want of a critical support and historical prop for enabling us to arrange and dispose the whole. The one grand contradiction, however, that prevails throughout Indian tradition and collective literature, namely, between the religion of Brahma and the doctrine of Buddha, which even the Greeks in Alexander's time found there, in the two sects or religious parties of the Bramins and the Samanæans, may certainly be historically cleared up and explained away. This fact, which has altered and split up everything in India, and in the people who, in their mental culture, are, or were, dependent on India, forms now that very historical support by means of which light and order first pervade the whole, as I shall attempt to show in another place.*

The question, too, concerning the primitive state, and how it was constituted, about which Hüllman has given us lately such interesting inquiries, has been quite neglected by the author, although he so carefully endeavours to ascertain the entire primitive condition both in religion and language, as also with respect to the land originally inhabited by the first human race. This omission of the state, in his investigations, may be perhaps less regretted, since he seems not to have as yet perceived the proper point for commencing them from. Here, before all things, it would be incumbent to solve and decide the question, so important in many respects, whether the different ranks-that is, in the old world-whether the castes, in short, were older, or whether the state was. I use

* In what relates to the objections which the author has advanced in his former work ("On the Age and Value of some Oriental Records ") against the genuineness and age of Menu's Indian Code already alluded to further back, with respect to Sir W. Jones's and my declaration in the treatise on the language and wisdom of the Indians; I will simply remark here on this occasion, that those objections are in so far well founded, that the question cannot be at all, whether this work first proceeded from Menu, since the contrary is proved by the work itself. The judgment of Sir W. Jones was principally founded on the antiquity of the language, and when I at that time subscribed to the judgment and great authority of Jones on this point, I for the present, and until further reasons be adduced, see no grounds for not doing so still. I grant that it is nothing but a relatively great age, that can be concluded on from the antiquity of the language; but that the Indian Code of Menu, notwithstanding this great limitation of the supposed great age, may well be a source of no mean importance for old tradition and historical knowledge, the author himself seems to recognize, since he on several occasions resorts to and uses it as such.

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the word "state" in its proper signification, as a peaceinstitution guaranteed by the power of war, and which, although it is at the same time founded on internal peace, is nevertheless immediately directed to external peace or war; and although of mutable circumference or extent, has nevertheless, as a moral individual thing, its boundaries strictly closed against everything external. In point of fact, the universal and favourite expression of "primitive people" is not correct, if we, as the author in the main decidedly does, take our departure from the unity of descent; for in that case there can be no question of a primitive people, but only of a primitive or original stock, from which all nations are derived, and by which we mean therefore nothing but the condition of mankind that obtained before the distribution of man into nations, and previous to the origin of any individual people. They, it is true, who do not take their departure from one common descent, but assume that man has sprung forth everywhere from the earth, differently fashioned according to the different nature of the country, are on the other hand quite right in their sense of the term when they speak of primitive races in the plural number, since they refuse to acknowledge the primitively historical unity, and will not allow it to have ever existed. Now with the author, who manifestly gives the preference to the system of unity, and who endeavours to show, how all nations emigrated and are descended from one primeval land (the central high land of Asia), it is therefore only an inconsistency when he also speaks at times (pp. 48 and 52) of primitive peoples, that are said to have preserved themselves here and there in the deep valleys of the great range of lofty mountains, like a genus of animals in solitary districts, that has indeed grown scarce, but which is still found. If we do not mistake, he has borrowed this opinion from Ritter, in other respects a very excellent geographical writer, who is, however, still something touched with that hypothesis of Antochthones. This, too, notwithstanding the wealth, so genially amassed by himself, of ethnographic facts and remarks, in his grand arranged outlines, leads us palpably and evidently back to an original unity of all nations derived from the three main parent stocks.

If we now return to the primeval land of Eeriene, as it is

designated in the Zendavesta, it is manifest, by the mode in which the other countries are adjoined to it and ranged in a line around it, that it is used in a sense perfectly historically defined, and bounded with geographical accuracy. It is at the same time set down in the midst of other countries as the parent land of the Arian people, as the main land of their origin. Now, according to the author's own rule, we must carefully discriminate before all things in every old historical tradition the Universal from what is special, nationally peculiar and geographically local. Thus, in the Zend saga, for instance, Jemjid is a connecting point of this description with the Universal, since Shem, not only in this tradition, but also in the Mosaic and other Asiatic ones, takes so important a place in the derivation and history of the descent of nations. Afterwards there are some more detached but valuable indications, as for instance, a very beautiful indication is contained in that myth of the nine human pairs, who wandered across the sea; consequently, as the author explains it (pp. 54 and 55), may have, perhaps, first peopled Africa. Everything, however, seems to be local in the geographical views given of the world and various lands in the Zendavesta. First of all, Eeriene, or the Ari land, is accurately defined the original country of the Arians, the precise Aria of the ancients. Among the fifteen blessed regions and spots that are ranged around this centre, the first are evidently, and without a shadow of doubt, Sogdiana and Bactria. Among those that follow, many are doubtful and capable of being explained in more ways than one. Though they are not situated to the south of that centre in a geographical seuse, they may, nevertheless, in a climatical sense, as valleys and low lands, be described as warmer ones in comparison with the old mountainous seat of nativity, the cradle of the race. The eastern provinces are very conspicuous; namely, the Sind regions of Cabool and Lahore, or the Punjaub; after them, Candahar also, the Arachosia of the ancients, and the country near the river Hindmend. The design of the drawerup of the old record was, perhaps, less directed to the representing of "the whole great Arian family of nations" in their common descent, which at all events was certainly not his only object. It seems far more probable to have been his intention at the same time to comprehend and describe, in his

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geographical views of the earth, the great Median empire also, which coming after the Assyrian, preceded the Persian in its greatest extent, inclusive not only of the nations and countries that formed it, but also of those by which it was bounded. It is remarkable in this geographical description, that according to the more correct interpretation of Ver and Verene, as alluded to further back, Persis is given quite as little as Babylonia, or Susiana. Of Assyria, too, only the most northerly part, on the confines of Armenia, is introduced in a very ambiguous way, but no mention is made of it in its higher sense of the Assyrian empire. The extreme frontier of this great extent, as designated in that description, is formed towards the west by Armenia; that is to say, if the sixteenth blessed region, Rengheiao,* in Pehlvi Arvestanove, is rightly explained as the northern portion of Assyria contiguous to Armenia. (Kleuker, vol. ii. p. 303.) From what has been here advanced, it appears now evidently to follow, that this geographical description in the Zendavesta is neither an Assyro-Babylonian, nor a Persian (taken from the empire as founded by Cyrus), but most decidedly a Median one. If this point could be regarded as certain, then much light would be thrown upon the whole, notwithstanding great difficulty and obscurity still hang over isolated parts. It would be very desirable if some learned men, provided with all the proper sources that explain the ancient geography of Asia, and deeply versed in Oriental languages, would thoroughly explain this entire Median list of countries, such as it is found in the Vendidad (Fargard, i., in Kleuker, part ii. pp. 299, 304), from which the author, Mr. Rhode, only selects what best corresponds to his hypothesis. Then a definite judgment could be come to, whether there was any reason for assuming a twofold and double Ari land and Eeriene. One, according to the author, is the first and original native country of the Arians in the north or north-west part of Sogdiana; but which as yet is mere hypothesis. The other is the main central land of the Median empire, founded by the parent stock of the Arians, namely, the Aria of the ancients, and which is both historically and geographically certain. Towards the north-west this Medo-Arian descrip

*According to Görre, in his translation just published of the Schanahme, Introd. p. xlix., Rengheia is the province Zarangia, Sareng.

tion in the Zendavesta extends, as already observed, in no case further than up to Armenia, or as far as the north part of Assyria. The other terminal point towards the southeast is, on the other hand, more clearly defined. It is formed by the fifteenth blessed region, Hapte Heands, or the seven Indias, respecting which the record adds, remarkably enough, that this blissful region "surpasses all the other kingdoms of the world in size and extent." This very circumstance obliges us to regard the compilation of these books as having taken place in the neighbourhood of India, for only near the spot could so distinct and complete an idea have been formed of the greatness, population, and importance of this region of the globe. The Arian race, however, is also described in an Indian source, quite clearly in my eyes, as closely allied to the Indian, both by descent and language. In that often-discussed passage of Menu's code (criticised in the author's other work, "On the Age and Value of some Oriental Records," p. 64), where the question regards the alienation from the Bramins, the neglect of Braminical manners and usages, the warrior-castes that had thrown off the yoke of civilization, and the nations that sprang from them, it says at the conclusion, "All these are Dasyus (or predatory tribes living in a state of war), whether they speak the language of the Mlecchas, or that of the Aryas." The Mlecchas are barbarian tribes, alien to the Indians, both in race and language. Now since these are mentioned in evident contradistinction to the Arians, it is tantamount to saying, they are all savage and desperate robber tribes, whether they are barbarians, or even Arians, the latter being actually allied to the Indians both in race and language.

Now, if the author takes his Eeriene historically in a far more extended sense than the Zendavesta does, and regards it as the whole of the primitive land after the Flood, therefore the central high land of Asia, no objection in this respect is to be made. Only he ought then to remain steadfast to this comprehensive view of his, and not limit it again himself in a partial manner. For it is self-evident, that in the primitively historical tradition of each nation, according to the particular locality, the point situated nearest to that nation has the greatest importance assigned to it. The author himself grants the possibility, that the Caucasus may have formed