As an account of the tenures in the Dekkan involves the consideration of certain ancient Hindú offices, I beg to offer some preliminary observations which may possibly assist in throwing light on the former state of the country now called Mahárashtra, and its institutions. The Mahrattas do not pretend to be the aborigines; they have a tradition that they came from the north, and that they are of Rájpút origin.

From the year 1661 to the present day, the Syrian Christians of Malabar have remained a divided people. The churches which have maintained their independence of the Roman pontiff are in number fifty-seven; their number of officiating priests, commonly called catanárs, is one hundred and forty-four; and the families belonging to their churches, at the lowest computation, are reckoned at thirteen thousand five hundred, or about seventy thousand souls. They consider themselves as the true descendants of the flock established by Saint Thomas, and acknowledge the ecclesiastical authority of the patriarch of Antioch, or Mosul, from whence they continued, after their separation from the Roman Catholics, till the year 1751, to receive their metropolitan. But that ancient patriarchal authority having become nearly extinct, and incompetent to the appointment of learned men, their metropolitans have, since that period, been elected and consecrated from amongst themselves.

The following abstract is taken from Captain Low's history of the provinces wrested from the Burmese during the late war, which, through his friend in this country, was presented to the Royal Asiatic Society. Several portions of it have already been read at the general meetings of the society, and it is intended to continue to give abstracts from it in the successive numbers of this journal, in the confident hope that the British public will speedily call for the entire publication of a work containing the most authentic information respecting a country, our relations with which are daily increasing in value and importance.

The vessel on the opposite page, including the cover, measured in height, twelve Chinese inches and four-tenths; its containing depth, seven inches and five-tenths; the length of the neck, four inches and eight-tenths; that of the body, eight inches and six-tenths; and the circumference, seven inches and two-tenths. It weighed nine Chinese pounds and twelve ounces. The inscription, which was engraved on the cover, and on the vessel, is, by the moderns written Sun, tsŏ tsoo yĭh paou tsun e, “The descendants make this beautiful or valuable vessel in veneration of their ancestor Tsoo-Yĭh.” From the form of the first ancient character, a hand grasping a missile weapon, this vessel has been denominated the Chetaou, or grasping a missile vase. The emperor Tsoo-Yĭh reigned 1496 b.c., and was the son of Ho-tan-Keă; who, owing to great inundations, removed his court to Ho-chung-foo, in Honan province. The compiler here remarks, that the ancient forms of Sun almost invariably represent it as grasping a weapon; and that its meaning should then be restricted to that of a son, not grandson. It is also stated, that their ancient emperors, to encourage agriculture, set their subjects an example by annually taking hold of the plough. When sacrificing, the monarch was required to take hold of the He vessel; when preparing for the sacred feast, to take hold of the Lwan-knife; and, after feasting, when the sacred dance commenced, to raise the Kan-tsŭh banner, for it was considered indispensable that all the rites of sacrifice should be performed with dignity and promptitude; hence, all who assisted at the sacrifice had with them a knife. This is assigned as a reason why the first character is holding up a knife, or other weapon. It is said in the ancient work Le-ke, that the “usages require that the arm, while dividing the sacrifice, should be bared.” From the relief and form of the characters, there can be no doubt, say the compilers, but that the vessel is very ancient, and was the first of this kind of vessels.

Several distinguished Orientalists having, whilst they applauded the novelty and importance of the information conveyed by the Sketch of Buddhism, called upon me for proofs, I have been induced to prepare for publication the following translation of significant passages from the ancient books of the Saugatas, which are still extant in Nepál in the original Sanskrit. These extracts were made for me (whilst I was collecting the works in question) some years ago by Amrita Nanda Bandya, the most learned Buddhist then, or now, living in this country; they formed the materials from which chiefly I drew my sketch, and they would have been long since communicated to the public had the translator felt sufficiently confident of his powers, or sufficiently assured that enlightened Europeans could be brought to tolerate the rudis indigestaque moles of these original authorities, which, however, in the present instance, are original in a far higher and better sense than those of Csoma De Körös, or of Upham.

My first paper being descriptive of the various vessels of India, on the coasts of Malabar and Ceylon, I shall now proceed to describe the sea-ports, and the resources of the forests, on the coast of Malabar; and also, the facilities for building vessels of different descriptions, particularly at the port of Cochin, and those places which I have visited during my residence of five years in the country.

The object in collecting and translating the many inscriptions to be met with in India, is, as Mr. Wathen very justly observes in his letter to the Secretary of the Royal Asiatic Society, to elucidate the history of India previous to the Muhammedan conquest. Of that history, but little is yet known: that little to the few only who have devoted the greater part of their lives to this research, and each of those few possessing perhaps a part only of that information which, if combined and moulded into a whole, might, at no distant day, supply this desideratum in our knowledge of the East, without which no accurate notion can be formed of the true character of ancient India, as to its modes of government, laws, and usages