prevail among our native friends, is, that it is intended to raise up a race of literary and scientific ladies, who will be disqualified for all social and domestic duties. There could not be a greater mistake. Female Education in England has produced but one Miss Edgeworth, and one Caroline Fry, and one Hannah More, and one Mrs. Somerville in many generations: and we should be quite contented were the scheme that we now propose to issue in the production of a class of intelligent, large-minded wives and mothers, though it did not, in the course of a thousand years, produce a single specimen of a learned lady. And even in reference to the last-named lady, it ought not to be forgotten that it has been said of her that she is equally at home in calculating the aberrations of a comet, and in mending her husband's stockings! There is nothing that a lady ought to be required to do, that an educated lady will not do as well or better than an uneducated one.

But once more they say-if we admit Mr. Fordyce's Governesses into our families, what security have we that our female relations shall not become Christians? And is the religion of the most civilized portion of the world, the religion of Europe, of England, of England's queen, that model of lady-like accomplishments, so great a bugbear? There is a prevailing opinion in certain quarters that such is the state of native manners that a European lady going to a native gentleman's house from day to day, would not be safe from annoyance or something worse. This opinion having been expressed to Mr. Fordyce, we stood guarantee to him that, if a reasonable discretion were exercised in the selection of the families into which the Governesses should be sent, they would be perfectly safe from every semblance of danger; and so will we stand guarantee to our native friends on behalf of the Governesses, and will engage that they will not take undue advantage of the influence which, it is to be expected and desired, they will acquire over their pupils, but that they will wisely and judiciously impart a sound education to the best of their ability. There must be a mutual confidence between the Governesses and their employers. There must be no promise of compromise on the one side, there must be no system of espionage on the other. We will not conceal the fact, that our own earnest desire is that India were thoroughly Christianized, and that we regard Female Education as an important means towards that end, and we would ask our native readers and friends, whether there be one amongst them all who will deny that this would be a mighty improvement on the present state of things.

Now we have done. We have throughout written soberly

and temperately, and we leave the matter in the hands of those whom it most concerns, in the sure confidence that what we have written will commend itself to their calm judgment. Had our desire been to get up a temporary excitement, we might have infused some amount of furor into our style, the result of which might have been to give rise to declamation on the part of others, and haply to elicit a few panegyrics on our own eloquence. But in this matter we desire action. Of declamation we had already had enough and more. A great work is to be done, a work that will not be done in a day, in a year, in a generation—a work that will require to be prosecuted with calm, steadfast, inflexible determination. Great is the work; glorious will be the reward.

ART. IV. Kshitisha Bansávali Charitam. A Chronicle of the Family of Raja Krishna Chandra, of Navadwipá, Bengal. Berlin, 1852, pp. 155.

THE Germans are men of wonderful research, whether we consider their labours in the departments of Physiology, Metaphysics, History or Chemistry-but in nothing do we see it more conspicuously than in the fact that, without the aid of pandits, but guided solely by their own philological acumen, they have launched successfully on the sea of Sanskrit literature, and have certainly yielded us from it many articles valuable for history, manners and religion. One German has published Jagynavalkya's valuable abridgment of Hindu law, with a German translation; another gives us the Vrihatkatha, a series of curious national tales, with a German translation. Another German, Boehtlink, is issuing at the present time, from St. Petersburgh, the most elaborate Sanskrit Lexicon that has ever been given to the world. But the Germans are not the only people who, without any special connexion with India, are threatening to leave England behind in Oriental studies. Even Denmark sends us a profound work on Sanskrit roots; and America, with her young blood, is entering on the same field of Oriental research.

The work we undertake to notice is another specimen of German research. The late Sir R. Chambers, Chief Justice in Bengal, had purchased a large number of Sanskrit MSS., which his widow took to England and offered for sale to the British Government, but they declined the offer. The king of Prussia then purchased them, and this is one of them. It contains the Sanskrit text, with an English translation and notes. So little is known of the past history of Bengal, except from Persian sources, that this book is a very acceptable addition to our local histories. It bears about it the air of vraisemblance. We have found upon enquiry in the Krishnaghur district, that the native traditions there correspond with it. The history begins its account about the year 1,000, with the settlement of Kanauj brahmans in Bengal; we have then notices of the rise of the Nuddea family, and their connection with the Moslem Sovereigns, with glimpses here and there of the relations subsisting between the Hindu Rajas and the Musalman Viceroys.

We have read through the original Sanskrit itself, and here present an analysis of the contents, with occasional notes.

The author begins with stating that he is to celebrate the race of

Bhattanáráyan (the ancestor of the present Nuddea Raja) which is to destroy the rust of the Kali Yug. Adisur, King of Gaur, who had expelled the Budhists from Bengal, alarmed at the omen of a vulture alighting on his palace, by the advice of a Kanauj brahman invited five brahmans from Kanauj to avert the omen by sacrifices, A. D. 999. One of these brahmans was Bhattanáráyan, the son of the King of Kanauj: the King was disgusted at seeing the brahmans in leather shoes, and needle-sewed garments, with lips betel-stained he therefore pretended to be asleep and they could not see him; the brahmans on this, by incantations, made a wrestler's stick to send forth buds; the King next day hearing of this, and fastening his clothes round his neck, went to deprecate the wrath of the brahmans, who forgave him, adding, however, that their wrath could reduce him and his city to ashes. The vulture was sacrificed, and the King built five cities for those brahmans and their families; and Bhatta, the son of a famous King in Kanauj, having pleased the King, he offered him villages. The other would not take as a present villages filled with cows, gold, iron, sesamum, as being an unsuitable present for a brahman, but he purchased at a low price villages where his descendants for eleven generations ruled tax-free.

A quarrel took place among Bhatta's sons for sovereignty, and Mahmud of Gizni having just conquered Delhi, they appealed to him he was not able to decide at once: he then required tribute, only one, however, Vishvanath, paid it, he in consequence was selected as Rájá; after him his sons succeeded to the rule, and after them Kásináth. But elephants being sent as a present from the King of Tripura to the Emperor Akbar, one of them on the road strayed away, and was killed by Kásináth; on this the Emperor enraged sends an army to take Kásináth prisoner and carry him to Jamhagir or Dacca-Dacca was at that time the capital of Bengal. Kásináth fled to the banks of the Bhagirathi, and at the village Anduliya seeing some fish, and having no money, he pledged his gold-ring to purchase them sometime after Moslem soldiers coming up and seeing the ring on a fisherwoman, found out who owned it-they took the King prisoner while bathing; after this, the Governor of Dacca on hearing him one day repeating the names of Bhagavan, in a rage had him killed.

Kásináth's wife bore a son named Ram, one of whose sons, Durgadas, being one day at Ballabhpur city* to witness the games-the

*Can this be the village of Bhallabhpur on the Bhairab, in the Krishnaghur district? There are still the remains of a wide road which ran from Bhallabhpur to Krishnaghur. Certain it is that the river Bhairab there was formerly almost as wide

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attendants of Durgadas seeing a Musalman Governor on his way from Delhi pass there, fled in alarm, but Durgadas shewed such thorough knowledge of the localities, in giving the particulars of the route to Hugly, that he was invited to Hugly, where he studied Persian, and received from Delhi the title of Bhavananda Majumdar. He built a palace after this at Ballabhpur. At this time there were twelve Bengal Rajahs exempt from taxes; the chief among them was Pratapaditiya, wealthy, famous; eleven were compelled by the Emperor's armies to pay tribute, but Pratápaditiya refused; the Governor of Dacca and Hughly informed the Emperor of his oppressions of the Zemindars, and of his keeping an army of 100,000 men, armed with leather shields, mallets and arrows, besides mad elephants, and that a young prince Kachu, whose father Pratápaditiya had killed, had to escape for his life to the forest. Akbar on hearing this, with lips swollen from anger, ordered Mán Sing to lead an army against Pratápaditiya. Mán Sing, laying the King's order on his head, marched on, the people of the villages running away as the armies advanced*-They came to Chapada, on the river banks; here Majumdar met Mán Sing, and taking off his signet ring from his fingers, gave it to Man Sing as a mark of homage after this the river was crossed on elephants, horses and boats, by Majumdar's aid. A tempest came on which detained them seven days, but Majumdar, being unable to celebrate the festival of the nuptials of the deities Lakshmi and Goverdhan, gave to Man Sing's army and bards the provisions which had been accumulated for this festival: after seven days they marched for Pratapaditiya's city, but he fortified himself so strongly in a fort as to repel the enemy, but on the second attack the fort was taken skirmishes took place between the armies for several days, at last Mán Sing, by the advice of Majumdar, made a charge with all his cavalry on Pratápaditiya, who had but few horsemen, he defeated them, took the Raja prisoner and put him into an iron cage to carry him to Delhi; but he died on the way to Benares. Akbar appointed Kachu, whom Pratápaditiya had tried to kill, the Governor of Jessore, while Majumdar was made ruler over fourteen districts, and fixed his

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as the Ganges, and formed probably the route by water from Delhi to Hugly; it is probable that a city might then be on its banks-there are still near the Church Mission House there the remains of a large temple and of an ancient road which extended to Krishnaghur. The native tradition is that the Rajas of Krishnaghur had pleasure and kachari houses at Bhallabpur : this is confirmed by the fact of Matiyari, so often mentioned in the Chronicle, being situated also on the Bhairab.

*This with other points in the narrative indicates what oppressions the Moslems exercised on the Hindus, and shews why the Hindus in various places adopted the practice of secluding their women,-though from the Vrihat Katha we can see there was much seclusion of women even before the Moslem invasion.