DISSERTATION, &c.

CHAPTER I.

Ancient classical Writers very defective in Information, respecting the INTERNAL POLICY of the Indians. Accounted for in the Reluctance of the Indians to admit Visits from Foreigners, and in the Injunction of Menu to themselves not to pass the ATTOCK.-Their Relations, bowever, not wholly to be rejected.The Government MONARCHICAL, but not despotic, and founded on the Principles of the PATRIAR CHAL. The unlimited Power of the Brahmins, immediately derived from a divine Source, in the Control of the regal Authority, and in the arbitrary Interpretation of the Laws, rendered it a Kind of THEOCRACY.-Hereditary Counsellors of the Crown, in Peace and War; all! the higher Functions of effective Government, though nominally and by Law intrusted to the KHETTRI, or RAJAH, Tribe, ultimately depended on themselves.-Wisdom of the original

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Division of the Hindoos into FOUR CASTS.Their DUTIES, RIGHTS, and IMMUNITIES, respectively considered.-The Police established throughout the Indian Empire extremely vigilant and rigid.-The Duties of its Officers, -That Police sanctioned by a CODE which held out REWARDS as flattering as the PuNISHMENTS it denounced were terrible and sanguinary.

N the subject of the original Form of government established in India, little solid information can be expected from the classic page of antiquity, because a perfect knowledge of the mode in which the government of a country is conducted necessarily implies an intimate acquaintance with its history. But, concerning that history, through the whole volume of antiquity, there are scattered only the faintest glimmerings of intelligence; and this universal and continued ignorance of the ancients, in regard to the domestic history of India, is easily to be accounted for in the peculiar manners of this secluded people, who seem neither to have been anxious to visit other nations nor to receive visits from them.

In truth, forbidden, under the severest penalties the legislature could inflict, to wander beyond the limits of the country which gave

them birth; attached to that country as well by its fertility and beauty as by the necessity. which there existed of his daily performing a multitude of sacred rites and ceremonious ablutions prescribed by his religion, and possibly ordained for that very purpose by the wise policy of Menu; fixed by the decree of the same legislator to a rank and class among his fellow-creatures, from which those immutable decrees allowed no possible deviation; the ancient Indian could possess little curiosity to be gratified in regard to foreign kingdoms, of whose existence, indeed, in any extent or number, his secluded situation would naturally render him in a great degree ignorant. He professed also a religion so directly opposite, in its leading principles, to those of that furious Mahommedan superstition which afterwards deluged with blood his unhappy country, that it neither sought nor admitted of proselytes; and, while he conscientiously obeyed the mandates of a system of jurisprudence, which prohibited any immediate intercourse with the individuals of all the various tribes, except his own, that inhabited his native region, he could not fail of scrupulously abstaining from the defilement inevitably consequent on an intercourse, still more strictly interdicted, with foreigners. The ATTOCK, the most western river

of the Panjab, the very name of which implies forbidden, was appointed by Menu to be the eternal barrier between them and alien nations, and to pass it was to incur at once the chastisement of man and the curse of God.

On the other hand, deterred by their natural reluctance to admit strangers within their cities, few travellers in ancient times penetrated far into India, and fewer still into the mystic theology and abstruse lore of the Brahmins. The vists to that country of Zaratusht and Pythagoras, for the noble purpose of investigating the principles of their philosophy, are among the few recorded in history. In respect to their commerce with the Egyptians and Arabians, that branch of it was carried on principally along the coasts of the Peninsula; and Lahore and Cabul seem to have been the utmost limits of the migration of those merchants of Upper India, who traded to Persia and Tartary. Hence it arose that such astonishing fables were circulated in the ancient world concerning this little explored country, where every thing vast and prodigious was supposed to generate and abound; of all which the credulous Pliny has been the diligent collector and the too faithful

narrator.

The Indian sovereigns also, contemplated as they were by their subjects, as the vicegerents

of God on earth, with a reverential awe little short of idolatry, possessing treasures beyond calculation, and power without limit, in their hereditary domain, felt no sting of avarice, no ardour of ambition, to goad them to the conquest of surrounding nations whom they considered as Mileeches, infidels, outcasts of God, and occupying a station in the scale of humanity far inferior to themselves and the favoured tribe of the great Brahma. Over such vassals, they would have thought it inglorious to have reigned; happy would it have been for the Hindoos, in after-ages, had the Persian and Tartar sovereigns, their neighbours on the west and north, been of the same opinion with themselves!

Not absolutely relying on what classical writers have written concerning India, yet, in the course of our retrospect, not wholly regardless of their exaggerated narrations, let us consult the more accurate accounts which British diligence and zeal, in India, have recently proeured for us of that country in its earliest periods, either from books or living authorities of the highest rank; let us inquire what actually was that government so celebrated for its wisdom and equity, and in what manner it was conducted to render it at once so lasting and so respectable.