knew the art of writing previously to the Akkadians, he has given good reasons against the theory of a Sum Akkadian origin of this writing. For my own part, I already expressed as my opinion (The Kushites, wh they? in The Babylonian and Oriental Record. ecember, 1886), that the writing in question was brought in by the Kushites, speaking a language having an indirect ideology, whatever they may have been as a race apparently much mixed; and as this importation would have been done from the Persian Gulf, the tradition preserved by Berosus would thus be explained. I am well aware of the pitfalls and dangers of all sorts which the inquirer has to avoid in researches concerning ideographic characters. A writing so composed is never steady. With the increase of knowledge new meanings are engrafted by analogy either on the sounds or on the characters; new pictographs are made either anew altogether or by the adaptation of their shape to some purpose and object foreign to their original value. Such, for instance, when the Chinese scribes applied to the representation of swan or counting-rods, two old characters. she "reveal," simply because of their suitable shape. Similar instances cannot always be discriminated, and may cause mistakes in a question so intricate and bristling with difficul ties as the beginnings of the Babylonian characters. The language of the inventors of these characters can be ascer tained only when a sifting of the oldest sounds attached to the characters has been made in order to find the residuum of words and sounds older than the Sumerian introduction. The matter is the more difficult if I am right in my inferences concerning the language and dialects spoken by the Kushite mixed race of seafarers and traders, which were not very distant offshoots of the Turano-Scythian stock. Further researches will explain away the difficulty and throw light on this obscure problem.

In the mean time we may be satisfied with the proof that this writing was not originated in a highland country. The great argument in favour of this view cuts both ways. It rests on the fact that the symbol for 'mountain' means also

ns, ind' and 'country,' but for islanders or seafarers land umways looks mountainous! and could not be represented Dy them otherwise. And what is highly significant is that the symbol for 'mountain' imparts a contemptuous meaning to the compounds in which it occurs; for instance gin 'servant,' lit. woman of the mountains,' uru servant,' lit. 'man of the mountains,' am wild bull,' lit. bull of the mountains.' Should the writing have been invented in the highlands, the reverse would be the case. There are no primitive characters for 'river' nor for 'bear' (it is a compound). On the other hand, the primitive character for 'fish' is important in the writing; the sign for 'water' means also 'father,' and there are primitive symbols for 'boat,' for wind' (represented by an inflated sail), etc. I hope my readers will agree with me that all this constitutes a pretty strong argument in favour of the genuineness of the tradition reported by Berosus, that letters were introduced into Chaldea from the Persian Gulf.

The Secretary Royal Asiatic Society.

TERRIEN DE LACOUPERIE.

JOURNAL

OF

THE ROYAL ASIATIC SOCIETY.

ART. VIII.-Notes on the Early History of Northern India. By J. F. HEWITT, late Commissioner of Chota Nagpur.

THE most noteworthy part of the history of India must always be that which tells how the people known as Hindoos, speaking languages derived from the Sanskrit, and living in the country between the Himalayas and the Vindhyan Mountains, and in the Valley of the Indus, were formed from originally heterogeneous elements into a nation, and which further describes the origin and development of their system of government and their early religious history. The written materials available for these purposes are unusually abundant, but vary greatly in value. The earliest documents at all deserving the name of authentic history are the Pali writings of the early Buddhists. These give us a very good idea of North-eastern India, the institutions, government, and customs of the people in the fifth and sixth centuries before Christ. But the people had then reached a comparatively late stage in their progress, and as to events occurring before that time, we have to look for information primarily to the very voluminous early Sanskrit literature, and chiefly to the legends and traditions therein contained; and secondarily to facts ascertained from foreign countries and languages, and to deductions from the earliest subsequent historical documents, and from coins, monuments, and remains of early buildings, all dating from a much later period. The Sanskrit writings consist of religious and warVOL. XX.K.-[NEW SERIES.]

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like odes, ritualistic manuals, metaphysical and treatises, books of sacred law, and epic poems; but f historical value of the contents of these works is g lessened by the circumstances under which most were composed.

Of these books the most valuable for historial purposes are the Hymns of the Rigveda, as the authors of these poems write naturally, without any bias beyond that arising from pride in Aryan prowess, the conviction of Aryan infallibility, trust in Aryan gods, and depreciation and contempt of their opponents who possessed the land they wished to call their own. Though less legendary than the Homeric or later Sanskrit epics, they are in no sense narrative poems, being for the most part war-songs and religious odes addressed to the gods and the god-like Soma, the inspirer alike of gods and men, and they deal only incidentally with actual facts. They nevertheless give us most valuable information as to the social polity and beliefs of the Aryan tribes before they had been much altered by contact with other races. And though they tell us little directly about their predecessors in the country who opposed their advance into it, they enable us to judge of the change effected by the subsequent influence of other races, by comparing Aryan institutions, as set forth in the Veda, with those current in the country in later times.

Many of the later Sanskrit works would be much more trustworthy guides than they are, when not carefully tested, if it were not for the one-sidedness and inaccuracy of the writers, who, whether as priests or bards, systematically ignored and frequently falsified facts, to serve their special ends. The priests, who wrote for the most part after the caste system resulting from the amalgamation of the different races had become an article of the Brahmin faith, made it their object to secure its general recognition, and thereby to make the Brahmins, as priests of the gods and guardians of the national morality, supreme in Church and State. In doing this it was their interest to ignore and suppress all that tended to prove that those who were accepted as