the sacred books of the Hindoos, believed to be revealed by God, and called immortal. They are considered as the fountain of all knowledge human and divine, and are four in number; of which we have the following account in the first volume of the Asiatic Researches: the Rigveda consists of five sections; the Yajurveda of eighty-fix: the Samaveda of a thousand; and the Atharvaveda of nine; with eleven hundred sācchāts, or branches, in various divisions and subdivisions. The Vedas in truth are infinite; but have been long reduced to this number and order: the principal part of them is that which explains the duties of man in a methodical arrangement; and in the fourth is a system of divine ordinances.

From these are reduced the four Upavedas, the first of which was delivered to mankind by Brahma, Indra, Dhanvantari, and five other deities; and comprises the theory of disorders and medicines, with the practical methods of curing diseases.

The second consists of music, invented for the purpose of raising the mind by devotion to the felicity of the Divine nature; the third treats of the fabrication and use of arms; and the fourth of sixty-four mechanical arts. Of however little value we may esteem the mechanical arts of the Hindoos, and however desppicable their theological system may really be, the Upaveda, which treats of diseases and the method of curing them, surely deserves to be studied by every European physician practicing in India. There are indeed a great number of medical books in the Sanscrit language worthy of attention; for though the theories of their authors may be groundless and whimsical, they contain the names and descriptions of many Indian plants and minerals, with their uses, discovered by experience, in the cure of diseases.