INDIAN CONSUMPTION OF BRITISH MANUFACTURES. 391 years in which the Company added to their territories one hundred and sixty-seven thousand square miles, with eight millions and a half of new population,10 the imports of British goods shewed an actual annual decrease. Calculations made in reference to the consumption of British manufactures in different countries shew, that whilst Chili and the States of Rio de la Plata take of our goods to the yearly value of 13s. 7d. for each inhabitant; and Cuba, Hayti, Brazil, and other countries, consume for each inhabitant 7s. 3d. annually, British India takes but 1s. for every inhabitant. Small as this sum appears, it is in reality much above the actual amount taken by the population generally, which, throughout by far the widest range of the Company's territories, will be represented by no other symbol than a unit. Millions upon millions of Hindoos live and die unpossessed of the smallest fragment, the veriest shred of any British manufactures. What can the miserable ryot spare for Manchester prints, Glasgow cloths, or Birmingham ware, out of the pittance of 6d. a week, the proceeds of his heavy toil? Yet were the inhabitants of our Indian territories to take but half as much per head of our goods as the foreigners of Chili and La Plata, British merchants would export to the East merchandise to the yearly value of upwards of thirty-three millions sterling. And no one acquainted with this magnificent country can doubt that, with justice to India, this and much more might be accomplished. 10 Report on Indian Territories, Appendix, p. 330. CHAPTER I. LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE. THERE HERE is no valid reason for doubting the high antiquity of the Sanscrit language, from which the Hindoo had its origin; indeed we may attribute to it a descent from the earliest dialects, if not even coeval with the confusion of tongues at Babel. It is difficult for western nations to appreciate the beauties of a language so opposed in its construction and tone to that of European tongues; hence many of the peculiarities which, in the original, impart so much of grace and charm to the Sanscrit, are entirely lost in a translation, however perfect. The figures, the associations, the colouring imparted by the Hindoo poets to their works, fail to create sympathy or admiration in the mind of an English reader, even if perused in the original tongue, wanting, as that reader necessarily must be, in the perception of ideas taking their rise from oriental life and eastern thought. The current languages of India are thirty-one in number, and may be arranged under two distinct heads; those derivable entirely from the Sanscrit; and those, chiefly of the south, based upon a Tamil foundation, though in several instances still blended to a certain extent with Sanscrit words. When this language ceased to be the vernacular tongue of India, it is in vain to attempt to divine; but it appears certain that at a remote period it gave way to the Prakrit, a corruption of itself; and from this latter have sprung directly the many tongues I am about to mention. The Prakrit is no longer spoken, though it is still preserved in numerous writings. The languages of the Hindoos which are to this day in common use are derivable from the Sanscrit, though its corrupted offspring appears to be comprised within the country lying to the north of a line drawn from Chicacole, in the Bay of Bengal, to Goa, on the western coast.1 1 Lassen: Institutiones Linguæ Pracritica, p. 12, |