man's. Hence, perhaps, by tradition, the subsequent religious importance of the cow.

The second, the age of the Puranas and the Bhagavat Gita, is a meditative, mystical period, during which speculation among the Hindoos reached its highest point.

Then comes the third period, extending to the present time, the age of commentators, of subtile distinctions, and of polemics; the Indian Scholastic Age.†

Mr. Colebrooke and others who have treated of the Hindoo philosophy, distinguish several systems, with their subdivisions, -finding also parallels between them and the earlier Greek schools. They make us acquainted even with a good deal of controversy on metaphysical points, and sharp polemics, among the adherents of the various opinions. The arguments consist of appeals to the authority of the more ancient writings, together with some rather superficial, though often acute reasoning, and illustration by comparisons with familiar objects. But if we look at the texts themselves which are cited on opposite sides, we find them substantially in harmony with each other, and their apparent opposition only the diversity of various sides of one idea, successively made prominent, according to the habit of the Oriental mind.

This division of systems is evidently the product of later ages. "All the Indian schools," says Creuzer, "acknowl edge three ways to knowledge: sensuous perception (Experience); Inference; Revelation (Tradition). But it is agreed by all that true knowledge is not to be obtained through the senses. Nor can discursive thought and inference conduct us to the knowledge of the supreme Deity;- this is only to be obtained by tradition (doctrine) and hearing (of discourses); the teacher imparting to the disciple the true exposition of the sacred writings, handed down by tradition."‡ All this is evidently of later origin. The essence of the Hindoo metaphysics, so far as they are of importance in the

*Rigveda-Sanhita: ed. Fr. Rosen. London, (Oriental Trans. Fund.) 1838. 4to. See Hymns 4, 7, 23, et passim.-Sanhita of the Sáma Veda: Translated by the Rev. J. Stevenson, D. D. London, (Oriental Trans. Fund.) 1842. 8vo.

†The Hindoo chronology remains in utter and probably hopeless confusion. Creuzer places the age of the Puranas 1600 years before the Christian era, (Symbolik, i. p. 386.) The Vedas are undoubtedly much older, but the whole reckoning is so often founded on mythical and fantastic data that any precision is at present impossible.

Symbolik: ed. 1837, i., p. 528.

history of Philosophy, may be expressed in few words: It is the reduction of all Reality to pure, abstract Thought.

In the following pages we have brought together some extracts from the more important original sources, so far as they are known to us in translations.* As the works from which they are taken are most of them costly, and thus not often met with, we have made these extracts copious, in order to afford our readers the means of forming a general notion of this interesting phase of thought; the more interesting to us, as the Hindoos are intellectually, as well as physically, our antipodes, and their peculiar tone of thought, their common-sense, the opposite and complement of our own. Such, however, is the simplicity and abstractness of its principle, on the one hand; and such the profuseness and indistinctness of the forms in which it is presented, on the other, that a development of the view from a central idea, or even a methodical arrangement of propositions, is scarcely possible. One might almost as well attempt a topographical survey of a wreath of mist. This may excuse the repetition and want of perspective in the following exposition.

--

The main principle of the Hindoo Idealism that Reality is equivalent to pure abstract Soul or Thought, unexistent, and thus simple and unformed; in a word, pure Negation, -is presented especially under the aspect of the unity and identity of all things in the Deity. This is the constant theme of the ancient writings, and in every form of often sublime imagery, fills a great portion of the sacred books. Even in the grammatical forms of speech this idea is not overlooked; the most absolute expression for the Deity (Brahm) being a neuter word:

Laws of Menu, (Sir William Jones's translation, Calcutta, 1794) ch. 1, § 2. "From THAT WHICH IS, the first cause, not the object of sense, existing, not existing, without beginning or end, was produced the divine male, famed in all worlds under the appellation of Brahmá."

* Others, not cited, are Vans Kennedy's Researches into Ancient and Hindoo Mythology, London, 1831, in which, it is said, are many extracts from the Puranas. Anquetil du Perron: Upnekhata. Strasbourg. 1804. 2 vols. 4to. (Which, however, according to v. Bohlen and others, "is without critical value.") -Windischmann: Sancara, Sive de theologumcnis Vedanticorum. Bonn. 1833. - Görres: Mythengeschichte.- Niklas Müller: Wissen, Glauben, und Kunst d. alt. Hindus, -none of which we have been able to consult. See also Rammohun Roy: Translation of several Books, &c., of the Veds. 2d ed. London. 1832.-P. F. Stuhr: D. Religions-Systeme d. heidn. Völker d. Orients.

Bhagavat Gita, p. 103.* "I will now tell thee what is Gnea, or the object of wisdom, from understanding which thou wilt enjoy immortality. It is that which hath no beginning, and is supreme, even Brahm, who can neither be called Sat (ens) nor Asat (non ens). It is all hands and feet; it is all faces, heads, and eyes; and, all ear, it sitteth in the midst of the world, possessing the vast whole. Itself exempt from every organ, it is the reflected light of every faculty of the organs. Unattached, it containeth all things; and without quality, it partaketh of every quality."

Ib. p. 85. Vishnu says, "I am the soul which standeth in the bodies of all beings. I am the beginning, the middle, and the end of all things."

Ib. p. 70. "I am the creation and the dissolution of the whole universe; and all things hang on me even

as precious gems upon a string."

Vishnu Purana,† p. 94. "All the world is derived from thee. As the wide-spreading Indian fig-tree is compressed in a small seed, so, at the time of dissolution, the whole universe is comprehended in thee as its germ. As the bark and leaves of the Plantain tree are to be seen in its stem, so thou art the stem of the Universe, and all things are visible in thee."

Ib. p. 215. "He is primary nature; he, in a perceptible form, is the world; and in him all finally melts; through him all things endure. He is the performer of the rites of devotion; he is the rite; he is the fruit it bestows; he is the implements by which it is performed. There is nothing besides the illimitable Hari."

Bhag. Gita, p. 80. "I am generation and dissolution; the place where all things are reposited, and the inexhaustible seed of all nature. I am sunshine, and I am rain; I now draw in, and now let forth. I am death and immortality; I am entity and non-entity."

Vedas (cited in Comm. to Sankhya Kāriká,‡ XVII.) "One only soul is distributed in all beings; it is beheld collectively or dispersedly, like the reflection of the moon in still or

* Bhagvat-Geeta, or Dialogues of Krèèshnă and Arjoon. In 18 Lectures. With notes. Translated by Charles Wilkins. London. 1785. 4to.

†The Vishnu Purana: Translated by H. H. Wilson, F. R. S. (Oriental Trans. Fund.) 1840. 4to.

↑ Sankhya Kariká: Translated by H. T. Colebrooke. Edited by H. H. Wilson. Oxford, (Orient. Trans. Fund.) 1837. 4to.

troubled water. Soul, eternal, omnipresent, undisturbed, pure, one, is multiplied by the power of delusion, not of its own nature."

Laws of Menu, ch. 12, § 124." It is He, who, pervading all beings in five elemental forms, causes them by the gradations of birth, growth, and dissolution, to revolve in this world like the wheels of a car."

Ib. ch. 1, § 52. "When that power wakes, then has this world its full expansion; but when he slumbers with a tranquil spirit, then the whole system fades away."

Vishnu Pur., p. 132. "This whole world is but a manifestation of Vishnu, who is identical with all things; and it is therefore to be regarded by the wise as not differing from, but as the same with themselves."

The distinctness of things from God being unreal, God, or Reality, is the negation or transience of the Finite :-Time. Ib. p. 335. "Glory to thee, O lotus-eyed, who art one with Time, the form that devours, without remorse, all created things."

Ib. p. 12. "The two forms which are other than the essence of unmodified Vishnu, are Pradhana (Matter) and Purusha (Spirit); and his other form, by which those two are connected or separated, is called Kála (Time)."

Ib. p. 519. "At the end of all, the universe disappears in thee; upheld by thee, this earth sustains living and inanimate things in the character of uncreated time, with its divisions of ages, developed from an instant, thou devourest the world."

Not only all positive qualities, all virtues and powers, but also weakness, imperfection, and foulness are embraced in the One Soul, since otherwise independent Reality must be attributed to them :

Vishnu Pur., p. 154. "He (Vishnu) is the creator, who creates the world; he, the eternal, preserves it in existence; and he, the destroyer, destroys it; invested severally with the attributes of foulness, goodness, and gloom."

Ib. p. 139. "Thou (Vishnu) art knowledge and ignorance, truth and falsehood, poison and ambrosia."

Ib. p. 335. "Glory to thee, Govinda (Vishnu), who art all demons, whose essence is arrogance and want of discrimina tion, unchecked by patience or self-control. Glory to thee, who art the Yaksas, whose nature is charmed with sounds, and whose frivolous heart perfect knowledge cannot pervade. Glory to thee who art all fiends, that walk by night, sprung

from the quality of darkness; fierce, fraudulent, and cruel. . . Glory to thee who art one with the saints, whose perfect nature is ever blessed, and traverses, unobstructed, all permeable elements. Glory to thee who art one with the serpent race, double-tongued, impetuous, cruel, insatiate of enjoyment, and abounding in wealth. Glory to thee who art one with the Rishis, whose nature is free from sin or defect, and is identified with wisdom and tranquillity."

Here, very evidently, a subsistence of all things in God is not meant, but merely an absorption of all in him. The power and greatness of God is not shown as embracing and upholding the vast variety of the Universe, but as reducing it to his own undivided essence. God is the whole of Reality, and thus all that is not God is unreal. All distinction, therefore, is unreal. All diversity of things, and all finite existence, is a delusion. The outward world has only the reality conferred on it by human imagination, which in its blindness so conducting itself as if the Outward were real, confers upon it a subjective reality, an existence for Man, by making it an object and motive for action.

Vishnu Pur., p. 242. "How can reality be predicated of that which is subject to change, and reassumes no more its original character? Earth is fabricated into a jar; the jar is divided into two halves; the halves are broken to pieces; the pieces become dust; the dust becomes atoms. Say, is this reality? though it be so understood by man, whose self-knowledge is impeded by his own acts. Hence, Brahman, except discriminative knowledge, there is nothing anywhere, or at any time, that is real."

Ib. p. 258. "Even as the same sky is apparently diversified as white or blue, so Soul, which is in truth but one, appears to erroneous vision distinct in different persons.'

Ib. p. 251. "As one diffusive air, passing through the perforations of a flute, is distinguished as the notes of the scale, so the nature of the great spirit is single, though its forms be manifold, arising from the consequences of acts. When the difference of the investing form, as that of good, or the rest, is destroyed, then there is no distinction."

His

Moral distinctions also, as appertaining to individuality, and thus to bodily existence, belong merely to the sphere of Nature, which it is the aim of the wise man to transcend. aim, therefore, is not action, whether virtuous or otherwise, but liberation from existence, since as long as he exists, as