268 AN ESSAY ON THE 



mansions or habital>le places. Such a geographi- 

 cal treatise is cited by Signor Bayer, under the 

 corrupted appellation of Fincaua Saccaram. Ano^ 

 ther treatise in my possession is called Trailocija- 

 darpayi'a, and was given to me by the late Mr. 

 Reuben Burrow, who procured ;t ntwY Hardwar. 

 Its name signifies the mirror of the ihree worlds, 

 meaning heaven, earth, and hell, and answers ex- 

 actly to the treatise ascribed to Saint Patrick, 

 and called Dissffrtatio de't'ribus Loc':Sj ox habit acuits. 

 lit uas written some hundred 3'tars ago, and the 

 copy I have is of the year I7I8 of Vicrama'di- 

 TYA. In several Purcmas, there is a section ex- 

 pressly on the subject of geography^ and for "that 

 reason called Bhuvana-Ccs'a. It is also denomi- 

 nated Bhu-chanda, or section of the earth. Except 

 the sections contciined m th^ Pur an as, geographical 

 tracts are in general written in the spoken dialects, 

 and are extremely scfice, as they are discounte- 

 nanced by the ^. cerdotal class, as are historical 

 books. This they have often acknovi^ledged to me, 

 saying, they have the Puran'as ; what do they 

 want more r Besides, as they are wiitten in the 

 vulgar dialectSj, they are the works of persons not 

 sufficiently learned and informed, and very apt, as 

 I am told, to hazard occasionally a few heretical 

 notions. They are not, however, so strict in the 

 Dek/iin, and the western parts of India: there, I 

 am credil)]y informed, th(y have treatises expressly 

 on the subject both of history and geography. 



There are two geographical tracts in Sanscrit : 

 the first,, called Vicramapratides'a vyavastlid, is at- 

 tributed to Vicrama'ditya, probably the one of 

 that name, who lived, as we shall see hereafter, 

 in the fifth century, and it is said to consist of 

 eighteen, or twenty thousand .s/oaw or lines: the 

 second, called Munja-pralidt&'a-vyat'ast'hd, is a'ttri- 



