Page:The Indian Antiquary, Vol. 4-1875.djvu/300

September, 1875.] BOOK NOTICES. 285 use of Gunpowder in India, is a reprint, with some alterations and additions by Sir H. Elliot himself. The comments on the Institutes nf Jahangir, and the Bibliographic;-. ire also his work. The extracts from the ShashFat'h-i Kdngrd were pre- pared under his superintendence; those from a biographical work of 'Ahdu-1 Hakk Dehlawi were made by MajorA. R, Fuller, and the editor has supplied an oft-expressed want by giving a com- plete translation of the Introduction to Firishta's great history. The volume will be found very valuable fof study of the particular period to which ic relates, but we cannot but express disappointment that the materials supplied are given in so very frag- mentary a form ; many of tho works from which cts are translated would be quite unworthy of translation in full, and perhaps none of them are very deserving of this, but one of the best might have been selected for nearly entire trans- lation, with summaries of all the omissions, and the extracts from other works made to do duty in the more subordinate form of notes to this test. The objections in the way of this would have been most trivial in comparison with the ndvu:. to the general reader. Then much of the materials left ready to hand by Sir H. M. Elliot is being passed over because, in the editor's opinion, it id not sufficiently important to be published: a certain amount of judgment in this matter he ought doubtless to exercise, but no one, however well read in history, can Bay infallibly what 6crap of information may or may not come to be of importance, and it would be much better that he gave us rather too much than too little of the MS. that lies ready to his hand — -summarizing what he does not think at all worth printing in externa, that his readers may know the real character and contents of the omissions. But the greatest defect volumes such as these could have is the entire absence of ifidfiEBS, ud even of analytical tables of contents. This on; tt little creditable either to editor or pub- lishers,— as a good index is realty indispensable for reference to volumes -such as these, filled with ox tracts nt the moat varied contents, and treating again and again, under different authors, of tho personages and events. . Wiscoif, or Eiamplcs of fchfl ReHgious, Fhiloao- E- .1 Doctnnn <,f the Hindu * : with a brief 'istoryxf thech:if Depnitmeot* of Sanskrit Liter uuttarae Hseoaot of the F«t4 nd Present Condition of India Masai and Intellectual. By Homer Will nskrit in the Ucitorsity of t ' (London • Vf. H. Allen, 1875.) object of this book is briefly stated i: prefare. ami is a reply to the question, Is it possible to obtain from any one book a good ral idea of tho character and contra Sanskrit literature P Is it possible to get an in- sight into the mind, habits of thought, and customs of the great Hindu people, and a correct knowledge of a system of belief and practice which has pre- vailed for three thousand years ? No one volume assuredly did contain a f of such knowledge, and wo are satisfied that any one who wonld have the patience to dip into five hundred and odd pages, either systematically u a student, or cursorily as an amateur, wonld not fail to rise up with a feeling of pleasureful wonder at the intellectual phenomenon of an isolated literature of such expansion and such variety, yet free from contact with the outer world. The Hindu sage borrowed nothing, Unit- nothing, was even aware of the existence of nothing beyond the limits of his literary conscious- ness and the peculiar bent of his own genius. In the dawn of his intellectual life ho composed Vedic hymns and elaborated a system of nature- wor si rip -. to preserve the correct understanding of these treasures, he composed a system of commentaries and spun a web of grammar the like of which the world has never seen. As he ad vane self-consciousness, different orders of Hindu minds worked out different systems of philosophy, religious, aomo opposed to all religions. As eel, generation overlaid the work of its predecessor, new dogmas arose, new modes of treatment of old doctrines, new definitions, new hair-splitting, which few can understand without contracting a headache, and the majority of mankind could not understand at all. A later age began to make laws and codify laws, to construct a cast-iron system for the con- trol of all future generations, the strangling oi all new ideas, the arrest of all possible pro- Vain effort at Benares as at Rome ! At the same time the fonnt of poetry, which lies at the bottom of the hearts of all nations, burst forth into mag- nifloent epics in glorification of the heroes and demigods of the past: to them, in due course, succeeded the drama, and a class of poems which may be called elegiac, or lyric, and prose-wri of a didactic character. Last of all were the legend- ary talcs and traditions, written in a later age to prop up tho uncompromising pantheism to which centuries of intellectual isolation and philo- Eophica] eonc.it, had reduced the Hindu, in spite of his fine intellect, unwearied industry, and magnificent literature. Of genuine hiBtory there is not one reliable fragment. And the whole of this literature is clothe Sanskrit, a language of unrivalled force, variety, and flexibility, wonderfully preserved, considering that for many centuries the Vedic hymns were