1850.] Brdhminic al Conquerors of India . 4 1 



My twofold object in the above enquiry will have been easily detected 

 as respects the brahminical conquerors. 



1 . To recognize them as migratory in the act of migration. 



2. To fix a date for this act from other than their own chronology. 

 Success in this object, suppose it attained, will put a stop to that 



mystery and idea of excessive antiquity, as respects India which has 

 so long palsied enquiry ; for learned mystery is the worst of foes to 

 true knowledge. The rich field of Sanskrit literature has taught us, 

 itself, but nothing out of itself; — nor did the reading of inscribed 

 copper plates and stones give us for many years more than a certain 

 amount of local information. It was not until the time of him, for 

 whom, the more I study the works of others the more I feel I have 

 but one word, — the admirable James Prinsep, that the decypherage of 

 the unread Pali gave on the one hand a philological result, and esta- 

 blished on the other the connection of India at a certain time, with a 

 certain people or peoples beyond her limits. This is, for any fact, a 

 complete proof on the two evidences, internal and external : this is 

 what I want to carry out at a period a few centuries anterior. We 

 know that the high castes of the Hindus are not aborigines: we 

 know that they did not find their science and philosophy, in India : 

 we know therefore that they brought these, or their germ with them : 

 we know that their impulse as a nation was purely progressive, and 

 that they obeyed this impulse even to Ceylon, to Java and the Lacca- 

 dives, both which last we call by the names they gave them : but we 

 are certain that they never, as a nation, went back with their science 

 and philosophy to teach it to other men ; on the contrary, although 

 individuals visited them and brought away their doctrines (or said 

 they did), the nation that held these, deserted, site after site, if it was 

 not too much to say so, their ancient haunts, mention of which however, 

 still lives in their mythological history, and whither still their devotees 

 make long and painful pilgrimages. Now the process whereby we 

 shall ever know any thing of this people, — what their acts and deeds in 

 India, — must be by seizing some definite epoch, like Bunsen's Menoph- 

 thah-era, and working upwards to their origin from it. 



My conception, as to the Egyptians I have already given, as much 

 the older and more energetic people, perfecting their system of life and 

 polity in a particular site, and going back on their own traces to disse- 



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