ourselves, and that instead of returning evil for evil, we should confer benefits, even on those who injure us: but the first rule is implied in a speech of Lysias, and expressed in distinct phrases by Thales and Pittacus; and I have even seen it, word for word, in the original of Confucius, which I carefully compared with the Latin translation. It has been usual with zealous men to ridicule and abuse all those who dare on this point to quote the Chinese philosopher; but, instead of supporting their cause, they would shake it, if it could be shaken, by their uncandid asperity; for they ought to remember, that one great end of revelation, as it is most expressly declared, was not to instruct the wise and few, but the many and unenlightened. If the conversion, therefore, of the Pandits and Maulavis in this country shall ever be attempted by Protestant missionaries, they must beware of asserting, while they teach the gospel of truth, what those Pandits and Maulavis would know to be false. The former would cite the beautiful Arya couplet, which was written at least three centuries before our æra, and which pronounces the duty of a good man, even in the moment of his destruction, to consist not only in forgiving, but even in a desire of benefiting, his destroyer, as the Sandal tree, in the instant of its overthrow, sheds perfume on the axe which fells it; and the latter would triumph in repeating the verse of Sadi, who represents a return of good for good as a slight reciprocity; but says to the virtuous man, Confer benefits on him who has injured thee;" using an Arabic sentence, and a maxim apparently of the ancient Arabs. Nor would the Mussulmans fail to recite four distichs of Hafiz, who has illustrated that maxim with fanciful but elegant allusions: Learn from yon orient shell to love thy foe, And store with pearls the hand that brings thee woe: Mark, where yon tree rewards the stony show'r: Now there is not a shadow of reason for believing that the poet of Shiraz had borrowed this doctrine from the Christians; but, as the cause of Christianity could never be promoted by falsehood or error, so it will never be obstructed by candour and veracity; for the lessons of Confucius and Chanacya, of Sadi and Hafiz, are unknown even at this day to millions of Chinese and Hindus, Persians, and other Mahommedans, who toil for their daily support; nor, were they known ever so perfectly, would they have a divine sanction with the multitude; so that, in order to enlighten the minds of the ignorant, and to enforce the obedience of the perverse, it is evident, a priori, that a revealed religion was necessary in the great system of Providence but my principal motive for introducing this topic, was to give you a specimen of that ancient oriental morality which is comprised in an infinite number of Persian, Arabic, and Sanscrit compositions. Nearly one half of jurisprudence is closely connected with ethics; but, since the learned of Asia consider most of their laws as positive and divine institutions, and not as the mere conclusions of human reason; and since I have prepared a mass of extremely curious materials which I reserve for an introduction to the digest of Indian laws, I proceed to the fourth division; which consists principally of sciences transcendently so named, or the knowledge of abstract quantities, of their limits, properties, and relations, impressed on the understanding with the force of irresistible demonstration; which, as all other knowledge depends, at best, on our fallible senses, and in a great measure on still more fallible testimony, can only be found in pure mental abstractions; though for all the purposes of life, our own senses, and even the credible testimony of others, give us, in most cases, the highest degree of certainty, physical and moral. IV. I have already had occasion to touch on the Indian metaphysics of natural bodies, according to the most celebrated of the Asiatic schools, from which the Pythagoreans are supposed to have borrowed many of their opinions; and, as we learn from Cicero, that the old sages of Europe had an idea of centripetal force, and a principle of universal gravitation (which they never indeed attempted to demonstrate) so I can venture to affirm, without meaning to pluck a leaf from the never-fading laurels of our immortal Newton, that the whole of his theology, and part of his philosophy, may be found in the Védas, and even in the works of the Sufis. The most subtil spirit, which he suspected to pervade natural bodies, and, lying concealed in them, to cause attraction and repulsion; the emission, reflection, and refraction of light; electricity, calefaction, sensation, and muscular motion, is described by the Hindus as a fifth element, endued with those very powers; and the Védas abound with allusions to a force universally attractive, which they chiefly ascribe to the Sun, thence called Aditya, or the Attractor: a name designed by the mythologists to mean the Child of the Goddess Aditi; but the most wonderful passage on the theory of attraction, occurs in the charming allegorical poem of Shirin and Ferhad, or the Divine Spirit and a human soul disinterestedly pious: a work which, from the first verse to the last, is a blaze of religious and poetical fire. The whole passage appears to me so curious, that I make no apology for giving you a faithful translation of it: 66 66 66 "There is a strong propensity which dances through every atom, and attracts the minutest particle to some particular object. Search this universe from "its base to its summit, from fire to air, from water "to earth, from all below the Moon to all above "the celestial spheres, and thou wilt not find a corpuscle destitute of that natural attractability; the very point of the first thread, in this apparently tangled skein, is no other than such a principle of "attraction; and all principles beside are void of a real basis: from such a propensity arises every "motion perceived in heavenly, or in terrestrial "bodies: it is a disposition to be attracted, which "taught hard steel to rush from its place and rivet "itself on the magnet: it is the same disposition "which impels the light straw to attach itself firmly on amber: it is this quality which gives every "substance in nature a tendency toward another, " and an inclination forcibly directed to a determinate point." These notions are vague, indeed, and unsatisfactory; but permit me to ask, whether the last paragraph of Newton's incomparable work goes much farther? and whether any subsequent experiments have thrown light on a subject so abstruse and obscure? That the sublime astronomy and exquisitely beautiful geometry with which that work is illumined, should in any degree be approached by the Mathematicians of Asia, while of all Europeans who ever lived, Archimedes alone was capable of emulating them, would be a vain expectation; but we must suspend our opinion of Indian astronomical knowledge till the Súrya Siddhanta shall appear in our own language, and even then (to adopt a phrase of Cicero) our greedy and capacious ears will by no means be satisfied; for, in order to complete an historical account of genuine Hindu astronomy, we require verbal translations of at least three other Sanscrit books; of the treatise of Parasara for 66 ། the first age of Indian science; of that by Varáha, with the copious comment of his very learned son, for the middle age; and of those written by Bhascara for times comparatively modern. The valuable and now accessible works of the last mentioned philosopher, contain also an universal, or specious arithmetic, with one chapter at least in geometry; nor would it, surely, be difficult to procure, through our several residents with the Pishwa and with Scindhya, the older books on algebra, which Bhascara mentions, and on which Mr. Davis would justly set a very high value; but the Sanscrit work, from which we might expect the most ample and important information, is entitled Cshétrâdersa, or a View of Geometrical Knowledge, and was compiled in a very large volume, by order of the illustrious Jayasinha, comprising all that remains on that science in the sacred language of India: it was inspected in the west by a Pandit now in the service of Lieutenant Wilford, and might, I am persuaded, be purchased at Jayanagar, where Colonel Polier had permission from the Rájá to buy the four Vedas themselves. Thus have I answered, to the best of my power, the three first questions obligingly transmitted to us by Professor Playfair,---Whether the Hindus have books in Sanscrit expressly on geometry? Whether they have any such on arithmetic? and, Whether a translation of the Súryha Siddhânta be not the great desideratum on the subject of Indian astronomy? To his three last questions,--Whether an accurate summary account of all the Sanscrit works on that subject? A delineation of the Indian celestial sphere, with correct remarks on it? and, A description of the astronomical instruments used by the ancient Hindus, would not severally be of great utility? we cannot but answer in the affirmative, provided that the utmost critical sagacity were applied in distinguishing such works, |