Ixvi APPENDIX. 



6th. The Histoiy of the People of India as illustrated by their systems of 

 law, by their divisions into castes, and by the nature of their tenures and as- 

 sessments of land. 



\sl. TIte Astronomy and Geography of India. 



As to the Astronomy of India, the Committee have forwarded to each of the presi- 

 dencies of India such queries as may enable the people of those presidencies to 

 obtain without difficulty the information which the Society requires from them. Col. 

 Caulfield, late political resident at Kotah, in the Rajpoot country, sent the Society some 

 time ago an instrument used by the natives of that country for making astronomical 

 observations. The Sanscrit characters on this instrument have been translated by Dr. 

 Rosen : the instrument itself, with an English translation of the characters, has been sub- 

 mitted by the Committee for examination to Mr. Hart, a gentleman of distinguished 

 talents at Glasgow, who has already directed his attention to an instrument of this sort 

 given him by an officer from India, the characters on which being Arabic, have been 

 translated into English for him by Dr. Dorn. The Committee have also submitted 

 to Mr. Hart for examination a forestaff, which Sir Alex. Johnston, while on the 

 island of Ceylon, obtained from one of the native pilots of the Maldiva vessels 

 which trade from the islands of Maldiva to Ceylon, Bengal, and Malacca. A forestaff 

 of this description, a French ephemeris, and a chart of their own construction, are the 

 means by which the Maldiva pilots are enabled to navigate their vessels from their 

 own islands to the foreign ports which they frequent. This forestaff is very similar to 

 the instrument which was in general use amongst European navigators before the inven- 

 tion of the quadrant, and is supposed to have been derived by the Arabs, who navigated 

 the Indian seas in the fifteenth century, from Vasco de Gama and the other early Por- 

 tuguese navigators. 



Dr. Dorn has, at the request of the Committee, drawn up an able and interesting 

 account of the brass globe which is in the Museum of the Society.* There are only 

 three globes of this kind known at present in Europe; one in Italj', one in Germany, 

 and one in the Society's Museum, They are all supposed to have been made by Arab 

 astronomers in the thirteenth century ; one of tliem in Egypt ; the other at Maragha, 

 in Bucharia; and the third at Mousul, where at that time there were several very 

 able astronomers, whose astronomical tables are still extant and used in the East. 



Sir Alex. Johnston has presented to the Society a collection of drawings made for 

 him by a native of Ceylon, illustrating the various modes in which astronomy as con- 

 nected with astrology is observed by the natives of the country to exercise a powerful 

 influence over the religious and moral conduct of the people of that island. In this 

 collection are several drawings of the twelve signs of the zodiac, as represented in dif- 

 ferent parts of the country and on the island of Ramisseram, and which form a portion 

 of a more extensive collection which Sir Alex. Johnston is making of drawings of the 

 signs of the zodiac as represented in every part of Asia. The Committee being 



* This paper is printed in the present volume of the Society's Twnsactions. 



