1849.] Brahmans and Buddhists. 125 



or matter. His followers might gratefully endeavour to perpetuate his 

 name and his sympathy with their moral deficiencies, by connecting 

 these with splendid Chaityas and temples and colossal statues, but his 

 ministry had been accomplished, and he could in no way influence their 

 destinies, or happiness, but by the example and precepts he left behind 

 him. His object, — that which he had pointed out to his followers as the 

 sole aim of all his actions, had been, as he and they believed, attained, 

 when he was on the point of entering Nivana, which, like the negative 

 Elisian beatitude of the Vedanta school, consisted originally perhaps of 

 a total absorption into the divine essence, thus losing all identity. 



The study of the simple Sutras^ according to M. Burnouf, will throw 

 much light on the connexion of Brahmanism and Buddhism. 



I shall not hazard an opinion as to the nature and scope of the 

 Indian epigraphic monuments lately elucidated and ascribed to Bud- 

 dhists. When this very interesting branch of antiquarianism shall have 

 been so proved and analysed as it ought to be, it will be perhaps time 

 enough for a final decision. If these shall ever be awarded to the 

 brahmans, they will probably exhibit the latter under very different 

 phases of religious and moral character, than we have been accustomed 

 to view them in. 



It would meanwhile be satisfactory to learn if there be in existence 

 an undoubted specimen of the Sanscrit character of a date anterior to 

 the oldest existing Pali character. The brahmans may not have cared 

 much about epigraphs, but if they were a race to whom India was des- 

 tined to owe its religion and social polity, some vestiges of the written 

 character in which these doctrines were to be preserved would, one 

 might suppose, have been left on some less perishable material than 

 leaves or paper. 



It has not been proved how castes originated, or when. If caste ex- 

 isted over Gangetic India and the Peninsula at the time when the brah- 

 mans were confined to the Punjab, it must, I think, be admitted to have 

 done so independent of the latter. As I have before hinted, the 

 brahmans probably found the nucleus of the institution as derived, 

 according to Sir W. Jones, from Persia, extant in India, on their first 

 intermedling with its civil affairs ; and readily availed themselves of so 

 convenient a weapon for dividing and ruling. 



