2 3 velyan, who was at that time Governor. The memoirs of Manouchi have been already described in the Preface to Part I.; but it may be added, on the authority of the Madras records, that during the latter years of the reign of Aurangzeb, Manouchi took up his abode at Madras, where he was much respected by the English, and employed on more than one occasion in presenting petitions to the Moghul in behalf of the East India Company's servants at Fort St. George. There is one other feature in the present half volume to which attention may be drawn. The ninth chapter, which deals with the state of civilisation in the Moghul Empire, mainly consists of the evidence of European travellers who sojourned in India at different intervals in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Some account of these travellers will be found in the chapter in question. It will suffice, in the present place, to mention the names of Terry, Della Valle, Tavernier, Thevenot, Fryer, Hamilton, and Karstens Niebuhr, as amongst the most competent and trustworthy eyewitnesses of the condition of the people of India, in addition to those who have been already brought under review in Part I. of the present volume. The remaining portion of the present History will The results of these investigations were published at Madras in 1861-62, in three volumes, small 4to, under the title of "Madras in the Olden Time, Compiled from Official Records." 3 The author is indebted to his publisher, Mr. N. Trübner, for a copy of Father Catrou's History of the Reign of Aurangzeb, but the original memoirs, written in Portuguese, which Manouchi sent to Europe in the beginning of the last century, have not as yet been discovered. comprise that of British India, and will deal with the rise and growth of British power, and progress of British administration and legislation, from the earliest settlements of the late East India Company in India down to our own time.* WITHAM, ESSEX, In Part I. of the present volume the author expressed the opinion that the Vedic Aryans might possibly prove to have been Moghuls; and as this hypothesis has met with some opposition, he would take this opportunity of furnishing additional grounds for arriving at such a conclusion. During a residence in Burma he found that the Burmese, who are unquestionably Moghuls, still cherish the traditions and worship of the Vedic gods. They are Buddhists; but on the first day of every new year they celebrate the descent of Indra. In their popular songs they implore Indra and the other Vedic gods, especially Brahma, to help them in their troubles. At Mandalay he found that the King of Burma entertained Brahmans at his court; that on state occasions these Bráhmans chanted hymns which resembled Vedic hymns. Subsequently he found that the Moghul Khans in Upper Asia, in the neighbourhood of the Altai mountains, presented wine and food in Vedic fashion to fire, air, water, and ghosts; that their priests, like Bráhmans, were skilled in astronomy, foretold eclipses, and cast nativities; that they had dirty saints, like Hindu yogis, who performed miracles by virtue of their sanctity and penances. Pursuing these inquiries, he found that Sir Henry Rawlinson had discovered that the language of the ancient Scythians was Aryan, and he deemed it possible that the Moghuls, who are descendants of ancient Scythians, were Aryans likewise. It was on these data that he pronounced it likely that the Moghuls and the Vedic Aryans had a common origin. Father Rubruquis states in his Travels amongst the Tartars in the thirteenth century that the Moghuls regarded themselves as a sovereign tribe. Possibly they may have been descendants from the royal Scythians described by Herodotus. It is equally possible that they may have been originally an Aryan colony, who had established a supremacy over a Turanian or non-Aryan people. It is certain that the two races of Turks and Moghuls have been in antagonism from a very remote period; they have waged perpetual war against each other. The Turks are the so-called Children of the Moon, and to this day they carry the crescent on their standard. The Moghuls are the socalled Children of the Sun, and to this day they carry a peacock on their standard. A peacock of gold and jewels blazed over the throne of the Moghul Emperor Shah Jehan, and a peacock is still the standard of the Moghul kings of Burma. |