LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS; FROM DRAWINGS BY W. WESTALL, Esq., A.R.A. No. 1. Ghaut in the Himalaya, to face title. Page 2. Bheem ka Udar, a view in the Himalaya Mountains 4 3. The Bore-coming in of the Tide in the Ganges 4. Ferry-boat on the Ganges 5. Jumna Musjeed, Delhi. 6. City of Agra. 7. Point de Galle, in the Island of Ceylon 8. Individuals of the Four Great Castes 7 13 73 81 9. The Trimurti-Busts of Brahma, Vishnu, and Siva, in the THE HINDOOS. CHAPTER I. GENERAL DESCRIPTION OF INDIA. THE ancient and extensive empire of India has from the remotest ages been an object of extraordinary curiosity to the inhabitants of all the more civilized portions of the world. In early antiquity, the Assyrian queen Semiramis is said to have made a fruitless attempt at subduing India; the conquests of Darius Hystaspis do not appear to have extended beyond the Panjâb (Herodot. iv. 44; compare iii. 101), and those of Alexander and of Seleucus made 1 The origin of the name of India is altogether unknown; but, as Egypt derived its name from the ancient appellation of the Nile (Aïyværʊs. Hom. Odyss. iv. 477, xvii. 427, and Eust. ad loc.), so many etymologists have imagined that India originally derived its name from the Indus. In Sanscrit, the name of that river is Sindhu, and its derivative Saindhava is the common adjective for whatever belongs to, or comes from the country along the Indus. The name became, probably, first known to the Greeks through the Persians, and a Sanscrit initial sibilant is often lost or changed into h in the corresponding words of the Persian and other cognate languages. Though properly confined to the provinces adjacent to the Indus, the acceptation of the term India was extended to the country east of that river as the knowledge of it advanced. A large province at the mouth of the Indus is still called Sinde; and Vincent supposes the present town of Sinde to be the Sindomana of Arrian (vi. 16). See Vincent's Voyage of Nearchus, p. 160. Lieutenant Burnes, however, is of opinion, that Sindomana is the present Sehwun. Journal of the Royal Geographical Society, vol. iii. p. 138. VOL. I. B |