374 



Proceedings of Societies. 



ma t e Vials for writing an autheiitic history of the whole of the southern peninsula 

 Of Indib- 



« Fro' <n these circumstances it is obvious that the Mackenzie collection does 

 afford documents illustrative of what I have already described as one of the most 

 imp< »'tant parts of our Indian possessions. 



« \With respect to the other subject of inquiry, the Committee of Correspondence 

 have taken such measures as may be necessary to ascertain the best means of in- 

 trodu. =in c * n a raore direct manner the sciences of Europe amongst the Hindus of 

 the south of I&dia. With a view to this point, they have inquired what degree of 

 science they had attained in former days ; what degree of encouragement was 

 'then held out to those amongst them who cultivated literature ; and whether,, 

 raising their character by increasing their knowledge, is likely to increase their 

 respect for, and attachment to, the British government. 



" Science is employed in contemplating either the operations of the human 

 understanding, the exercise of our moral powers, or the nature and qualities of 

 external objects. When employe ! in the first, it is called logic and metaphysics ; 

 in the second, ethics ; and in the third, physics. The committee have, therefore, 

 endeavoured to ascertain the extent of the progress which the Hindus of India 

 had, at any one time, made in each of those branches of science. It finds ample 

 evidence in different parts of the poem called the Mafrdbhdrat, that they had made 

 about the same progress in logic and metaphysics when that poem was written, 

 which is supposed to have been 1,500 years before the Christian era, as the 

 Greeks and Romans had made during the most enlightened period of their his- 

 tory: and it is, therefore, fair to infer, that they had attained great accui-acy in 

 defining their ideas, and in drawing correct conclusions from their definitions in 

 the more ancient times ; for a poem that was so popular as it was amongst the 

 Hindus, must, in order to have been so, have contained modes of reasoning and 

 opinions which were generally understood, and generally liked by the people 

 amongst whom the poem was circulated. It is, therefore, fair to infer, that a 

 poem of this sort, for the reasons I have just mentioned, affords the best evidence 

 which can be obtained of the opinions which were in general circulation in the- 

 country at the time the poem was written. The science of ethics has for its object 

 to ascertain the difference between virtue and vice; the motives by which we ought 

 to be guided ; and the general rules for regulating our conduct in society. This 

 science, judging by the opinions of the author of the Mahabharat, seems to have 

 attained amongst the Hindus the same degree of perfection 1,500 years before the 

 Christian era, as it diJ in Greece and Rome during the best days of the Stoic 

 philosophy. In the science of law, the Hindus, according to the institutes of 

 Menu, and their most ancient law-tracts, seem to have made as great a progress 

 in the earliest times, as the Greeks seem to have done in the days of Justinian ; 

 and to have exceeded the Greeks, and even the Europeans of the middle ages, in 

 that branch of it which related to commerce ; the laws of the Greeks and the 

 laws of the English having, up to the seventeenth century, restricted the allow- 

 ance of interest on all contracts to a fixed sum without any exception whatever — 

 the Hindu law, on the contrary, always making a distinct exception in cases of 

 adventures at sea ; though such an exception had never been made in the laws of 

 England till the time of Charles 1., when a knowledge of the true principles of 

 commerce had made great progress in England. 



" In physics, the progress of the Hindus seems to have been equally remark- 

 able in the earliest period of their history. In arithmetic, they were always be- 

 lieved to be the first who adopted the system of notation by ten numerals, in- 



