[Historical and Descriptive Account of British India (in the Edinburgh
Cabinet Library). 3 vols. 12mo. Edinburgh, Oliver and Boyd, 1832. Price
15_s._]
To the imagination of the people of Europe, for more than two thousand
years, a peculiar charm has hung around the name of India. Its
remoteness and separation from our quarter of the globe; its high, and
at the same time anomalous civilization; its singular and fantastic
institutions of civil polity; its mysterious, stern, and imposing
religion; its dazzling abundance of gold and precious gems, and other
productions, which have usually most inflamed the cupidity of men; its
sunny sky and teeming soil, and its swarming population,--all these
considerations long threw over India the colours of a land seen in a
dream, or read of in some volume of romance or poetry. Nor when, at
last, commerce had made a high road to it over the waves, and for the
narratives, filled with unexplained wonders, of individual voyagers, we
had fleets constantly arriving, loaded with its merchandize, did it
cease still to dwell in the public mind as a splendid vision. In many
respects the nearer and more distinct view only disclosed new features
of magnificence and attraction. From a foreign country, with which we
carried on trade by means of some two or three marts, established here
and there on the border of the immense peninsula, India has become,
throughout nearly its whole extent, a part of our own empire--a
subjugated and tributary possession of our little island. This is the
most extraordinary of all the revolutions which have marked the history
of that portion of the earth, and, together with the state of things
which has grown out of it, the political and social systems which have
sprung up under the British connexion, and the changes through which
both are likely to pass, gives an interest to the subject of India
greatly exceeding any that before surrounded it.
The present publication, as its general title, which we have quoted,
indicates, is an account of British India, considered not only
historically, but in its actual condition. It is the work of several
writers, some of whom have long been eminent for their acquaintance with
the subjects which they here undertake to illustrate. Only the first
volume, and somewhat more than the half of the second, is devoted to
what may be properly called the history of India; but the remainder of
the second volume, which appears to be contributed by the same writer,
Mr. Hugh Murray, consists of five chapters--on the Hindoo History and
Mythology; on the Hindoo Manners and Literature; on the British
Government of India; on the British Social System in India; and on the
Industry and Commerce of India: which may be considered as belonging to
the same portion of the work. These two volumes are written in a
flowing, perspicuous, and agreeable style, and will be found to present
a very interesting and useful outline of the succession of great events,
of which India has been the theatre since it was overrun by the first
swarm of its western invaders. The principal fault we have to find with
the narrative is, that the notices of important transactions are
occasionally so brief as to be unsatisfactory, if not almost
unintelligible, and that this unpleasant effect seems, in some degree,
to be occasioned by an over anxiety on the part of the author to
preserve the mere smoothness of his style, by the omission sometimes
even of a necessary clause, or sentence of explanation, which might have
interrupted the ease or equability of its current. In other instances,
the brevity with which parts of the story are treated may be imputable
solely to the limited space which the author had at his command; but the
effect is sometimes awkward enough. The only account, for example, which
we have of the late contest with the Birmese, is contained in the
following two sentences, the second of which, by the bye, would seem
almost to contradict the first: “Since the termination of the Pindarree
contest, no important event or acquisition has distinguished the history
of British power in Indostan. The only war undertaken on a great scale
was the arduous but finally successful one with the Birman empire, by
which the Company gained a considerable territory along the Bay of
Bengal.”--(ii. 283.) We would also recommend to Mr. Murray a more
liberal insertion of dates than we usually find in his historical
compilations. The year in which an event happened can always be given
without much expenditure of space; and nothing contributes more to the
clearness of such narratives as the present.
The third volume is the work of various authors. The Zoology of India is
treated of in the first five chapters, by Mr. James Wilson, who is well
known for his familiarity with the subject of Natural History, and whose
descriptions are in general lively and graphic, while he appears to have
exerted a very laudable industry in the collection of his materials from
the best sources. Two chapters on Indian Botany follow from the pen of
Dr. Greville, who has had the advantage of some valuable communications
from Dr. Wallich, the able and zealous superintendent of the Botanic
Garden at Calcutta. The climate, the hydrography, the geology, and
mineralogy of India, are then described by the learned pen of Professor
Jameson; after which comes a chapter on the general medical effects of
the Indian climate by Dr. Ainslie, late of the Medical Staff of Southern
India; and another on the Spasmodic Cholera, as it appeared in that
country, by Mr. Rhind. A popular view of the Hindoo astronomy and
mathematics, followed by an account of some interesting trigonometrical
surveys executed by the late Colonel Lambton, is then given by Professor
Wallace; and the volume concludes with two interesting chapters by
Captain Clarence Dalrymple, in which that officer describes the manner
in which the navigation to India is at present performed, and discusses
the question as to the best means of establishing a steam communication
between that country and England.
We regard this publication as extremely well adapted to introduce its
readers to an acquaintance with India. In respect to many matters it is
fitted indeed rather to stimulate to further inquiry than to afford
complete satisfaction; but this, which is an unavoidable consequence of
the limited size of the work, we do not look upon as a defect in an
elementary book. Whatever the subject, the first view of it which is
presented to the mind of the student ought to be a general one, for the
plain reason that it can in no otherwise be a comprehensive one.
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