As a last stage in the mythe of the Vaidik Traitana we may mention versions like those given by Sir John Malcolm and others, who see in Zohâk the representative of an Assyrian invasion lasting during the thousand years of Zohâk's reign, and who change Feridun into Arbaces the Mede, the conqueror of Sardanapalus. We may then look at the whole with the new light which Burnouf's genius has shed over it, and watch the retrograde changes of Arbaces into Feridun, of Feridun into Phredûn, of Phredûn into Thraêtaona, of Thraêtaona into Traitana,--each a separate phase in the dissolving view of mythology. As to the language of Persia, its biography is at an end with the Shahnameh. What follows exhibits hardly any signs of either growth or decay. The language becomes more and more encumbered with foreign words; but the grammar seems to have arrived at its lowest ebb, and withstands further change. From this state of grammatical numbness, languages recover by a secondary formation, which grows up slowly and imperceptibly at first in the speech of the people; till at last the reviving spirit rises upwards, and sweeps away, like the waters in spring, the frozen surface of an effete government, priesthood, literature, and grammar. _October, 1853._ IV. THE AITAREYA-BRÂHMANA.[40] The Sanskrit text, with an English translation of the Aitareya-brâhma_n_a, just published at Bombay by Dr. Martin Haug, the Superintendent of Sanskrit Studies in the Poona College, constitutes one of the most important additions lately made to our knowledge of the ancient literature of India. The work is published by the Director of Public Instruction, in behalf of Government, and furnishes a new instance of the liberal and judicious spirit in which Mr. Howard bestows his patronage on works of real and permanent utility. The Aitareya-brâhma_n_a, containing the earliest speculations of the Brahmans on the meaning of their sacrificial prayers, and the purport of their ancient religious rites, is a work which could be properly edited nowhere but in India. It is only a small work of about two hundred pages, but it presupposes so thorough a familiarity with all the externals of the religion of the Brahmans, the various offices of their priests, the times and seasons of their sacred rites, the form of their innumerable sacrificial utensils, and the preparation of their offerings, that no amount of Sanskrit scholarship, such as can be gained in England, would have been sufficient to unravel the intricate speculations concerning the matters which form the bulk of the Aitareya-brâhma_n_a. The difficulty was not to translate the text word for word, but to gain a clear, accurate, and living conception of the subjects there treated. The work was composed by persons, and for persons, who, in a general way, knew the performance of the Vedic sacrifices as well as we know the performance of our own sacred rites. If we placed the English Prayer-book in the hands of a stranger who