Those regions of which our ancestors spake and read with a kind of awe-struck wonder, as of those where the gorgeous east Shower'd o'er her kings barbaric pearl and gold, having lost their imaginative interest, as the realms of sovereigns who sat on ivory thrones, rode abroad among a thousand elephants, and seemed to realize all the magic wonders of the Arabian Nights;' and having sunk into the presidencies of quiet and unromantic English gentlemen, are supposed to possess no interest except to the holders of East India stock, or to those who think India an admirable country to provide for younger sons. The Journal of Bishop Heber awoke the public mind, at least for a time, to a more vivid curiosity about regions where external nature is so prolific in wonders; where the British government issues out its mandate to almost as many nations and languages as the great king in the Old Testament; where the land. is strewn with the wrecks of mighty empires, and with the mouldering monuments of religions whose origin is lost in the depth of remote ages, but which have influenced the fate of generations after generations of our fellow-creatures; and where vestiges are discovered, if not of the earliest, at least of civilization in its primeval form, and stretching upward far beyond the reach, at all events, of profane record. If then there is, in general, such remarkable apathy on all questions connected with India, questions which at present relate to the civil, moral, and religious welfare of a hundred millions of our subjects, it could scarcely be expected that much general attention should be drawn towards the antiquities and literature of a people whose habits of feeling, thinking, and believing are, in many respects, so remote from and repugnant to those of all European nations. Yet to the few who study with intense interest the history of man, how full of wonder and of information is the civil, the religious, the literary history of this remarkable people, as it has been gradually developed, and as their monuments are more profoundly studied, and their writings more extensively made known through the diligence and activity of English and continental scholars! What curious, even if inexplicable, secrets come, daily as it were, to light from the study of a language, not merely in its primitive roots, but in its construction and grammatical forms, so strikingly allied with the Persian, still more with the Greek, the primitive Latin, and the Teutonic tongues ;* from the discovery, if not in its primitive at As a single instance, we find in the two auxiliary verbs of the Sanscrit not only almost, totidem literis, the soul, 100, 107, in the asmi, asi, asti of the Indian; but in the other, the bhavami, with its root bhu and its derivatives, the germ of the bam, bas, bat of the Latin imperfect, and of the ancient form of the preterite fuvi, fuvisti, fuvit. least least in its most full and perfect form, of the great pantheistic system of religion, which, with one exception, under its various modifications, comprehended the whole of Asia and Egypt, at least as the faith of the higher and more intellectual classes; from the examination of the laws and civil polity of a people in which the institution of castes appears in its most rigid and certainly its most lasting form, unchanged, as even European history can prove, since the days of Alexander; from the development of their philosophy, which appears to have passed like that of elder Greece and that of modern Europe through every successive gradation of Idealism, Materialism, Scepticism, Eclecticism; finally, from their poetry, which however encumbered with monstrous and extravagant fiction, and a wild and incoherent mythology, not only excites our interest as characteristic of the people of whose imagination and feelings it is the living expression, but even to European ears may be found to abound in passages rarely perhaps of striking grandeur or energy, but often of the most exquisite delicacy, of the softest tenderness, of infinite variety and gracefulness of fancy, and what may not least surprise our readers, of the purest simplicity. * Oriental poetry is generally proscribed in the mass, as offering little more than a brilliant confusion of florid diction, of turgid and fantastic metaphor, not merely false to European nature, but to those primary and universal principles of taste which demand that the language should be in harmony with the thought, the imagery in keeping with the sentiment. If we may judge, as doubtless we may fairly judge, from literal translations into free though elegant Latin, and into German, which, from the infinite variety of its metres, and the general pliancy of its structure, is so well adapted to give a faithful copy of every style of national poetry; if we may form anything like a reasonable estimate of Sanscrit poetry from the numerous works which are before us, we may safely pronounce that the diction of the Indian poets is peculiarly simple: their luxuriance is not in the language but in the subject matter of their poetry; in the infinite variety, vastness, and exuberance of their mythological fables; it is in this part that the imagination runs riot, The reader who may be interested in this branch of oriental literature, will find a brilliant survey of the successive schools of Indian philosophy in a book where, from its title, he would not be inclined to seek it, the Histoire de la Philosophie du xviiime Siècle,' by Victor Cousin. This sketch is chiefly compiled from the works of one of the earliest, as well of the ablest, discoverers in the unknown regions of eastern literature, our countryman, Mr. Colebrooke. To this gentleman Indian scholars on the continent, as well as in England, look up with something of filial reverence; and we know no one to whom the praise of ability and sagacity seems awarded by such universal consent, or whose title to the highest rank of oriental scholarship is admitted with such ready and unquestioning unanimity. B 2 not not in the redundance of metaphor, or the profusion of unmeaning similitudes-in this respect their taste is Grecian rather than Italian. The elegant mind of Heber, at the very commencement of his oriental studies, perceived at once the distinction. I have more and more convinced myself that what is called the florid Eastern style is chiefly to be found in translations; and that the characteristics of the originals are often rather flatness and vapidity than exuberance of ornament.'* The justice of this opinion, we apprehend, will be acknowledged by all competent judges, even as regards Arabic and Persian poetry; and, however all countries, India among the rest, may have their Seicentesti, their Marinos, and Gongoras, the Nalodaya, edited by M. Benary, is in this false style, the general character, especially of their earlier poems, is directly the reverse. It is to the ancient poetry of India that we propose to confine our present article,-to give some account of the discoveries which have been made in these untrodden regions by persons in every sense qualified to pass judgment on the real value of that which has come to light. Unquestionably the mine of Indian poetry has been worked for some years by men admirably qualified to trace the rich vein of gold which runs beneath its dark surface. When we mention the names of the Schlegels, we appeal to poetical critics whose boundless acquaintance with ancient and modern literature, whose high and philosophic principles of taste, however they may not command universal deference, have at least a right to universal respect and attention. The elegant work of the late Frederick Schlegel on the language and the philosophy of India, first, we believe, directed the industry and excited the enthusiasm of German scholars towards the study of Sanscrit. He was followed, and soon outstripped, by his brother, who has, among other works, edited the Bhagavat-Gita, with a most felicitous Latin translation; has published the Indische Bibliothek-a journal abounding in information on all subjects relating to the study of Sanscrit ; and is employed in the more arduous work of editing the complete text of the Ramayana. Of the publications of their most acute and indefatigable associate, F. Bopp, we shall have frequent occasion to avail ourselves in the course of our article; and every German catalogue brings forward the names of new adventurers in this expanding field of literary inquiry. If, however, we set out by professing our almost total ignorance of the ancient language, we may perhaps be accused of assuming a judicial authority to which we have no pretensions. We might at once take refuge in the excuse that we profess to review the *Journal of Voyage to India, p. xxxiii. translations, translations, not the original works; to give our readers an account of these ancient Eastern poets as they appear before us in modern European attire, not to introduce them in their native garb and original simplicity and dignity: yet we may perhaps go further, and, frankly admitting that we have imperfect information, for that very reason advance a higher claim to impartiality. Those who have made themselves masters of a rare and difficult branch of study are naturally disposed to over-estimate its value. The very zeal which has carried them in triumph through many and great obstacles, insensibly magnifies the object, to attain which they have consumed so much labour. None but fervent and enthusiastic minds will apply themselves to such abstruse studies; and the fervour and enthusiasm which cheer them on their course will throw a bright and dazzling colouring over the objects of their pursuit. As to the first navigators of the ocean every island was a paradise, every rock a realm of gold and an abode of bliss; partly from the mere excitement of novelty; partly from the intoxication of success so long despaired of, and the sense of toil and peril undergone, which no one is willing to suppose that he has thrown away on a worthless object; partly from that universal propensity of our nature to attribute the highest value to that of which we have exclusive possession:-from illusions such as these men of the coolest minds cannot sometimes altogether emancipate themselves; and hence the reports of the first adventurers gradually sober down, and the enchanted lands, though they may still prove in a high degree picturesque and beautiful, lose their romantic and almost preternatural character. So, if we may still pursue the illustration, we have sailed to the pleasant shores of Indian poetry, with little toil on our own part; we have compared the separate accounts of the various discoverers with considerable care, and endeavoured to form a dispassionate judgment on the merits of the new territory thus added to the world of literature. In other words, we have collected from many quarters all the translations of Sanscrit poetry which we have been able to obtain -those of the Schlegels, of Bopp, of Kosegarten, and of Rosen, of the German school; of M. Chezy, in French; and in English, of Sir William Jones, the missionaries Carey and Marshman, but, above all, of Mr. Horace Hayman Wilson. Ourselves, as students of the language, being confessedly in our leading-strings, we have, nevertheless, been able to form our own opinion in many places where we have ventured to translate the foreign translations, as to the structure of the verse, the collocation of the words, and other peculiar characteristics of the originals. If we have, in general, been obliged to copy the wrong side of the tapestry,' we have, nevertheless, endeavoured to form some notion of the bril liancy liancy and disposition of the colours on the right. Our object is to afford to the common reader, by the wide circulation of a popular journal, some knowledge of the valuable labours of men, whose industry and talents deserve a more extensive fame than they are likely to obtain within the circumscribed sphere in which Oriental scholars appear to dwell apart from the common world of letters; and, at the same time, to open a view, although necessarily rapid and imperfect, of the works of poets unknown, even by name, in the West, though once the delight of the most splendid courts, and some of them not merely the bards, but likewise the religious instructors of the most populous, perhaps in their day the most civilized, regions of the earth. Our first extract will be taken from the famous Bhagavat-Gita, an episode in the great epic poem, the Maha Bharatâ. The oldest poetry of the Hindus is contained in their primitive religious books, the Vedas,* and in their metrical laws, the Institutes of Menu. The Puranas, the traditions, as the Vedas are the scriptures of Hindu faith, are of later origin-the poetical Golden Legend of Brahminical hagiography. Between the Vedas and Puranas, in point of antiquity, or, at least, older than parts of the latter, rank the two great epic poems, the Ramayana and the Maha Bharatâ -the Iliad and the Odyssey of the heroic, or rather the mythological, age of Sanscrit poetry. These extraordinary works, in comparison to the stately and uniform structures of the Grecian bard, are as the Himalaya to the bifidi juga Parnassi, or perhaps, a more appropriate illustration, as the banian of India, stretching out, and striking down and taking root again, in an endless and intricate grove, to the spreading yet regular planes, or the tall and graceful poplars, which rise beside the margin of some poetic Grecian river. The Maha Bharatâ is most justly called the Great Bharata, for it is distributed into eighteen parts, which together amount to one hundred thousand slokas or distichs. In the midst of this giant epic occurs the Bhagavat-Gita, or the Divine Song-an episode, which, in the form of a dialogue between the god Krishna and the hero Arjuna, gives a full and most curious exposition of the half-mythological, half-philosophical Pantheism of the Bramins. It is, indeed, probable that this episode is of a much later *Of the Vedas, our knowledge is derived from the profound dissertation of Mr. Colebrooke, in the eighth volume of the Asiatic Researches. Professor Rosen, of the London University, has just put forth a 'specimen' of the Rig Veda in the original, with a translation and notes. It consists of several short hymns, chiefly addressed to Agni, the God of Fire, and may be compared, with some interest, with the PseudoOrphic Hymns of Greek poetry, consisting, like them, of appellations and descriptions of the attributes of the different deities. The laws of Menu, it is well known, were translated by Sir W. Jones, and have been published in a splendid form, and, in the judgment of M. Chezy, with great critical ability, by Mr. Haughton, date |