of this universe, does indeed know; but not another can possess that knowledge."

Perhaps you will be as much struck as I was with the grandeur and simplicity of "He thought, I will create worlds; thus He created these worlds." But you must be aware that this is the creed of the learned, and not that of the people, who are taught the common mythological fables of the alternate destruction and renovation of the earth, with the periodical sleep of Brahma, or rather of Vishnu, the preserving power, during whose slumbers the genius of destruction prevails.

These better notions of the Vedas, and particularly those of the Aitaréya Aranyaca are professedly the fundamental doctrines of the philosophers of the Vedanta sect, whose speculations appear to coincide nearly with those of Berkeley, and perhaps, of Plato. The. Sastra which contains the doctrines of the Vedantas is ascribed to Vyasa, and the commentator is Sancara, who explains and enlarges the very ancient and almost obsolete texts of this author. The opinions of this school concerning matter are, that it has no existence independent on mental perception, and consequently that existence and perceptibility are controvertible terms. That external appearances and sensations are illusory, and would vanish into nothing if the

divine energy which alone sustains them were suspended but for a moment.

Their notions concerning the human soul approach nearly to the Pantheism of some other philosophical sects, and may be understood from the following text. "That spirit from which these created beings proceed; through which, having proceeded from it, they live; toward which they tend, and in which they are ultimately absorbed, that spirit study to know; that spirit is the great one*."

1

The oldest philosophical sect in India appears, however, to have been that of the followers of Capila, inventor of the Sanc'hya or numeral philosophy which Sir William Jones thought resembled the metaphysics of Pythagoras, who is said, indeed, to have travelled into India in search of knowledge, and who might possibly have adopted the tenets of the

* "Know first that heaven and earth's compacted frame
And flowing waters, and the starry flame

And both the radiant lights, one common soul
Inspires and feeds, and animates the whole.
This active mind, infused through all the space
Unites and mingles with the mighty mass.
Hence men and beasts the breath of life obtain,
And birds of air, and monsters of the main.
Th'etherial vigour is in all the same;

And ev'ry soul is filled with equal flame."

1

Brahmins his instructors. Next to the Sanc'hya, Gotama and Canáda invented the Nyaya or logical philosophy, admitting the actual existence of material substance in the popular sense of the word matter, and comprising a body of dialectics, with an artificial method of reasoning, with distinct names for the three parts of a proposition and even for those of a regular syllogism*.

The philosophy of the Baudd'ha and Jaina religious sects is branded with the name of atheism by the orthodox Brahmins, who assert that they deny the existence of spirit independent on matter, and consequently that of the supreme intelligence. But we may, I think, doubt how far the assertions of enemies and rivals are entitled to belief.

Thus you see the forests and groves of Hindostan produced systems of philosophy long before she

From heav'n descended to the low-roofed house

Of Socrates.

* Sir William Jones, in his eleventh Discourse, printed in the 4th vol. of the Asiatic Researches, p. 170, mentions the following curious tradition which, according to the author of the Dabistan, prevailed in the Panjab. "Among other Indian curiosities which Callisthenes transmitted to his uncle, was a technical system of logic which the Brahmins had communicated to the inquisitive Greek," and which the Mahomedan writer supposes to have been the groundwork of the famous Aristotelian method.

And conjecture, and even tradition seem to point them out as the origin of all the

Streams that watered all the schools

Of academies old and new, with those
Surnamed Peripatetics, and the sect
Epicurean, and the Stoic severe.

A thousand circumstances concur to identify the ancient religions of India and Egypt; and to render it most probable that the relation of their sciences and philosophy was not less intimate. Which was the most anciently civilized of the two countries will probably ever remain undetermined; but the Indians seem on many accounts to lay claim to a superior antiquity. Their physical situation, so well adapted to the production of all that nature requires, while it must have been long before the muddy shores of the Nile were habitable, is not the least argument in their favour; besides, their traditions and poems all seem to point to the north as the quarter whence they received their religion, their science, their language, and their conquerors, which could not have been the case if they were originally from Egypt. It is possible that the same origin may be common to them both, and that the similarity observed in the monuments of every kind in the two nations may be drawn from one common source. Now the Greeks confessedly borrowed from

the Egyptians, but transporting their coarse and clumsy imagery into their own charming climate, genius refined and purified it with her magic touch, and formed even in the infancy of happy Greece those models, which like the ideal beauty of the painter, future times have sought unceasingly to emulate, but sought in vain; while the ancient mothers of art, continued their massy and ill-formed works, as if the palsied hand of time had brought them back to a state of infancy and fixed them in irrecoverable mediocrity. You have only to compare the rude sketch I send you of a still ruder deity*, with the beautiful head of the Apollo, and if for a moment you can forget its deformity to think of the ingenuity that made the elephant's head the symbol of the god of letters, I shall think you deserve to be born a Brahmin in your next visit to this world, and to be one of Genesa's especial favourites, with whose name I conclude this letter, the subject of which is peculiarly his own.

14

LETTER VI.

You flatter me extremely by desiring the continuance of so grave a correspondence as mine on the subject of India has hitherto *See the plate of Genesa.