Page:Adam's reports on vernacular education in Bengal and Behar, submitted to Government in 1835, 1836 and 1838.djvu/258

198 the literature it contains will constitute one of the most precious remains of antiquity connecting itself by links clearly perceptible, but not yet fully traced, with the history of almost every people of Western Asia and of Europe; and so long as the Hindus shall exist as a distinct people, they will derive some of their most inspiring associations and impulses from the great literary monuments which belong to their race, and which the progress of time will render more venerable, even when from the progress of improvement they may cease to be regarded as sacred. Viewed with reference to the present constitution and wants of native society, Sanscrit literature may be considered either as sacred, profane, or of a mixed character. The Tantra scriptures, prescribing the ritual observances of Hinduism, are exclusively religious. Law includes not only the prescriptions of religion, but the rules of inheritance, contract, &c., which are recognized by the British Government and are essential to the working of civil society. The six Darshanas, of which I have found four taught in the schools, viz., the Nyaya, Vedanta, Mimansa, and Sankhya, contain expositions not only of theological doctrine and ritual observance, but systems of philosophy on logic, on spirit and matter, and on moral and legal obligation. The mythological poems, the Mahabharata and the Bhagavat Purana, which are generally read, contain a system of metaphysical philosophy, disquisitions on political morality, and probably remnants of true history mixed up with the fables of heroes and of gods. Astrology would be more correctly denominated arithmology, for it is the science of computation in the widest sense, and embraces not only divination and the casting of nativities by the situation and aspect of the stars, but also mathematical and astronomical science. The native medical writings may be worthy of much, but not of all, the contempt with which the native medical profession is regarded by Europeans at the present day, for to a calm observer the very supremacy of their authority, which is so absolute and undisputed as to have repressed all independent inquiry, observation, and experiment, would seem to imply no inconsiderable degree of merit in the works to which such an influence has been so long conceded. Finally, the works on grammar, general literature, and rhetorical composition, will be valued as long as the philosophy of language shall be studied, or the Sanscrit language itself employed as an instrument for the expression of thought and sentiment. These, and the collateral branches of learning constitute the national literature of the Hindus,—a literature which needs not to be created, but which may be improved, by the transfusion into it of those discoveries in art, in science, and in philosophy, that distinguish Europe, and that will help to awaken the native mind from the sleep of centuries.

Fifth.—The native mind of the present day, although it is asleep, is not dead. It has a dreamy sort of existence in separating,