RECENT PROGRESS OF SANSKRIT STUDIES. 288 



The limits within which I am necessarily restricted will not allow me to 

 supply any further details regarding the subsequent religious history of India, or 

 regarding the Itihasas (the so-called epic poems), and the Puranas, those volu- 

 minous collections of legends and mythological stories, in both of which classes 

 of works that religious history may be obscurely traced. Nor can I give an}^ 

 particular account of the later poetry, narrative and dramatic, of the Hindus, 

 which, by its polished, elaborate, and rhetorical character, is widely distinguished 

 both from the simplicity of the Vedic hymns, and from the tiresome and inarti- 

 ficial prolixity of the epic poems and most of the puranas. I must also omit every- 

 thing but a passing reference to the treatises on algebra and astronomy by which 

 the Indians have established their title to an honourable rank in science as well 

 as in literature. I will only mention, that in these treatises they repudiate the 

 mythological fiction of the earth being supported on a serpent or a tortoise, and 

 assert its rotundity and self-sustaining position in space ; and that Arya Bhatta, 

 one of their most ancient astronomers, maintained the rotation of our globe on 

 its own axis. 



Enough has however been already said to refute the old idea that the Hindus 

 are a stationary and unchangeable people, to give some conception of the great 

 antiquity of their civilisation, of the chief productions of their genius, and of its 

 wide range and versatility, and to show that, though inferior to the Greeks in 

 correctness of taste, in the sense of harmony and proportion, in robustness of 

 intellect, and in practical sagacity, they yet rival their great Western kinsmen in 

 speculative subtlety, originality and elevation* 



* I quote from the "North British Review" for May 1856, p. 213, the following estimate of 

 the Indian intellect : — " The Indo-Arians partake largely in all the higher qualities of the Indo- 

 Germanic race — in their capacity of self-development, their intellectual power, their love of science, 

 their tendency to metaphysical speculation, their aspirations after ideal and spiritual perfection, their 

 taste for the fine arts and for elegant literature. And yet they are distinguished by marked char- 

 acteristics of their own, corresponding to their position as an Asiatic nation. They do not possess 

 the masculine nature of the kindred tribes who migrated to the north-west. While the Greeks, with 

 all their speculative genius and exquisite sense of the beautiful, were a restlessly active, energetic, 

 and practical people, the Hindus, on the other hand, have manifested a sti'ong tendency to repose, 

 and to dreamy contemplation. While the Greeks sought, as far as possible, to realise their concep- 

 tions of ideal truth and good in the outward world, in forms of visible beauty, or of political 

 organisation, the Hindus, rejecting the material universe as a theatre or permanent instrument of 

 perfection, came soon to regard the world of the senses as, on the contrary, the necessary source of 

 all evil and disorder, and to seek their chief good in a purely spiritual state, emancipated from all 

 mundane relations, and from ordinary human feelings and interests. Their philosophy, properly so 

 called, has all a religious aim ; every branch of it professes to unfold a scheme of knowledge of 

 ■which the declared end is to enable its possessor to free himself from the bondage of worldly exist- 

 ence. Its logical and metaphysical systems, while displaying wonderful acutsness and subtlety, are 

 too much concerned with abstruse and unpractical niceties, and with the controversial anticipation 

 of all possible and impossible objections. Gifted with a luxuriant imagination, with tenderness of 

 feeling, with sensibility to natural impressions, with a delicate perception of the nicest shades of 

 thought, and of the harmonies of language, the Hindus are yet deficient in correct taste, and in a 

 sense of the true sublime : their poetical power is wasted on tasteless refinements or jingling allitera- 

 tions ; and when dealing with the vast, or the terrible, they are prone to mistake exaggeration and 

 aggregation of magnitude and numbers for forcible and impressive representation." See Lassen's 

 great work on Indian history, the " Indische Alterthumskunde," vol. i. pp. 412, ft. 



