Proceedings of Societies, 



view to the first, they have taken measures for ascertaining the value and extent 

 of the materials which compose the Mackenzie collection; and for procuring such 

 further materials as may he necessary to the completion of this work through the 

 medium of the Hindu Society of Literature at Madras, of which Lutchmiah, the 

 late Colonel Mackenzie's head assistant, is the president. The part of India to 

 which these inquiries refer, is hounded on the north by the river Krishna, on the 

 south by Cape Comorin, on the east by the coast of Coromandel, and on the west, 

 by the coast of Malabar; and contains a superficies of about 140,000 square miles. 

 This tract of country is of moral, commercial, and political interest, as well from 

 its topograp hy, population, languages, religious and civil institutions, agriculture, 

 manufactures, and commerce, as from its ancient and modern history. The great 

 chain of mountains, known by the name of the Eastern and Western Ghats, sepa* 

 rate the two coasts of this peninsula, the western coast being open to the south- 

 west, the eastern coast to the north-east monsoon. Where the mountains ascend 

 above a certain height, neither the south-west nor the north-east monsoon breaks 

 over them ; but where they are below a certain height, both monsoons break over 

 them. In the Paligautcherry Pass, and in the Gulph of Manar, the influence of 

 this chain of mountains, and of these two monsoons, is, independent of many other 

 local circumstances, very great, both upon the vegetable and animal productions; 

 and produces a greater variety in this part of India than is any where to be found 

 in the same space within the tropics, as is fully shewn, as well by the difference 

 between the productions on the coast of Malabar, and those on the coast of Coro- 

 mandel, as by the production of the pearl oyster, of the chank-shell, and of the 

 different modifications of coral in the gulph of Manar. The population consists of 

 the different descriptions of people who inhabit the Neilgherry and other moun- 

 tains ; of the Hindu people who inhabit the low-lands, of the descendants of the 

 Moguls and Arabs, and of people of the different nations of Europe who have from 

 time to time established themselves in the several parts of the country, I must 

 here mention that we are indebted to our Secretary for an interesting description 

 ef the former people. 



" There are four principal languages ; the Telugu, which extends from the 

 Northern Circars to Pulicat, and which, from its softness, bears the same relation 

 to the other languages in ihat part of India, as the Italian does to the languages 

 of the rest of Europe ; the Tamil, which extends from Pulicat to Cape Comorin, 

 and which has a system of literature peculiar to itself, originating with the people 

 amongst whom it is spoken; the Malayal'ma, which extends from Cape Comorin 

 to Mount Dilli on the Malabar coast ; and the CanaTese, which extends from 

 that mountain to the Concan, and throughout the Mysore territories. All four 

 languages may be said to belong to one family, because they have the same 

 roots, although they differ so much in other respects as not to be intelligible 

 to the people who do not belong to the countries in which they are respectively 

 spoken. They are not of the same family with the Sanskrit, because they 

 differ in their roots from that language, though they all contain a great many 

 words derived from the Sanskrit. I am indebted to our Secretary, who has devoted 

 so much of his attention to the people and language of the Neilgherry hills, and to 

 the people of southern India generally, for a very curious fact relative to these 

 languages. He tells me, if you extract from them all the words that are Sanskrit, 

 you leave a language similar to the one which is at present spoken by the people 

 of those hills . 



" The religions which prevail in the Peninsula of India are the Brahmanical, 

 the Budd'ha, the Jain, the Muhammedan, the Jewish, and the Christian, in all its 



