Keeping the school-room in proper condition as to tempera ture and ventilation. Length of school day. Length and frequency of recess. Games to be encouraged or discouraged at recess. Modes of preventing tardiness. Causes by which the health of children at school is promoted or injured. Modes of establishing the teacher's authority. Modes of securing the scholars' affections. Mode of treating refractory children. Modes of bringing forward dull, backward children. The use of emulation. Prizes and rewards. But we pause. The mere enumeration of such a list, it seems to us, shows of itself, with overwhelming force, how urgent is the necessity that the teacher should have a time and an institution for considering them, and for obtaining in regard to them definite, well settled views. Some of these questions come up for practical decision every day of a teacher's life, and they are of too serious import to be left to the unpremeditated exigencies of the moment of execution. In a Normal School the novice hears these subjects discussed by teachers and professors of learning and experience, and he is made acquainted with the general usage of the most successful members of the profession. He enters upon his important and responsible work, not only fortified with safeguards against mistake, but furnished with a kind of knowledge which reduces to a minimum his chances of failure, and increases to almost a certainty his chances of success. ART. III.-Indische Alterthumskunde von Christian Lassen, Vol. III. Geschichte des Handels und des Griechisch-Römischen Wissens von Indien u. s. w. 8vo. pp. 1200. THE peninsula of India is by its position isolated from the rest of Asia. The broad rivers and lofty mountain chains, almost defying transit, by which it is bounded, are formidable obstacles to intercourse. Capable of supporting a vast population, and blessed with exuberant fertility and abundant material resources, it seemed complete within itself; there was no necessity, and there seemed to be no inducement to open communication with the outside world. It has hence developed a civilization peculiar to itself, which has been wholly shaped by internal and domestic causes; and it has entered but little into the broad current of general history. Still, remarkable as this seclusion is, it has at no time been total. It has both influenced other lands, and been influenced by them to an extent which will well repay examination. Its precious wares have stimulated trade from the earliest periods to the present. Its fertile and salubrious plains have attracted invaders in ancient and in modern times. Its grand natural features, its strange productions, coupled with its mysterious history, and its hoary wonders, have awakened curiosity, and led to investigations, from which science has received some of its most powerful impulses. It has given birth to a religion which has propagated itself over more than half of Asia. Its extensive literature and subtle philosophy have left their traces on the thought of the world from its fables and romances to the speculations of the schools and the doctrines of the church. Its astronomical and mathematical learning, caught from western lands, received a development greatly beyond anything that antiquity or the middle age could boast elsewhere. It gave the world the arithmetical digits: and had its methods of calculation and their results been sooner known, they would have formed an era in western science and materially accelerated its advance. Its language revolutionized philology, or rather brought it into being; for as now understood it cannot be said to have existed before. Our present design is not to discuss the entire subject of the relations of India with the rest of the world, but simply to trace those which existed between India and ancient Greece and Rome, so far as they can now be recognized, and to exhibit the influence reciprocally exerted by these two great systems of civilization so widely sundered at once in locality and in character. And in treating of these relations, those which may be called aboriginal shall at present be excluded from consideration, and only those which in contrast may be denominated historical will be taken into account. It is foreign to our purpose to inquire into the primitive connection between. the races, that from which the Greeks and Romans were descended on the one hand, and the Arian race that peopled India on the other. Recent investigations into their physical structure, their language, usages, truths, and religious ideas, have developed much that is interesting upon this point. Such a connection has not only been established in the clearest manner, but the measure of its intimacy ascertained, not only as contrasted with tribes and nations, sprung from an entirely different stock, but as compared with other affiliated branches of the same primeval race, and some definite conclusions reached as to the grade of culture in the great Arian family before its various members successively separated themselves from it; and the range of ideas, or fund of traditions, possessed by this aboriginal ancestry, and transmitted to the whole multitude of their descendants. Dismissing this whole class of questions, attractive as they are, we shall confine our attention to relations established in historical times, and which admit of being historically traced, such as subsisted between them after the races had become distinct, and they had become established as separate nationalities. Thus, viewed, our subject spontaneously divides itself into three great periods: 1. That of indirect relations, extending to the time of Alexander the Great. 2. That in which the relations were chiefly military and diplomatic, embracing the reigns of Alexander and his succes sors. 3. That of commercial intercourse, dating from the extension of the Roman empire into the east, and particularly from B. C. 31, when Egypt became a Roman province. Before entering upon this discussion, however, it may be proper in a few words to specify the authorities from which the following materials have been chiefly derived: They are Lassen's Indische Alterthumskunde, in four thick octavos, a work of immense learning, in which everything relating to the early history and antiquities of India is elaborately, and, as nearly as may be, exhaustively discussed; Weber's Indische Skizzen, which contains four brief but exceedingly interesting and valuable articles relating to ancient India; Ritter's Erdkunde, vol. iv., in which there is an extended inquiry into the knowledge possessed of India in ancient times; and Humboldt's Cosmos, in which a distinguished place is assigned to the expeditions of Alexander in the development of the idea of the Cosmos, or the enlargement of men's views respecting the world, as one grand, consistent, and organized whole. Agreeably to the division suggested above, the first period of Greek acquaintance with India is that in which there was no direct intercourse between the two countries. The only knowledge which the Greeks possessed of India or its products, before the time of Alexander, was the vague and uncertain information which reached them through the medium of other nations, especially the Phenicians and the Persians. The Egyptians are not included in this statement, for the reason that there is no conclusive evidence of their having established at this early period immediate communication with India. The expedition of Sesostris is too indefinite and legendary to build much upon it. The similarity of their institutions can be otherwise accounted for. It has been said that cotton coloured with indigo, mummies wrapped in Indian muslins, and pieces of Chinese porcelain, have been found in tombs of the 18th dynasty, which came to an end, B. C. 1476. But this is declared by Lepsius to be a mistake; and even if such articles had been found, they would not establish the existence of a direct trade, as they might have been brought overland. The Phenicians in the time of Solomon traded with Tarshish, a port of southern Spain in the West, and Ophir in the East. The learned have long been divided in opinion whether the latter is to be sought in India, or Arabia, or upon the eastern coast of Africa. Weber and Lassen give their suffrages in favour of India, and assign the following reasons: 1. This best suits the conditions of the narrative, 1 Kings ix. 9, 26-28; x. 11, 12. 2 Chron. viii. 17, 18; ix. 21. The vessels were made at Ezion-geber and Elath, and must have sailed out by the Red Sea. The voyage was a long one, occupying three years. The articles obtained were gold, silver, precious stones, sandal-wood, called almug, or algum trees, ivory, apes and peacocks. 2. The names of some of these articles have been explained from the Sanscrit; thus apes ip, xýños, Sans. kapi, and with more or less probability peacocks, , Sans. çikhin; algum trees, Sans. valgum; ivory Dr, lit. tooth of elephants, Sans. ibha, an elephant; whence also the Latin ebur, and in Greek, with the Arabic article prefixed, el-eças, or εley-avt,* may be equivalent to aleph-hind, ox of India. ελεφαντ,* In either case the name of the animal bears testimony that it was first heard of from India, and through the medium of a Semitic people. 3. Ophir has, with considerable probability, been identified with Abhîra, mentioned both by native and Greek writers, which was located at the mouths of the Indus, where it would be convenient of access to the Phenicians, and well situated for interior trade, to which gold could be readily brought from the north, and sandal-wood from the south. A volume of native tales, the Panchatantra, perhaps alluding to the good bargains which the sharp-witted Phenicians were able to make with these simple-minded people, says, "Where there are no men of understanding in the land sea-born jewels are of no value; herdmen in the land of Abhîra (Ophir) sell gems radiant as the moon for three cowries." 4. To this may be added at least the partial testimony of tradition. Josephus refers it to the Golden Chersonesus which belongs to India. The LXX have Σουφιρ and Σωφερ, which is the Coptic name of India. The Arabic translator several times substitutes India for Ophir. The trade with Ophir must have been very ancient. It was * Tamarind is similarly derived from tamar-hind, palm of India. The Romans who first saw the elephant in the army of Pyrrhus called it Bos lucanus, ox of Lucania. |