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Miscellaneous Scientific Proceedings on the Continent. 



ACADMIE DES INSCRIPTIONS ET BELLES LETTRES. 



Indian Antiquities. On the 22d April, MM. Quatremere, La- 

 jard, and Abel-Remusat, made a report on the antiquarian part of 

 M. Lamare-Picquot's collection of curiosities, brought from Hin- 

 dostan. The zoological part of this splendid collection has formed 

 the subject of a report to the Academic des Sciences (vide p. 157), 

 and the present reporters had, therefore, only to occupy themselves 

 with such parts as tended to throw a light on the civil and religious 

 manners and customs of the Hindoos. The greater part of the 

 articles relating to the Brahmin religion are from Calcutta and its 

 neighbourhood ; those which relate to the worship of Buddha are 

 originally from the Burmese empire, whence they were taken during 

 the war with the English in 1825 ; and a few remarkable curiosities 

 are from the isles of the Ganges. There are about fifty figures 

 representing the divinities of the Brahmins ; these are in terra cotta, 

 marble and bronze, and present images (some of them in bas-relief) 

 of Brahma, Vishnou, Sheva and his wife, Parvati, Krishna and his 

 wife Radha, Gamessa, Balarama or Vishnou as a child, Jagher- 

 nout, Dharma-Deva, or the god of the law, under the figure of an ox ; 

 Dourga the wife of Sheva; Kali, the same goddess with the attributes 

 of goddess of death, those of protectress of the universe, and those 

 of her combat with Mahichaasoura, the genius of evil, under the form 

 of a buffalo. There are also several mythological subjects, executed 

 on pasteboard, by Hindoo painters ; and a large picture represent- 

 ing the combat of Rama against Ravana, the tyrant of the isle of 

 Lauka, a subject taken from the Ramayana or the Baghavata-Pou- 

 rana. M. Lamare-Picquot has also brought over a number of 

 vases, lamps, and other religious and domestic vessels of the Hin- 

 doos. He has also succeeded in procuring three or four Bercho- 

 cath, or pieces of carved wood, representing towers with several 

 stories, enriched with a variety of paintings and ornaments. These 

 are carried in the funeral processions of the Hindoos, and then 

 placed near a pagoda on the banks of the Ganges, or some other 

 consecrated river. The collection also includes a variety of exact 

 models of the Hindoo temples, and a sort of fetish, found in an 

 island of the Ganges, representing a head surmounted by a rudely 

 shaped mitre, and coloured equally coarsely. The reporters have 

 not discovered who is represented by this figure. The figures 

 relating to the worship of Buddha are fewer in number, but of con- 

 siderable dimensions. There are thirty statues of Gaouatama in 

 terra cotta,wood, copper, marble, and alabaster, all exhibiting traces 

 of gilding, and varying in size from one to three feet. This per- 

 sonage is always represented in the act of divination, in a sitting 

 posture at the moment of inspiration, the head surmounted with the 

 characteristic tubercle, the hair in ringlets, half naked, and the right 

 hand pendant. Two only of these statues have inscriptions, one of 



