CIVIL A^ T D NATURAL. XV11 



but from the Sanscrit literature, which our country has 

 the honour of having unveiled, we may still collect 

 some rays of historical truth, though time, and a se- 

 ries of revolutions, have obscured that light which we 

 might reasonably have expected from so diligent and 

 ingenious a people. The numerous Pnranas and hi- 

 Jiasas, or poems mythological and heroic, are com- 

 pletely in our power; and from them we may recover 

 some disfigured but valuable pictures of ancient man- 

 ners and governments ; while the popular tales of the 

 Hindus, in prose and in verse, contain fragments of 

 history; and even in their dramas we may find as 

 many real characters and events as a future age might 

 find in our own plays, if all histories of England were, 

 like those of India, to be irrecoverably lost. For ex- 

 ample, a most beautiful poem by Somade-va, compris- 

 ing a very long chain of instructive and agreeable sto- 

 ries, begins with the famed revolution at PataUfntra, 

 by the murder of king Nanda with his eight sons, and 

 the usurpation of Chandragupta \ and the same revo- 

 lution is the subject of a tragedy in Sanscrit, entitled 

 the Coronation of Chandra^ the abbreviated name of 

 that able and adventurous usurper. From these once 

 concealed, but now accessible compositions, we are 

 enabled to exhibit a more accurate sketch of old In- 

 dian history than the world has yet seen, especially with 

 the aid of well-attested observations on the places of 

 the colures. It is now clearly proved, that the first 

 Parana contains an account of the deluge ; between 

 which and the Mohammedan conquests the history of 

 Vol, IV. b genuine 



