The Biographical Dictionary of lbn Khallikán, although it hardly merits the extravagant praise bestowed upon it by Sir William Jones, has always, and deservedly so, been held in great estimation by all those who have been induced to enter upon the study of the noble language and extensive literature of the Arabs. There is, perhaps, no other book in the whole range of the learning of Islamism which throws so much light upon Arabic literature; while the extensive erudition, and general accuracy of the writer, have caused it to be considered of great authority upon all such subjects of information as come within the design of the work. It has consequently been very frequently referred to by Orientalists, and many detached lives have from time to time been given in different publications. Within the last four years two complete editions of the entire work have been undertaken by the zeal and industry of two distinguished Oriental scholars: the one by M. Wtistenfeld, lithographed, 4to. Göttingen, 1835–31), of which seven fasciculi, comprehending six hundred and ninety-eight lives, have been published; the other, in type, by the Baron Mac Guckin de Slane, 4to. Paris, 1838–40, of which three livraisons have appeared.

In former notices on this subject, I have given probable reasons for believing, that those objects of worship among the Hindús which by custom are denied the use of temples—denominated demons by the Brahmans, which do not require the aid of Brahmans for the celebration of the rites by which they are honoured, and even if at all venerated by them have the worship paid them represented as if it were a boon given to Rakshas, slain by some one or other of the Brahmanical gods,—were adored prior to the ascendency of the priestly caste in this part of India.

Tammana Nuwera hold sa very important place in the Singhalese history, as having been founded by Vijaya, the first in the list of the kings of Ceylon, so far back as 2382 years from the present time, or 5.13 before the Christian era. It bears in pali the name of Tambapanni, which it is surmised the Greeks and Romans corrupted into Taprobane, and applied as an appellation to the island itself. Tambapanni signifies “copper-coloured,” and is said to refer to the reddish colour of the soil in the place, as Albion did to the colour of the chalky cliffs on the southern coast of England.

In a paper of mine published in the 4th and 6th numbers of the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, on Land Tenures in Dakhun (Deccan), I endeavoured to prove, and I believe successfully, from the authority of the Mahratta princes themselves, that the proprietary right in the soil in Dakhun was vested in the subject, and not in the prince, and I expressed my belief that such was the case all over India, and had been so from antiquity. It was therefore with no ordinary gratification, that I found a confirmation of my opinion in an inscription on the colonnade of a Buddhist tope or chaitya, at Sanchi, near Bhilsa in Bhopal, recorded in the 6th volume of the Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, p. 456., and the translation of which, from the ancient Deva Nagari character, we owe to the indefatigable zeal, the singular ingenuity, and the varied knowledge of the lamented Mr. James Prinsep.

Our Sanskrit scholars have sought, in the depths of Brahmanical literature, for the means of illustrating the political, the religious, the moral, and social condition of that ancient people, over whose minds it has hitherto been believed, that Brahmans exercised from the earliest times unbounded sway. The inquirers sought for facts and they found fables; they looked for historic lights, and they found poetic coruscations, which served only to render the darkness in which truth was enveloped more impenetrable. An Orientalist, Mr. Wathen, has said, that on the Mussulman conquest of India the Brahmans destroyed all previous historical documents; they seem, nevertheless, to have carefully preserved, or invented, or adapted, such compositions in Sanskrit, as attested their own religious supremacy or establisbed their cosmogony; and which have fettered the minds of Indians, as well as foreigners, to an unreserved admission of such pretensions as in their arrogance, caprice, or selfishness, they chose to advance.