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THE

QUARTERLY REVIEW.

ART. I.-Bhagavat Gita, id est EσTEGOV Meλos, sive almi Krishna et Arjuna Colloquium de rebus divinis. Edidit Augustus Gulielmus a Schlegel. Bonn. 1823.

2. Ueber die unter den Namen Bhagavat-Gita bekannte Episode des MAHABHARATA von Wilhelm von Humboldt. Berlin. 1826.

3. Nalus, Carmen Sanscriticum e Mahábháratá, edidit, Latinè vertit, et adnotationibus illustravit Franciscus Bopp. 1819. 4. Nala. Eine Indische Dichtung von Wjasa. Aus dem Sanskrit von Joh. Gottfr. Ludw. Kosegarten. Jena. 1820. 5. Yadnadattabada, ou la Mort d'Yadnadatta, Episode extrait du Ramayana, Poëme Epique Sanscrit. Par A. L. Chezy. Paris.

1826.

6. Diluvium cum tribus aliis Maha-Bharati præstantissimis Episodiis. Primus edidit Franciscus Bopp. Berolini. 1829. 7. Die Sündflut, nebst drei anderen der wichtigsten Episoden des Mahá-Bharatá. Aus der Ursprache übersetzt von Franz Bopp. Berlin. 1829.

8. Ardschuna's Reise zu Indra's Himmel, nebst anderen Episoden des Mahá-Bharatá von Franz Bopp. Berlin. 1824. 9. Nalodaya. Sanscritum Carmen Calidaso adscriptum, una cum Pradschnacari Methelinensis Scholiis. Edidit, Latinâ Interpretatione atque adnotationibus Criticis instruxit Ferdinandus Benary. Berolini.

1830.

10. Brahma-Vaivarta-Purani Specimen. Edidit Adolphus Fredericus Stenzler. Berlin. 1829:

11. Select Specimens of the Theatre of the Hindus. Translated from the original Sanscrit by Horace Hayman Wilson, Esq. 3 vols. Calcutta. 1827.

12. Indische Bibliothek. Eine Zeitschrift von August Wilhelm von Schlegel. 2 vols. Various years.

13. Rigveda Specimen. Edidit Fredericus Rosen, London.

1830.

THE indifference of the British public to the religious and political state of the vast empire which extends, in its sovereignty or influence, from the foot of the Himalaya to Cape Comorin, has been a frequent subject of astonishment and complaint.

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Those

Those regions of which our ancestors spake and read with a kind of awe-struck wonder, as of those

where the gorgeous east

Shower'd o'er her kings barbaric pearl and gold,

having lost their imaginative interest, as the realms of sovereigns who sat on ivory thrones, rode abroad among a thousand elephants, and seemed to realize all the magic wonders of the Arabian Nights ;' and having sunk into the presidencies of quiet and unromantic English gentlemen, are supposed to possess no interest except to the holders of East India stock, or to those who think India an admirable country to provide for younger sons. The Journal of Bishop Heber awoke the public mind, at least for a time, to a more vivid curiosity about regions where external nature is so prolific in wonders; where the British government issues out its mandate to almost as many nations and languages as the great king in the Old Testament; where the land is strewn with the wrecks of mighty empires, and with the mouldering monuments of religions whose origin is lost in the depth of remote ages, but which have influenced the fate of generations after generations of our fellow-creatures; and where vestiges are discovered, if not of the earliest, at least of civilization in its primeval form, and stretching upward far beyond the reach, at all events, of profane record. If then there is, in general, such remarkable apathy on all questions connected with India, questions which at present relate to the civil, moral, and religious welfare of a hundred millions of our subjects, it could scarcely be expected that much general attention should be drawn towards the antiquities and literature of a people whose habits of feeling, thinking, and believing are, in many respects, so remote from and repugnant to those of all European nations.

Yet to the few who study with intense interest the history of man, how full of wonder and of information is the civil, the religious, the literary history of this remarkable people, as it has been gradually developed, and as their monuments are more profoundly studied, and their writings more extensively made known through the diligence and activity of English and continental scholars! What curious, even if inexplicable, secrets come, daily as it were, to light from the study of a language, not merely in its primitive roots, but in its construction and grammatical forms, so strikingly allied with the Persian, still more with the Greek, the primitive Latin, and the Teutonic tongues ;* from the discovery, if not in its primitive at

As a single instance, we find in the two auxiliary verbs of the Sanscrit not only almost, totidem literis, the sous, soo, or, in the asmi, asi, asti of the Indian; but in the other, the bhavami, with its root bhu and its derivatives, the germ of the bam, bas, bat of the Latin imperfect, and of the ancient form of the preterite fuvi, fuvisti, fuvit.

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