at an end with the Shahnameh. What follows exhibits hardly any signs of either growth or decay. The language becomes more and more encumbered with foreign words; but the grammar seems to have arrived at its lowest ebb, and withstands further change. From this state of grammatical numbness, languages recover by a secondary formation, which grows up slowly and imperceptibly at first in the speech of the people; till at last the reviving spirit rises upwards, and sweeps away, like the waters in spring, the frozen surface of an effete government, priesthood, literature, and grammar.

October, 1853.

THE

HE Sanskrit text, with an English translation of the Aitareya-brâhmana, just published at Bombay by Dr. Martin Haug, the Superintendent of Sanskrit Studies in the Poona College, constitutes one of the most important additions lately made to our knowledge of the ancient literature of India. The work is published by the Director of Public Instruction, in behalf of Government, and furnishes a new instance of the liberal and judicious spirit in which Mr. Howard bestows his patronage on works of real and permanent utility. The Aitareya-brâhmana, containing the earliest speculations of the Brahmans on the meaning of their sacrificial prayers, and the purport of their ancient religious rites, is a work which could be properly edited nowhere but in India. It is only a small work of about two hundred pages, but it presupposes so thorough a familiarity with all the externals of the religion of the Brahmans, the various offices of their priests, the times and seasons of their sacred rites, the form of their innumerable sacrificial utensils, and the preparation

1 The Aitareya-brâhmanam of the Rig-veda,' edited and translated by Martin Haug, Ph. D., Superintendent of Sanskrit Studies in the Poona College. Bombay, 1863. London: Trübner & Co.

of their offerings, that no amount of Sanskrit scholarship, such as can be gained in England, would have been sufficient to unravel the intricate speculations. concerning the matters which form the bulk of the Aitareya-brâhmana. The difficulty was not to translate the text word for word, but to gain a clear, accurate, and living conception of the subjects there treated. The work was composed by persons, and for persons, who, in a general way, knew the performance of the Vedic sacrifices as well as we know the performance of our own sacred rites. If we placed the English Prayer-book in the hands of a stranger who had never assisted at an English service, we should find that, in spite of the simplicity and plainness of its language, it failed to convey to the uninitiated a clear idea of what he ought and what he ought not to do in church. The ancient Indian ceremonial, however, is one of the most artificial and complicated forms of worship that can well be imagined; and though its details are, no doubt, most minutely described in the Brâhmanas and the Sutras, yet, without having seen the actual site on which the sacrifices are offered, the altars constructed for the occasion, the instruments employed by different priests-the tout-ensemble, in fact, of the sacred rites the reader seems to deal with words, but with words only, and is unable to reproduce in his imagination the acts and facts which were intended to be conveyed by them. Various attempts were made to induce some of the more learned Brahmans to edit and translate some of their own rituals, and thus enable European scholars to gain an idea of the actual performance of their ancient sacrifices, and to enter more easily into the spirit of the speculations on the

mysterious meaning of these rituals, which are embodied in the so-called Brahmanas, or the sayings of the Brahmans.' But although, thanks to the enlightened exertions of Dr. Ballantyne and his associates in the Sanskrit College of Benares, Brahmans might have been found knowing English quite sufficiently for the purpose of a rough and ready translation from Sanskrit into English, such was their prejudice against divulging the secrets of their craft that none could be persuaded to undertake the ungrateful task. Dr. Haug tells us of another difficulty, which we had hardly suspected, -the great scarcity of Brahmans familiar with the ancient Vedic ritual:

'Seeing the great difficulties, nay, impossibility of attaining to anything like a real understanding of the sacrificial art from all the numerous books I had collected, I made the greatest efforts to obtain oral information from some of those few Brahmans who are known by the name of Srotriyas or Srautis, and who alone are the possessors of the sacrificial mysteries as they descended from the remotest times. The task was no easy one, and no European scholar in this country before me ever succeeded in it. This is not to be wondered at; for the proper knowledge of the ritual is everywhere in India now rapidly dying out, and in many parts, chiefly in those under British rule, it has already died out.'

Dr. Haug succeeded, however, at last in procuring the assistance of a real Doctor of Divinity, who had not only performed the minor Vedic sacrifices, such as the full and new-moon offerings, but had officiated at some of the great Soma sacrifices, now very rarely to be seen in any part of India. He was induced, we are sorry to say by very mercenary considerations, to

perform the principal ceremonies in a secluded part of Dr. Haug's premises. This lasted five days, and the same assistance was afterwards rendered by the same worthy and some of his brethren whenever Dr. Haug was in any doubt as to the proper meaning of the ceremonial treatises which give the outlines of the Vedic sacrifices. Dr. Haug was actually allowed to taste that sacred beverage, the Soma, which gives health, wealth, wisdom, inspiration, nay immortality, to those who receive it from the hands of a twiceborn priest. Yet, after describing its preparation, all that Dr. Haug has to say of it is:

The sap of the plant now used at Poona appears whitish, has a very stringent taste, is bitter, but not sour; it is a very nasty drink, and has some intoxicating effect. I tasted it several times, but it was impossible for me to drink more than some teaspoonfuls.'

After having gone through all these ordeals, Dr. Haug may well say that his explanations of sacrificial terms, as given in the notes, can be relied upon as certain; that they proceed from what he himself witnessed, and what he was able to learn from men who had inherited the knowledge from the most ancient times. He speaks with some severity of those scholars in Europe who have attempted to explain the technical terms of the Vedic sacrifices without the assistance of native priests, and without even availing themselves carefully of the information they might have gained from native commentaries.

In the preface to his edition of the Aitareyabrâhmana, Dr. Haug has thrown out some new ideas on the chronology of Vedic literature which deserve careful consideration. Beginning with the hymns of