During the night of the 19th, the Beloochees were again amongst us. From our two squadrons eight camels were carried off; a party of us hunted about for them in vain, and offered Rs. 150 reward in a village of these thieves, to any one who would give us information of the camels and their captors. After breakfast, however, three of us again started with a couple of ghorawalas, and came on a camp in front of which two magnificent camels were tied. The Beloochees had gone up the hills, leaving only their wives and children in charge. As there unluckily seemed no chance of the arrival of a few stout fellows with whom to dispute our prize, we secured and carried off our booty, and a finer camel than the one falling to my share I have never seen.

We marched fourteen miles to Punjook, over a burning and sandy desert, surrounded on all sides by robbers. The chief had gone on to catch up and take command of the Bengal forces, leaving us to the tender mercies of General Willshire. In Sir John we lost an excellent commandant. Surrounded by his own comforts, even luxuries, it is true he could scarcely imagine the hardships and privations to which the regimental officers and men were exposed; but he had ever on the march shown himself most kindly disposed, and though he had his detractors, thus showing the fate of all in authority, there were few who did not regret most heartily our change of heads. On quitting Punjook, the last village in the dominions of the Hydrabad ameers, we took a long farewell of Sinde.

ON PROFESSOR WILSON'S THEORY RESPECTING THE

PURANAS.

TO THE EDITOR.

SIR :-In the learned and ingenious remarks contained in the preface to his translation of the Vishnu Puran, Professor Wilson remarks that the Puranas "may be acquitted of subservience to any but sectarial imposture-they were frauds for temporary purposes;" and that "they are also works of evidently different ages, and have been compiled under different circumstances, the precise nature of which we can but imperfectly conjecture from internal evidence, and from what we know of the history of the religious opinions in India. It is highly probable that, of the present popular forms of the Hindu religion, none assumed their actual state earlier than the time of Sankara Acharya, who flourished in all likelihood in the eighth or ninth century. Of the Vaishnava teachers, Ramanuja dates in the twelfth century, Madhwacharya in the thirteenth, and Vallabha in the sixteenth; and the Puranas seem to have accompanied or followed their innovations, being obviously intended to advocate the doctrines they taught." He farther observes, that "a very great portion of the contents of many [of the Purans], some portion of the contents of all, is genuine and old. The sectarial interpolation or embellishment is always sufficiently palpable to be set aside, without injury to the more authentic and primitive material; and the Puranas, although they belong essentially to that stage of the Hindu religion in which faith in some one divinity was the prevailing principle, are also a valuable record of the form of the Hindu faith which came next in order to the Vedas :" and yet Professor Wilson, at the same time, maintains that religious instruction is not one of the five topics which are treated of in a genuine Purana, and that its occurrence in the Puranas now extant is a decisive proof that these are not the same works in all respects that were current under the denomination of Puranas in the century prior to Christianity.

These, however, and similar remarks contained in that preface, seem to be inconsistent and inconclusive; for if the Purans in their present form are of so modern a date, and if the ancient Purans are no longer extant, by what means can it be ascertained that any portion of the contents of the works now bearing the name of Purans is genuine and old? Professor Wilson rejects, as not belonging to the Purans in the time of Amara Sinha (B.C. 56), all those parts of the present Purans which relate to the rites and observances and to the theology of the Hindus; but it is those parts only which admit of being compared with other Hindu works, and with all that is known of the Hindu religion. It is, also, unquestionable that certain works, denominated Purans, have been immemorially considered by the Hindus as sacred books; and it must be evident that, unless the doctrines of the Hindu religion were inculcated in those works, they could contain nothing which could communicate to them a sacred character. The opinion, therefore, of Professor Wilson, that the genuine Purans treated

of profane subjects only, is obviously incompatible with that profound reverence with which the Purans are regarded by all Hindus, even at the present day. The only argument, also, which he has adduced in support of this opinion, depends entirely upon the use and meaning of the term "panchalakshanam," as applied to a Puran. But the passage in Sanscrit, quoted in the note in page v., does not admit of the restricted sense which Professor Wilson has given to it, because the first of the five topics* there mentioned, or Sarga, is inadequately expressed by "Primary creation, or cosmogony." This will be at once evident by a reference to the contents of the translation of the Vishnu Puran, where, under Sarga, are enumerated-Vishnu, the origin, existence, and end of all things-his existence before creation-his first manifestations-description of Pradhana; of Prakriti; of the active cause-development of effects of the mundane egg. For the description of all that precedes the appearance of the mundane egg, which occurs in the Vishnu and other Purans, is the most abstruse and sacred part of Hindu theology, as it explains the real nature of the Supreme Being, and of those manifestations of his divine essence, which lead men to believe in the actual existence of a material world. The first, therefore, of the five topics treated of in a genuine Puran, according to Professor Wilson, necessarily includes religious instruction, because the antecedents to creation could not have been described, without at the same time explaining the distinction between the one sole-existing spirit and those illusive appearances which seem to be composed of matter. The second, also, of those topics is equally of a religious nature, for an account of the destruction and renovation of worlds must necessarily include a description of the means and agents employed by the Supreme Being for those purposes. Under the first two topics, consequently, is comprised a great part of what is contained in the Purans as at present extant—namely, a description of the real essence of the Supreme Being, and of the illusive nature of the universe; of the production of Brahma, Vishnu, Shiva, and their female energies; of the origin of angelic beings and holy sages; and of all the circumstances relating to the repeated creation, destruction, and renovation of the world; and it may, therefore, be justly concluded, that these subjects were also treated of in the eighteen Purans as originally committed to writing, and that the term "panchalakshanam" affords no grounds for the conclusion which Professor Wilson has deduced from its use and meaning.

But those parts of the present Purans which relate to festivals, rites, and observances, and to the worship of particular deities, may appear to support this remark of Professor Wilson :-"They (the Purans) are no longer authorities for Hindu belief, as a whole; they are special guides for separate and sometimes conflicting branches of it, compiled for the evident purpose of promoting the preferential, or in some cases the sole, worship of Vishnu or Siva." It is not clear what is here meant by the "Hindu belief

The five topics, as explained by Professor Wilson, are-1. Primary creation, or cosmogony; 2. Secondary creation, or the destruction and renovation of worlds, including chronology; 3. Genealogy of gods and patriarchs; 4. Reigns of Manus, or periods called Manwantaras; and 5. History.

as a whole;" for there are, I believe, no traces now extant of the Hindu religion having ever existed as one uniform system of belief in one and the same deity. But the antiquity of the Upanishads is not disputed, and in one or other of them the attributes of the Supreme Being are distinctly ascribed to Brahma, Vishnu, Shiva, Devi, Surya, and Ganesha; and, consequently, when the Upanishads were composed, there must have been some Hindus who paid a preferential worship to one or other of those deities. These, however, are precisely the same deities to whom the attributes of the Supreme Being are ascribed in one or other of the Purans, and, therefore, if the antiquity of the Upanishads be admitted, the variety of deities proposed for worship in the Purans now extant can be no proof that these works were recently compiled for sectarian purposes. The Vedas, indeed, have not yet been so examined as to admit of its being determined whether the same distinction is to be found in them; but Mr. Colebrooke has stated that the whole of the Indian theology is founded on the Upanishads, and that several of them, which he has described, were extracts from the Vedas. The six deities, therefore, just mentioned, were most probably objects of worship when the religious system of the Vedas flourished, and it must in consequence be altogether improper to consider the worshippers of one of those deities in preference to the others as sectarians-if by this term is intended such sectarians as have existed in India in later times. For, according to the principles of the Hindu religion, there is unity in diversity, and hence it is held that these apparently different deities are merely variant forms of one and the same Supreme Being, and that consequently the worship of any one of them is equally holy and effective, as it is in fact the adoration of the Supreme Being in that particular form. Sectarianism, at the same time, consists in the exclusive, and not merely preferential, worship of a particular deity; but in not one of the Purans is there a single intimation or injunction, which virtually or expressly sanctions the rejection of the worship of Vishnu or Shiva, or of any of the other six deities. The orthodox Hindus, therefore, are even at the present day votaries but not sectaries of either Vishnu or Shiva, and such they appear to have been from the remotest time; as the particular worship of Brahma has long ceased, and though particular worshippers of Surya and Ganesha have existed, and perhaps still exist, in India, they have never been numerous, and the worship of Devi has degenerated into rites and ceremonies which, though practised by many Hindus, are generally considered to be contrary to the tenets and ritual of the Hindu religion.*

Professor Wilson, also, has not explained the sectarian purposes, to promote which he thinks the works at present bearing the names of Purans were compiled in a period so comparatively modern as that between the eighth and seventeenth centuries. But he cannot mean to contend that Vishnu and Shiva were not objects of worship in the earliest times of the Hindu religion, or that they were worshipped with the same rites and cere

⚫ I bere merely allude to the worship of Devi by the sacrifice of animals, and not to the abominable worship described in the Tantras.

monies; and if not, the mere ascribing in those works pre-eminence to either Vishnu or Shiva, and a superior excellence to the worship of either of those gods, which is all that occurs in them, can be no proof that the Purans as now extant are mere modern works compiled for sectarian purposes; because in not one of the eighteen Purans is it in any manner intimated that Vishnu or Shiva ought not to be worshipped, and, on the contrary, numerous passages occur in them, in which precisely the same rewards are promised to the worshipper of either god. So far, indeed, is any one of the Purans from inculcating the exclusive worship of either Vishnu or Shiva, that Vishnu is introduced in some of them teaching the worship of Shiva, and in others Shiva teaching the worship of Vishnu. The only distinction which appears to exist between these gods is that, in particular Purans, each is represented as the Supreme Being, when the other becomes in a certain sense inferior, without, however, detracting from his divine excellence. It is, also, remarkable that it is not in separate Purans only that pre-eminence is ascribed to either Vishnu or Shiva, or even to Brahma, but this ascription occurs in the very same Puran. For, as far as I have observed, there are only five Purans in which the supremacy is uniformly ascribed to the same god-namely, the Linga and Skanda, in which Shiva is identified with the Supreme Being; the Vishnu and Bhagavat, in which this honour is attributed to Vishnu; and the Brahma Vaivarta, in which Krishna is represented as the Supreme Being, and his favourite mistress, Radha, as his Shakti or energy. When, therefore, in the Purans as now extant, equal reverence is given not only to Vishnu and Shiva but to four other deities, and when nothing occurs in them which in the least sanctions the rejection of the worship of those deities, or in any manner condemns or disparages it, it seems evident that such works could not have been composed for the sectarian purpose of promoting the exclusive worship of either Vishnu or Shiva, or of any other god.*

It is at the same time impossible to understand why Professor Wilson should have been so anxious to establish in that preface, that the Purans now extant are mere modern compilations, and that a genuine Puran treats of profane subjects only, when in p. lxiii. he makes these remarks:-"That Brahmans unknown to fame have remodelled some of the Hindu scriptures, and especially the Puranas, cannot reasonably be contested, after dispassionately weighing the strong internal evidence which all of them afford of the intermixture of unauthorized and comparatively modern ingredients. But the same internal testimony furnishes proof equally decisive of the anterior existence of ancient materials; and it is therefore as idle as it is irrational to dispute the antiquity and authenticity of the greater portion of the contents of the Puranas, in the face of abundant positive and circumstantial evidence of the prevalence of the doctrines which they teach, the currency of the legends which they narrate, and the integrity of the institutions which they describe, at least three centuries before the Christian era." For

* I should except the Brahma Vaivarta Puran, for I have not met with any Upanishad in which Krishna is represented as the Supreme Being; but this Puran appears to me to be of a much more ancient date than that ascribed to it by Professor Wilson.