and Tufcans, the Scythians or Goths, and Celts, the Chinese, Japanese, and Peruvians; whence, as no reafon appears for believing, that they were a colony from any one of those nations, or any of those nations from them, we may fairly conclude that they all proceeded from some central country, to investigate which will be the object of my future Difcourfes; and I have a fanguine hope, that your collections during the present year will bring to light many useful difcoveries; although the departure for Europe of a very ingenious member, who first opened the inestimable mine of Sanferit literature, will often deprive us of accurate and folid information concerning the languages and antiquities of India.

THE FOURTH

ANNIVERSARY DISCOURSE,

DELIVERED 15 FEBRUARY, 1787.

BY

THE PRESIDENT.

GENTLEMEN,

I HAD the honour last year of opening to you my intention, to discourse at our annual meetings on the five principal nations, who have peopled the continent and islands of Afia; so as to trace, by an historical and philological analysis, the number of ancient ftems, from which those five branches have severally sprung, and the central region, from which they appear to have proceeded: you may, therefore, expect, that, having submitted to your confideration a few general remarks on the old inhabitants of India, I should now offer my fentiments on fome other nation, who, from a fimilarity of language, religion, arts, and manners, may be supposed to have had an early connection with the Hindus; but, fince we find some Afiatick nations totally diffimilar to them in all or moft of those particulars, and fince the difference will ftrike you more forcibly by an immediate and close comparison,

I design at present to give a short account of a wonderful people, who seem in every respect fo ftrongly contrafted to the original natives of this country, that they must have been for ages a diftinct and separate race.

For the purpose of these discourses, I confidered India on its largest scale, defcribing it as lying between Perfia and China, Tartary and Java; and, for the fame purpose, I now apply the name of Arabia, as the Arabian Geographers often apply it, to that extenfive Peninsula, which the Red Sea divides from Africa, the great Affyrian river from Iran, and of which the Erythrean Sea washes the bafe; without excluding any part of its western side, which would be completely maritime, if no isthmus intervened between the Mediterranean, and the Sea of Kolzom; that country in short I call Arabia, in which the Arabick language and letters, or fuch as have a near affinity to them, have been immemorially current.

Arabia, thus divided from India by a vaft. ocean, or at least by a broad bay, could hardly have been connected in any degree with this country, until navigation and commerce had been confiderably improved: yet, as the Hindus and the people of Yemen were both commercial nations in a very early age, they were probably the first instruments of conveying to the western

world the gold, ivory, and perfumes of India, as well as the fragrant wood, called álluwwa in Arabick and aguru in Sanfcrit, which grows in the greatest perfection in Anam or Cochinchina, It is poffible too, that a part of the Arabian Idolatry might have been derived from the fame fource with that of the Hindus; but fuch an intercourfe may be confidered as partial and accidental only; nor am I more convinced, than I was fifteen years ago, when I took the liberty to animadvert on a paffage in the Hiftory of Prince KANTEMIR, that the Turks have any just reason for holding the coaft of Yemen to be a part of India, and calling its inhabitants Yellow Indians.

The Arabs have never been entirely fubdued; nor has any impreffion been made on them, except on their borders; where, indeed, the Phenicians, Perfians, Ethiopians, Egyptians, and, in modern times, the Othman Tartars, have feverally acquired fettlements; but, with these exceptions, the natives of Hejaz and Yemen have preserved for ages the fole dominion of their deferts and pastures, their mountains and fertile valleys: thus, apart from the rest of mankind, this extraordinary people have retained their primitive manners and language, features and character, as long and as remarkably as the Hindus themselves. All the genuine Arabs of

Syria whom I knew in Europe, those of Yemen, whom I saw in the ifle of Hinzuàn, whither many had come from Mafkat for the purpose of trade, and those of Hejaz, whom I have met in Bengal, form a striking contrast to the Hindu inhabitants of these provinces: their eyes are full of vivacity, their speech voluble and articulate, their deportment manly and dignified, their apprehenfion quick, their minds always present and attentive; with a spirit of independence appearing in the countenances even of the lowest among them. Men will always differ in their ideas of civilization, each measuring it by the habits and prejudices of his own country; but, if courtesy and urbanity, a love of poetry and eloquence, and the practice of exalted virtues be a jufter measure of perfect society, we have certain proof, that the people of Arabia, both on plains and in cities, in republican and monarchical states, were eminently civilized for many ages before their conqueft of Perfia.

It is deplorable, that the ancient History of this majestick race should be as little known in detail before the time of Dhú Yezen, as that of the Hindus before Vicramáditya; for, although the vast historical work of Alnuwairì, and the Murújuldbabab, or Golden Meadows, of Almafúúdi, contain chapters on the kings of Himyar, Ghafan, and Hirah, with lifts of them and