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OF THE HINDUS.
7
VRIHASPATI, having no worship at all, easily eluded the storm, but the Bauddhas of Hindustan were annihilated by its fury, and the Jainas apparently evaded it with difficulty, although they have undoubtedly survived its terrors, and may now defy its force.
The varieties thus arising from innovations in practice and belief, have differed, it may be concluded, at different eras of the Hindu worship. To trace the character of those which have latterly disappeared, or to investigate the remote history of some which still remain and are apparently of ancient date, are tasks for which we are far from being yet prepared: the enquiry is, in itself so vast, and so little progress has been made in the studies necessary to its elucidation, that it must yet remain in the obscurity in which it has hitherto been enveloped; so ambitious a project as that of piercing the impenetrable gloom has not instigated the present attempt, nor has it been proposed to undertake so arduous a labour, as the investigation and comparison of the abstruse notions of the philosophical sects'. The humbler aim of these researches has been that of ascertaining the actual condition of the popular religion of the inhabitants of some of the provinces subject to the Bengal Govern
Something of this has been very well done by Mr. Ward, in his account of the Hindus: and since this Essay was read before the Society, the account given by H. T. Colebrooke, Esq. in the first part of the Transactions of the Royal Asiatic Society, of the Sankhya and Nyáya Systems, has left little more necessary on this subject.
