We have, then, wholly insufficient means for arriving at any information concerning the ante-Indian period of Hindu history, beyond the general conclusion derivable from the actual presence of barbarous and apparently aboriginal tribes--from the admitted progressive extension of Hinduism into parts of India where it did not prevail when the code of Manu was compiled--from the general use of dialects in India, more or less copious, which are different from Sanscrit--and from the affinities of that language with forms of speech current in the western world--that a people who spoke Sanscrit, and followed the religion of the Vedas, came into India, in some very distant age, from lands west of the Indus. Whether the date and circumstances of their immigration will ever be ascertained is extremely doubtful, but it is not difficult to form a plausible outline of their early site and progressive colonization.

The earliest seat of the Hindus within the confines of Hindusthán was

undoubtedly the eastern confines of the Panjab. The holy land of Manu and the Puráńas lies between the Drishadwatí and Saraswatí rivers, the Caggar and Sursooty of our barbarous maps. Various adventures of the first princes and most famous sages occur in this vicinity; and the Ásramas, or religious domiciles, of several of the latter are placed on the banks of the Saraswatí. According to some authorities, it was the abode of Vyása, the compiler of the Vedas and Puráńas; and agreeably to another, when on one occasion the Vedas had fallen into disuse, and been forgotten, the Brahmans were again instructed in them by Sáraswata, the son of Saraswatí 89. One of the most distinguished of the tribes of the Brahmans is known as the Sáraswata 90; and the same word is employed by Mr. Colebrooke to denote that modification of Sanscrit which is termed generally Prakrit, and which in this case he supposes to have been the language of "the Sáraswata nation, which occupied the banks of the river Saraswatí 91." The river itself receives its appellation from Saraswatí, the goddess of learning, under whose auspices the sacred literature of the Hindus assumed shape and authority. These indications render it certain, that whatever seeds were imported from without, it was in the country adjacent to the Saraswatí river that they were first planted, and cultivated and reared in Hindusthán.