The Press.
London, England, 1858-11-27 00:00:00

tt6l.

GRATIS.

that the only real guarantee for peace in India
lies in the subjugation of those powers whose
interest or pleasure it is, from time to time, to
make war. The wars in the Carnatic, the Mysore,
and the Mahratta territories, are not only nar-
rated with spirit, but ably vindicated on the
principle referred to. He condemns, on the
other hand, the Affghan expedition, and the
conquest of Scinde (as to which latter we do not
concur with him); but his relation of these
events, and his fair exposition of the anti-Rus-
sian policy inducing the proceedings which be
condemns, reads like a summary of discussions
carried on in the country itself, with the vivacity
of near observers.

A chief point of interest to the thinking public,
is the prominence given in this little volume to
the national distinction among the natives of
India. " Hindoo " and " Nlahomedan," he tells
the million, are not, as perhaps they suppose,
national, but religions distinctions. Are these
millions aware that ►here are, at this moment, in
India, sixteen millions of souls, the remnants of
aboriginal races, supplanted by Hindoos ? Thus
commences Mr. Trevor his second chapter ; and
it was this passage, so tersely and in such a
pleasing style correcting a misapprehension per-
haps more than popular, which first attracted
our attention to the volume :
The natives of India are commonly regarded in Europe
as consisting of two classes, Hindus and Mohammedans ;
it would be nearly as accurate to divide Europeans them-
selves int.) Christians and Jr..s These are religious, not
national, designations. The Hindus and Mohammedans
of India belong to divers nations, while the number of
those who adhere to neither religion is nearly doable that
of the 310.8min:tans. The Bheels of Central India, the
Collies and Dun* of Gnzerat, the Ghoonds and Coles of
Orissa, the Shanars of Tinnevelly, with many other tribes
in different parts, are the fragments of an earlier popula•
Lion, which, though driven into the mountains and ex-
tremities of the land, has continued to preserve an inde-
pendent existence, and is still computed at sixteen millions
of souls.*

From the present state of these tribes little can be con•
jectnred of the history and condition of the aboriginal
race or races which they represent. Their occupation of
India, however, must have been among the earliest settle-
ments of mankind. A country where life is sustained in
comfort with little or no protection front the elements, and
by a moderate application of unskilled labour; would natu-
rally be populated before the arts and sciences had been
discovered, which in colder regions are necessary to obtain
food, clothes, and habitation. It may be assumed, there.
fore, that India was visited by the first wanderers from the
dispersion of Babel. _

A rapid sketch is given of the rise of Idolatry.
Mr. Trevor shows us clearly the real state of the
case : that the primi:ive llindoo religion was
not monotheistic ; that the texts commonly cited
for this purpose from the reda—" The Book "
or llindoo Sacred Scriptures—are from the later
and philosophical portion of it. The earlier, or
primitive portion—the hymns used in worship
by the first Hindoos—are distinctly polytheistic.
(p. 27.) The philosophy of the iiindoos—the
scheme elaborated by the philosophers, as it ap-
pears in the pages of Menu—is monotheistic ;
but it never influenced the mass of the people,
who remain sunk in a system of the grossest
forms imaginable of idolatry. The real Scripture
of that system is the Petrarias (p. 36), a mass of
legendary poems, the bulk of which have been

• llle.teral Briggs distributes the natives of In.lia as follows—
Abotigii•al 'Rees
Mobaminelatis
Other foreigners
Leaving a Hindu population of
India sal Esrops Comporod, p. 19.

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