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principles, or more independent minds. The great body of artists, alfo, in this kingdom, who do not diflike a little bigh colouring in ftyle, I have the greatest reason to think decidedly friendly to my work; though many of them have not ceased to lament that my plates are by no means adequate to the importance of the fubjects difcuffed. On fome future occafion, poffibly, with their kind affiftance, that error may be rectified.

The conviction, Gentlemen, of your particular and practical knowledge of Indian Jurifprudence, evinced, on a memorable occafion, in the highest court of judicature known in this country, excites in my mind no small degree of anxious apprehenfion, while I infcribe to you a volume containing an exprefs treatise on the ancient government and legal inftitutions of that mighty empire. Little converfant, from different habits and pursuits of life, in legal researches, I would willingly have declined altogether engaging in the fubject; but a differtation on Indian jurisprudence forms a part of my original proposals, published long before Sir William Jones favoured the learned

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world with a tranflation of Menu's Inftitutes, which are now in the hands of most profeffional men. Though that circumstance has enabled me greatly to curtail my difquifitions on that curious head of Indian literature, yet it by no means releases me from the obligation I am under to the general class of my readers, who may not be poffeffed of the work in question. The concife obfervations which I have ventured to offer on the legislature of India and that fingular code, compofed of fuch heterogeneous ingredients, that jargon (for so I must call it) of defpotism to men and benevolence to brutes, of fenfe and absurdity, of the fublime and the puerile, are the refult of confiderable attention to the subject, founded partly on what I have been able to collect from ancient claffical writers, and partly from the few genuine Hindoo documents as yet in our poffeffion. They might easily have been made longer, and are, in fact, themselves only an abridgement of a more extended effay; but, as I have in that Differtation apologetically obferved, the work itself has been fince reprinted and widely circulated in Europe. It

is entered into in fufficient detail to gratify the curiofity of the general reader, and the legal ftudent will probably not rest content without confulting the original. My intention, in giving a regular analysis of the code, was, by leaving cut what appeared to be its interpolated abfurdities, to prefent it to the reader in a more connected point of view, and better worthy of the wifdom of the fublime legislator to whom it is attributed.

The legal Differtation, though the last in order of those that occupy the pages of this final volume, I have introduced first and more particularly to your notice, Gentlemen, because it is the one in which you will probably find yourselves most interested. It contains two others, intimately connected with Indian commerce and literature, to which I beg permiffion to make thefe dedicatory pages fomewhat introductory.

When the Arabian chiefs, in the feventh century of the Chriftian æra, poured their myriads into the plains of Hindoftan, they found there fuch fuperabundant wealth, the tribute of all nations for innumerable ages, as occafioned the writers of that country

to

to invent the romantic fiction that, among other rarities peculiar to India, a tree was discovered there of pure gold,* and of enormous fize, fpringing naturally out of the foil, thus realizing Milton's fable of the vegetable gold that grew in the delightful paradife of his fancy. According to writers, however, hereafter referred to, of fomewhat better authenticity than those fablers, nothing could equal, in the ancient periods that preceded their irruption, the astonishing magnificence difplayed in the pagodas. The lofty roofs and columns of those ftupendous edifices are reported to have been entirely covered with that beautiful metal; the high-raised altars blazed with a profufion of gems; the breafts and vestures of their monftrous idols were covered with ftrings of the lovelieft pearl, while their eyes fparkled with the borrowed luftre of emeralds and rubies. I thought it could not fail of being peculiarly interesting to that very large and refpectable portion of my readers who are commercially connected with India, to trace to

* See Orme's Hindoftan, vol. i. p. 9.

their fource, in the vaft, but now probably exhausted, mines of Africa and Afia, the ftreams of that amazing wealth, by way of appendix to the Differtation on the ancient commerce of India in the fixth volume of these Antiquities. The picture, it must be owned, is extremely gaudy and magnificent, but I truft it is not overcharged.

The arts and fciences of India, which I have confidered under the general head of its literature, were carried, in periods of the most remote antiquity, to fo high a point of excellence as opens to the European scholar an immenfe field for reflection. In this inftance alfo I have endeavoured to do the ancient Indians ftrict justice without exaggeration; but, on fome points principally relating to their unparalleled advance in mechanical science, confiderable difficulties arifing, and there being fuch a deficiency of written materials in Europe for proving the points contended for; to fubftantiate thofe points I have had recourse to the following plan of inveftigation and decifion, in which, if my author Sir William Jones was, as I have every reason to think, correct in his original po

fitions,

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