fame indefatigable workmen, who formed the vaft excavations of Cánárab, the various temples and images of BUDDHA, and the idols, which are continually dug up at Gayá, or in its vicinity. The letters on many of those monuments appear, as I have before intimated, partly of Indian, and partly of Abyffinian or Ethiopick, origin; and all thefe indubitable facts may induce no ill-grounded opinion, that Ethiopia and Hindustan were peopled or colonized by the same extraordinary race; in confirmation of which, it may be added, that the mountaineers of Bengal and Babàr can hardly be distinguished in fome of their features, particularly their lips and nofes, from the modern Abyffinians,

whom the Arabs call the children of Cu'sн: and the ancient Hindus, according to STRABO, differed in nothing from the Africans, but in the ftraitnefs and smoothness of their hair, while that of the others was crifp or woolly; a difference proceeding chiefly, if not entirely, from the respective humidity or drynefs of their atmospheres: hence the people who received the first lig. of the rifing fun, according to the limited knowledge of the ancients, are faid by APULEIUS to be the Arü and Ethiopians, by which he clearly meant certain nations of India; where we frequently fee figures of BUDDHA with

curled hair apparently defigned for a reprefentation of it in its natural state.

IV. It is unfortunate, that the Silpi Sáftra, or collection of treatises on Arts and Manufactures, which must have contained a treasure of useful

information on dying, painting, and metallurgy, has been fo long neglected, that few, if any, traces of it are to be found; but the labours of the Indian loom and needle have been univerfally celebrated; and fine linen is not improbably supposed to have been called Sindon, from the name of the river near which it was wrought in the highest perfection: the people of Colchis were alfo famed for this manufacture, and the Egyptians yet more, as we learn from several paffages in fcripture, and particularly from a beautiful chapter in EZEKIAL containing the moft authentick delineation of ancient commerce, of which Tyre had been the principal mart. Silk was fabricated immemorially by the Indians, though commonly ascribed to the people of Serica or Tancut, among whom probably the word Ser, which the Greeks applied to the filk-worm, fignified gold; a sense, which it now bears in Tibet. That the Hindus were in early ages a commercial people, we have many reafons to believe; and in the first of their facred lawtracts, which they suppose to have been revealed

by MENU many millions of years ago, we find a curious paffage on the legal interest of money, and the limited rate of it in different cafes, with an exception in regard to adventures at fea; an exception, which the sense of mankind approves, and which commerce abfolutely requires, though it was not before the reign of CHARLES I. that our own jurifprudence fully admitted it in respect of maritime contracts.

We are told by the Grecian writers, that the Indians were the wifeft of nations; and in moral wisdom, they were certainly eminent: their Niti Sáftra, or Syftem of Ethicks, is yet preferved, and the Fables of VISHNUSERMAN, whom we ridiculously call Pilpay, are the most beautiful, if not the most ancient, collection of apologues in the world: they were first translated from the Sanfcrit, in the fixth century, by the order of BUZERCHUMIHR, or Bright as the Sun, the chief phyfician and afterwards Vezir of the great ANU'SHIREVA'N, and are extant under various names in more than twenty languages; but their original title is Hitopadefa, or Amicable Inftruction; and, as the very existence of Esop, whom the Arabs believe to have been an Abyffinian, appears rather doubtful, I am not difinclined to fuppofe, that the first moral fables, which appeared in Europe, were of Indian or Ethiopian origin.

The Hindus are said to have boasted of three inventions, all of which, indeed, are admirable, the method of inftructing by apologues, the decimal fcale adopted now by all civilized nations, and the game of Chefs, on which they have some curious treatises; but, if their numerous works on Grammar, Logick, Rhetorick, Mufick, all which are extant and acceffible, were explained in fome language generally known, it would be found, that they had yet higher pretenfions to the praife of a fertile and inventive genius. Their lighter Poems are lively and elegant; their Epick, magnificent and sublime in the highest degree; their Purána's comprise a series of mythological Hiftories in blank verse from the Creation to the fuppofed incarnation of BUDDHA; and their Védas, as far as we can judge from that compendium of them, which is called Upanishat, abound with noble speculations in metaphyficks, and fine difcourfes on the being and attributes of God. Their moft ancient medical book, entitled Chereca, is believed to be the work of SIVA; for each of the divinities in their Triad has at least one facred compofition afcribed to him; but, as to mere human works on Hiftory and Geography, though they are faid to be extant in Cashmir, it has not been yet in my power to procure them. What their aftronomical and mathematical writings contain, will

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not, I trust, remain long a fecret: they are easily procured, and their importance cannot be doubted. The Philofopher, whose works are said to include a fyftem of the univerfe founded on the principle of Attraction and the Central pofition of the fun, is named YAVAN ACHARYA, because he had travelled, we are told, into Ionia: if this be true, he might have been one of those, who converfed with PYTHAGORAS; this at leaft is undeniable, that a book on aftronomy in Sunfcrit bears the title of Yavana Jática, which may fignify the Ionic Sect; nor is it improbable, that the names of the planets and Zodiacal stars, which the Arabs borrowed from the Greeks, but which we find in the oldeft Indian records, were originally devised by the fame ingenious and enterprising race, from whom both Greece and India were peopled; the race, who, as DIONYSIUS defcribes them,

'first affayed the deep,

And wafted merchandize to coafts unknown, Thofe, who digested first the starry choir, 'Their motions mark'd, and call'd them by their names.'

Of these cursory observations on the Hindus, which it would require volumes to expand and illuftrate, this is the result: that they had an immemorial affinity with the old Perfians, Ethiopians, and Egyptians, the Phenicians, Greeks,