62 A Note on Boodhiam and the Cave 



would find akin to those which he has been taught to follow, 

 and which to the Indian would come recommended by their Indian 

 origin and their sacred antiquity ; — I say then by doing this, 

 Government would be amply repaid in the rapid social and mental 

 improvement of an affectionate and grateful people. 



In our investigations into the ideas and feelings incident to man 

 in an early age, or as we are pleased to call it " a savage state," we 

 are fond of giving him credit for little else than a debased and 

 brutal imagination ; — whereas in reality the savage mind is capable 

 of the most abstruse speculations, and even metaphysical deductions, 

 the effect of a luxuriant and unfettered imagination : with few 

 wants and those satisfied without difficulty, the contemplative savage 

 had little else to do than revel in the creations of his own imagina- 

 tion. We find, therefore, the poetry of a rude and barbarous age as rich 

 in its imagery as that of the most civilised epoch. It is even with 

 some mental exertion that we moderns with all the concomitants of 

 romantic scenery, a secluded locality, and the assistance of a memory 

 stored with the ideas that have gone before us, can raise ourselves 

 from viewing the air, earth and water around us — but as earth, 

 air and water. Whereas in the eye of the savage his native land 

 teemed with beings of an ideal essence and an airy form ; with him, 

 every fountain had its Naiad, and every dingle had its fay ; each leaf 

 in the wide forest owned its peculiar sprite who shielded with his 

 little hands, its light bloom from the rude blast, and trimmed the 

 notches of its edge ; 'twas they, he loved to think, who sped the 

 Mote- Dance in the sun-beam and smiled in every dimple of the 

 stream. Every one of us must have remarked that the deeper we 

 penetrated into the secluded forests and mountain ranges of India— 

 and the more rude and untutored are their inhabitants — the more 

 addicted do we find them to such picturesque superstitions and 

 beliefs. Arguing, as I remarked before, a mind gifted with strong 

 ideal powers. For this reason we should not (as some writers on 

 Boodhism have been) be startled with the deep metaphysical ab- 

 stractions of some of its dogmas, and declare that therefore it savors 

 of a modern and not of an antient day. There is a true remark, 

 bearing on this subject, made by Mills in his History of British 

 India. When alluding to the fondness existing among the Afghans 



