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12 is little more than the language of the Bráhmens melted down by a delicate articulation to the softness of Italian; while the low persons of the drama speak the vulgar dialects of the several provinces which they are supposed to inhabit. The play of Sacontalá must have been very popular when it was first represented; for the Indian empire was then in full vigour, and the national vanity must have been highly flattered by the magnificent introduction of those kings and heroes in whom the Hindûs gloried, the scenery must have been splendid and beautiful; and there is good reason to believe, that the court of Avanti was equal in brilliancy during the reign of Vicramáditya, to that of any monarch in any age or country.

Dushmanta, the hero of the piece, appears in the chronological tables of the Bráhmens among the children of the moon, and in the twenty-first generation after the flood; so that if we can at all rely on the chronology of the Hindûs, he was nearly contemporary with Obed or Jesse; and Puru, his most celebrated ancestor, was the fifth in descent from Budha, or Mercury, who married, they say, a daughter of the pious king, whom Vishnu preserved in an ark from the universal deluge; his eldest son Bheret was the illustrious progenitor of Curu, from whom Pándu was lineally descended, and in whose family the Indian Apollo became incarnate; whence the poem, next in fame to the Rámáyan, is called Mahábhárat.