The Act abolishing the Pilgrim tax was passed this year, and in every point of view deserves unqualified approbation, though we may mention, we have heard an enlightened Hindu express an opinion that instead of abolishing the tax, it should have been applied to the education of the people, and thus superstition would have been contributing to its own decay. There is more ingenuity than soundness in this opinion: all experience proves that for the sake of revenue, Government will cherish the greatest political and social evils, if it is permitted to derive a revenue from them; and this, if there were no other reasons, would be a sufficient one for abolishing a tax founded in the superstition of the people, and for utterly breaking all connection, all sympathy of objects, between officers of the state and the Brahmans. There are no other very remarkable Acts of 1840. The minor Acts of this year are the following. An Act for Madras, regulating the procedure on trials referred to the Court of Foujdarí Adalut. An Act for regulating the execution of sentences of imprisonment passed by courts martial. An Act for Bengal, opening the offices of Deputy and Assistant Register of the Sudder Courts to uncovenanted servants. An Act for Madras, concerning the signing of awards by the members of Punchayats. An Act for Bombay, amending the Law concerning prisoners sentenced to labor or solitude. An Act for the something, or some meaning, which it would otherwise include: but exceptions or saving clauses (though this is their proper use)—are often unnecessarily introduced ex Majori Cautela, as the lawyers call it,-to prevent the possible extension of an enactment to matters not really intended to be within its operation. The preamble, in the present instance, states the subject matter of the Act, viz., oaths as administered to Hindus and Mahometans, and describes them all as under the same category, of a grievance to these classes of persons, and consequently as a public evil. This is the whole of the preamble. Then comes the enacting clause which refers to a subsequent exception; and the enacting clause says that excepting as is thereinafter excepted, instead of any oath or declaration now authorized, &c. Hindoos and Mahometans shall make the affirmation following. Plainly, this affirmation would have been of universal application, in judicial proceedings but for the exception: what then is the exception or saving clause? It is simply this :-that the Act shall not extend (1) to any declaration made under the authority of Act No. 21 of 1837;" nor" (2) "to any declaration or affirmation made in any of H. M.'s Courts of Justice." What can be more plain than that this exception applies not to oaths, but to affirmations and declarations. Affirmations and declarations already in use are preserved; the affirmation given by the Act is to be in substitution of oaths in judicial proceedings, but not in substitution of any existing affirmations or declarations, or not of those mentioned in the saving clause. We add this note to our text under the following impression; that while on the one hand the decisions of the Supreme Court are not to be treated as cabbala above or beneath criticism; on the other hand, they are not lightly to be impugned, without some exhibition of reason. We impugn the decision alluded to, and we regard the exercise of the right of free discussion on all the subjects of intellectual comprehension as of the hrst importance to mankind. We protest against the cloud and mystery in which the lawyers have shrouded a branch of study which can be made as intelligible as the science of morals. Straits' settlements, respecting buildings. An Act for Bombay, extending certain regulations to the Agents of Foreign Sore reigns. An Act concerning the management of Convicts tran ported to places within the factories of the East India Company. An Act for Madras, amending a regulation respecting penal ties for breaches of the Salt Laws. An Act for Bombay, respecting Licenses for sale of Liquors. An Act respecting procedure on appeals in forma pauperis. An Act for Bengal, respecting auction purchasers of permanently settled estates: (repealed). Another repealed Act for Bengal. An Act for the punishment of vagrants in the three Presidency Towns An Act for the execution of Mofussil process within the Presidency Towns. An Act for amending the law with respect to rates for municipal purposes in Calcutta. An Act for Bengal, respecting the Abkarí revenue. And besides these, several Acts of Parliament were adopted. An Act for the amendment of the Law concerning the negotiation of Bills of Exchange. An Act for amending the Law administered in the Supreme Courts with reference to arbitrations, damages, and interested wit nesses. An Act for the amendment of the law regarding factors. An Act for rendering a written memorandum necessary in certain cases. Having now passed in review but five of the thirteen years which have elapsed since the Charter Act, it is obvious that the remaining Acts of the present decade would require more space than one number of the REVIEW can afford to this subject. We shall therefore here conclude for the present; not, we may add, in the manner we had designed and still intend, when we shall have laid the entire legislation of the new era and system before our readers. Many general inferences have already occurred to us: others will be suggested by Acts yet to be reviewed; other questions of law and government will have to be mooted; and therefore for the present we must take leave, for a short time, of this subject, which we commend in the interval to the reflection of our readers, =" ART. IV.-1. Commentary on the Hindu System of Medicine, by T. A. Wise, M.D. 8vo. Calcutta, 1845. 2. An Essay on the Antiquity of Hindu Medicine, by J. Forbes Royle, M. D. F. R. and L. S. &c. &c. &c. 8vo. London, 1837. 3. Tracts, Historical and Statistical on India, by Benjamin Heyne, M. D., F. L. S. &c. &c. &c. 4to. London, 1814. 4. A view of the History, Literature, and Mythology of the Hindus, including a Minute description of their Manners and Customs, and translations from their principal works, by William Ward, of Serampore. 8vo. London, 1822. 5. Materia Indica; or some account of those articles which are employed by the Hindus, and other eastern nations, in their Medicine, Arts, and Agriculture, &c., by Whitelaw Ainslie, M. D. M. R. A. S. 2 vols. 8vo. London, 1826. 6. Asiatic Researches; or Transactions of the Society instituted in Bengal, for enquiring into the History, the Antiquities, the Arts and Sciences and Literature of Asia. 18 vols. 4to. Calcutta. The articles relating to Hindu Medicine. 7. Transactions of the Medical and Physical Society of Calcutta. 8 vols. 8vo. Calcutta. Ditto. 8. The History of India, by the Hon'ble Mountstuart Elphinstone, 2 vols. 8vo. London, 1841. Vol. 1, Chapter IV. On Hindu Medicine. 9. The History of British India, by James Mill, Esq., edited with notes and continuation by H. H. Wilson, Esq., M. A., F. R. S. 8vo. London. Book II, Cap. 10, Vol. 2d. 10. Essai d'une Histoire Pragmatique de la Medecine, par Kurt Sprengel, traduit sur la deuxieme edition par C. F. Geiger. 2 vols. 8vo. Paris 1809. Section III. Vol. 1, Médecine Indienne. "11. The History of Medicine, Surgery, and Anatomy, from the creation of the world to the commencement of the 19th Century, by W. Hamilton, M. B. 2 vols. 12mo. London, 1831. Cap. 1. vol. 1. History of Medicine from the time of Adam to the birth of Hippocrates. THERE are few, if any, countries in which the public generally take so great an interest in purely professional matters, as that manifested by European sojourners in India. The reason of this is obvious. The community generally is an educated one, and many of its members from the vicissitudes incidental to an Indian life, whether in its civil, military, or planting capacities, are so often exposed to the influence of disease, to accidents from flood and field, and to various mishaps and mischances, far removed from medical aid and attendance, as to render a little knowledge of medicine and surgery not only a valuable but a tolerably general acquisition. Few Sportsmen and Indigo Planters are without their medical reminiscences, sometimes of a ludicrous, but far more frequently of a sad and melancholy character; and the time is not far removed when the military and medical charge of small detachments devolved upon the gallant Subaltern in command, aided by a compounder picked up for the nonce, and as ignorant of the rudiments as was the renowned Japhet himself, when first placed under the charge of the sagacious Cophagus, and in the companionship of the facetious Timothy. The first contact with disease in a tropical form is well calculated to startle the novice. Its deadly grasp and giant strides -the ruddy health of the morning followed by the pallor and collapse of the evening-the rapid death of the victim of cholera, fever, and the other plagues and pestilences of the jungle and the marsh, enforce an attention not easily called into existence in the more favored regions of the fair earth. An acute observer has remarked, that "every one desires to live as long as he can. Every one values health above all gold and treasure.' Every one knows that as far as his own individual good is concerned, protracted life and a frame of body sound and strong, free from the thousand pains which flesh is heir to, are unspeakably more important than all other [earthly objects, because life and health must be secured before any possible result of any possible circumstance can be of conse quence to him. Possessed then of this knowledge, and knowing the class of readers we are about to address, as well as being anxious that all departments of literature and science which appertain to the gorgeous East, should find a fitting place in the Calcutta Review, need we apologize for introducing to their notice and consideration the subject of "Hindu Medicinc. The first question that demands attention in an examination of Hindu Medicine is its claim to a high degree of antiqui ty, for upon this must rest its chief recommendations to preeminence over other systems which have obtained celebrity, and led to the present advanced state of the art and science of medicine in modern Europe. It would be difficult, if not impossible to decide with certainty the exact age in which the various Hindu medical treatises were produced, and with every respect for the profound attainments and acute reasoning of the eminent oriental scholars, who have at various times attempted to unravel this tangled thread of mystery, we cannot regard the conclusions at which they have arrived in any other light than that of probable conjecture. Dr. Wise has treated this portion of his subject with much candour and acumen in the introductory remarks prefixed to his Commentary, and appears carefully to have consulted all accessible authorities regarding it. It is now generally admitted that the three first Yugs or ages of Hindu Chronology are purely fanciful and fabulous, and that the present degenerate age or Kali-yug is the only one concerning which any really trustworthy information has been, or can be afforded. The Hindus themselves pretend, that this era began 3101 B. C. or 756 before the Deluge; and from the manner in which their calculations were conducted, as well as the basis upon which they rested, the proofs of the antiquity both of the nation and of its system of Astronomy were for some time supposed to be complete and perfect. It was adopted by the celebrated Bailly in his elegant history of Astronomy, accepted by the scientific circles of Paris at that time, and advocated in England by Playfair, Robertson, and other eminent authorities; but subsequent investigation has demonstrated, "that the series of Astronomical phenomena which Bailly regarded as affording decisive evidence of the extreme antiquity of the Hindu nation, in reality established the very reverse, for they have been shown not to have been taken from actual observation, but framed from calculating backwards on tables constructed during a period consistent with authentic history, and to contain, in consequence, several errors which the more accurate researches of later times have proved, are inconsistent with what must have occurred." * Bentley has shown, in his paper on the "Hindu systems of Astronomy, and their connections with History in ancient and modern times," that there is no reason for believing the Kaliyug to have commenced at an earlier period than 1004 B. C. or rather more than two centuries and a half subsequent to the occurrence of the Argonautic expedition, and the conjectured existence of Esculapius. This would render the existence of Hindu records, if we suppose them to have been produced during the present age, more recent by six centuries and a half, than Alison. + Asiatic Researches, vol. viii. |