tion of the medical profession into one faculty, having full power to regulate the examination and government of the whole body, and to confer equal rights and privileges upon all its members."

The Medical Associations existing in the north of Ireland, Glasgow and other parts of Scotland (separate from the Colleges and Schools of Edinburgh), are almost completely of the same opinion with regard to the remedy required. We thus have the great body of the profession in England, who have formed themselves into five or six associations in different parts of England; the great body of the profession in Scotland, who have formed themselves into four or five associations in various parts of Scotland, such as Glasgow, Aberdeen, etc. and the same in Ireland;-all complaining of the same grievances, all pointing out the same absurdities, all desiring the same remedies, and all petitioning for the same redress. How then does it happen that nothing is done? There are various reasons; such as opposition from interested parties, to which we have alluded; but still more the state of political parties in the House of Commons, from which it results that the ministers and their dependents are more attentive to, and occupied by manœuvres to defeat their adversaries, than in getting rid of public and private grievances and oppressions. Yet on this point, the Reforming Ministry must not stop. Lord John Russell must, as a matter of course, follow up his principles in reforming such abuses as exist in the medical corporations; and of obstruction, this not being a party matter, his supporters cannot throw the whole onus on the House of Lords, whom they have been so willing to censure but so loth to combat. Let him not then stand any longer in the way of a needful reform in a respectable and honourable profession, in forwarding which there is not the least danger of his favourite views being affected; perhaps his showing some ardour in such a cause might help to make up for his unpopular doctrines on other subjects. Let him not leave too many such questions to be taken up by his expectant successors, by which they would be able to make themselves popular with a set of gentlemen who are not few in number, not without interest in the community, who are scattered over every county and borough in the United Kingdom, who can and will act on election committees, and

who can and if necessary will assist in the putting out of any member of parliament, who refuses the justice which they demand. If the present ministry wish to stand well with the great body of the medical profession, let them do something, or let them pledge themselves to do something, which may justify their friends and supporters in giving them time. Above all, let them not allow it to appear as if indolence of their own, or flattery of interested parties, weighed more with them than the almost unanimous opinion of those who are best qualified to judge, in every part of the United Kingdom.

ARTICLE VII.

Hindu Fiction.

1. Essai sur les Fables Indiennes. Par M.-LOISELEUR DES LONGCHAMPS. Paris. 1838.

2. Somadevas Mährchensammlung, Sanskrit und Deutsch. Von Dr. HERMANN. Brockhaus. Leipzig. 1839.

THE controversy that was carried on towards the end of the last century between the advocates of the eastern or of the northern origin of European fiction, had reference especially to a particular class of creations,-to those of chivalric romance,— to the marvellous exploits that were magnified out of the traditional achievements which might possibly have been wrought by the companions in arms of Arthur and Charlemagne, elevated to the rank of knights of the round table, or Paladins of France. These narrations, although they no doubt derived much of their martial fierceness from the songs of the bards and scalds, and much of their machinery from the more graceful and inventive fancy of the Arabs, yet took their peculiar character from the people for whom they were composed, and were moulded into the forms in which they were popular, in unison with the temper and tone of the times in which they were written, until they presented but few and uncertain vestiges of their foreign original.

This was not the case with the different class of fictions

which, at a somewhat later date, formed an important accession to the literature of Europe, and which can most confidently be traced to the East. Belief in the Asiatic origin of many of the fables and tales of domestic life, which afforded instruction and entertainment to the Middle Ages, has for some time prevailed, and of late years the proofs have been multiplied by the industry of Oriental scholars. The evidence adduced has been of the most positive description. It is not built on probabilities, upon general and indefinite analogies, or on partial and accidental resemblances, but upon actual identities. Although modifications have been practised, names altered, scenes changed, circumstances added or omitted, we can still discover the sameness of the fundamental outline; and amidst all the mystifications of the masquerade, lay our hands, without hesitation, upon the authentic individual. We can also, in many instances, follow the steps of the migration which the narratives have undergone, and determine when and by what means these Asiatic adventurers were naturalized in the different countries of Europe in which they are found. The inquiry, however, is yet in its commencement, and it seems highly probable that its further prosecution will very extensively add to the testimonies of the Eastern origin of many of the inventions, which, as Contes, Fabliaux and Novelle, constituted the light reading of the more civilized nations of the West in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.

Sir William Jones, in his Discourse on the Hindus, observes that they are said to have boasted of three inventions,—the game of chess, the decimal scale, and the mode of instructing by apologues. He does not cite his authority, and it may be doubted if the Hindus ever boasted of any such discover

As far as relates to teaching by apologues, although there can be no doubt that it was a national contrivance, devised by them for their own use, and not borrowed from their neighbours, yet there is no sufficient reason to suppose that it was originally confined to them, or first communicated by them to other nations. It has been urged with some plausibility, that the universal prevalence amongst the Hindus of the doctrine of the metempsychosis, was calculated to recommend to their belief the notion that beasts and birds might reason VOL. XI.-No. XXI.

and converse, and that consequently the plan of such dialogues probably originated with them; but the notion is one that readily suggests itself to the imagination, and an inventive fancy was quite as likely as a psychological dogma to have gifted mute creatures with intelligence, and supplied them with a tongue. At any rate, we know that, as an article of poetical and almost of religious faith, it was known to the Greeks at an early date, for Homer is authority for the speech of horses. Without affirming the apocryphal existence of Æsop, we cannot doubt that fables, such as are ascribed to him, were current even prior to his supposed date; and we have an instance of the fact in the story of the Hawk and Nightingale of Hesiod. Other specimens of the same class of compositions are afforded by the fable of the Fox and Ape of Archilochus, of which a fragment is preserved by Eustathius; and by that of the Eagle and the Fox, which is attributed to the same writer, and is an established member of all collections of fables, both in Asia and in Europe. Roman tradition,-it would once have been called history,-furnishes at least one well-known instance of popular instruction by fable, which Menenius was not likely to have learnt from the Hindus; and various examples of this style of composition are familiarly known as occurring in Scripture. Although the invention was very probably of Eastern origin, we cannot admit that it was in any exclusive degree a contrivance of the Hindus, or that it was imparted originally by them to other Asiatic nations. If such a communication ever did take place, it must have occurred at a period anterior even to Hindu tradition.

Although, however, instruction by apologues cannot, strictly speaking, be regarded as originally or exclusively a Hindu device, yet the purposes to which the Hindus directed it, and the mode in which they employed it, seem to be peculiarly their own. Fable constitutes with them practical ethics-the science of Niti' or Polity-the system of rules necessary for the good government of society in all matters not of a religious nature-the reciprocal duties of the members of an organized body either in their private or public relations: hence it is especially intended for the education of princes, and proposes to instruct them both in those ob

ligations which are common to them and their subjects, and those which are appropriate to their princely office; not only in regard to those over whom they rule, but in respect to other princes, under the contingencies of peace or war. Each fable is designed to illustrate and exemplify some reflection on worldly vicissitudes, or some precept for human conduct; and the illustration is as frequently drawn from the intercourse of human beings, as from any imaginary adventure of animal existence; and this mixture is in some degree a peculiarity of the Hindu plan of fabling or story-telling. Again, these stories are not aggregated promiscuously, and without method, but they are strung together upon some one connected thread, and arranged in the frame-work of some continuous narrative, out of which they successively spring; a sort of machinery to which there is no parallel in the fabling literature of Greece or Rome. As far, therefore, as regards the objects for which the apologues or stories are designed, and the mode in which they are brought together, this branch of literary composition may be considered as original with the Hindus; and it was the form of their fabling that served as a model, whilst at the same time the subjects of their tales afforded materials, to the storytellers of Europe in the Middle Ages.

That the fables of Pilpay were of Indian extraction was known to the orientalists of Europe in the latter part of the last century. They are so described by Assemannus, Fabricius, Schultens, and other scholars. Acquaintance with Sanscrit literature had not then been attempted, and the orientalists alluded to were therefore unaware that the Indian original, in one of its forms at least, was still in existence, and was still as popular in its native country as it had been for some fifteen centuries at least. The translation of the Sanscrit work, entitled Hitopadesa, or Friendly Instruction, by Mr. Wilkins and Sir William Jones, first added this fact to the history of Pilpay's fables, and it was confirmed by the publication of the text at Serampore, in 1804, with an interesting preface by Mr. Colebrooke, in which its relations to its Asiatic and European imitations are circumstantially particularized. The text has been twice reprinted; in London in 1810, and at Bonn in 1829. The history has been further