ERRATA TO VOLUME I. Page 53, line 11, read Jyotisha. 286, line 28, read niḥśreyasa. ,, 438, line 29, read drishtopakárake. OF THE UNIVERSITY MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. I. A DISCOURSE READ AT A MEETING OF THE [From the Transactions of the Royal Asiatic Society, [1] CALLED by the indulgence of this meeting to a chair, which I could have wished to have seen more worthily filled, upon so interesting an occasion as the first general meeting of a Society instituted for the important purpose of the advancement of knowledge in relation to Asia, I shall, with your permission, detain you a little from the special business of the day, while I draw your more particular attention to the objects of the Institution, for the furtherance of which we are now assembled. To those countries of Asia, in which civilization may be justly considered to have had its origin, or to have attained its earliest growth, the rest of the civilized world owes a large debt of gratitude, which it cannot but be solicitous to repay; and England, as most advanced in refinement, is, for that very cause, the most beholden; and, by acquisition of dominion in the East, is bound by a yet closer tie. As Englishmen, we participate in the earnest wish that this duty may be fulfilled, and that obligation requited; and we share in the anxious desire of contributing to such a happy result, by promoting an interchange of benefits, and returning in an improved state that which was received in a ruder form. VOL. II. [ESSAYS I.] 1 But improvement, to be efficient, must be adapted to the actual condition of things: and hence a necessity for [2] exact information of all that is there known, which belongs to science; and all that is there practised, which appertains to arts.... Be it then our part to investigate the sciences of Asia, and agire into the arts of the East, with the hope of facilitating améliorations of which they may be found susceptible. In progress of such researches, it is not perhaps too much to expect that something may yet be gleaned for the advancement of knowledge and improvement of arts at home. In many recent instances, inventive faculties have been tasked to devise anew, what might have been as readily copied from an Oriental type; or unacknowledged imitation has reproduced in Europe, with an air of novelty, what had been for ages familiar to the East. Nor is that source to be considered as already exhausted. In beauty of fabric, in simplicity of process, there possibly yet remains something to be learnt from China, from Japan, from India, which the refinement of Europe need not disdain. The characteristic of the arts in Asia is simplicity. With rude implements, and by coarse means, arduous tasks have been achieved, and the most finished results have been obtained; which, for a long period, were scarcely equalled, and have, but recently, been surpassed, by polished artifice and refined skill in Europe. Were it a question of mere curiosity, it might yet be worth the inquiry, what were the rude means by which such things have been accomplished? The question, however, is not a merely idle one. It may be investigated with confidence, that a useful answer will be derived. If it do not point to the way of perfecting European skill, it assuredly will to that of augmenting Asiatic attainments. The course of inquiry into the arts, as into the sciences, of Asia, cannot fail of leading to much which is curious [3] and instructive. The inquiry extends over regions, the most anciently and the most numerously peopled on the globe. The range of research is as wide as those regions are vast; and as various as the people who inhabit them are diversified. It embraces their ancient and modern history; their civil polity; their long-enduring institutions; their manners and their customs; their languages and their literature; their sciences, speculative and practical: in short, the progress of knowledge among them; the pitch which it has attained; and last, but most important, the means of its extension. In speaking of the history of Asiatic nations (and it is in Asia that recorded and authentic history of mankind commences), I do not refer merely to the succession of political struggles, national conflicts, and warlike achievements; but rather to less conspicuous, yet more important occurrences, which directly concern the structure of society, the civil institutions of nations, their internal, more than their external relations, and the yet less prominent, but more momentous events, which affect society universally, and advance it in the scale of civilized life. It is the history of the human mind which is most diligently to be investigated: the discoveries of the wise, the inventions of the ingenious, and the contrivances of the skilful. Nothing which has much engaged the thoughts of man is foreign to our inquiry, within the local limits which we have prescribed to it. We do not exclude from our research the political transactions of Asiatic states, nor the lucubrations of Asiatic philosophers. The first are necessarily connected, in no small degree, with the history of the progress of society; the latter have great influence on the literary, the speculative, and the practical avocations of men. [4] Nor is the ascertainment of any fact to be considered destitute of use. The aberrations of the human mind are a part of its history. It is neither uninteresting nor useless to ascertain what it is that ingenious men have done, and contemplative minds have thought, in former times, even where |