alone occupy some 250 pages, or nearly the entire volume, of the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, for May, 1841 -we find among his scientific and literary works one on the "Organisation and Cost of the English and French Armies and Navies," and upwards of sixty papers published in the transactions of various learned societies, "mainly on the ancient history, antiquities, statistics, geology, natural history, and meteorology of India."*

The general complaint, remarked on by the wise Seneca, of the shortness of life, and his answer-Vita, si scias uti, longa est-"Life is long, if you know how to use it"— were known to few men better than Colonel Sykes. Not long before his death, the writer had occasion to pay him a visit in Albion Street, Hyde Park. The conversation turning on work for the Anglo-Indian at home, on its being remarked to him what a vast deal of work he had got through since he left India (more than forty years ago), he replied “But there is little use in living now; the vis vitae has gone!"

Some twenty years before, the conversation with him, when he served as a Director in Leadenhall Street, had been on Buddhism and Monsieur Manupied's wonderful work, bringing out a comparison between some of the Buddhistical writings and those in Isaiah; now it was on the great question of the day-Education!

Perhaps no Anglo-Indian ever moved in a higher circle of society than Colonel Sykes. He was the friend of several distinguished men, among others, Lord Rosse, the inventor of the mighty telescope, with whom the writer found him busy on one occasion; and, during the first conversation above alluded to, he remarked on being obliged, from ill health, to decline all invitations, even from those related to the Royal Family. This is mentioned to show that, in spite of a few short-comings as a public man, there was some attractive metal about him, even in a social point of view. Early in June, on leaving the House of Commons, we believe that he said to a brother Member with whom he had been associated for years, while supporting him on leaving the House, "I'm going home-I don't think I shall ever return " The remark was too true; he went

* See Broad Arrow, June 22nd, 1872.

home but to die. Sykes comes under the head of useful and hard-working rather than of brilliant Anglo-Indians. Those who knew him well declared that he thought he knew every thing better than anybody else; and surely, when we consider that he was a soldier a year before Nelson won the battle of Trafalgar, and then an ardent student, such pride of knowledge may be excused. A duplicate of the man can never possibly appear: he belongs to a school fast passing away; but younger men will do well if they evince the same amount of energy and industry in the public service, which so long distinguished Colonel Sykes.

THE GENIUS OF ANCIENT BUDDHISM.

[Under the above head, the conclusion of Colonel Sykes' famous paper, "Notes on Ancient India," may be given as an example of his style. When we consider that the religion of Buddha numbers some 400,000,000 members, the subject should be one of no common interest.]

WITH a few words on the genius of ancient Buddhism, and the possible cause of its fall in India, I shall close these notes. The Buddhists, like many other Eastern nations, believed in the transmigration of the soul. To terminate the probationary state, and to obtain final liberation or rest, nirvana or nirbutti, that is to say, the stoppage of the further transition of the soul, was the sole worthy object of man's existence ! The only path to this object was through the grades of the clergy. The conditions were, the "most perfect faith, the most perject virtue, and the most perfect knowledge." It was insufficient for the laity that they believed in Buddha, Dharma, Sanga, i.e. Buddha, the law, and the clergy or church; of which there is elsewhere an analogue in "God, the law, and the prophets :" it was only by receiving the tonsure, and enlisting in the ranks of the church that they even made the first step towards salvation. It was then, that, abandoning the world and its concerns, pledged to absolute poverty, to support life by eleemosynary means, to chastity, to abstinence, to penance, to prayer, and, above all, to

continued contemplation of divine truths, they rose in the grades of the church, until some one amongst them having obtained the most perfect knowledge, the most perfect virtue, and the most perfect faith, became Buddha, or infinite wisdom; that is to say, the soul ceased to wander,-its final rest was attained, and it was absorbed into the First Cause. It has been attempted to brand this doctrine with atheism; but if it be so, then are the Brahmans atheists, for it is part of their esoteric system.* Those of the Buddhist clergy who could not attain nirvana, in their renewed births were supposed to attain a form amongst the grades of beings either celestial or terrestrial, approaching to perfect happiness in the proximate ratio of their attainment of perfect knowledge, and in these states they might rise or fall, until final liberation was attained. The souls of the laity went on transmigrating through animal or vegetable life, without even passing the threshold to salvation. It was a strong motive with every man, therefore, to join the clergy, and even the painful lives the latter led, did not prevent the proper relation between producers and non-producers in the social system being subverted. The accumulation of the clergy was pregnant with evil. Their standard of excellence was infinitely too high for humanity; their tests for its attainment too severe; schisms occurred, disorders broke out, relaxations in discipline followed, and these circumstances, in the progress ages, combined with the severe pressure upon the laity for the support of the enormously disproportioned numbers of the clergy [vide Mahawanso], loosened their hold upon the veneration and affection of the people: they silently fell off from a system which was so onerous, and merged into the Vaisya or Sudra ranks of the Brahmanical faith, precisely as is described by Hiuan thsang to have been the case at Patna in the seventh century, when "the Buddhists were living amongst the heretics, and no better than them." In this corrupted stage of Buddhism, the fiery Saivas mustered in sufficient force to effect its overthrow; the clergy, and such of the laity as espoused their interests, were either slaughtered, or driven out of India to a man, and the rest of the laity had little difficulty in transferring their allegiance from one idol to another, (for from works of Buddhist art, and from what we now see of its practices in other countries, it must then have lapsed into little better than rank idolatry,) and Buddhism thus finally disappeared from India, leaving, however, indestructible vestiges of its former

of

* Wilson, Second Oxford Lecture, p. 64.

glory, and many of its practices amongst the Hindus, as noticed by Dr. Stevenson; the Saivas leaving also, as I elsewhere have had occasion to notice, monuments of their triumphs! *

In case I am asked for the specific object and cui bono of my labours, my reply is brief and simple. The startling accounts of India by the Chinese travellers in the fifth, sixth, and seventh centuries of our era, prompted me to subject details so novel and unexpected to the test of such contemporary or previous evidence, as might be obtainable. The Chinese travellers have come from the ordeal unscathed, and the accumulated facts in the preceding pages satisfy me that the narratives of what they saw, in their chief features, are as worthy of credit as those of the travellers of any other time or nation whatever, at least those of Fa hian. With respect to the cui bono, if it be proved that Brahmanism is neither unfathomable in its antiquity, nor unchangeable in its character, we may safely infer that, by proper means, applied in a cautious, kindly, and forbearing spirit, such further changes may be effected, as will raise the intellectual standard of the Hindus, improve their moral and social condition, and assist to promote their eternal welfare.

* Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, No. iv., page 205.

MAJOR-GENERAL W. H. MILLER, C.B.*

WILLIAM HENRY MILLER appears in the "Madras Quarterly Army List," in June, 1860, as Regimental LieutenantColonel, a Colonel in the Army, and Aide-de-Camp to the Queen; his season of appointment to the Madras Artillery dating as far back as 1823. The same interesting workmore interesting to many than either romance or historyrecords that Colonel Miller served with the force of Colonel Evans, C.B., employed against the insurgents in the Nuggur Province of Mysore, in April, May, and June, 1831; with the Saugor Field Divison in the Bundelkund campaign, of 1858, in command of the Artillery Brigade; present at the actions of Jheenjun, April 10th, and of Kubraee, April 17th, 1858; the Battle of Banda, 19th April, 1858. Received three wounds, one on the hand, one on the face, and lost his right arm.

"the

From the fourth of the seven ages of man (according to Shakspeare), we make a retrograde movement to infant," and find that, as the son of Major Miller, Royal Horse Guards (Blues), William first saw the light in May, 1805, at or near the town of Windsor. To his father, one of the best informed officers of the day, the son owed much of his education; and that love of argument in conversation, which so distinguished him in after life, was due to paternal tuition. The Millers seem to have caught some infection from the vastness of the Scotch intellect during the eighteenth century, of which we read in Buckle's remarkable book on "Civilisation." Of the two fundamental divisions of human inquiry-the deductive and the inductive during that renowned period of invention, all the

Written June, 1873, partly from a sketch printed at Ootacamund, Neilgherries, 1866.