rope, the Italian, the Hellenic and the Illyrian races may be supposed to have passed into the West by a different route, namely through Asia Minor and across the Hellespont or the Bosphorus.

If we attempt to enumerate the different nations who are to be considered as ramifications of the Indo European stock-viewing those as the most ancient which are farthest removed from the centre or from the path of migration-Pritchard shews that we must begin with the Celtic nations in the West of Europe, including the two branches which are represented, in modern times, by the Irish, Scots, and Manks, and the other by the Welsh and Armoricans, or Bretons. Next to them, in the North of Europe, is the Germanic family. It consists, according to the latest and most accurate philologers, of two principal divisions; of the Northmen, ancestors of the Icelanders, Norwegians, Swedes and Danes; and secondly, of the Proper Teutonic stock, in its three subdivisions, which are the Saxon, or Western German; the Suevians or High German; and the Gothic, or Eastern Clan. The next branch of Indo European stock are tribes who speak the dialects of the old Prussian or Pruthenian language. These dialects are the Lettish, Lithuanian and the Proper Pruthenian, which, of all the languages of Europe, bear by far the nearest resemblance to the original Sanskrit. The people who spoke these dialects had a peculiar mythology, and an ancient and very powerful hierarchy, as famous in the North as were those of the Brahmuns and the Druids in the East and West. The Sclavic or Sclavonian race, is a fourth Indo European family its two great branches are the Western, or Proper Sclavic, including the Poles, Bohemians, Obotrites, and the tribes near the Baltic.* Secondly, the Eastern branch, comprehending the Russians, the Servians, and other tribes nearly related to them. The Southern nations of Europe maintain their relation to the same stock. With the exception of the Rasennian, or Tuscan people, all the Italian nations belonged to one race; and their dialects, the Umbrian, the Oscan, or Sabine, the Latin, and the Sicilian, or Enotrian, are but variations of one speech These Italians are not, as has been supposed, descended from a mixture of Greeks, or Pelasgi, with aboriginal barbarians, but form, collectively, one particular branch of the Arian Race; and, in respect to the era of their migration from the East, they must

:

*The Maygars, or Hungarians, are considered to be descended from the Vogouls of the Uralian Mountains, an Eastern branch of the Ugoriansa people of Mongolian type. The Maygars of the tenth century, according to the description of them by contemporary writers, presented all the physiological characters of the Mongul variety.-(Blackwell.)

In a report of the death of Mr. Csoma de Koros, published by Dr. Campbell in the eleventh volume of the Journal of the Bengal

be considered as the most ancient of this division. The other races, in Southern Europe, who belong to the same great stock, are the Thracians, the Arnaouts, Albanians, or, more probably, the Skipetari, descended from the Epirots and Illyrians: lastly, the more celebrated Hellenic race.*

Alexander, then, and Dalhousie when, at an interval of twentyone centuries, they carried their power across the Land of the Five Rivers did no more than assert the claim of the younger sons to share with their elder brethren in the division of their common fatherland.+

At whatever periods these Arians, or Asæ, spread through Europe, it was, almost demonstrably, they who introduced the main features of the Druidical system, Polytheistic Worship in Groves and in Stone Temples; the belief in Dryads or Tree Spirits; who taught their progeny to erect the Stone Circles, the Devil's Arrows, the Cromlechs, and the Cyclopean Bridges, who introduced to the North the adoration of the Phallic Emblem, Human Sacrifice, Polygamy, and Polyandry, and Incremation of the Dead; brought into common use their weapons and their ornaments, the bow, the brazen leaf-shaped sword, the armlet and the torque, were the founders of Augury and Sorcery, and established permanently in the North a multitude of superstitious practices and fancies which are still traceable, detail by detail, amongst many of the remotest and least sophisticated nations of the East.

The patient Archæologist will encounter no very difficult task Asiatic Society, some curious hints are thrown out regarding the opinions held by that remarkable traveller and philologist. He appears to have observed that several existing places and hill ranges in Hungary still have names of Sanscrit origin. When attacked by the illness which cut short his labour, he had advanced to Darjeeling on his way to Thibet, apparently in search of the country and language of the "great nation" who, he believed, passed from Asia and became the progenitors of the Hungarians. As far as Dr. Campbell could gather from his remarks, he appeared to consider that, in the Sclavonic, Celtic, Saxon, and German dialects, the people who gave their name to the country now called Hungary, were styled Hunger, or Unger, Oongar, or Yoonger; and, in Arabic, Turkish, and Persian works, there are notices of a nation in Central Asia resembling, in many respects, the people who came from the East into Hungary. In these languages they are styled Oogur, Woogur, Voogur, or Yoogur, according to the pronunciation of the Persian letter; and from the same works it might be inferred, he said, that the country of the "Yoogurs" was situated to the East and North of Lassa and the province of Kham, and on the Western confines of China. To reach this was the goal of his most ardent wishes, and there he fully expected to find the tribes he had hitherto sought in vain.-His hope was destined never to

be realized.

* Page 183.

For this idea we have to thank Mr. Pococke, to whose learned, but not very safe speculations on "India in Greece," we shall presently have to refer.

in undertaking to trace an affinity between the present inhabitants of Europe and the Persian Branch of the Arian Race. A far more arduous labour will be placed before him who, guided alone by the faint lights of scattered antiquities and of cognate words, strives to prove,-what we fully believe to be the fact,that the Indian Branch has been engrafted in Europe, and has spread widely throughout most of the Northern Countries. We have not time, space, or will, to encounter this latter task ourselves; we shall merely point out to our readers a few of the leading sources of the information available to those who may be disposed to grapple with it; premising that the enquiry is by no means a novel one, and that it has engaged much of the attention of Antiquarians and Philologists since the middle of the last century; when the advancing power of the English in India began to excite in the minds of European literati an interest in the customs and languages of the East. Although touched by the contagion ourselves, it would be uncandid and useless to deny that the European antiquaries of that period,―suddenly discovering, in the stores of Eastern learning then first displayed before them, a new and abundant source of illustration,-eagerly mounted the Indian hobby,—and rode it rather hard. Still we trust we shall be able to show that many of the facts elicited by these enthusiasts were of great historic value and suggestive

ness.

Let our readers, therefore, be well advised before they follow us further in our quest. We shall not pretend to have power to delve into the hidden truth; we shall merely promise to lead the searchers hither and thither, shewing the manifest outcroppings of its buried mass.

In

One great and self-evident source of doubt and fallacy meets us at the threshold of this enquiry. During six centuries, the Mussulmauns and the Hindoos have been inextricably associated with each other throughout the entire Plain country of India. Either race, abhorring the leading tenets of the other's belief, has listened to and imbibed, with keen avidity, a very large proportion of the other's fanciful superstition. many parts of the country moreover, especially in Bengal, the two races have become so closely intermingled, by illicit unions and still more by the forcible system of conversion which the Mahomedan conquerors unceasingly maintained, that it is considered probable that there are scarcely to be found, in Southern India, any Mussulmauns of the inferior classes in whose veins there is not a considerable intermixture of Hindoo blood. Hence the Mahomedan wears the amulets of the Hindoos on his arm and holds more of their superstitions than he is generally willing to confess in his heart; while, as we shall presently shew,

some of the most prevalent national beliefs in supernatural agencies and not a few of the most popular usages of the Black Art, although probably of Moorish origin, are practised equally by the low class natives of both sects.

On the other hand, it will be borne in mind that, from the 8ht to the 15th century, the Moorish race were rooted strongly and broadly in the South of Europe. With them originated all that deserved to be called the Science, whether natural or occult, of those times. There was scarce any of the learning and very little of the superstition, jugglery and quackery of the age which might not be traced to the Arabic lore taught in the schools of Padua, Toledo and Salamanca. Doomsday makes mention of the Moors who were sojourners or settlers in London. The Saracens being, at that time, among the great merchants of the world. Marseilles, Arles, Avignon, Montpellier, Toulouse, were the chief emporia of their active traders.* It will also be remembered that, from the eighth century, constant tides of pilgrims, out of all parts of Europe, were passing through the Holy Land, gaining more or less acquaintance with the Moslem possessors of the country on their way. Many of these pilgrims fingered on their homeward route, and took service with those potentates whose territories lay adjacent to the great highway. Thus the famous Væringers or Verangians, the body-guard of the Byzantine Sovereigns, were, for the most part, Northmen ;-many of whom, returning to their Scandinavian and British homes, must have introduced various ideas and customs of Eastern origin.t It needs not, therefore, be

*Bulwer. They it was who, according to William of Malmesbury, introduced into Saxon England the abominable custom of selling female servants either for prostitution or slavery abroad ;-a practice which is (as almost every fourth page of the Printed Reports of the Courts of Nizamut Adawlut of Calcutta and Agra will shew), at the present moment, one of the greatest curses entailed by Mussulmaun rule, Up-Country, upon the surrounding districts.

+We read, in Thomas of Walshingham, of a Saracen physician who had possessions at the village of Bromfield on the Welch marches in the year 1344. Many of the stories most popular in Europe during the Middle Ages were derived, through the Arabians, from India. The period at which the transmission of these stories from the East appears to have been going on most actively was the twelfth century. Some very curious information on this subject, will be found in "Essays on Subjects connected with Literature, Popular Superstitions and History of England in the Middle Ages," vol. 2, p. 59, by WRIGHT, who gives two Brahminical stories, from the Vrihat-Katha and Pantchatantra, which were considered good jokes by the medieval Barons.

Olaus Magnus reports (lib. v. c. xxi.) that Harald had been in Constantinople; it being then a custom of the Northerns to send their sons to learn the art of war in foreign armies of renown.-Nenia Britannica. Byzantine Coins have been frequently discovered in Anglo Saxon graves (Wright). The Game of Chess was commonly played by the AngloJUNE, 1856.

FF

considered that every Oriental practice and superstition of which trace may still be found in England or Norway was necessarily brought into Europe so recently as the time of the Croisades; neither is it safe, at once, to entertain the idea that such Orientalisms are relics of the primeval Arian Colonists. One of the surest modes of avoiding the latter source of fallacy is to compare the antiquities and superstitions of the North with those which still prevail among the smaller Hill Tribes of India; of whom the Kolis or Coolies in Guzerat, Orissa and in the Goomsur Hills, the Coles or Kols of Singbhoom, and the Kassias,-inhabiting the ranges to the N. W. and N. E. of Bengal Proper,-may be taken as types. The best authorities regard these now obscure tribes as the representatives of the nations who inhabited India previously to the Hindu Invasion. Their physical characters appear to be distinctly Mongolian. In a large measure, the customs of these people, although, according to the respective geographical positions of the races, partaking more or less of the characters of Bhuddism or Hinduism,-have remained, up to the present moment, almost entirely free from Mussulmaun intermixture and innovation. We believe that, hereafter, a rich mine of comparative research may be worked, with highly interesting results, in this direction. In the present enquiry, we shall draw as many illustrations as possible from the customs of these Paharis, or early, if not aboriginal, Hill Races.

Most of our readers have, probably, heard of King Cole, or Coil; and have, doubtless, learnt to regard him as a mythical personage, as little to be believed in as Sir Tristram or Bevis of Hampton. Although generally but little inclined to found historic fancies upon slender philological data, we have long speculated that Cole was, in fact, a very substantial reality. In a "Comparative Essay on the Ancient Geography of India," published from a manuscript by Col. Wilford in the 20th vol. of the Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, we are told that-" The oldest name of India that we know of, is COLAR, which prevailed till the arrival of the

Saxons, who are stated, by the writers immediately after the Conquest, to have learned it from the Danes (Wright's Domestic Manners of the English), Strutt's Sports and Pastimes of the People of England; Hone's Ed. p. 21; and Sir F. Madden's Historical Remarks on the Introduction of Chess into Europe, in Archæologia, vol. xxiv. p. 303.) In his learned observations on the Origin of Chess, Dr. Duncan Forbes has demonstrated that the Chaturanga of the ancient Hindoos gave origin to the Shatranj or Chess of the Arabians of the Middle Ages. A fact which has lately gained additional corroboration in the discovery, by Mr. A. F. Bellasis, of beautifully carved ivory Chess-Men in the almost pre-historic buried city of Brahminabad,-the "Pompeii of Sind."-Whether the Asæ, or the Væringers brought Chess into Europe is a question worthy of attention.