During our last session I did myself the pleasure of presenting to the Society an autobiographical sketch of Nana Farnevis; and of elucidating the character of Madhu Rao the Great, the prince of Poona, from a series of original letters, principally in his own handwriting.

The interest which those papers excited fully proves, that the biography of celebrated men is an object not only deserving your attention, but, I may venture to say, is also one of the most pleasing forms in which information regarding the inhabitants of the East can well be conveyed to the learned of the West. It is this conviction that has induced me to submit to you the following sketch of the life of the great Muhamedan historian of India, commonly known by the name of Ferishta, with some account of his writings; and I feel assured that your attention will be more completely roused, when you know that his work, now lying before me, has lately been translated, and will in a few days, I trust, be open to your inspection, and submitted for your judgment and approval.

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

It was in the month of February 1824 that, while on leave from my regiment, and travelling about the province of Berar, I visited the extraordinary excavations of Adjunta, situated in lat. 20° 25′ N. and Ion. 76° 12′ E. These, though I believe hitherto undescribed, are as much deserving of a separate publication as the far-famed temples of Ellora; and though I spent only a few hours in their gloomy recesses, yet I saw enough to convince me that they are well worthy of a more minute investigation, and a lengthened sojourn amongst them.

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

Amongst those sciences which, after a long interval of ignorance and barbarity, were revived by the Mahomedan Arabs, astronomy ranks very high; and it cannot be denied, that had not the Arabs applied themselves to it with great assiduity and zeal, and encouraged all that served to promote its dissemination and advancement, after it had remained almost totally forgotten from the time of Ptolemy, the application to its study would, perhaps, never have extended over so large a portion of the globe as it has done. Although the pagan inhabitants of Arabia, before the time of Islamism, were in the habit of observing the stars, many of which they knew, and denominated by names taken from pastoral life, and several of which they even worshipped as visible gods, yet of a scientific knowledge of astronomy among them no traces can be discovered. The revival, therefore, of this celestial science, was principally attributable to their Mahomedan successors, who introduced its study into Arabia, at a time when the countries around them were immersed in the most deplorable state of mental darkness, which could only be dissipated by slow degrees.

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

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

In the arrangement of our subject, it may perhaps be useful to preserve so much regard to method, as to treat of it separately, under the two following heads:

Part I. Versification, or the particular rules which prevail in the mere construction of lines, couplets, and stanzas; and the sources whence these derive their melody and rythm.

Part II. A general view of the style and spirit of Chinese poetry, the character of its imagery and sentiment, and the extent to which it seems to admit of a precise classification, relatively to the divisions and nomenclature adopted in European literature.

To such as should find the first portion of our treatise dry and technical in its details, the second may possibly prove more attractive: but the order of discussion could hardly be inverted with propriety.

The first intimation of any intercourse by embassies between the courts of Dehli and Constantinople occurs in the reign of Suliman the Lawgiver, in the year 1536; when Burhân, the son of Sikandar, the king of Dehli, sought refuge at the Ottoman Porte from the displeasure of Humayun. In Ferdi's excellent history of Sultan Suliman'S reign is the following account of this event:

“Burhan Beg, the son of Sikandar, king of Hindustan, ruined by the “invasions of the Jagataïan armies, fled to the Sublime Porte; where he “was honoured by being allowed to kiss the imperial hand, and was pro-“vided with a daily pension of three hundred aspers.”

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

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

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

In presenting to the Royal Asiatic Society the four accompanying representations of the Ellora Sculptures, in continuation of those which I had the honour of submitting last session, I have to regret that, from the very scanty and imperfect intelligence procurable on the spot, I am unable to attach to some of them any descriptive notice that would be at all satisfactory.

Many principles and forms of the religion of the Lamas are evidently borrowed from that of the Hindoos. They have similar ceremonies performed on the banks of rivers, and the Ganges is held in equal veneration, A little of its water is a most valuable acquisition to one of their faquires or pilgrims, who carries it in a small brass or silver bottle, carefully corked, and tied to his girdle. Their supreme deity, called indiscriminately by the name Sijamony, Mahamony, and Sejatoba, is said to have been brought many ages ago by one of the superior Lamas from Benares, and others of them must have been of foreign extraction; for although plainly drawn and carved as females, the priests will not allow them of that sex; and often, as they think, decide the distinction with a pair of whiskers, when the turn of the features and swell of the bosom shew whiskers to be misapplied.

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

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

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

During my residence in North Hampshire, in the years 1819–20, I was led to pay considerable attention to a race of vagrant men, who, roaming about the high roads and lanes in the vicinity of Waltham, Overton, and Whitchurch, appear almost to be out of the protection of the law (whether in this or any other country), and are known throughout the world under the varied names—

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

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