One language prevailed in the West, a second in Greece and the little Asia, a third in Persia: the national speeches of the Moors, the Negroes, the Egyptians, the Sarmatians, the Goths or Germans, and the Welsh, in our present sketch, may be neglected. The hearer will instantly conceive the rapid dissemination of the Christian Scriptures, (which were originally written in the Syriac and the Greek,) through the two grand monarchies of Europe, and of Middle Asia, since they spake or understood the two languages, in which those writings were published.

At a glance our hearer will apprehend that the same end will be attained in Indostan by the same means; that a peninsula, subjected to one empire, will rapidly learn the gospel, when it shall be translated into the six dialects of their original, and ancient tongue. The dove of the gospel rested on the eagles of Rome; and the British preponderance in India may present the religion of Britons the same facility, and the same security.

A second point of resemblance is the illumination of the Augustan age, and the crowd of learned natives in modern India. The preacher might describe the virtuous qualities, and the sound learning, of the Munshis and the Pundits, quoting Hastings's Preface to Gladwin's Maha-Baarat, and Bernier's Travels, &c.; and with peculiar force, their qualifications as translators, from their long habits in the public situations which they fill in India, from the embassies which they attend, from their offices as interpreters, as writers, as clerks, as copiers, as authors, &c. The preacher might delineate the majesty, the purity, the metaphysical terms, the philosophical phrases, of the six dialects of India; the peculiarities of each, and the perfection and polish of all, from the Asiatic Researches, the Asiatic Annual Register, Gladwin, and others; Bernier, Maurice, and Halhed. He may candidly avow, that the translation of our metaphysical Scriptures into their full and rich dialects, would prove a far easier task to a nation thus refined, and thus possessed of expressions, so happy and so appropriate, than to an Eskimaux convert, a Virginian, a Turkman, or a Goth, into their idiom, so defective, so barren, so brutish.

The preacher may also delineate the national effect of an Indostani translation, as more important than a translation of the VOL. IV. No. VIII.

M

Scriptures, into any speech of a rude and barbarous people. For the Bible of Mr. Entic, which was edited in the oral speech of the Indians, in Virginia, had not been printed twenty years, when the tribe, which spake the language, was extinct. The Indoos are too vast a people to be either lost, or incorporated; their tongue will be as permanent as their peninsula; it will be coeval with our globe.

The laborious researches, and the extensive correspondence, of the Bible Society," have detected the remarkable fact, that in the collection, in the Library at Copenhagen, in the Vatican at Rome, &c. the public possess numerous translations of the Scriptures into the Indostani, &c. These should be collated, should be revised, should be improved.

Much assistance could be obviously derived from these sacred works of former linguists.

The preacher, when he has both enumerated and criticised these early translations, may add, that any new translation should be undertaken with superior diligence, and superior accuracy. Let us avail our hearers of the experience both of the Septuagintal writers, and of the British translators. Josephus delineates the cares, the zeal, the learning, the subdivided labor, of his seventy countrymen. Dr. Grey, in an epitome, describes the comparative excellence with which our national translation was finished; the ardor with which it was commenced; the former works of Saxon authors, (see Mrs. Elstob,) of Wickliffe, &c. which it has employed and incorporated; the defects, which it yet contains, and the most prudent methods by which in any national revision it may be purified and corrected. The preacher may add to the remarks of Dr. Grey, on a subject so extensive, the wisdom of Dr. Campbell, the reading of Dr. Kennicott, the learned prefaces, and the sagacious notes, of a hundred translators of single books in the New Testament, and even in the old.

The preacher should lastly comment on the defects of the above translations into the Indostani, and the other tongues, the increasing knowledge of Europe in Eastern languages, the superior ability, and the experienced talent of modern Munshis; considerations, which promise to the modern translation very superior merit. All this union of ability should be employed in a new and oriental translation.

But it forcibly strikes my mind, that no translation of the Christian Scriptures should be published in the East, unless we introduce and recommend it to their solemn perusal by able notes, and short, but judicious, illustrations. If St. Paul quoted a Pagan poet in Athens, and the Rabbi, in his letters to the Romans and the Hebrews, a modern translation should produce from the venerated Vedas and Puranas the passages, which minutely resemble the Christian doctrines. If our Gothic ancestors applied with happy and evangelising effect, the phrases heofan, hela, die good, die evil, to the Christian and the Jewish tenet, of a heaven, a hell, of Jehovah, and of Satan, a modern commentator should appropriate the Sanscrit terms of creation, of a religion revealed and inspired, of an incarnate Deity, of a future Judge, of a future world, of a place for punishment, and a place for reward; and should not merely produce in his annotations the parallel descriptions from the Sanscrit theologians, but he should triumphantly display their parallel traditions of the origin of the human race from one primitive family, of a deluge, of a gigantic and profane dynasty in the postdiluvian period, and of the dispersion of man, the plantation of colonies, the settlement of kingdoms and empires.

Certain doctrines also, which have been considered in ages less enlightened as peculiar to the gospel, are discovered by modern scholars to be awfully promulgated in the Vedas and the Puranas; these should be announced in the notes to the oriental reader. They are the singular doctrines of fate, or the divine decrees, which are amply delineated in the MahaBaarat, an epic poem, surprisingly similar in its machinery and its philosophical discussions to the book of Job; the origin of evil in the same work, and the union with the divinity to which the virtuous soul attains at its departure from the body. The admirable picture of the dying saint in Jones's translation of a Sanscrit Veda on law, is a passage which may be contrasted with various verses in the New Testament.

Between the Sanscrit tenet of a Trinity in unity, and the Christian expressions on the same profound subject, the terms are so parallel, and so similar, that by adopting the general phrases of the Sanscrit authors, an Indian reader would both instantly comprehend the doctrine, and habitually reverence the mystery. Such should be the uncommon annotations of an

oriental and learned Testament, whenever in a Polyglott of six dialects, it shall be laid before the understanding, submitted to the investigation, or impressed on the consciences, of the "wisest nation."

It would appear a very absurd objection to conjecture, that by such a contrasted quotation of the Bramin doctrines and the Christian, the latter would sink in the comparison, and that the adherents to Braminism would retain their ancient predilection, and attachment to its ceremonies.

As their consciences were enlightened by the perusal of the Christian writings, the superior purity and piety, the divine inspiration, the authentic history, the internal evidences of the latter would convince their reason, and interest their passions, and holier emotions. The gospel has eradicated the schools of Grecian philosophy, the immorality of the "Ethics, or Duties,” written by the elegant Cicero, the republic of Plato, the Cyropædia of Xenophon, the ethics of Socrates, of Epictetus, and of Antoninus; the moral philosophy of the Druidical priests, the wise sayings of the Egyptians, and the theological systems of the Magians and the Pharisees. And shall Brama, who has merely expelled the superstition of Buddhoe in the tenth century, retain for ever the possession of the Indian mind? Modern missionaries, it is true, with the Rev. Mr. Tennant, have pursued an opposite course, and recommended a different method of diffusing the Gospel through India. Unlike the Welsh Bishops, in the age of Augustus, or the more wise and accommodating practice of St. Augustine, who was regulated by the sensible letters of Pope Gregory, or the efficient preachers of Christianity in Pagan Batavia, or Teutonic Germany; the above gentlemen have concluded all the Sanscrit ethics, laws, and rites, under the sweeping and convenient phrases of heathenism, immorality, and profaneness. The last writer has classed the venerable labors of a Maurice, a Jones, a Gladwin, &c. &c. under the degrading appellation of "dreams and delusions."

*

"Ye shall know them by their fruits." The missions and the chaplaincies in India, have produced few converts, and raised few churches; have neither recovered the scattered Jews of the twelve tribes, nor revived and comprehended, in our

national church, the Christians of St. Thomas, in the tedious period of 200 years. This failure in their attempts, and this paucity of converts, answer and refute the objections of Tennant, with the missionaries. K.

REMARKS

ON H. STEPHENS'S GREEK THESAURUS.

TO THE EDITOR OF THE CLASSICAL JOURNAL.

SIR, A Report having lately reached me of your intention to reprint the celebrated THESAURUS Ling. Gr. of HENRY STEPHENS; a design no less creditable to yourself, than honorable to your country, and advantageous to the cause of science, and to the preservation of good taste, all over Europe; I have taken the liberty of communicating to you such observations connected with this arduous undertaking as a continued use of that incomparable Lexicon has enabled me to make. The scarcity, and the consequent price of the THESAURUS, have rendered a new edition indispensably necessary; but you would ill requite the expectations, which such intelligence will naturally excite among the Scholars, both of this country and of the Continent, by confining yourself simply to a mere republication: for those who may be destrous of perusing the ipsissima verba of that illustrious Lexicographer, there are already copies in abundance of the original edition: no public library, and very few private ones, are without it. But those persons are comparatively few in number. It is the object, and must be the wish, of every philologer of the present day, to possess as perfect a Dictionary of his favorite language, as the state of Literature can possibly afford him; his labor will be infinitely abridged by referring at once to a complete body of grammatical and etymological information, instead of turning from one reference to another, and wading through a mass of undigested and often irrelevant matter, or poring over an incessant repetition of observations, with which he has been long familiar. To accomplish this most desirable object, it appears to me, at least, that the following rules should be followed, as closely as the subject will admit :—

1. All the articles and supplements contained in the Index, or Appendix, ought to be incorporated with the body of the work. 2. The line or page of every citation, both in verse and prose,