of beholding the godhead in its real nature. Krishna assents to his petition, and purifies his eyesight for the insupportable vision— • Behold my million forms divine, of every kind, and shape, and hue; Wonders ne'er seen to mortal eye, thou shalt behold, O Bharata. Yet with thine earthly vision thou that mystic sight mayst not behold; I give to thee an eye divine, to gaze on all my mysteries.' The veil of mortal sense is instantaneously removed-the god appears as he is 'As from a thousand suns the light were blazing over all the heaven, Even such the full magnificence of that o'er-weening splendour shone. The unity of all the worlds, and all their multiformity, Embodied in the god of gods, at once the son of Pandu saw.' In an agony of terror, his hair uplift, his head on high, his hands clasped in supplication, Arjuna addresses the awful being'All beings, God, in thee I see, and every animated tribe, And Brahma on his lotus throne, and all the wise and heavenly HostI see thee with thy countless arms, and sides, and visages, and eyes, Infinite on every side, without beginning, middle, end. Thou wear'st the crown, thou wield'st the club, the fatal disc-on side every Intense, immeasurable light, in every part a blazing sun.' The poet dwells much longer on the magnificence of the vision, but at length the deity assumes a more terrific appearance for as all things emanate from, so all things are re-absorbed into this universal being. He is not only the creator and origin, but likewise the destroyer and the termination of created things, and is represented as a being into whose immense and horrid jaws the whole human race precipitates itself and is swallowed up Even as the torrent rivers pour to ocean's all-absorbing flood, Thy form primeval I would know, yet may not guess thy dread design.' The god replies, and brings back the whole description to the part from whence they set forth, closing, as he began, with the same fearful lesson of inexorable fatalism : Time, the destroyer I, prepared t' extinguish all yon armed host; Save thou, shall not a man survive in that proud battle line arrayedWherefore, arise, the glory win-defeat the foe-enjoy the throne. By me already are they slain, fate's passive instrument art thouSlay Dron and Bhishma, Jagathrath, and Karm, and all the valiant host; Strike them, already struck by me, be fearless and be conqueror.' We subscribe to the opinion of Baron Humboldt, that the seven concluding cantos of this remarkable poem are by a different hand, perhaps perhaps of a later philosophy. To us, as poetical critics, they appear less vigorous and imaginative-and, however full of very curious information as to the philosophical tenets of the Brahminical religion, mar the kind of unity which seems to combine and centre on one purpose the bolder and more complete outline which is comprehended in the earlier cantos. Nor can we afford space for any detailed examination of these later books. On the whole, the Bhagavat-Gita is certainly one of the most curious, and the most characteristic works, which we have received from the East. As a record of religious and philosophical opinion it is invaluable; and if the progress of Sanscrit criticism should hereafter be able to fix, with any certainty, the date of this episode of the Maha Bharatâ, it would throw light on the whole history of Indian civilization. We pass now to a poem of an entirely opposite description,one which reminds us more of our own Spenser than of the Lucretian or Empedoclean tone of the Bhagavat-Gita. The Nalus or Nala, is another episode of the vast Mahâ Bharatâ, and has been translated into Latin by Franz Bopp, and into German verse by Kosegarten. A part of the poem has likewise been translated into German verse by the original editor. It is a poem full of the most pathetic interest; and if any portion of Indian song, hitherto translated into the European languages, is likely to arrest general attention, it is this beautiful tale, which wants only a poet's hand to transplant it in its living freshness to our foreign climate. We must, indeed, acknowledge that, in general, Indian poetry is scarcely ever likely to become popular in Europe. The causes are obvious.-Poetry, which departs from what we may call the vernacular idiom of thought and feeling, must content itself with being the treasured delight of the few;-if it speaks a dialect in the least foreign or learned, or requires a more than ordinarily vivid imagination to transport us into the new world which it opens before us; if it not only awakes no old delightful associations, but depends upon others which are altogether alien to our habits and usual tone of thinking, it must win its way, even if successfully, very slowly; nor is it at any time likely to become completely naturalized among the general mass of readers. Of our own great poets-Milton and Spenser cannot, strictly speaking, be said to be popular ;-nothing but the universal nature of Shakspeare forces its way to all hearts. If, then, even with some of our own poets, certainly with those of other European countries, we often require a previous training of knowledge before we can enter into their real spirit, and there is constant danger, lest in this tardy process the life and the feeling which are essential to poetic enjoyment should have evaporated,-if when the understanding must have coldly inter preted preted before the heart and affections can catch the poet's meaning, -by that time the contagious fire, which ought to have communicated itself with electric rapidity, has died away, and can never hope to be rekindled,-how much more must this be the case with poetry born in a region with a different soil, a different heaven, as well as a different race of human beings? Such are the serious difficulties with which Indian poetry must strive. The face of external nature-the domain of the poet-in those more minute details which give life and reality to the fiction, is strange, unusual; if not demanding a perpetual and laborious comment, at least connected with no pleasurable associations. The gardens of England bloom with the same flowers as those which enamel the meadows of Italy and Greece, at least they bear the same names and excite the same emotions,-the roses, and lilies, and violets of southern song breathe, as it were, their familiar odours when transplanted into our northern climate,-they are the common property of all European poets. The laurels which wave over Delphi; the oaks of Dodona, the beech under which the shepherd Tityrus reclined,-constantly awaken agreeable and wellknown images. But take, on the other hand, the description of spring, translated from the hymns of Jayadeva, by Sir W. Jones: Now the hearts of damsels, whose lovers travel at a distance, are pierced with anguish.' [So far we have a common, and therefore pleasing, though trite observation, but what interest can we have in what follows?] While the blossoms of Bacul are conspicuous among the flowrets covered with bees, the Tamala, with leaves dark and odorous, claims a tribute from the musk which it vanquishes; and the clustering flowers of the Palasa resemble the nails of Cama, with which he rends the hearts of the young. The full-blown Cesara gleams like the sceptre of the world's monarch, Love; and the pointed thyrsi of the Cetasa resemble the darts by which lovers are wounded. See the branches of Patali flowers filled with bees, like the quiver of Samara filled with shafts; while the tender blossom of the Caruna smiles to see the whole world laying shame aside. The far-scented Madhavi beautifies the trees, round which it twines, and the fresh Mallicâ seduces with rich perfume even the hearts of hermits; while the Amra tree, with blooming tresses, is embraced by the gay creeper Atimacta, and the blue streams of Yamuna wind round the groves of Vrindhasa.' To an Indian ear, doubtless, this would be as delightful a landscape as Cowper's Garden to our own,-while to us it is even more barren and unmusical than Darwin's scientific botany to the uninitiate. The mythology, with which their poetry is as instinct as that of the ancient Greeks, presents to us but dark allusions, and either strange, or monstrous, or at least unknown forms. We are cradled in familiarity with the gods of Greece and Rome, their - their very haunted dwellings are sacred to the imagination,— Tempe and Arethusa, and Delphi and Helicon, are peopled with their tutelar deities, whose forms and attributes rise up at once before us ;-but we feel no sacred horror at the name of the holy mountain Meru: Troy and Thebes awaken far different trains of thought from Ayodhya and Vidarbha, of the form and the powers of Vishnu and Siva we know little, and that little indistinctly. Had the Indian mythological odes of Sir W. Jones been animated with a much higher and more daring vein of lyric inspiration, they would still have been weighed down by their cumbrous learning, they require a profound and regular course of study before we can enter into their merits. The Cloud Messenger of Calidasa, translated with considerable elegance by Mr. Wilson, is liable to the same objection; its beauty, after its very fine opening, consists in the description of places whose very names are full of poetry to the native ear, but to the European awaken no pleasing sentiment whatever. To a certain degree, then, Indian poetry must be to us learned or foreign-yet there are universal feelings, which lie in the very depth of our common nature,-affections and passions, of which the language is as universal as the shape and the lineaments of man; and when poetry, in however remote a region, speaks this general dialect of the heart, it will command attention and excite a pleasing or a thrilling interest. Such appears to us to be the case with the episode of Nala; and the purely Indian costume of the poetry, in this instance, only adds to its charms, by making us feel that we have before us a faithful transcript of native manners, which, instead of demanding much previous acquaintance with Indian usages, conveys to us much information in a very delightful way the Nala would require much fewer explanatory notes than any other piece of Oriental poetry. This poem likewise gives a very favourable view of the virtues of the Indian character. A nation, to whom the devoted conjugal fidelity of the wife of Nala is the ideal of female excellence, must have reached a high rank in moral culture; and the whole poem breathes that gentle, and humane, and pacific tone, which is so strikingly distinctive in all the earlier representations of the Indian native races. Mr. Southey, when, following the bent of his own genius, he indulged, in his Oriental epic, in those exquisite pictures of domestic love which are the peculiar charm of his poetry, was more true to Indian life than he himself perhaps supposed; for the poem of Nala was, we believe, altogether unknown in Europe at the time of the publication of the Curse of Kehama.' Nor is it mean praise to the Indian poet that so many centuries ago he should have equalled, in his conceptions of the moral elevation of the female character, the the Christian poet who has been most successful in delineating the domestic virtues. Nala, the monarch of Nishadha, centered in his person all the noble qualities which could distinguish an Indian monarch. He surpassed all kings in justice, all men in beauty, and he was unrivalled in the management of horses. Bhima, the king of Vidarbha (Berar), possessed an only daughter, the most beautiful and most modest of her sex-the gentle Damajanti. Like the knights and ladies of old, these two perfect beings become mutually enamoured from the fame each of the other's admirable qualities but instead of human ambassadors-the faithful squire or the adventurous handmaid,-Indian poetry furnishes the enamoured prince with a very different kind of confidante. Wandering in the woods, Nala beholds a flock of birds with golden wings, who offer to convey the tidings of his passion to the ear of the princess. Nala could not refuse a proposal so courteous, and at the same time so acceptable. We have in these translations admitted a slight alteration in our measure, in order to make it more flowing. Flew away the swans rejoicing, to Vidarbha straight they flew, To Vidarbha's stately city, there by Damajanti's feet, Down with drooping plumes they settled, and she gazed upon the flock, Wondering at their forms so graceful, where amid her maids she sat. All we've seen, but ne'er the equal have we seen of noble Nala. * In the original, according to our translators, this is a far less poetic bird; and we must crave permission for once to turn our geese into swans.' If, however, we are to believe Bohlen, in his very learned work, Das alte Indien,' the translators are altogether mistaken; they have been misled by the similarity of the word hansa to gans. The original either means a mythic bird, closely resembling the swan, or is perhaps the tall and brilliant flamingo, which Southey has introduced with such effect in one of his rich descriptions in the Curse of Kehama.' The goose, however, is so common in Indian mythology, that this must be received with much doubt. † Intermediate beings in Indian mythology. They |