The National quarterly review Volume 8 - Softcover

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1864 Excerpt: ...whatever pretensions they may make to the contrary; they have not disdained to borrow from the West. Yet, that these works, in their essential parts are of unquestionable antiquity, and of a date apparently more than a thousand years before Christ, is asserted by Sir William Jones, and assented to by the ablest Oriental scholars. Thus, long before the Egean heard entranced " the blind old man of Scio's rocky isle," or Sappho's fate rendered Leucadia's steep memorable to lovers, Valmika 6ung the deeds of Rama, and Vyasa told the tragic story of the Indu Line. The Muses played in the bowers of Vraja and the groves of Vrindavan, before they appeared in the vale of Tempe or the glades of Helicon; and they sung as 6weetly by the Yamuna as by Ilyssus. The history of a nation's literature is to the enlightened mind the most interesting portion of its annals. Its political greatness, its preeminence in arms, will pass away; but in its literature we have a never-failing evidence of its power. Cities sacked, towers levelled with the dust, may show the conqueror's path in blood; but without the peaceful student to chronicle his deeds, his very name is forgotten. Vixere fortes ante Agamemnona mitlti, sed caruere sacra vate. Hindustan had her chiefs and heroes before Agamemnon; but they had their poets and historians. Long before that splendid assemblage of the Hellenic powers against Troy, the shores of Lauca shook beneath the tremendous contest of Ravan and Rama, and all the princes of India nocked to take part in the great war of the Lunar Race for the imperial throne; and Valraika and Vyasa sung their several stories ages before the birth of Homer. The poems of the Ramayuna and the Mahabharat hold a position among the Hindus analogous to that of the Iliad ...