That Buddhism prevailed extensively in the Dekkan during the period of its ascendancy in India, is evident, from the imperishable monuments of that religion existing in the celebrated caves of Ellora (Verul), K´rli, Ajanta, and Salsette (Sáshte). It would give, however, but a very imperfect and limited idea of the influence and extensive ramifications of Buddhism, to suppose that its monuments are confined to places of such celebrity. To speak only of the neighbourhood of Bombay, small caves having inscriptions in the ancient cave character are to be found in the hills near Nasik and Junír. Even at the comparatively unimportant villages of Máhar on the Bánkot river, and Kher, twelve miles distant, there are excavations of a similar kind, which I myself have visited. Some of them still contain a dágoba, and others fragments of stone, belonging to a previously existing place of that kind; and I have no doubt that many similar caves exist throughout the country, though they never have been brought to public notice. When, then, stations of Buddhist priests existed in such places as these, to say the least, their influence in the country around must have been considerable. At the commencement of the controversy between the rival sects, the Buddhists seem to have had the decided superiority. Buddhism is eminently a religion of reason: it rejects all that reason does not comprehend; and makes its constant appeal to (Buddhi) the human intellect, as the supreme judge in religious things. Brahmanism, on the contrary, is a religion of tradition.

The many uses to which Caoutchouc is now applied, as well as its increasing importance as an article of trade, render it of peculiar interest, and more particularly so at the present time, from the circumstance that a new and abundant source of it in India has been lately pointed out. In the following observations I am anxious to draw attention to some facts which, though perhaps known to a few who have examined the subject with great attention, are generally unknown or overlooked.

That India is not the cradle of the Brahmanical faith, may be a proposition startling to many who are not acquainted with its ancient literature. To the orientalíst of the humblest pretension, however, it needs no proof. The predecessors of the Brahmans, it is admitted by all who hare considered their records and traditions, were first associated together as a religious fraternity in a country beyond the Indus, or exterior to the Himálaya mountains. Our greatest men are divided in their opinions as to the country from which they came. Sir William Jones brings them from Iran, or Central Asia; Adelung from a similar locality; Klaproth, from the Caucasian mountains; Kennedy, from the plains of the Euphrates; and Schlegel, from the borders of the Caspian Sea. The theories of these scholars are all plausibly supported; and they generally agree in this respect, that they take it for granted, that the Brahmans in ancient times were found in the territories immediately north of India. The occurrence of about three hundred Sanskrit words in the Persian language, the Hindú notion of the northern position of the residences of the gods, the situation of the Manusarovar, or Lake of Intelligence, still a celebrated place of religious pilgrimage, and the source of the river Brahmaputra, whose etymological meaning, the “son of Brahma,” is similar to that of the usual designation of the priestly class to whom I refer, are in favour of this agreement. After the Brahmans entered India, they continued for a considerable time to inhabit its northern territories. The “Holy Land” of Manu, which is of no great extent, lies between the Drishadwatí and Saraswatí. On the banks of the latter river, according to some authorities, lived Vyása, the reputed compiler of the Vedas and Puránas. In the north are to be found the shrines, junctions of rivers, and lakes, esteemed most sacred by the Hindús in all ages.

Lodoïcea Sechellarum, of Labillardière and Commerson; Lodoïcea inermis, of Persoon; Cocos Maldivica, of Gmelin; Borassus macrocarpus, of Sonnerat, vulgarly called “Rondier des Séchelles,” the Sea Cocoa-nut of the Maldives or Séchelles: a genus of monocotyledonous plants, of the family of Palms, belonging to the class Diœcia monadelphia, of the sexual system of Linnæus.

In submitting to the Royal Asiatic Society the following remarks on the very important inquiry, as to the length of that unit on which is founded the simple but perfect system of land measurement, by bigahs and their subdivisions, adopted by the most enlightened of the Moghul sovereigns of Hindustan, the Emperor Akbar, I hope I may be excused for entering into much more detail than the subject may at first seem to require; and before entering into the investigation, that I may be allowed to submit some preliminary remarks.

The Bauddho-Vaishnavas are a sect of Hindus living chiefly within the limits of the Marátha country, though also scattered over Gujaráth, Central India, and the Carnatic, wherever the Marathas have formed settlements. People usually call them Vitthal-Bhaktas, because they worship Vishnu under the form of Pandurang or Vitthal, whose chief temple is at Pandharpur, on the right bank of the Bhima. They delight in calling themselves Vaishnava Vira, yet since there are others to whom this name is equally applicable, it will not serve for a characteristic epithet. But as the worshippers of Pandurang consider their god to be the ninth or Bauddha Avatár of Vishnu, the term Bauddho-Vaishnavas forms a convenient descriptive name for the sect, In the paper on the intermixture of Buddhism with Brahmanism in the religion of the Hindus of the Dakhan, I made particular mention of Vithobá, as this god is most frequently termed. In that paper, I based my observations mainly on oral communications and popular traditions; since that time, however, having had occasion to pay more attention to the literature of the Vitthal-Bhaktas, there appears enough of interesting matter in their writings to merit a particular notice of their religious opinions and history.

Having learnt, whilst engaged in inquiries amongst manufacturers, and other practical men, that the root of the common Barberry, or Berberis vulgaris, was an article of increasing value in the arts, on account of the fine yellow colour which it contains, and that a new source of this dye stuff was rather a desideratum; I was led to inquire in how far the root in question could be advantageously obtained from India.

After a night's refreshing bivouac on the sand, under the palm trees of Wadi Tor, we rose at sunrise on the 10th of June, 1840, mounted, and travelled slowly among some low sand hills in a northerly direction, almost parallel with the eastern shore of the Red Sea. As we emerged from the mouth of a small defile, the waters of this sacred gulf burst on our view; the surface marked with annular, crescent-shaped, and irregular blotches of a purplish red, extending as far as the eye could reach. They were curiously contrasted with the beautiful aqua-marine of the water lying over the white coral reefs. This red colour I ascertained to be caused by the subjacent red sandstone, and reddish coral reefs; a similar phenomenon is observed in the straits of Babel-mandeb, and also near Suez; particularly when the rays of the sun fall on the water at a small angle. The low hills of the defile were covered with fragments of brown, red, white, and black chert, many of them coated with a white mealy enduit, flattish and singularly honeycombed. Hillocks of a considerable size were often wholly composed of similar fragments. In a pass to the left, at the foot of some cliffs about fifty feet high, imbedded in a stratum of friable earthy sandstone, we observed a layer of fossil shells. The rock in many places is impregnated with oxide of iron, and contains thin veins of quartz resembling calcedony. From this place, our route lay along the shore of the Red Sea. High sandstone cliffs skirted the right of the path, in regular strata, dipping at an angle of 5°. E. 20 N.; direction S.S.E.

The study of the vernacular languages of India is every day becoming a subject of more and more importance. The Government, yielding to the voice of reason, has decreed, that in every province the language of the people shall be the language of their rulers. Christians and philanthropists, in every district of the country, are preparing books and communicating the elements of learning to the native inhabitants, in their own dialects. Grammars and dictionaries of the principal vernacular tongues, exist either printed or in manuscript; and the speech of the common people instead of being despised as a jargon, is every where cultivated as a language.

The following paper contains a description, with drawings annexed, of a plough, recently introduced from America into India, and which promises to prove of the greatest benefit to agriculture in that country.

Iron ore is found chiefly in the north-west quarter of the Peninsula. The result of my inquiries gives the number of six foundries working at one time, during the fair season, throughout the province, and two or three more occasionally. The extent to which the metal is manufactured will be given in the body of this Report. I have visited only two foundries, those at Ranawao and Ranpoor in the Ranas and Jam's Talookas respectively; but I understand a description of one applies alike to all, their construction being rude and simple.

The religion of the Hindus of the Dekkan seems to me to consist of four constituent parts; 1st. Pure Brahmanism, as contained in the Vedas and Puranas; 2nd. An ante-Brahmanical worship, consisting in the adoration of painted stones, which are not acknowledged as objects of worship by the Brahmans, but considered as the representatives of demons; 3d. Buddhism, or that modification of it which subsists among the Jains; and under which heads falls the worship of the Pandharpur Vitthoba. 4. A local superstition based on Brahmanism, and consisting of the worship of remarkable persons who have arisen in the Maratha country in times comparatively modern. It is to these modern local deities that I now solicit attention.

Among the Hindus of Southern India three modes of quarrying granite prevail. The first, and most common, is by the agency of fire. In this process the surface of the bare convex plateaus, or bosses, of the rock is covered with dry fuel, composed generally of bushes of the thorny Acacias common to the surrounding plains,—viz., those of the Babul and Kikar,—and proportioned in quantity according to the thickness of the slabs required. The fuel is set fire to, and suffered to burn, except in a few cases, until entirely consumed; when the subjacent rock will be found to have exfoliated in a cavo-convex flake, thinning off towards the edges, and varying in extreme thickness from six to twenty-four inches. The longer continued and more intense the heat, the deeper, in general, the line of separation. The flake is detached by driving small iron wedges underneath, and raising it with an iron lever: the separation is assisted, when the rock is refractory, by dropping a heavy boulder of greenstone or granite on its surface; or, when heated, by a sudden affusion of cold water.

About the middle of 1836 I sent to the late Mr. J. Prinsep, then Secretary to the Asiatic Society of Bengal, a brief account of a hill of ashes, situate at Budigunta, about eleven miles W. from Bellary, in the Ceded Districts, which he published in the Journal of the Society for October of the same year under the head of “Note on the occurrence of Volcanic Scoria in the Southern Peninsula;”—a title given by himself to the communication, from which it may be inferred that he was inclined to consider the ashes (specimens of which were forwarded) as of volcanic origin.

The subject of the Sanskrit poem called the Mahábhárata is well known to be the struggle for supremacy between two kindred and rival families, those of Pándu and Kuru. The event is in all probability historically true, and the circumstances related in the poem, however blended with fiction and coloured by mythology, are in many instances likely to be substantially authentic. It is, however, Jn the episodical portions with which the poem abounds, that information of a curious and no doubt, in the main, correct description, relating to the social and political state of India, at periods considerably anterior to the Christian æra, is to be found. The information, it is true, is of a mixed character, as might be expected in a professedly poetical composition, and in a work which has very possibly been from time to time corrupted by comparatively modern interpolation. Still there is much that wears the semblance of accuracy and antiquity, as in the instances which I propose to bring to the observation of the Society.

This substance, which although it differs in some particulars from the Kino which is found in the shops, yet as it agrees in its most important properties with what has so long been described under that name, it is most convenient to call it Butea Kino.

These are some excavations, said to have been made under the direction of Hyder, on the lower ridge of the copper mountain range in the Ceded Districts, five or six miles westerly from the cantonment of Bellary, in about lat. 15° 5′ N., and long. 76° 59′ E.; they were given up, according to native information, in consequence of the little profit yielded. The ore,—the green carbonate of copper,—I found in thin layers, filling up seams, and interlaminated with a slate-clay and slate, resembling the killas of Cornwall, which is associated with hornblende and chloritic schists, alternating with gneiss in conformable strata. The former contain thin veins of crystalline marble, and, with the gneiss, have been penetrated by large basaltic dykes. Bosses of granite are seen in the plain at the base. The highest peaks of the range are capped with a ferruginous cellular rock resembling laterite, and resting horizontally on the highly-inclined strata of the crystalline schists; it exhibits efflorescences of impure muriate of soda and sulphate of aluminaj the latter resulting, probably, from the decomposition of iron pyrites which are occasionally found in this rock. Depositions of kunker are seen at considerable elevations, on the sides of the range, and often covering, in beds of variable thickness, the rocks in the plain. The excavations made in search of the ore are not of great magnitude, and must have been speedily given up. I was unable to detect any distinct lode. I have observed indications of a similar ore in the plumbiferous district of Jungumrazpilly, in the Cud-dapah Collectorate, Ceded Districts.

Although it is the object of this paper to notice all the known magnesite localities of Southern India, its scope is more particularly directed to that of the Salem province, as being the most extensive, and as yielding the mineral in the greatest abundance.

The chromate of iron mines of South India are situate near Curpúr, about four miles to the N.W. of Salem, a town which stands in lat. 11° 37′ N., and long. 78° 13′ E., among some hilly, jungly tracts at the S.W base of the Shevaroy Hills.

[Note. Several years ago, at the close of the military operations of the Madras Government in Goomsur, Captain (then Lieutenant) Macpherson executed by order of government a survey of the country, and in that service lost his health. From the Cape of Good Hope, whither he had gone for its recovery, he transmitted his notes on the religion of the Khonds to a relative in this country, who considered them to possess so much novelty and general interest, that he presented them to the Society, upon his own responsibility, and without the sanction of the writer: and a few additions having been since made, the paper is now laid before the public.]