termining fortunate and unfortunate days or hours, and the figures of their guardians are inscribed on amulets or other charms. They correspond not only with the Decani of the Greeks, but with the Rab ul Wajeh of the Arabs who were not less addicted to judicial astrology than the Hindûs.

A modern Hindû will upon no account undertake a journey or an enterprise of any kind without consulting the astrologer, and you may remember that I mentioned him as one of the twelve chief persons in a village, where his office is to declare the proper times for the different operations of agriculture, to adjust the calendar for religious festivals, besides the proclamation of lucky and unlucky days. All of which, after all, only proves that men are the same in every climate and under every circumstance: the augurs of Greece and Rome, the soothsayers of Israel, and the conjurors of modern Europe, like the astrologers of Hindostan, had equally the credulity of their fellow-mortals to work upon, and as a knave sometimes ends in being as great a dupe as those he deceives, the deception that was begun from interested motives may be carried on with the good faith of superstition.

Thus the most sublime science that the mind of man ever aspired to grasp, has been made subservient to purposes the most ridiculous, as if

poor human nature was destined to be humbled even where she might justly have exalted herself. Thank Heaven the days of the triumph of astrology in the West are over, and there is little danger of our seeing an army run away in consequence of a bad omen, or a general keep his tent because of an unlucky conjunction of the stars! The lights of heaven now shine with beneficent lustre to guide the mariner over the trackless deep, and the "bands of Orion and the sweet influences of the Pleïades*" cheer the traveller as he wanders on through distant na tions, imparting and receiving knowledge.

The industry and ability of Mr. Strachey has lately furnished us with a translation of a Sanscrit work on algebra, called Bija Gannita, written by Bhascara Acharya about the year 1188 of our æra. The work appears to have been written with a view to astronomy, and seems to have been compiled from more ancient materials: I would fain refer you entirely for an account of it to the Edinburgh Review for July 1813, where, among other curious remarks, you will find a very ingenious explanation of the use of the word colours for unknown quantities. As the operations of arithmetic received the name of

* If the translation be true, the stars were named and classed in Egypt and Chaldea before the time of Moses, since the book of Job is as old as that lawgiver.

calculus from the pebbles with which they were carried on before the invention of numerical signs, so the unknown quantities of the Indian algebra must have received those of the colours from the use of different coloured shells, flowers, or pieces of cloth, when the first rude essays towards inventing the science were made. This may rationally be considered as a collateral proof of the originality of the Hindû algebra; but there appear to be others much more direct in the solutions of various difficult problems given in the Bija Gannita, some of which continued to be unknown in Europe until the time of Euler, which could scarcely have been the case if they had been derived from the Greek and Arabian writers, whose works are the foundation of modern science. But I am so ignorant on this subject, that I have written even the name of algebra in fear and trembling, and only ventured to do so as an excuse to tell you where you might look for the best account of it in its Indian guise that we yet possess in this country.

The mode of dividing time in India is very unequal, as it depends on the seasons and consequent length of day and night: the great divisions are four day watches and four night watches, each of which must of course vary with the season; but the watches are subdivided into ghurrees which are fixed, and contain twenty

four English minutes, so that there are sixty ghurrees in the twenty-four hours, although the number of ghurrees in each watch or puhur is perpetually changing. The ghurree is divided into sixty puls, the pul into sixty bipuls, and the bipul into sixty till or anoopul. The way in which these periods are measured for the common purposes of life is with a kutoree, or thin brass cup perforated at the bottom and placed on the surface of water in a large vessel where nothing can disturb it, when the water has filled it to a certain line, which has been previously adjusted astronomically by an astrolabe, the ghurree allee or watchman strikes the ghurree with a wooden mallet on a shallow bell-metal pan, like those we bring from China under the name of gongs, and besides the number of the ghurree, that of the puhur is rung at the end of each watch. The same kind of water measure, but very delicately arranged, is used for astronomical purposes. None but great men can afford the luxury of a ghurree al, or clock, as it requires the attendance of numerous servants, and the only public clocks in India are those attached to the armies.

MY DEAR SIR,

LETTER VIII.

A THOUSAND thanks for the patience you have had with my last letter, which has really encouraged me to begin this, and to go on with the plan I had proposed. Since, then, we have done with the heavens, it will not be amiss to inquire what the ancient Hindûs thought of the earth.

Their systems of geography are extremely curious, though involved in considerable obscurity, owing to the exuberance, or poverty, shall I say, of the Hindû imagination, which delights in describing mountains of precious stones, seas of milk, and rivers of honey or butter; and has pleased itself with rendering the world so equal, that for every mountain in the south there is its equivalent in the north, and that no river can flow without a sister stream in an opposite direction. Notwithstanding these disguises, however, it is plain that the Hindûs had a very general and tolerably correct notion of the old continent; and though at first sight they appear, completely separated from the rest of the world,. the means by which they acquired their true notions of it, become, on a little attention, abundantly apparent.