various Puranas, as the Matsya, Kudma, Markandeya, Vishnu, Varáha, Narasinha, the Bhagavat and Rámáyana.

3. Desanirnaya, ms. on palm leaves, Grandham character, incomplete. This is a description of the fifty-six countries into which India is divided; said to be a portion of the Brahmanda Purana.

MEDICINE.

Some account of the medical and surgical sciences among the Hindoos will be found in the following paper, from which it appears that they were at one time highly esteemed and extensively cultivated in India: On the Medical and Surgical Sciences of the Hindoos, Oriental Magazine, Feb. 1823; also in the Asiat. Journ. 1823, Sept. p. 241-243; translated into German under the following title: Ueber die medizinischen und chirurgischen Kenntnisse der Hindus im Allgemeinen, im Morgenblatte, 1823, No. 292, 293.

The Ayur-Veda, is a collection of the medical treatises of the highest antiquity and authority, and is considered to form a part of the Atharva Veda. It is consequently the work of Brahma, by whom it was communicated to Dascha the Prajapati, who instructed the two Aswins, the sons of Surya, the sun, who became the medical attendants of the gods. This genealogy cannot but recal to our minds the two sons of Esculapius, and their descent from Apollo. The Ayur Veda, which originally consisted of one hundred sections of a thousand stanzas each, was adapted to the limited faculties and life of man, by its distribution into eight subdivisions, the enumeration of which conveys to us an accurate idea of the objects of the Ars Medendi amongst the Hindoos. The divisions are thus enumerated

1. Salgu is the art of extracting extraneous sub

stances, whether of grass, wood, earth, metal, bone, etc. violently or accidentally introduced into the human body; with the treatment of the inflammation and suppuration thereby induced; and by analogy, the cure of all phlegmonoid tumours and abscesses.

2. Salakya is the treatment of external organic affections or diseases of the eyes, ears, nose, etc.

3. Kaya Chikitsa is, as the name implies, the application of the Ars Medendi (Chikitsa) to the body in general (Kaya), and forms what we mean by the science of medicine. The two preceding divisions constitute the surgery of modern schools.

4. Bhatavidya is the restoration of the faculties from a disorganised state, induced by demoniacal possession. This art has vanished before the diffusion of knowledge; but it formed a very important part of medical practice through all the schools, Greek, Arabic, or European.

5. Kaumarabhritya means the cure of infancy, comprehending not only the management of children from their birth, but the treatment of irregular lactic secretion, and puerperal disorders in mothers and nurses. 6. Agada is the administration of antidotes.

7. Rasayana is chemistry, or, more correctly speaking, alchemy, as the chief end of the chemical combinations it describes, and which are mostly metallurgic, is the discovery of the universal medicine; the elixir that was to render health permanent and life perpetual.

S. The last branch, Bajikarana, professes to promote the increase of the human race.

An abstract of this work, in the Devanâgari character, is contained in the Royal Library at Copenhagen.

According to some authorities, the Aswins instructed Indra, who became the preceptor of Dhanwantari;

A a

while others make Atreya, Bharadwaja, and Charaka prior to the latter. Charaka's work, which goes by his name, is still extant. The disciple of Dhanwantari was Suruta, the son of Viswamitra, and consequently contemporary of Rama: his work Sausruta is still extant, and is the great authority of Hindoostan practice. It is unquestionably of great antiquity, though not of the prodigious age assigned to it by Indian fable. We must therefore be satisfied with knowing that it is the oldest work on the subject, except that of Caraka. A commentary on the text, by Ubhatta, a Cashmirian, is probably as old as the twelfth or thirteenth century; and his commentary, it is believed, was preceded by others. The work is divided into six portions, namely:

1. Sutra-St'hana, surgical definitions.

2. Nidana St'hana, on the diagnosis.

3. Sarira St'hana, anatomy.

4. Chikitsa St'hana, internal application of medicine. 5. Kalpa St'hana, doctrine of antidotes.

6. Uttara St'hana, a supplementary section upon various local diseases of the eyes, ears, etc. In all these divisions, however, surgery, and not general medicine, is the object of the Sausruta. See Asiat. Journ. 1823, Sept. p. 242.

The six following medical works are copied from Professor Wilson's Catalogue of the Mackenzie mss. See above, p. 61.

1. Vaidyajivana, ms. on palm leaves, Nandinágari character. A work in three sections, on the practice of medicine, by Rolamba Raja.

2. Vaidya grantha, ms. on palm leaves, Telugu character. A section of a medical work, author unknown: it includes the description of the body, or anatomy, the treatment of women in childbirth, and the symptoms and treatment of various diseases.

3. Shadrasa Nighanta, on the properties of drugs, Telugu character.

4. Chikitsa Sata Sloka, on the cure of sundry dis

eases.

5. Hara pradipiká, a work on alchemy and mercury,

and its combinations.

6. Vaidya Sangraha, a collection of medical formulæ.

Besides these, another medical manuscript exists in the Royal Library of Copenhagen. It is quoted in the Litter. Tidende for 1819, p. 124, under the following title: Pathyapathya, sive tractatus de Materia Medica et Diætetica; auctore Baidyakeya, fol.

Account of the Spasmodic Cholera, from Hindoo writers, by Calvi Virumbon, in Asiatic Journal, 1819, Sept. p. 232-235.

Rogantaka Sara, Materia Indica, auct. Whitelaw Ainslie, Londini, 1827, 8vo. See Asiatic Journal, vol. i, p. 126.

FINE ARTS.

POETRY.

On Sanscrit Poetry in general.

A HISTORY of Sanscrit poetry would be a general history of Sanscrit literature. Not only the Vedas, the most ancient sacred books of the Hindoos, but even treatises on science, apparently the most awkward to reduce to a metrical form, are composed in verse; as examples of which we may mention the vocabularies of Amara Sinha, and Menu's Code of Laws: and although, in the extensive range of Sanscrit learning, there are some few compositions which may be called

prose, yet, even the style of most of these bears so great a resemblance to the language of poetry, from their being written in a kind of modulated prose, as scarcely to form an exception. The age of Sanscrit poetry, therefore, like that of all other nations, is coeval with the earliest vestiges of the language; and its antiquity, after deducting every fair demand that can be made upon it, will still be sufficient to render it venerable, and give it a high claim to our attention. But Sanscrit poetry,-confining the term to its stricter sense, as designating such compositions as from their nature and form come within our ideas of the term,has much loftier claims than this to our regard. Nor has it been neglected; though, perhaps, of all the countries of Europe it has been treated with most indifference in England, where, from the political connection of the people with the land of its birth, it might have been expected to excite the most general and lively interest.

The classical poets of ancient India are divided into three periods. The first is that of the Vedas; the second, that of the great Epics; the third, that of the Drama. A fourth is mentioned; but as it is of a later date, (since the birth of Christ,) it is not considered as belonging to the classic age. These three periods are assigned to Sanscrit poetry, not only from historical testimony, but from the language and style of the compositions themselves. One of the first Sanscrit scholars of the present day observes, that the specimens we have of the Vedas are sufficient to enable us to trace a difference of style between them and the other specimens of early Sanscrit literature, so great, as

a Sir William Jones, vol. v; Colebrooke, Asiatic Researches, vol. x, p. 447, 8vo, mentions several kinds of prose, but scarcely one used in any reputable work which can be strictly called by that name.

b Heeren's Researches: Indians, ch. i.