X.

descended, notwithstanding the alteration in their CHAP. features; but it is more probable that their pure descent is a fiction, as we have an example of a still more daring imposture in the poets of Java, who have transferred the whole scene of the "Mahá Bhárat," with all the cities, kings, and heroes of the Jamna and Ganges, to their own island.

times sub

sequent to the Greeks.

The accounts of voyagers and travellers in times Trade in subsequent to the "Periplus" speak of an extensive commerce with India, but afford no information respecting the part taken in it by the Indians, unless it be by their silence; for while they mention Arab and Chinese ships as frequenting the ports of India, they never allude to any voyage as having been made by a vessel of the latter country.*

Marco Polo, indeed, speaks of pirates on the coast of Malabár, who cruised for the whole summer; but it appears, afterwards, that their practice was to lie at anchor, and consequently close to the shore, only getting under weigh on the approach of a prize. When Vasco da Gama reached the coast of Malabár, he found the trade exclusively in the hands of the Moors, and it was to their rivalry that he and his successors owed most of the opposition they encountered.

ancient

The exports from India to the West do not Exports in seem, at the time of the "Periplus," to have been times. very different from what they are now: cotton cloth, muslin, and chintz of various kinds; silk cloth

* See, in particular, Marsden's Marco Polo, p. 687.

BOOK
III.

Imports.

Inland trade.

and thread; indigo and other dies; cinnamon and other spices; sugar; diamonds, pearls, emeralds, and many inferior stones; steel; drugs; aromatics; and, sometimes, female slaves.

The imports were coarse and fine cloth (probably woollen); brass; tin; lead; coral; glass; antimony; some few perfumes not known in the country; wines (of which that from Italy was preferred); together with a considerable quantity of specie and bullion.

The great facility of transport afforded by the Ganges and its numerous branches has been alluded to; but, as few of the other rivers are navigable far from the sea, the internal trade must always have been mostly carried on by land. Oxen would be the principal means of conveyance; but as, from the earliest Hindú times to the decline of the Mogul empire, the great roads were objects of much attention to the government, we may, perhaps, presume that carts were much more in use formerly than of later years.

CHAP. XI.

MANNERS AND CHARACTER.

CHAP.

XI.

Ir has been stated that Hindostan and the Deckan
are equal, in extent, to all Europe; except the
Russian part of it, and the countries north of the Difference
Baltic.*

Ten different civilised nations are found within the above space. All these nations differ from each other, in manners and languaget, nearly as much as those inhabiting the corresponding portion of Europe.

They have, also, about the same degree of geneneral resemblance which is observable among the nations of Christendom, and which is so great that a stranger from India cannot, at first, perceive any material difference between an Italian and an Englishman. In like manner Europeans do not at once distinguish between the most dissimilar of the nations of India.

The greatest difference is between the inhabitants of Hindostan proper, and of the Deckan. The neighbouring parts of these two great divisions naturally resemble each other; but in the extremities of the north and south the languages + See pp. 278, 279.

* Introduction, p. 6. note.

of Indian nations.

III.

BOOK have no resemblance, except from a common mixture of Shanscrit; the religious sects are different; the architecture, as has been mentioned elsewhere, is of different characters; the dress differs in many respects, and the people differ in appearance; those of the north being tall and fair, and the others small and dark. The northern people live much on wheat, and those of the south on rági, a grain almost as unknown in Hindostan as in England.* Many of the points of difference arise from the unequal degrees in which the two tracts were conquered and occupied: first, by the people professing the Braminical religion, and afterwards by the Mussulmans; but more must depend on peculiarities of place and climate, and, perhaps, on varieties of race. Bengal and Gangetic Hindostan, for instance, are contiguous countries, and were both early subjected to the same governments; but Bengal is moist, liable to inundation, and has all the characteristics of an alluvial soil; while Hindostan, though fertile, is comparatively dry, both in soil and climate. This difference may, by forming a diversity of habits, have led to a great dissimilitude between the people: the common origin of the languages appears, in this case, to forbid all suspicion of a difference of race.

From whatever causes it originates, the contrast is most striking. The Hindostanis on the Ganges are the tallest, fairest, and most warlike and manly of the Indians; they wear the turban, and a dress Cynosurus Coracanus.

*

XI.

resembling that of the Mahometans; their houses CHAP. are tiled, and built in compact villages in open tracts; their food is unleavened wheaten bread.

The Bengalese, on the contrary, though goodlooking, are small, black, and effeminate in appearance; remarkable for timidity and superstition, as well as for subtlety and art. Their villages are composed of thatched cottages, scattered through woods of bamboos or of palms: their dress is the old Hindú one, formed by one scarf round the middle and another thrown over the shoulders. They have the practice, unknown in Hindostan, of rubbing their limbs with oil after bathing, which gives their skins a sleek and glossy appearance, and protects them from the effect of their damp climate. They live almost entirely on rice; and, although the two idioms are more nearly allied than English and German, their language is quite unintelligible to a native of Hindostan.

Yet those two nations resemble each other so much in their religion and all the innumerable points of habit and manners which it involves, in their literature, their notions on government and general subjects, their ceremonies and way of life, that a European, not previously apprised of the distinction, might very possibly pass the boundary that divides them, without at once perceiving the change that had taken place.

The distinction between the different nations will appear as each comes on the stage in the