36 Account or a DISCOVERY OF 4 
hand writing, both of the Sanserié and French, throughout the manus 
scripts, for those may be copies only, I think the judgement which will be 
formed will lead to the conclusion against the probability of the author 
and translator of these works having been the same person, and though 
the establishment of this point, will not prove the truth of the conjecture 
I have ventured to offer on their origin, it will corroborate any circums 
stances which may be hereafter discovered tending to establish it. 
Tue conclusion would be natural, that a person, who had acquired 
such an extensive command of the Sanscrit language as te be qualified 
to compose these works, and such a knowledge of the ceremonial 
observances and religious tenets of the Hindus, as to enable him to 
compile the materials of which they are formed, would have made. 
himself acquainted, also, with the form and substance of the writings he 
was about to imitate, as essentially necessary to the success of his forgery 3 
on the same prineiple, indeed, however different. the motive, that a 
common swindler imitates, even to the minutest stroke, the signature. of 
the person he intends to defraud. And, thus concluding, it might cers 
tainly be expected that these Jesuttical forgeries were nearly the same 
as the real Védas; that they were the same in general arrangement, 
style of composition, as verse or prose, and in matter, as. far as compatible 
with the intentions of the author: in none of these, however, do they. 
bear to the writings, the title of which they assume, the most distant 
resemblance, 
‘Tue contents of the several Védas and their general character are 
well explained by Mr. CoLeBRovke, in his Dissertation ** on the Védas 
