nant Wilford, and might, I am persuaded, be purchased at Jayanagar, where Colonel Polier had permission from the Rájá to buy the four Védás 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 Súrya Siddhánta 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, constellations, and instruments, as are clearly of Indian origin, from such as were introduced into this country by Muselman astronomers from Tartary and Persia, or in later days by mathematicians from Europe.

V. From all the properties of man and of nature, from all the various branches of science, from all the deductions of human reason, the general corollary, admitted by Hindus, Arabs, and Tartars, by Persians, and by Chinese, is the supremacy of an all-creating and all-preserving Spirit, infinitely wise, good, and powerful, but infinitely removed from the comprehension of his most exalted creatures; nor are there in any language (the ancient Hebrew always excepted) more pious and sublime addresses to the Being of beings, more splendid enumerations of his attri

butes, or more beautiful descriptions of his visible works, than in Arabic, Persian, and Sanscrit, especially in the Koran, the introductions of the poemз of Sadí, Nizámí, and Firdaus'i, the four Védas, and many parts of the numerous Purànas: but supplication and praise would not satisfy the boundless imagination of the Vedántì and Sùfì theologists, who, blending uncertain metaphysics with undoubted principles of religion, have presumed to reason confidently on the very nature and essence of the Divine Spirit, and asserted in a very remote age, what multitudes of Hindus and Muselmans assert at this hour, that all spirit is homogeneous; that the spirit of God is in kind the same with that of man, though differing from it infinitely in degree; and that, as material substance is mere illusion, there exists in this universe only one generic spiritual substance, the sole primary cause, efficient, substantial, and formal of all secondary causes and of all appearances whatever, but endued, in its highest degree, with a sublime providential wisdom, and proceeding by ways incomprehensible to the spirits which emanate from it: an opinion which Gótama never taught, and which we have no authority to believe, but which, as it is grounded on the doctrine of an immaterial Creator supremely wise, and a constant Preserver supremely benevolent, differs as widely from the pantheism of Spinoza and Toland, as the affirmation of a proposition differs from the negotiation of it; though the last named professor of that insane philosophy had the baseness to conceal his meaning under the very words of Saint Paul, which are cited by Newton for a purpose totally different, and has even used a phrase which occurs indeed in the Véda, but in a

sense diametrically opposite to that which he would have given it. The passage to which I allude is in a speech of Varuna to his son, where he says, "That spirit, from which these created beings proceed; through which, having proceeded from it, they live; toward which they tend, and in which they are ultimately absorbed,—that spirit study to know; that spirit is the Great One."

The subject of this discourse, Gentlemen, is inexhaustible: it has been my endeavour to say as much on it as possible in the fewest words; and, at the beginning of next year, I hope to close these general disquisitions with topics measureless in extent, but less abstruse than that which has this day been discussed; and better adapted to the gaiety which seems to have prevailed in the learned banquets of the Greeks, and which ought surely to prevail in every symposiac assembly.

END OF SIR WM. JONES'S DISCOURSES.

55

SHORTLY after the delivery of the foregoing Discourse the Society was deprived of its President by death. The Editor of this selection of his works intended to have written a brief life of their author, but he found it so admirably executed in the following, or Twelfth* Anniversary Discourse by the new President, that he preferred printing it entire, and adding a few of the most interesting of Sir William's other papers, to the gratifying his own vanity by the composition of a new memoir.

J. E.

* Advertisement.-The unfortunate death of Sir William Jones, on the 27th of April, 1794, having deprived the Society of their Founder and President, a meeting of the Members was convened on the 1st of May following, when it was unanimously agreed to appoint a Committee, consisting of Sir Robert Chambers, Mr. Justice Hyde, Colonel John Murray, John Briston, and Thomas Graham, Esquires, to wait on Sir John Shore, and, in the name of the Society, request his acceptance of the office of their President. With this request, he, in terms highly flattering to the Society, agreed to comply; and on the 22d of May, 1794, took his seat as President, and delivered the Discourse No. 12, of this volume.

EDMUND MORRIS, Secretary.

IF I had consulted my competency only, for the station which your choice has conferred upon me, I must, without hesitation, have declined the honour of being the President of this Society; and although I most cheerfully accept your invitation, with every inclination to assist, as far as my abilities extend, in promoting the laudable views of our association, I must still retain the consciousness of those disqualifications, which you have been pleased to overlook.

It was lately our boast to possess a President, whose name, talents, and character, would have been honourable to any institution; it is now our misfortune to lament, that Sir William Jones exists but in the affections of his friends, and in the esteem, veneration, and regret of all.

*Now Lord Teignmouth, the biographer of Sir Wm. Jones, and editor of his works.