of firearms.” Mephistopheles was right:— “Mit Worten lässt sich trefflich streiten, Mit Worten ein System bereiten.” Halhed’s mistakes might have been forgotten had they not been revived and elaborated by Professor G. Oppert in an essay “On the Weapons, &c., of the Ancient Hindus,” London, 1880. His argument is briefly this: firearms are clearly mentioned in the “Laws of Manu” and two very ancient Sanskrit poems; therefore at some very remote period the Hindus possessed an explosive which, for whatever reason, fell into disuse eventually. “Does the passage in Manu refer to firearms or not?” asks Dr. Oppert. “In our opinion it certainly alludes to them” (p. 70). We need not recur to the mistranslation of Manu already noticed. The two poems on which Dr. Oppert relies for further evidence are the _Nitiprakásika_ of Vaisampayana, and the _Sukraniti_ of Sukra. According to the former, the Hindu deities, Sita, Indra, Krishna, &c., were authors of “books on polity.” Brahma’s contribution to literature consisted of 10,000,000 double verses (p. 36). The constitution of an army was as follows (p. 5):— Foot 2,187,000,000 Horse 21,870,000 Elephants 218,700 Chariots 21,870 The “arms in use” of one species were forty-four in number; of another species, fifty-five. Rabelais has only succeeded in cataloguing forty-six arms in the introduction to the third book of “Pantagruel.” Lest the ninety-nine arms in use might fail to ensure success, a spell (of thirty-two syllables) is given (p. 10) which would bring certain victory to him who repeated it 32,000 times. Both of these veracious works, however, undoubtedly mention cannon and muskets, and a recipe for gunpowder is given in the _Sukraniti_.[236] Dr. Oppert makes no critical examination of the texts of these poems to ascertain whether they contain the interpolations to be found in most Oriental works. Of their age he only says that “no Chinese work ... can, with respect to antiquity, be compared with the _Sukraniti_” (p. 45). As the reader will find in the following chapter, this implies a considerable age.