gems and gold. Princes, among them the hundred Curus of Hastinapura, and other illustrious chiefs, occupied glittering pavilions as candidates, while temporary scaffolds, housetops, and every vacant space without the barriers were crowded by spectators. The king, hoping to the last that the Pandus would appear, spun out the time by preliminary entertainments, music, dancing, dramatic exhibitions, and games; but after sixteen days had thus elapsed further delay became impossible, and the great prize to be competed for, the lovely Draupadi, took her place in the arena. The bow which the king had prepared was now brought forth; but none succeeded in bending it except a youth named Kerna. To him, however, there was a fatal objection. Though in fact one of the children of the sun, his reputed birth was low, and on this ground his other merits were disregarded. Draupadi herself burst forth with the exclamation—“I wed not with the base-born!” On this Kerna, after glancing upwards to his sire, cast down the bow and shafts, and sternly walked away.
The list of competitors being exhausted it seemed that the swayambara was to prove a failure. Suddenly Arjuna advanced. He was dressed like a Brahmin student, and many Brahmins believing him to be so, and afraid of the disgrace which his failure would bring upon their order, endeavoured to dissuade him from entering the lists. He stood unmoved, and then going up to the bow, lifted it, bent it, and placing an arrow on the string, sent it right into the mark. Being a Brahmin, there could be no objection to him on the score of birth. Both Draupadi and her father liked his appearance, and the prize was about to be awarded to him. On the other hand, the baffled suitors set no limits to their rage. Was royalty to be insulted in order that a Brahmin boy might be preferred? Sooner than permit it, they would slay the king and all his race, and burn his daughter in the flames. The scene of festivity was thus suddenly converted into a battle-field. Mainly by the prowess of Arjuna and his brothers, the princely suitors are defeated, and Draupadi becomes his bride.
The Pandus having declared themselves, were reinstated in their hereditary kingdom and Yudisthira, who, as the eldest brother, held the sovereignty, built a beautiful city called Indraprastha, on the site now occupied by Delhi. After a period of peace and prosperity a change took place. Yudisthira, forgetting his former moderation, became inflated with pride, and insisted that the neighbouring kings should do homage to him as their lord paramount. When they refused, he sent forth his brothers to compel them by force. He thus succeeded in his object, and a day was fixed on which the kings were to bring tribute, and acknowledge their inferiority, by doing some act of menial service. The Curus professed acquiescence in these proceedings, but the old enmity was rankling in their hearts. Not venturing to manifest it by open hostility, they adopted a method which was at once safer and more effective. Yudisthira had a propensity for gambling, and the Curus taking advantage of it, led him on from stake to stake, till he pledged his kingdom for twelve years. He lost, and he and his brothers were in consequence forced into exile.
When the twelve years had elapsed, the Pandus claimed restitution of their kingdom, but were answered with scorn, and told that they should not have as much as would cover the point of a needle. There was therefore no alternative but force. As this was meant to be the decisive struggle, alliances were sought in the most distant quarters, and there was not a king between the Himalaya and the ocean who was not enlisted on one or other of the sides. The Curus had gained one great advantage. Drona’s hatred to the King of Panchala was greater than his attachment to his old favourite pupils; and therefore, since the Pandus, by the marriage of Draupadi, had made common cause with her father, the Curus had little difficulty in persuading Drona to become the leader of their host. This advantage was more than counterbalanced by another which the Pandus had gained. Krishna was their steady friend, and, when the battle was about to be waged, took his place beside Arjuna as his charioteer. Wonderful displays of prowess were made on both sides. Drona, disdaining the place of safety which his position allotted to him, appeared in front, on a car framed by immortal art, and, supported by the redoubtable Kerna, drove back the Pandus “like clouds before the gale.” Arjuna and his charioteer did equal execution upon the Curus. At last, after the struggle had been maintained for eighteen days, the Pandus proved victors, but at a very heavy loss, which so grieved Yudisthira, that after placing the younger members of the family on the thrones of Hastinapura and Indraprastha, he set out with his brothers and Draupadi for Mount Meru, expecting that he might thus reach Indra’s heaven, and there find the repose which had been denied them on earth. The journey was long and disastrous. After coming in sight of the lofty Himavat, crossing it, and getting a distant view of rocky Meru, lying beyond a sea of sand, Draupadi was killed by falling on the face of the earth. By a similar fate, or “pierced through with sorrow,” four of the brothers perished, and Yudisthira was left alone, followed by his faithful dog. He moves on, never casting a look behind, and at last Indra appears, and bids him ascend.
The king refuses, unless Draupadi and his brothers who had died go with him. On being assured that he will find them there before him, he asks that his dog may accompany him. Indra, scandalized at such a request, answers, “My heaven is no place for dogs.” The king, however, insists, and the difficulty, after it had become apparently insurmountable, is removed by the dog himself. He was not what he seemed to be, but Yama in disguise, and now assumes his proper form. Even in heaven Yudisthira is disappointed. On looking round, he not only misses Draupadi and his brothers, but sees his cousins, the hated and hating Curus. This was no heaven for him; and he has made up his mind to exchange its joys for the gloom of the shades below, when the scene suddenly changes. All that he had yet beheld was illusion, designed to try his faith. The illusion vanished, he suddenly finds himself with his friends, in the possession of immortal bliss.
As an epic, judged by the strict rules of art, the Mahabharata is still more defective than the Ramayana. Not only does it sin more against unity, and present simultaneously a series of subjects which distract the reader, and make it often difficult for him to ascertain which of them is principal and which only subordinate; but many of the episodes introduced have no visible connection with the main story, and are much more allied to didactic than to epic poetry. One of them, the Bhagavat Gita, is an exposition of the doctrines of a particular school of theology; and though in itself a work of great merit, has no title to the place which it now occupies, since it must have been written in the seventh or eighth century, and therefore in all probability seven or eight hundred years later than the main body of the poem. The poetry of the Mahabharata is loudly praised, not merely by oriental scholars, but by such competent judges as Milman and Schlegel, who have furnished specimens which justify their encomiums. The only extract which we can afford to introduce here is from the description of the last great battle between the Pandus and Curus. The translation is by Professor Wilson:—
“Now, as on either side the hosts advanced,
A sudden tumult filled the sky; earth shook;
Chafed by wild winds, the sands upcurled to heaven,
And spread a veil before the sun. Blood fell
In showers; shrill-screaming kites and vultures winged
The darkling air, while howling jackals hung
Around the march, impatient for their meal;
And ever and anon the thunder roar’d,
And angry lightnings flash’d across the gloom,
Or blazing meteors fearful shot to earth.
Regardless of these awful signs, the chiefs
Rushed on to mutual slaughter, and the peal
Of shouting hosts commingling shook the world.
Contending warriors, emulous for victory
And great in arms, wielded the sharp-edged sword,
And hurled the javelin; frequent flew the dart,
And countless arrows canopied the combat.”
The Hindoos boast of many other poets of more modern date, and make mention in particular of nine who lived at Oojein, under a celebrated prince, of the name of Vicramaditya, and are said, in oriental hyperbole, to have shone like jewels around his throne. It is evident from the wide difference in the dates of the transactions ascribed to his reign that there must have been several sovereigns of the name; but the one who appears, from the splendour of his court, and the number of distinguished literary men whom he gathered around him, and liberally patronized, to have made the strongest impression on his own age, and also on posterity, flourished about the middle of the first century before the Christian era. Of the nine jewels, the most celebrated is Kalidasa, whose Meghaduta, or “Cloud Messenger,” and Ritusanhara, or “Circle of the Seasons,” are characterized as excellent specimens of descriptive poetry. The former, founded on the very fanciful idea that a spirit banished from heaven sends a message to his consort, has long been a special favourite in India. The messenger employed is a cloud, and the spirit in directing his course describes the various countries over which it will be necessary to pass. In this way full scope is given for introducing all the varieties of landscape, the most renowned cities, the characters of their inhabitants, and even many of the legends connected with their history. The exiled spirit, at the same time, often calling to mind the happiness he had once enjoyed, and lamenting the loss of it, ever and anon indulges in early remembrance, and draws splendid pictures of the heavenly mansions.
The Hindoos appear not to have possessed any poetry to which the name of pastoral could be properly applied, till a comparatively recent period. The Gita Govinda, a collection of songs in which the loves of Krishna are celebrated, was written in the fourteenth century; but the author, Jaya Deva, has succeeded so well in accommodating his muse to the superstitious spirit, as well as the voluptuous tastes of his countrymen, that he is, perhaps, the most popular of all their authors. His merits, however, are not equal to his popularity, and his luxuriant imagery often fails to compensate for his feebleness and conceits. There is another species of literature in which the Hindoos may more justly boast both of excellence and originality. Their fables and tales are undoubtedly the sources from which the nations both of the East and West have derived almost all that they possess in this department. The most ancient known fables, those of Bidpai, occur almost entire in the Sanskrit “Hitopadesha,” which was published by Mr. Wilkins; and the invention of the scheme of story-telling exemplified in the Arabian Nights, as well as the subject and materials of many of the most celebrated tales, are justly claimed for India.
The only other species of literature which remains to be noticed, is that of the drama. In this department the two most celebrated names are those of Kalidasa, mentioned above as one of the ornaments of Vicramaditya’s court, though he probably lived some centuries later, and of Bhavabhuti, who flourished in the eighth century. To each of them only three dramas are ascribed, and of four of these excellent English translations have appeared. The Sakontala, the most celebrated production of Kalidasa, was early made familiar to Europe by the translation of Sir William Jones, and has recently been translated anew by Monier Williams, from a much more accurate copy of the original. It abounds in fine poetical description, and in many of its scenes displays the utmost tenderness and delicacy. The Vikramorvasi, or the “Hero and the Nymph,” also by Kalidasa, has been translated by Professor Wilson, and is distinguished by the same qualities, though perhaps in an inferior degree. Bhavabhuti, in addition to Kalidasa’s tenderness and exuberant fancy, possesses a vigour and sublimity which are exceedingly rare in Hindoo literature. His most celebrated drama is Malati and Madhava. Malati, the heroine, is daughter of the prime minister of Malwah; Madhava, the hero, is son of the King of Behar, who sends him to Oojein, the capital of Malwah, to study logic under a celebrated female Buddhist, who had been Malati’s nurse, and still continues to be her confidante. Her logic soon becomes the least attractive of Madhava’s studies, and a mutual attachment is formed, which gives rise to incidents of a singular and interesting nature. Oojein, as seen from a neighbouring height, is thus described under its ancient name of Padmavati:—
“How wide the prospect spreads—mountain and rock,
Towns, villages, and woods, and glittering streams.
There where the Para and the Sindhu wind,
The towers, and pinnacles, and gates,
And spires of Padmavati, like a city
Precipitated from the skies, appear
Inverted in the pure translucent wave.
There flows Lavana’s frolic stream, whose groves,
By early rains refreshed, afford the youth
Of Padmavati pleasant haunts, and where,
Upon the herbage brightening in the shower,
The heavy-udder’d kine contented browse.”
As a specimen of the darker colouring which Bhavabhuti frequently employs, the following passage from a wild goblin scene will bear quotation:—
“And now I see the goblin host; each stalks
On legs like palm-trees—a gaunt skeleton,
Whose fleshless bones are bound by starting sinews,
And scantily cased in black and shrivell’d skin;
Like tall and wither’d trees, by lightning scathed,
They move, and as amidst their sapless trunks
The mighty serpent curls, so in each mouth,
Wide-yawning, rolls the vast blood-dripping tongue.”
These extracts are taken from Professor Wilson’s Hindoo Theatre, which contains translations of most of the other Hindoo dramas possessed of any interest, and furnishes full information on the whole subject in the introduction and the explanatory notes. One circumstance on which the drama considered as a representation of national character, depends, is unfortunately wanting in the case of Hindoo plays. With the exception of occasional passages, they were composed in Sanskrit at a time when it had ceased to be a living language, and had of course become unintelligible to the great body of the people. From this fact we may easily infer another—that the plays were intended only for select audiences, and for a single performance on some special occasion. There was no stage, as with us, where the same piece might be again and again repeated, and where every one who chose to pay the fee for admission had a right to be present, but only some temporary stage erected within the great hall or inner court of a palace, into which none but invited guests durst presume to enter. The author having thus no public taste to consult, could very imperfectly perform the office which Hamlet attributes to the player, to show “the very age and body of the time his form and pressure.” If he succeeded in pleasing his patron his object was gained, and it was superfluous to look beyond it. It may be owing to this want of the popular element, and the encouragement which would have accompanied it, that though some Hindoo plays certainly were written before the Christian era, and during the eighteen hundred years which have since elapsed many more must have been demanded by grandees, to form part of particular festivities, the whole number now extant does not exceed sixty. The drama, therefore, how important soever it may have been deemed in early times, does not hold any prominent place in modern Hindoo literature.
In the fine arts, comprehending music, painting, sculpture, and architecture, the Hindoos cannot take high ground. The science of music was in early times reduced to a system, and the Hindoos themselves are so satisfied with their proficiency in it as to affirm, “that the Europeans are superior to them in everything except music.” 1
Few who have listened to it subscribe to this opinion. Their melodies are distinguished by a peculiar sweetness and plaintiveness, and when sung by a single voice or accompanied only by the vina, or Indian lyre, are very pleasing; but unfortunately, when a concert is given, the usual accompaniments are fiddles, and drums beaten with the fingers, which would completely drown the voices of the singers, if they did not have recourse to a kind of unnatural screeching. This at least is the only music which the Europeans are in the way of hearing; but it is said that it is not a fair specimen, and that the performers “are regarded by their scientific brethren in much the same light as a ballad-singer at the corner of the street by the primo soprano of the Italian opera.”
The mythology of the Hindoos furnishing innumerable subjects for painting and sculpture, it might have been expected that these arts would be in great demand, and would consequently have made rapid progress. This is not the case. The productions are numerous, but they display no proficiency. “Painting,” to use the language of Mr. Elphinstone, 2 “is still in the lowest stage. Walls of houses are often painted in water colours, and sometimes in oils. The subjects are mythology, battles, processions, wrestlers, male and female figures, and animals, with no landscape, or at best a tree or two, or a building, stuck in without any knowledge of perspective, or any attention to light and shade.” They are more successful with pictures of a smaller size, painted in a sort of distemper, in which likenesses or the scenes of daily life are exhibited with accuracy, as well as with some freedom both of design and expression. Sculptures, executed in connection with prevailing superstitions, are innumerable. Besides images standing apart, all temples are covered internally, and, when not caves, externally also, with statues and high reliefs. Some of the latter are spirited, and display taste in their figures, attitudes, and expressions. In none of these, however, is there the least knowledge of anatomical skill indicated; even the external appearance of the muscles and limbs is disregarded, and the proportions are so inaccurate that it would be ludicrous to institute any comparison between the best of Indian sculptures and those which in Europe rank only as second-rate. One great obstacle in India has arisen from the nature of the objects represented. In Greece, the deities, however great the attributes ascribed to them, had human shapes, and the artist had only to select from models which were constantly under his eye, and make them ideally perfect. The Indian artist had a very different task. The objects which he had to represent were mere monsters of incongruous shapes, and often of hideous aspects. To give them an attractive appearance was impossible, and he was not even permitted to attempt it, since the more repulsive they were the better did they accord with the popular belief. The Hindoo artist, obliged to gratify this deprived taste, must have been strongly tempted to substitute mere mechanical dexterity for all other kinds of excellence.
On the subject of Hindoo architecture opinions are much divided. Some, denying that it has any just claim to originality, think that they have discovered in Egypt the models of the most venerable of Indian structures; while others, allowing themselves to be imposed upon by a fabulous chronology, assign dates which the structures themselves, and the historical events visibly stamped on them, completely disprove. Avoiding both extremes, we may readily admit that the Hindoos have from a very early period possessed an architecture which is peculiarly their own, and is embodied in written treatises as a regular system.
These treatises, bearing collectively the name of Silpa Sastra, or “Science of Manual Arts,” are said to have been sixty-four in number, and were supposed by Sir William Jones to furnish instruction in as many distinct trades. It would seem, however, from the Essay on the Architecture of the Hindoos, published by Ram Raz, under the auspices of the Royal Asiatic Society, that several of the treatises are devoted to the same subject, and more especially to architecture, to which various other arts were held to be subservient. As has happened in India in other instances, the progress of architecture from earlier to more recent times has been retrograde, and the Sanskrit works which treated of it have in a great measure disappeared. After careful search, Ram Raz was only able to recover portions of a few, and these so mutilated and full of errors that he does not venture to describe them as anything better than “shattered remains.” By far the most complete was a work entitled Manasara; but of the fifty-eight chapters into which it appears from the table of contents to be divided, the copy which he procured contains only forty-one. From these, and fragmentary portions of those other works, all the information given in his essay was derived, and therefore, in the use of it, some degree of caution is necessary. He has not been able to fix the date either of his manuscripts or of the originals, in a satisfactory manner; and there is necessarily a lurking suspicion that a more thorough acquaintance with their history might not raise them in our estimation. Still, they are certainly sufficient for the purpose for which they are here adduced. Taken in connection with the structures which have been actually reared in accordance with their rules, they make it impossible to doubt that among the Hindoos architecture early attained great proficiency, and besides being practised as an art, was studied as a science. The systematic form which it assumed cannot be better explained than by giving a short account of the manner in which it is treated in the Manasara.
After a series of introductory chapters on mensuration—on the qualifications of a silpi, or manual artist—on the kinds of soils to be preferred as building sites—on the mode of ascertaining the four cardinal points by means of a sundial, so as to make the walls astronomically true—on the laying out of ground plans for cities, towns, temples, palaces, and private dwellings—on the sacrifices and other religious acts to be performed before any building is actually undertaken—and on the ceremonies which ought to be observed in laying the foundation stone—the subject of architecture, properly so called, is entered upon, and all the separate parts of which a building is composed, their forms, their dimensions, and the proportions which these ought to bear to each other, are minutely explained. Thus one chapter is devoted to pedestals, another to basements, another to pillars or shafts, and another to entablatures. In determining these four principal parts, a great variety of forms is recognized; but the measure invariably used in fixing their relative heights is the diameter of the shaft. Thus it is said that the base may be the height of a whole, or of three-fourths, or of one-half of a diameter; and that pillars, besides being of various forms, as square, round, or octagonal, plain or variously fluted, may be of seven different kinds, according as they measure in height any number of diameters from six to twelve. No proper orders of architecture are recognized. The above varying proportions between the thickness and the height of pillars constitute the only essential differences; while the capitals and other ornaments, instead of being subjected to strict rules, as in Grecian and Roman architecture, are left in a great measure optional. After describing the principal parts of every building, the Manasara proceeds to treat of complete structures, as temples and palaces. No fewer than twelve successive chapters are devoted to descriptions of temples surmounted by pyramidal domes, and consisting of from one to twelve stories. In another work called the Casyalpa, the number of stories is extended to sixteen. These pyramidal temples or vimanas are constructed on the plan of diminishing in breadth at each successive story, and terminating in a cupola surmounted by a pinnacle. All the stories may be uniformly square, oblong, circular, oval, or polygonal, or they may be of a mixed nature, part of one form and part of another. They may also be of the same, or of different materials, and receive different names accordingly—a vimana of a single material, as brick or stone, being called sudha, or pure—of two materials, as stone and brick, or stone and metal, misra, or mixed—and of three or more kinds of materials, sancirna, or anomalous. Other more minute distinctions are recognized, and different names are given, according as the idol of the temple receives a standing, a sitting, or a recumbent posture.
Temples generally consist of the garbhagriha, literally the womb of the house, the antarala, or ante-temple, and the ardha mantapa, or front portico. In fixing their respective dimensions, the whole length of the building is divided into four and a half, or six parts—two, two and a half, or three of these being given to the garbhagriha, one and a half or two to the antarala, and one or one and a half to the ardha mantapa. The heights of the vimanas bear a certain fixed proportion to these breadths. Thus, when there is only one story, the height measured from the base to the apex, exclusive of the pedestal, is equal to one and a half of the breadth, and when there are two or three stories, the height is twice the breadth. In apportioning the different parts of the whole heights many subdivisions are made. Thus, in a vimana of twelve stories, the whole height is divided into eighty-seven parts. Of these four are given to the base, eight to the pillar, and four to the entablature of the first story—seven to the pillar, and three and a half to the entablature of the second story—six to the pillar, and three to the entablature of the third story; and so on, gradually diminishing in each successive story. On arriving at the last story, one part is to be given to the upper base, two to the cantha or neck of the cupola, three to the cupola itself, and one and a half to the pinnacle.
In subsequent chapters of the Manasara various adjuncts and appendages of temples are described with equal minuteness. Thus one chapter is devoted to outer courts, another to gopuras or pyramidal gateways, another to sulas or halls, another to porticoes, and another to stances for deities. The concluding chapters are somewhat miscellaneous in their contents, and seem to follow each other without any distinct principle of arrangement. Hence, after several chapters properly enough devoted to cities, private dwellings, gates and doorways, palaces and their appendages, the fortieth abruptly announces its subject to be “of princes, with their titles.” This is followed by chapters treating in succession of the building of cars and other vehicles of the gods, couches and cushions, and thrones for the gods and for princes. The forty-fourth chapter bears more directly on the subject, for it treats of ornamental arches; but the next is completely away from it, and treats of the “Calpataru, or the all-productive tree which is supposed to be planted in India’s heaven, and to supply all the wants of those who have the happiness of taking shelter under it.” It is needless to continue the detail of contents any further than to mention that the fifty-eighth chapter, the last of all, concludes “with rules for chiselling the eyes of the statue” of each god, and “the ceremonies to be performed on the occasion.” From the rules of the art a natural transition leads to their exemplification in practice; and we shall therefore conclude the notice of the architecture of the Hindoos with a brief account of some of their most celebrated structures.
As the earliest, and in some respects also the most interesting specimens of Indian architecture, the rock-cut temples and monasteries, the former called chaityas and the other viharas, first claim attention. Strictly speaking, they are not Hindoo but Buddhist, the oldest of them having unquestionably originated with the worshippers of Buddha. Still, as on the expulsion of the Buddhists, their temples were appropriated by their persecutors, and also furnished the models of similar structures for Brahminical worship, there is no great inaccuracy in classing them as if they had originally been Hindoo. They exist in so many localities that nearly fifty different groups are counted, and the number of distinct specimens has been estimated at not less than a thousand. Their geographical distribution is singular. Nine-tenths of the known groups are situated within the presidency of Bombay, while the other presidencies possess only three groups, of which one only, that of Mahabalipooram or Mahavellipore, belongs to Madras, and two, those of Behar and Orissa, to Bengal. In this unequal distribution some have endeavoured to find a confirmation of the hypothesis that Egypt and Ethiopia, lying nearest to that part of India where the cave-temples are most numerous, furnished it with the original models of them; but Mr. Fergusson, though once inclined to this opinion, now thinks the localities of the caves sufficiently accounted for by the nature of the strata. “The whole cave district of India,” he says, “is composed of horizontal strata of amygdaloid and other cognate trap formations, generally speaking of very considerable thickness and great uniformity of texture, and possessing, besides, the advantage of their edges being generally exposed in perfectly perpendicular cliffs, so that no rock in the world could either be more suited for the purpose, or more favourably situated than these formations are. They were easily accessible and easily worked. In the rarest possible instances are there any flaws or faults to disturb the uniformity of the design; and when complete, they afford a perfectly dry temple or abode, singularly uniform in temperature, and more durable than any class of temple found in any other part of the world. With these advantages, we need hardly look further for an explanation of the phenomenon, though some collateral points of explanation may perhaps reveal themselves to future explorers.”
Referring to the illustrations of cave-temples which have been already given in pages 17-19, vol. i., of our History, we now select for fuller description the cave at Karli, situated on the road between Bombay and Poonah. It is not the oldest, for the date assigned to it is the first century of our era, but it has other important recommendations. It is the largest, as well as the most complete, and seems to have been executed when the style was in its greatest purity. It is approached by a narrow path, winding among trees, brushwood, and fragments of rocks, and entered by three doorways, the one in the centre leading to the main area or nave, and the others to the side aisles. Immediately above the doorways is a gallery, from the extremities of which springs an arch in the form of a horse-shoe. This arch left open forms the only window for the admission of light. The outer porch is closed in front by a screen, composed of two stout octagonal pillars, which support what is now only a plain mass of rock, but is understood to have once been faced with a richly ornamented wooden gallery. In advance of these pillars is a shaft with thirty-two faces or flutes, known by the name of the Lion Pillar, from having a capital surmounted by four lions. A space on the opposite side, where another similar pillar probably stood, is at present occupied by a little temple. The interior measures 126 feet in length, 45 feet 7 inches in breadth, and from 42 to 45 feet in height. It consists of a nave and two aisles, each of them separated from it by a row of fifteen pillars. Towards the extremity, opposite the entrance, is an apse or semi-dome, round which the aisles are continued by a curve of seven smaller pillars. Immediately under the semi-dome of the apse is the shrine, consisting of a plain dome, slightly stilted on a circular drum, and surmounted by a terminal, on which a wooden umbrella, decayed and distorted by age, still stands.
The pillars of the aisles have each “a tall base, an octagonal shaft, and a richly ornamented capital, on which kneel two elephants, each bearing two figures, generally a man and a woman, but sometimes two females, all very much better executed than such ornaments usually are.” Four pillars, two on each side of the entrance-gallery, differ considerably from those forming the aisles, and the seven which curve behind the apse are plain octagonal shafts, without base or capital. The roof is semicircular, but being somewhat stilted where it springs from the summit of the pillars, has a greater height than a semi-diameter. From a series of wooden ribs which still cross it, and appear to be as old as the whole excavation, it is inferred that the whole roof was originally of wood, and therefore the existing roof could not have been intended as a copy of a masonry arch. The general effect is thus described by Mr. Fergusson: “The absence of wooden ornaments, as well as our ignorance of the mode in which this temple was finished laterally, and the porch joined to the main temple, prevents us from judging of the effect of the front in its perfect state. But the proportions of such parts as remain are so good, and the effect of the whole so pleasing, that there can be little hesitation in ascribing to such a design a tolerably high rank among architectural compositions. Of the interior we can judge perfectly, and it is certainly as solemn and grand as any interior can well be, and the mode of lighting the most perfect—one undivided volume of light coming through a single opening overhead, at a very favourable angle, and falling directly on the altar or principal object in the building, leaving the rest in comparative obscurity. The effect is considerably heightened by the closely-set and thick columns that divide the three aisles from one another, as they suffice to prevent the boundary walls from ever being seen, and as there are no openings in the walls, the view between the pillars is practically unlimited.”
The formation of temples out of the solid rock has not been confined to the process of excavation. In some cases the solid rock has not only been hollowed out, but hewn down into shape, and ornamented so as to present externally, as well as internally, all the features of a magnificent and gorgeous structure. Some remarkable specimens are furnished by what are called the Raths, or Seven Pagodas of Mahabalipooram, situated near Sadras, about halfway between Madras and Pondicherry. The name is given to seven masses of granite which protrude from the sands near the seashore, and have been carved and hollowed by the Hindoos into isolated structures. One of them is an exact representation of a Buddhist monastery of