1835.] Notes on the preceding Inscription. 387 



" If Siva be united to his energy (his spouse Siva), he is able to exer- 

 cise dominion ; if not, the god is utterly unable even to move. Where- 

 fore Thee, the goddess who art worshipped by Vishnu, Siva, Brahma', and 

 all other beings, what unholy person is competent to adore and praise ?" 

 That the same reason should be assigned by the philosopher here for Siva 

 and the rest of the triad adoring his consort, (agreeably to the Chandipatha 

 aforesaid, especially the 1st and 4th and 12th books,) which is on this 

 inscription, made a reason for Siva being adored by her, viz. his nearer 

 approach to abstract essentiality — will surprize no one who has studied the 

 genius of paganism. The former is the Saktya conclusion ; the latter that 

 of the Saivas : among whom also, as we may observe in this and the 6th 

 verse of the inscription, Siva has the properties of the other two mem- 

 bers of the triad, that of Creator and Preserver ascribed to him, as well 

 as his own. 



The efforts of the human mind, at any time, to escape the metaphysical 

 difficulties that attend the connexion of Mind and Matter ; and the yet 

 more serious kindred difficulty, the origin of evil ; will never want interest 

 in the eyes of the deeper observers of our nature, its capacities and itsdes- 

 tinies. We cannot wonder that in the darkness of unaided reason, men 

 have been almost universally led to interpose some independent exist- 

 ence, some TAH, the source alike of Nature and of Evil, between the 

 creature and the Creator. But it is more extraordinary, that at the pre- 

 sent day, Sankara A'cha'rya, and the Vedantists, whose mode of meeting 

 the difficulty is by maintaining external Nature to be illusion, and the per- 

 fect identity in real essence, of all human souls with the Supreme, should 

 be represented by any as reformers of Hinduism, and as attached to that 

 only true theology, by which the Supreme Being is recognized, in the 

 words of Sir Isaac Newton, non ut anima mundi, sed ut universorum. 

 Dominus. However natural be the desire in some, to unite the profession 

 of the most venerated school of Hindu religion with the boast among 

 Europeans of a pure and enlightened creed, the attempt to conciliate 

 things so dissimilar, and even opposite, as these, cannot long consist with 

 any accurate knowledge or study of either. 



II. — The second verse is in the free, but harmonious measure of iheAnus- 

 tubh class,(i. e. of eight syllables) — first unconsciously struck out,as it is said, 

 by Va'lmIki, the Homer of India, on witnessing the cruelact of a sportsman. 



*n fsw^ ^fa^i <3*flw ^t^wt*. wr: i 



Upon which, struck with the beautiful cadence of his own improvisation, 

 he composed the Ramayana in similar verses.* 



* An account of this measure is given by Colebrooke, in his Essay on Sanscrit 



and Pracrit Poetry, and by M. Che'zy, (Essai sur le Sloka.) The following will 



be found, I believe, a more complete statement of its rules than either. Each puda, 



or quarter, (of which the last syllable is ever accounted common,) consists of two qua- 



3 c 2 



