under the Madras presidency and in Ceylon to whom such a publication will doubtless be highly acceptable.

Report by the Directors of the Edinburgh Academy, at the Ninth General Meeting; and the Prize List on the Public Exhibition Day, 1st August 1833. Edinburgh. Black. THIS institution (a public day-school for boys from eight or nine to fifteen or sixteen, incorporated by royal charter, with a capital of £12,000 raised by shares of £50 each) seems, in spite of a diminution of pupils, to be augmenting its claims to public approbation. The prize pieces evince considerable talent in the pupils.

L'Echo de Paris. By M. A. P. Lepage. London, 1833. E. Wilson.

A selection of familiar phrases, in French, which will supply young persons with almost all they can need, in order to make themselves well-understood, in ordinary dialogue, in France.

The Parliamentary System of Short-Hand simplified, &c. By THOMas Parker. London, 1833. E. Wilson.

A short, concise, and clear system, in a cheap form.

LITERARY INTELLIGENCE.

Rajab Kalee Krishna (lately raised to the dignity of Rajah, by the Governor General of Bengal) of Calcutta, has printed at the Kámalalaya press, a translation into Bengalí of Rasselas. In the preface, he mentions the difficulty he experienced in rendering such a work into "the pure and unmixed Bengalí."

A complete translation of the Harivansa is now printing at the Royal press at Paris, at the expense of the Oriental Translation Fund. The translator is M. Langlois. It will make two volumes in quarto, and is to be accompanied by notes, and an alphabetical table of proper names, which will be extremely convenient for historical and genealogical researches.

A revised edition of the Analysis of the Constitution of the East-India Company, and of the Indian Governments and Establishments under the new Charter, &c. is preparing.

A newspaper, under the title of The Evangelist and Miscellanea Sinica, has recently been established at Canton.

LONDON.

NEW PUBLICATIONS.

A Dictionary, Bengali and Sanskrit, explained In English, and adapted for Students of either Language; to which is added an Index, serving as a Reversed Dictionary. By Sir Graves C. Haughton, M.A., F.R.S., M.R.A.S., R.I.A., &c. 4to. £7.75.

Illustrations of the Botany and other Branches of the Natural History of the Himalayan Moun tains, and of the Flora of Cashmere. By J. Forbes Royle, Esq., F.L.S. and G.S., M.R.A.S., &c. Part I. imp. 4to., with ten coloured plates, 20s. (To be completed in ten parts).

Miscellaneous Works of William Marsden, F.R.S. &c. &c. 4to. 18s.-(Contents: 1. On the Polynesian, or East-Insular Languages. 2. On a Čonventional Roman Alphabet, applicable to Oriental Languages. 3. Thoughts on the Composition of a National English Dictionary).

The Oriental Annual, or Scenes in India; com prising 25 Engravings from Original Drawings by William Daniell, Esq., R.A., and a Descriptive Account by the Rev. Hobart Caunter, B.D. 8vo. 21s. ; or royal 8vo., proof plates, £2. 12s. 6d. Flowers of the East, with an Introductory Sketch of Oriental Poetry and Music. By Ebenezer Pocock. 12mo. 6s.

History of Arabia, Ancient and Modern. By Andrew Crichton. 2 vols. 12mo. 10s. (Written for the "Edinburgh Cabinet Library.")

Report of Proceedings on a Voyage to the Nor

thern Ports of China, in the ship “Lord Amherst."
Extracted from Papers printed by order of the
House of Commons, relating to the Trade with
China. 8vo. 8s.

Narrative of a Voyage to the Swan River; containing Useful Hints to those who contemplate Emigration to Western Australia. Compiled by the Rev. J. G. Powell, B. A. 8vo. 8s. 6d.

Van Diemen's Land, its Rise, Progress, and Present State; with Advice to Emigrants. Also á Chapter on Convicts, showing the Efficacy of Transportation as a Secondary Punishment. By H. W. Parker, Esq., barrister-at-law. 8vo, with map. 6s.

Ercursions in New South Wales, Western Australia, and Van Diemen's Land, during the years 1830, 31, 32, and 33. By Lieut. Breton, R.N. 8vo. 14s.

Fragment of the Journal of a Tour through Persia, in 1820. By Peter Gordon. 12mo. 2s. 6d.

Memoirs of the Puthan Soldier of Fortune, the Nuwab Ameer-ood-doulah Mohummud Ameer Khan, chief of Seronj, Tonk, Rampoora, Neemahera, and other places in Hindoostan. Compiled in Persian by Busawun Lal, Naceb-Moonshee to the Nuwab, and translated by H. T. Prinsep, Esq. of the Beugal Civil Service. 8vo. 158. (Imported from Calcutta.)

Sermons, by Henry Melvill, M.A., late Fellow and Tutor of St. Peter's College, Cambridge, and Minister of Camden Chapel, Camberwell.

ANALYSIS OF THE PURÁNAS.

BY PROFESSOR H. H. WILSON.

THE BRAHMÁ VAIVERTTA PURÁNA.*

THE Brahma Vaivertta Purána is perhaps the most decidedly sectarian work of the whole collection, and has no other object than to recommend faith in Krishna and Rádhá: subservient to this purpose, it records a great variety of legends, of which no traces can be found in any of the other Puránas, and it deals but sparingly in those which are common to all. It is of little value as a collateral authority, therefore, and most of the stories it contains are too insipid and absurd to deserve investigation. It contains, however, a few remarkable passages that bear an ancient character, and it throws more light than any similar work upon the worship of the female principle, or Prakriti, as well as of Krishna and Rádhá.

The Brahma Vaivertta is supposed to be communicated by Sauti, the son of Su'ta, the original narrator of the Puránas, to Saunaka, a sage, at an assembly of similar characters, at the forest of Naimisha, whom he happens to visit, and who ask him to relate the work. This commencement opens several of the Puránas, and more especially the Máhátmyas, or chapters, descriptive of the virtues of some place or person, said to be taken from some Purána. In this case, the Rishis state, as the motive of their inquiry, their dread of the evil tendency of the present age, and their desire for emancipation; and their hope to be secured in the one, and defended from the other, by being imbued with bhakti, or faith in Hari, through the medium of the Purána, which they style the essence of the Puránas, the source of faith, felicity, and final liberation, and the dissipator of the errors of the Puránas, and the Upapuránas, and even of the Vedas!

Sauti acquired his knowledge of this work from Vyása, by whom it was arranged in its present form, to the extent of eighteen thousand slokas, Vyása received the Sutra, the thread or outline of it, from Náreda, who had learnt it from Nárayana Rishi, the son of D'herma, to whom it had been communicated by his father. D'herma had been made acquainted with it by Brahma, who had been taught it by Krishna himself, in his peculiar and deathless sphere, the celestial Goloka :—a paradise, it may be observed, of which no trace occurs in any other Purána. The Brahmá Vaivertta is so named, because it records the manifestations of the Supreme Being in worldly forms by the interposition of Krishna, who is himself the Supreme Spirit, the Parabrahma or Paramátma, from whom Prakriti, Brahmá, Vishnu, Siva, and the rest proceeded,

supreme;

of

The Brahma Vaivertta Purána is divided into four books or k'handas, the Brahma K'handa, the Prakriti K'handa, the Ganes'a K'handa, and the Krishna Janma K'handa, treating separately of the nature and acts of the the female personification of matter; of the birth and adventures of Ganes'a ; and of the birth and actions of Krishna. We shall notice the principal subjects of each division.

The Brahma K'handa begins with the creation of the universe, as taking place after an interval of universal, destruction. The world is described as waste and void, but the Supreme Krishna, the sole existent and eternal Being,

The Analysis of the Agni Purana was inserted in our ninth volume, p. 257. Translations of all the eighteen Puranas were completed under the direction of Mr. Wilson before he quitted India. 2 G

Asiat.Jour.N.S.VOL. 12.No.48.

is supposed to be present, in the centre of a luminous sphere of immeasurable extent and inconceivable splendour. From him the three qualities, crude matter, individuality, and the elements, proceed; also Náráyăna or the fourarmed Vishnu, in his ordinary garb and decorations, and Sankara, smeared with ashes, and armed with a trident. Nárayana, or Vishnu, comes from the right, and Siva from the left side of the primeval Krishna, and Brahmå springs from his navel: all the gods and goddesses in like manner proceed from his person, and each upon his or her birth utters a short prayer or hymn in honour of him.

After the several deities are produced from various parts of Krishna's person, he retires into the Rásamandala, a chamber or stage for the performance of a kind of dance, to which the followers of this divinity attach much importance, although it seems to be no more than a kind of dramatic representation of Krishna's dancing and sporting with the Gopis. There, Rádhá, his favourite mistress, proceeds from his heart; from the pores of her skin spring three hundred millions of Gopis, or nymphs of Vrindavan; and an equal number of Gopas, the swains of the preceding, originate from the pores of Krishna's skin; the herds they are to attend owe their existence to the same inexhaustible source. The Rása and Rádhá, and the origin of the kine, and their keepers, male or female, are amongst the chief characteristic peculiarities of the Brahma Vaivertta Purána.

After Krishna's thus evolving the different orders of subordinate deities, the work proceeds to describe the devotion of Siva towards his creator, and takes this opportunity of expatiating upon the different degrees of bakkti, or faith, and the various kinds of mukti, or salvation.

The work of creation is then resumed by Brahmá, who begets by his wife Sávitrí a various and odd progeny, as the science of logic, the modes of music, days, years, and ages, religious rites, diseases, time, and death. He has also an independent offspring of his own; as Viswakermá, from his navel; the sage Sánanda, and his three brothers, from his heart; the eleven Rúdras from his forehead, and sundry sages from his ears, mouth, &c.

The legends that follow relating to the daughters of Dharma, and their marriages with various patriarchs, from whom terrestrial objects proceeded, are told in the usual strain. In describing the origin of the mixed classes of mankind, this work contains a peculiar legend, which makes a certain number of them the issue of the divine architect Viswakermá by Ghritáchí, a nymph of heaven. The chapter often occurs as a separate treatise under the title of Játi Nirnaya, and is considered as an authority of some weight with respect to the descent of the mixed tribes, although of a purely legendary character.

The succeeding sections contain some legends of little importance, until the 16th, which is occupied with a short, but curious list of medical writers and writings. The first work on medical science, entitled the A'yur Véda, was, like the other Védas, the work of Brahmâ, but he gave it to Súrya, the sun, who, like the Phoebus of the Greeks, is the fountain of medical knowledge amongst the Hindus. He had sixteen scholars, to each of whom a Sanhitá or compen dium is ascribed: none of the works attributed to them are now to be procured.

The chapters that next follow relate a legendary story of the wife of a Gandherva named Málavatí, the efficacy of various mantras, the story of Náreda, the sage, and rules for the performance of daily purificatory and religious rites. The 28th and 29th chapters, the last of the book, are occupied with the description of Krishna, of his peculiar heaven or Goloka, of the holy

Rishi Nárayana, and of his residence. The style and purport of the whole are peculiar to this Purána. Goloka is said to be situated about 500 millions of Yojanas above the Lokas of Siva and Vishnu. It is a sphere of light, tenanted by Gopas, Gopis, and cows; the only human persons admissible to its delights are pure Vaishnavas, the faithful votaries of Krishna. It appears, however, that the author of this Purána, who in all probability is the inventor of Goloka, had no very precise notions of his own work, as he calls it in one place square, and in another round; and whilst he is content in one passage to give it the moderate diameter of thirty millions of yojanas, he extends its circumference in another to a thousand millions.

The next section of this Furána, is also of a peculiar character. It relates to Prakriti, the passive agent in creation, personified matter, or the goddess nature. The Puránas, in general, follow in regard to their cosmogony the Sankhya school of philosophy, in which Prakriti is thus described: Prakriti, or Múla Prakriti, is the root or plastic origin of all, termed Pradhána, the chief one, the universal material cause. It is eternal matter, undiscrete, undistinguishable as destitute of parts, inferrible from its effects, being productive, but no production.

According to the same system, the soul is termed Purush or Pumún, which means man or male; but the Sankhya doctrine is two-fold, one atheistical, the other theistical. The former defines the soul to be neither produced nor productive, not operating upon matter, but independent and co-existent; the latter identifies soul with Iswara, or God, who is infinite and eternal, and who rules over the world: and it is to this latter system that the Puránas appertain, only in this Iswara they recognise the peculiar object of their devotion, whichever of the Hindú triad that may be, or even as in the work before us, superadding a fourth in Krishna, who is every where else regarded but as a manifestation of Vishnu, and in a remarkable passage of the Mahábhárat is said to be no more than an Avatar of a hair plucked from the head of that divinity.

In the true spirit of mythology, which is fully as much poetical as religious, the figure of prosopopeia is carried by the Hindus to its utmost verge; and we need not wonder therefore to find spirit and matter converted by the Pauranic bards into male and female personifications, with the attributes adapted to either sex, or derived from the original source of either representation. Prakriti is consequently held to be not only the productive agent in the creation of the world, but she is regarded as Máyá, the goddess of delusion, the suggester of that mistaken estimate of human existence, which is referable to the gross perceptions of our elementary construction. With this character the Pauránics have combined another, and confounding the instrument with the action, matter with the impulse by which it was animated, they have chosen to consider Prakriti also as the embodied manifestation of the divine will, as the act of creation, or the inherent power of creating, co-existing with the supreme. This seems to be the ruling idea in the Brahmá Vaivertta, in which the meaning of the word Prakriti, and the origin of this agent in creation, are thus explained :—

"The prefix Pra means 'pre-eminent,' Kriti means 'creating;' that goddess who was pre-eminent in creation is termed Prakriti : again, Pra means 'best,' or is equivalent to the term Satwa, the quality of purity, Kri implies 'middling,' the quality of passion, and Ti means 'worse' or that of ignorance. She who is invested with all power is identifiable with the three properties, and is the prin

Such as the spirit, such

cipal in creation, and is therefore termed Prakriti. Pra also signifies 'first' or foremost, and Kriti 'creation;' she who was the beginning of creation, is called Prakriti. The supreme spirit in the act of creation became by Yoga twofold, the right side was male, the left was Prakriti. She is of one form with Brahme. She is Máyá, eternal and imperishable. is the inherent energy (the Sákti), as the faculty of burning is inherent in fire.” The idea of personifying the divine agency, being once conceived, was extended by an obvious analogy to similar cases, and the persons of the Hindú triad, being equally susceptible of active energies, their energies were embodied as their respective Prakritis, Saktis, or goddesses. From them the like accompaniment was conferred upon the whole pantheon, and finally upon man; women being regarded as portions of the primeval Prakriti. The whole being evidently a clumsy attempt to graft the distinction of the sexes, as prevailing in earth, hell, and heaven, upon a metaphysical theory of the origin of the uni

verse.

The primeval Prakriti, according to our authority, which now becomes wholly mythological, resolved herself, by command of Krishna, into five primitive portions. These were Durga, the Sakti of Mahadeva; Lakshmi, the Sakti of Vishnu; Saraswatí, the goddess of language; Sávitri, the mother of the Védas; and Rádhá, the favourite of Krishna.

In the same manner as the primary creator of the world multiples his appearances, and without losing any of his individual substance, occupies by various emanations from it different frames, so the radical Prakriti exists in 'different shapes and in various proportions, distinguished as Ansas, portions; Kalas, divisions; and Kalansas and Ansánsas, or subdivisions, or portions of portions. Thus Gangá, Tulasi, Manasá, Shashť'hí, and Kálí, are Ansarúpas, or forms having a portion of the original Prakriti; Swáhá, Swadhá, Dakshiná, Swasti, a host of virtues and vices, excellencies and defects, and all the wives of the inferior deities, are Kalárúpas, forms constituted of a minor division of Prakriti; whilst all the female race are animated by her minuter portions, or subdivisions, and they are virtuous or vicious, according as the quality of goodness, passion, or ignorance, derived from their great original, predominates in the portion of which they are respectively constituted. Women who go astray, therefore, have by this system a better excuse than the stars.

The compiler of this Purána is very little scrupulous as to the consistency of his narrative, and assigns to the principal goddesses other origins than that which he gives in the beginning of the Brahmá K'handa, or in the first chapter of this section. Thus Saraswati, who came out from the mouth of Krishna in the former, and in the latter is said to be one of the five subdivisions of Prakriti, is now described as proceeding from the tongue of Rádhá; and Lakhsmi, who in one place is also a portion of Prakriti, and in another issues from the mind of Krishna, is described in this part of the work as one of two goddesses into which the first Saraswati was divided; the two being Saraswatí proper, and Kamalá or Lakshmí. These incoherencies are quite characteristic of this 'Purána, which, from first to last, is full of contradictory repetitions, as if the writer was determined to make a large book out of a few ideas, the precise nature of which he forgot as fast as he committed them to paper.

After this account of the origin of the principal female forms, the third chapter contains a more particular description of the sphere of Krishna or Goloka. It then repeats an account of the creation of the world, through the agency of Brahmá; and the following chapters of the section are devoted to legendary stories of the principal Prakritis, or Saraswatí, Gangá, Tulasi,