court at the yhong (or place of truth), of which there is one in every city: yhong-dho, in strictness, ought only to be applied to the yhong of the palace, the adjunct dho meaning, the king's; but the term dho is attached to many things and persons no ways entitled to it, through courtesy, or the ignorance of strangers. Sherry-dho-ghee, the great king's writer, is applied to, or assumed, by every petty clerk of a governor or tribunal.

ち

CHARACTER.

The Birmah court appears to me an assembly of clowns, who have neither improved their manners or their sincerity by their transposition; they have retained their native chicane and vicious propensities, and have not acquired the blandishments of polish to veil the deformities of vice, or expansion of mind to check its domination.

To their superiors the Birmahs are abjectly submissive; towards strangers audacious and ungrateful; in power rapacious and cruel; in war treacherous and ferocious; in their dealings litigious and faithless; in appetite insatiable and avaricious; in babit lazy; in their ideas, persons, houses, and food, obscenely filthy, below any thing I have ever seen that has claims to humanity.

It must not be denied that they possess brutal courage; but it tends rather to debase than exalt them: it is irregular, uncertain, and not to be depended on. They are strict observers of the ceremonial parts of their religion; charitable to their priests and the poor; in the country, I am told, hospitable, and not vindictive; superstitious; addicted to magic; cheerful; patient under sufferings; hardy; frugal to penuriousnes, in their diet; and affectionate parents. They would make good soldiers in the hands of a skilful general; and perhaps, good subjects under a virtuous magistrate; but unhappily, their present government seems only calculated to exalt their vices, and depress their virtues.

Every great officer, civil or military, is a justice of peace; can try petty causes, and punish trespasses by flogging, fine, or imprisonment; for which purpose they all have tribunals and fire-rooms in their houses. This authority is also usurped by the lowest officers of the palace and courts, and is productive of infinite oppression and abuse. The only resource of the people is to inlist themselves under the banner of some great man, and submit to his impositions in order to obtain protection from the rest.

Causes are originated in the yhongs, but may be removed by appeal to the lootcho, and ultimately to his Majesty in council, where the decisions in general are pretty just, but the expense of obtaining a hearing is enormous.

Trials by ordeal, varying from those of India, are common.

TO SLEEP.

MUCH evil hath been said of thee, O Sleep!
(For malice will pursue the steps of worth),
Though evil none I say, but ever keep

Blessing thee, as the chiefest good on earth.
Thou art compared to death, our grisly foe:
Sure thou art little like him as can be;
For life, and health, and comeliness, we owe,
And vigour and agility, to thee.

They who abuse thy gifts are not the better;

But then the fault is theirs, not thine, I wot;

Yet man, too oft, when he becomes a debtor,

Spurns the kind hand from whence the boon he got.
Come, then, and steal from me all sense of ill,
Suspend awhile the iron reign of Care,

With images of joy my fancy fill,

And thou, O Sleep! shalt my devotion share.

C 2

Н.

** OF THE ANTIQUITY AND ORIGIN OF THE CHINESE, 154217 BRAND OF THE CHINESE EMPIRE. to79 10 230192 adi di ti.

To the Editor of the Asiatic Journal, chemours to not.

"

SIR. Mr. Davis describes the passage referred to in my last letter as the only direct and positive testimony which we seem to possess, out of China, crelating to the first origin of the Chinese nation, and adds, that we cannot help thinking that the observations of Sir W. Jones, on the passage in q in question, are deserving of great attention." On my side, I neither believe w Sir Wm. Jones and Mr. Davis, that the Chinese are of Hindoo origin, nor with the same authorities, that the Institutes of Menu design to say one word about the Chinese original, let it have been what it may.

with

There is, as I suspect, at the bottom of much of our system of Hindoo history, a radical error concerning the relative antiquity of Buddhism. Buddha, I believe, is a generic term for a god, prophet, divine person, or divine incarnation. Buddha and god are the same words, with dialectical variations of form. There have been many Buddhas, that is, many p prophets or preachers, each propounding a new dispensation; that is, each altering, and probably improving, the older doctrine and discipline. One of the grounds of alteration has been, the changes attendant upon the e progress of society. Bloody sacrifices, for example, have been abolished. A rúde doctrine and discipline have suited a rude age; a more refined doctrine and discipline have been acceptable to a more refined age; simplicity has belonged to a simple age; complexity has grown with an artificial one. The externals of religion have varied, in all countries, with the state of society and the revolutions of manners:

"With rude simplicity first Rome was built,

Which now we see adorned, and carved, and gilt;
This Capitol with that of old compare,

Some other Jove, you'd think, was worshipp'd there!
That lofty pile, where senates dictate law,
When Tatius reigned, was poorly thatched with straw ;
And where Apollo's fane refulgent stands,
Was heretofore a tract of pasture-lands.
Let ancient manners other men delight;
But me the modern please, as more polite.
Not, that materials now in gold are wrought,
And distant shores for orient pearls are sought;
Not for, that hills exhaust their marble veins,
And structures rise whose bulk the sea restrains;
But, that the world is civilized of late,

And polished from the rust of former date."

But Buddhism, throughout all its varieties and dates, is more simple in its structure than Brahminism, as it is also more universal in its reception. Buddhism discovers itself, at intervals, from Ceylon to Japan, and might, perhaps, be traced further, both to the east and to the west. The religion of the Jains is allied to it; and we know that this latter is the indigenous or ancient religion of the south of India. Buddhism, then, is the underlying stratum, which, like granitic rocks to the geologist, discovers itself, from space to space, to the student of religious history in India. But if Buddhism underlies all others in India, then it is likewise more ancient than all others. It

descends,

descends, in short, from Tibet and Tartary, or it ascends thither from the south, and spreads east and west. ♬ Brahminism, on the other hand, whether indigenous or exotic in India, is comparatively modern, and fills but narrow limits; it is in a high degree artificial, and therefore possessed of but little character of antiquity; it is in a high degree complex, and can never, therefore, refer to an early and rude state of society for its original. It may boast its antiquity, and call Buddhism modern; but it is itself the modern which has usurped upon the antique. It is arrayed, not always in its own vestments, but sometimes in the spoils of those whom it has displaced. It calls, and not wholly without reason, Buddha an incarnation of Vishnoo; but it has seized upon the Buddha of the people, or of what it may call Paganism, and amalgamated him with its own system. Brahminism has its seat and homestead, if it has not also had its cradle, upon the banks of the Ganges, and it is foreign, and even modern, almost every where else. The Abbé Dubois relates what, if that writer is to be credited, is singularly fatal to the theory of Sir Wm. Jones nes and Mr. Davis, as to an ancient communication between China and Brahminical India. He shows us that the country north-east of the Ganges was itself unbrahminical till within a recent date. Brahminism, indeed, as appears from the Abbé, has no necessary connexion with the general institution of castes, which, as is well known, has no place in China; and therefore the origin of the Chinese among a people of castes is inconceivable: add to which, that it is specially with abandoning the company of the Brahmins that Menu charges the " Chinas," and other nations. Now, there were no Brahmins, according to the Abbé Dubois, whose company could have been abandoned, to the north-east of the Ganges, till within these four or five hundred years. In reality, Brahminism, instead of being the ancient religion of India, and that upon which other religions have intruded, is itself the intruder, however long ago; is modern, and is probably even now pushing its way into new regions, and effecting new conquests. The following are extracts from the Abbé's Description of India. His first position is, that a Brahmin is made, not born:

A Brahman is in a very different situation from a Raja, a Vaisya, or a Sudra. These are born in the condition in which they continue to live. But a Brahman becomes such only by the ceremony of the Cord. He is till then only a Sudra; and by birth he possesses nothing that raises him above the rank of other men. It is after this rite that he is called Durja (twice born). The first birth admits him to the common rank of mortals; the second, which he owes to the ceremony of the Triple Cord, exalts him to the lofty rank of the tribe to which he belongs.

But there is at least one thing not fanciful on this question, which is, that in the countries to the north-east of Bengal, beyond the Ganges, there were neither castes nor Brahmans till within these four or five hundred years. The people who inhabited those provinces, beginning then to see that it would be advantageous to them to adopt the customs of their neighbours, demanded to have Brahmans. The order was soon created, by selecting and setting apart a number of their youths, who were trained up in the manners of that caste; into which they were duly embodied by the ceremony of the Cord. From that period they have been considered as true Brahmans, and hold equal rank with those who are of a far more ancient order [origin].

In the southern countries they do not like to be reminded of this anecdote, although they are obliged to admit its authenticity, as well as that of the two Penitents, who were at first only Rajas.

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Mr.

There is a puzzling objection," adds the Abbé, " frequently urged against the Brahmans. If it be the ceremony of the Cord, it is asked, that creates you Brahmans, how come your wives, who do not undergo

Mr. Davis speaks of the introduction of the religion of Buddha into China, from India, in the first century of the Christian era. But what then, was the previous religion of China; for Menu, eleven or twelve hundred years before, had spoken of the "Chinas" as in a state of religious degradation, and Mr. D. has nowhere' attempted to set up the claim of the Chinese to the least share of Brahminism? Mr. D. dates the refined morality of Confucius, and the subtle metaphysics, or theology, of the Laou-keun, in the fifth or sixth centhe tury before Christ; but neither the one nor the other of these supplied place of the national religion, and, even if it did, what was that national religion? Mr. D., indeed, expressly acknowledges that Confucius left the religion of his countrymen as he found it." Now, what was that religion religion? Nothing else, I answer, than some description of Buddhism. What religion, then, came from India into China in the first century of the Christian era? A new sect of Buddhism. What were those "tenets of Fo," introduced into China in the first century of the Christian era, and stigmatized by the instructions of the Tartar emperor Yung-ching? The new sect of Buddhism. If Buddhism, in one form or other, was not the ancient religion of China, then I should suspect Shamanism, or the religion of the Ostiacs and Kamtschatdales, of the north-east of Asia generally, and of all America, and of of so many other parts of the world, to have been that religion. But was there no relationship between the Fŏ-hi of Chinese antiquity, and the Fŏ of modern China ? Were not, at least, both these personages gods, that is, prophets, inspired preachers, divine incarnations?

But ancient China owes nothing to India; neither religious system, nor civil population. Mr. D., himself, is, indeed, impressed with the total absence of every thing Hindoo in China. "It is a curious circumstance," says that gentleman, "that they [the Chinese] and the Hindus (whether they had, or had not, any connexion in remote antiquity) should have subsisted so long in the immediate vicinity of each other, and at the same time possessed so little in common. With the exception of the sect of Fo, or Buddha, an Indian heresy, which found refuge in the Empire from the persecutions of a bigotted priesthood, the Chinese appear to me to have received nothing from their western neighbours. The ancient skill of the Hindus in astronomical and algebraic science, has been clearly and ably demonstrated; but no proofs have yet occurred that they imparted any portion of that skill to the Chinese." "Some persons," adds Mr. D., "have been led to suspect that the Chinese must at one time have possessed the astronomy of the Hindus, by [from] their having twenty-eight lunar mansions, and a cycle of sixty years; but a careful observation of the essential differences that exist on either side must remove all shadow of identity. The Hindu cycle is a cycle of Jupiter, while that of the Chinese is a solar cycle; and the twenty-eight constellations of the Hindus are nearly all of them equal divisions of the circle, consisting of about 136 each, while the Chinese constellations are extremely unequal, varying from 30° to less than 1°."-"That the Chinese possessed no real science of their own, and that they obtained none from the Hindus, is, I think, proved by the readiness with which they adopted that of the Europeans: on this one subject, that singular nation has deviated from its established prejudices and maxims against introducing what is foreign."

Mr.

undergo that ceremony, to be any thing but Sudras? You are, therefore, married to wives not belonging to your caste; [in opposition to] a principle held sacred and inviolable amongst all Hindus.

"Their solution of this difficulty is an answer which has been continually made to all their antagonists; namely, that they are guided in this particular by the usage of the caste from time immemorial." -Abbé Dubois' Description, pp. 35-38.

Mr. Davis is, here, one of the witnesses against himself; for it would belie all history and observation were we to suppose th that any people ever yet parted, in whatever lapse of time, with the traces of their real origin; that they ever parted with the features of their parent stock. As to the mixture of Sanscrit with the Chinese language, that fact establishes nothing to the present purpose. The English language, also, has its mixture of Sanserit. In reality, there is not the slightest foundation for giving the Chinese a Hindoo origin, and Mr. D.'s only error consists in having followed Sir Wm. Jones's interpretation of the Text of Menu.

12

3

こ

In what Brahminical sense, or under what Brahminical assumption, not only the Chinese, but every other nation upon earth, has had its origin in ndia, it is not difficult to understand. The Brahminical system embraces the whole human race. All mankind belong to one or other of the four great castes; every man is descended, either from the head, the arms, the belly or the leet of Brahma. All nations that, upon whatever part of the globe, have abandoned the ordinances of the Veda, "and the company of Brahmans," live in a "state of degradation;" the Chinese, for example, in the east, and the British in the west. The whole human race lives in this state, the devout in Hindoostan alone excepted. It is to this state of degradation that we should a attribute the moral and religious darkness of Europe, and of all the rest of the unbrahminical world! It is in the regular course of things that Brahmins should treat all men as having been once Brahminical, and that families of the military caste should be pointed out, in their theological view of the dispersion and degeneracy of the species, is not remarkable, because the military caste is both that which is the most given to roam abroad, the most likely, perhaps, to neglect the ordinances of the Veda, and abandon the company of the Brahmens, and to become colonists of distant lands, or conquerors of distant nations. But the observation of Menu is general; and what I am desirous of contending for is, that when, to illustrate that observation, he adduces the instance of the "Chinas," he incidentally proves, not, as advanced by Mr. Davis, that the Chinese nation was, in his time, in its infancy, but, on the contrary, that it was a nation already of so much celebrity in India, as that its name readily offered itself for an example of the truth to be inculcated. Had the British nation had as prominent an existence as the Chinese in the days of Menu, and had its name been as familiar to that sage, he would have said, perhaps, as the Chinas and the British, and other nations." The difference between Messrs. Jones and Davis and myself is this; the two former suppose Menu to speak of the abandonment of the Veda and Brahmins by the Chinese as a known fact in civil history; I, on the other hand, describe him as seizing upon the name of a celebrated neighbouring people, in illustration only of a theological assumption, become matter of traditional belief. Upon the whole, I conclude, from the passage in Menu, and the era assigned to that writer, that with respect to the antiquity of the Chinese, that people was a people of power and renown more than a thousand years before Christ.

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But, while I put this interpretation, as to any proof of origin of the Chinese, upon the words of Menu, and also find myself unable to discover in those words any thing which relates to the antiquity, greater or less, of their existence as a considerable nation; I am far from disposed to question the justice of Mr. Davis's doctrine, insofar as that gentleman regards the Chinese of the days of Menu as insignificant when compared with the Chinese of our own. On the contrary, I am quite prepared to admit, in consistence with the

results