INTROD. frequency of rugged passes in some parts, and the

annual destruction of the roads by the rains in others, make the use of pack cattle much greater than that of draught cattle, and produce those innumerable droves which so often choke up the travellers' way, as they are transporting grain, salt, and other articles of commerce from one province to another.

Camels, which travel faster, and can carry more bulky loads, are much employed by the rich, and are numerous in armies. Elephants are also used, and are indispensable for carrying large tents, heavy carpets, and other articles which cannot be divided. Buffaloes are very numerous, but they are chiefly kept for milk, of which great quantities (in various preparations) are consumed*: they are not unfrequently put in carts, are used for ploughing in deep and wet soils, and more rarely for carriage. Sheep are as common as in European countries, and goats more so. Swine are kept by the lowest casts; poultry are comparatively scarce, in small villages, from the prejudice of the Hindús against fowls; but the common fowl is found wild in great numbers, and resembles the bantam kind. The peacock, also, is common in a wild state. White cranes and egrettes are extremely numerous throughout the year; and grey cranes, wild geese,

* The commonest of these are clarified butter (ghí), and a sort of acid curd (dahí) which is called yourt in the Levant. Cheese is scarcely known, and butter never used in its natural state.

snipes, ortolans, and other birds of passage, come INTROD. in incredible numbers at their season. Eagles are found in some places, as are various kinds of fal

cons. Vultures are very common, and kites beyond number. Most English birds are common (except singing birds); besides parrots, or rather peroquets, and various birds of splendid plumage, for which we have not even names.

Fish is abundant, and is a great article of food in Bengal, and some other countries.

Crocodiles are often seen both in rivers and large ponds.

None of the minerals of India have attracted Minerals. attention except diamonds and iron. The steel of India was in request with the ancients, and is celebrated in the oldest Persian poem, and is still the material of the scymitars of Khórasán and Damascus. The inferior stones opals, amethysts, garnets, chrysolites, beryls, cornelians, agates, &c. - are found in considerable quantities. Most of the pearls in the world, and all the best, are taken up from beds near Ceylon. Rock salt is found in a range of mountains in the Panjáb; and salt is made in large quantities from the water of the Sámber Lake in Ajmír, and from that of the sea. Saltpetre is so abundant as to supply many other countries.

The conformation of the countries and the peculiarities of climate and seasons have great effect on military operations in India. The passes through the chains of hills that intersect the

INTROD. Country regulate the direction of the roads, and often fix the fields of battle. Campaigns are generally suspended during the rains, and resumed at the end of that season, when grain and forage are abundant. The site of encampments is very greatly affected by the supply of water, which must be easy of access to the thousands of cattle which accompany every army, chiefly for carriage. One party is often able to force his enemy into action, by occupying the water at which he intended to halt. A failure of the periodical rains brings on all the horrors of famine.

HINDÚS.

BOOK I.

STATE OF THE HINDÚS AT THE TIME OF

MENU'S CODE.

BOOK

I.

Prelimi

As the rudest nations are seldom destitute of some account of the transactions of their ancestors, it is a natural subject of surprise, that the Hindús should have attained to a high pitch of yo civilisation, without any work that at all approaches to the character of a history. *

The fragments which remain of the records of their transactions are so mixed with fable, and so distorted by a fictitious and extravagant system of Chronology, as to render it hopeless to deduce from them any continued thread of authentic narrative.

No date of a public event can be fixed before the invasion of Alexander; and no connected relation of the national transactions can be attempted until after the Mahometan conquest.

The history of Cashmír scarcely forms an exception. Though it refers to earlier writings of the same nature, it was begun more than a century after the Mahometan conquest of Cashmír even if it were ancient, it is the work of a small sequestered territory on the utmost borders of India, which, by the accounts contained in the history itself, seems to have been long liable to be affected by foreign manners; and the example seems never to have been followed by the rest of the Hindús.

nary Ob. servations.

BOOK

I.

But notwithstanding this remarkable failure in the annals of the early Hindús, there is no want of information regarding their laws, manners, and religion; which it would have been the most useful object of an account of their proceedings to teach : and if we can ascertain their condition at a remote period, and mark the changes that have since taken place, we shall lose very little of the essential part of their history.

A view of the religion of the Hindús is given, and some light is thrown on their attainments in science and philosophy, by the Védas, a collection of ancient hymns and prayers which are supposed to have been reduced to their present form in the fourteenth century before the Christian æra; but the first complete picture of the state of society is afforded by the Code of Laws which bears the name of Menu, and which was probably drawn up in the ninth century before Christ. *

With that Code, therefore, every history of the Hindús must begin.

But to gain accurate notions even of the people contemporary with the supposed Menu, we must remember that a code is never the work of a single age, some of the earliest and rudest laws being preserved, and incorporated with the improvements of the most enlightened times. To take a familiar example, there are many of the laws in Blackstone the existence of which proves a high state of refinement in the nation; but those relating to witch

* See Appendix I. "On the Age of Menu."