dersana. or commentaries. without end: one of the finest compositions on the philosophy of the Vedanta is entitled Yoga Vasishtha. and entains the instructions of the great Vasishtha to his pupil, Rama, king of Avedhya."

The Sudras, or fourth class of Hindus, are not permitted to study the six proper Sastras before enumerated; but an ample field remains for them in the study of profane literature, comprised in a multitude of popular books, which correspond with the several Sastras, and abound with beauties of every kind. All the tracts on medicine, must, indeed, be studied by the Vaidyas, or those who are born physicians;* and they have often more learning, with far less pride, than any of the Brahmins: they are usually poets, grammarians, rhetoricians, moralists; and may be esteemed in general the most virtuous and amiable of

As every profession and trade in India, belongs to, or is in the possession of distinct classes, the expression, who are born physicians, means, merely, to say, who are of the class that exclusively professes the study and practice of physic.

the Hindus. Instead of the Vedas they study the Rajaniti, or Instruction of Princes, and instead of law, the Nitisastra, or general system of ethics: their Sahitia. or Cavya Sastra, consists of innumerable poems, written chiefly by the medical tribe, and supplying the place of the Puranas, since they contain all the stories of the Ramayana, Bharata, and Bhagawata: they have access to many treatises of Alancara, or Rhetorick, with a variety of works in modulated prose; to Upachyana, or Civil History, called also Rajatarangini ; to the Nataca, which answers to the Gandharvaveda, consisting of regular dramatic pieces, in Sanscrit and Pracrit; besides which they commonly get by heart some entire dictionary and grammar.

The best lexicon, or vocabulary, was composed in verse, for the assistance of the memory, by the illustrious Amarasinha ; but there are seventeen others in great repute: the best grammar is the Mugdhabodha, or the beauty of knowledge, written by Goswami, named Vopadeva, and com

prehending, in two hundred short pages, all that a learner of the language can have occasion to know. To the Coshas, or dictionaries, are usually annexed very ample Ticas, or etymological commentaries."

"Wherever we direct our attention to Hindu literature, the notion of infinity presents itself; and the longest life would not be sufficient for the perusal of near five hundred thousand stanzas in the Puranas, with a million more, perhaps, in the other works before mentioned: we may, however, select the best from each Sastra, and gather the fruits of science, without loading ourselves with the leaves and branches ; while we have the pleasure to find, that the learned Hindus, encouraged by the mildness of our government and manners, are at least as eager to communicate their knowledge of all kinds, as we can be to receive it. Since Europeans are indebted to the Dutch for almost all they know of Arabic, and to the French for all they know of Chinese, let them now receive from our nation the first accurate know

ledge of Sanscrit, and of the valuable works composed in it; but, if they wish to form a correct idea of Indian religion and literature, let them begin with forgetting all that has been written on the subject, by ancients or moderns, before the publication of the Gita."*

In an appendix to an allegorical drama translated from the Sanscrit by Dr. J. Taylor,+ he particularly distinguishes the two systems or schools of Hindū philosophy, known by the names of Vedanta and Nyaya. The latter, he observes, as Sir William Jones had previously remarked, bears a strong analogy with the doctrines of Aristotle, both with regard to his philosophic opinions and his principles of logic; and in the preceding quotations from Sir William Jones, the reader will have observed, that a tradition prevails in the East, of the

* By Mr. (now Dr.) Charles Wilkins.

+ Intituled Prabodh Chandro Daya, or the Moon of Intellect; which I venture to recommend to the attention of the reader, together with the learned translator's introduction and appendix to it.

Brahmins having communicated a technical system of logic to Callisthenes, which was transmitted by him to Aristotle, and which the Mohammedan author of the Dabistan supposes to have been the ground-work of the famous Aristotelian_method.* Both the Vedanta and Nyaya philosophers as far as our knowledge extends, seem to make the great scope of sound philosophy to consist in the practice of virtue; in being guided in our actions by the dictates of reason, of that faculty which enables us to distinguish truth from falsehood, and what may be proper or unfit in our desires and affections without entering into all the different expositions and divisions of the same subject, by Plato, Aristotle, Zeno, and other ancient sages, such, in reality, is the result of their arguments on moral philosophy. Like Aristotle, the Nyaya philosophers make the operation of reason in regard to action, to consist in observing a just medium between extremes; thus,

* See p. 221.