1867.] Proceedings of the Asiatic Society. 97 



of nishedha or " prohibition" was to produce the absence (or non- 

 existence) of activity, i. e. pravritter abhdva. Now the question arises 

 to which of the three kinds of abhdva does this belong ? 



He first shewed that it could not be the third or " absolute" 

 abhdva, as this would imply that the absence must always exist some- 

 where, whether the prohibition be given or not. Neither could it be 

 the "emergent," as this would imply that the actions prohibited 

 must necessarily have been previously done, before the prohibition 

 could exist, — as if there could be no such thing as prevention but only 

 cure ! He therefore, concluded by exhaustion that the non-existence 

 of action which a prohibition produced in its hearers was " antecedent" 

 or prdgabhava. In other words, until the prohibition is promulgated, 

 the actions which it is to prohibit are of course not prohibited; they 

 are not, therefore, so long the objects of its injunction ; they only be- 

 come so from the moment of its being issued. From the moment of 

 its issue, these actions are forbidden, *, e., the hearer of the law will 

 thenceforth not do them. There will therefore, in his case, be an 

 absence of such prohibited actions, which will continue until he 

 violates the law ; and this absence will of course reach back to eter- 

 nity, as until the prohibition came, he never could have committed 

 them as prohibited. In other words, the non-existence of prohibited 

 actions ceases only when, after the prohibition, some such action is 

 performed.* 



This I think, is a fair and perhaps favourable specimen of the 

 niceties of what Di\ Hall has well called " the arcana of Hindu 

 dialectics. "f 



One of the things which most interested and surprised me in my visit 

 to Nuddea was the great desire which I found everywhere existing for 

 English education. Of course amongst the bideci students this did not 

 exist ; the grown up and elderly men who come to Nuddea to complete a 

 purely Pandit education, only care for studies which will gain them 

 reputation at home ; but it is very different with the degiya students. 

 I was continually receiving applications from the students for a free 



* The Pundit's reasoning is perhaps illustrated by Gibbon's remark on the 

 injustice of a retro-active enactment, "wliichpunish.es offences which did no t 

 exist at the time they were committed." (Autobiography, p. 80.) 



f A contribution towards an index to the Bibliography of the Indian Philoso- 

 phical systems, p. 32. 



