W.X.Y.Z.

Having fhown in what manner the Hindus arrange the Zodiacal stars with respect to the fun and moon, let us proceed to our principal subject, the antiquity of that double arrangement. In the first place, the Bráhmans were always too proud to borrow their science from the Greeks, Arabs, Moguls, or any nation of Mléchch'has, as they call those, who are ignorant of the Védas, and have not studied the language of the Gods: they have often repeated to me the fragment of an old verse, which they now use proverbially, na nichò yavanátparah, or no base creature can be lower than a Yavan; by which name they formerly meant an Ionian or Greek, and now mean a Mogul, or, generally, a Mufelman. When I mentioned to different Pandits, at feveral times and in feveral places, the opinion of MONTUCLA, they could not prevail on themselves to oppose it by serious argument; but fome laughed heartily; others, with a farcaftick fmile, faid it was a pleasant imagination; and all feemed to think it a notion bordering on phrenfy. fact, although the figures of the twelve Indian figns bear a wonderful resemblance to those of the Grecian, yet they are too much varied for a mere copy, and the nature of the variation proves them to be original; nor is the resemblance more extraordinary than that, which has often been observed, between our Gothick days of the week and those of the Hindus, which are dedicated to the fame luminaries, and (what is yet more fingular) revolve in the fame order: Ravi, the Sun; Sóma, the Moon; Mangala, Tuifco; Budha, Woden; Vribafpati, Thor; Sucra, Freya ;

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Freya; Sani, Sater; yet no man ever imagined, that the Indians borrowed fo remarkable an arrangement from the Goths or Germans. On the planets I will only obferve, that SUCRA, the regent of Venus, is, like all the reft, a male deity, named alfo USANAS, and believed to be a fage of infinite learning; but ZOHRAH, the NA'HI'D of the Perfians, is a goddess like the FREYA of our Saxon progenitors: the drawing, therefore, of the planets, which was brought into Bengal by Mr. JOHNSON, relates to the Perfian system, and represents the genii supposed to prefide over them, exactly as they are described by the poet HA'TIFI: "He bedecked the firmament with ftars, and ennobled this earth with "the race of men; he gently turned the auspicious new moon of the "festival, like a bright jewel, round the ankle of the fky; he placed "the Hindu SATURN on the feat of that reftive elephant, the revolving sphere, and put the rainbow into his hand, as a hook to coerce the "intoxicated beast; he made filken ftrings of fun-beams for the lute "of VENUS; and prefented JUPITER, who faw the felicity of true religion, with a rosary of clustering Pleiads. The bow of the sky "became that of MARS, when he was honoured with the command of "the celestial hoft; for GOD conferred fovereignty on the Sun, and "fquadrons of stars were his army."

The names and forms of the lunar conftellations, especially of Bharanì and Abhijit, indicate a fimplicity of manners peculiar to an ancient people; and they differ entirely from those of the Arabian system, in which the very first asterism appears in the dual number, because it confists only of two stars. Menzil, or the place of alighting, properly fignifies a station or stage, and thence is used for an ordinary day's journey; and that idea feems better applied than manfion to so inceffant a traveller as the moon: the menázilu'l kamar, or lunar ftages, of the Arabs have twenty-eight names in the following order, the particle al being understood before every word:

Sharatàn.

Now, if we can trust the Arabian lexicographers, the number of stars in their several menzils rarely agrees with those of the Indians; and two such nations must naturally have obferved, and might naturally have named, the principal stars, near which the moon paffes in the course of each day, without any communication on the fubject: there is no evidence, indeed, of a communication between the Hindus and Arabs on any fubject of literature or science; for, though we have reason to believe, that a commercial intercourfe fubfifted in very early times between Yemen and the western coast of India, yet the Bráhmans, who alone are permitted to read the fix Védángas, one of which is the aftronomical Saftra, were not then commercial, and, most probably, neither could nor would have converfed with Arabian merchants. The hostile irruption of the Arabs into Hindustán, in the eighth century, and that of the Moguls under CHENGIZ, in the thirteenth, were not likely to change the astronomical system of the Hindus; but the supposed confequences of modern revolutions are out of the question; for, if any historical records be true, we know with as pofitive certainty, that AMARSINH and CA'LIDA's composed their works before the birth of CHRIST, as that MENANDER and TERENCE wrote before that important epoch: now the twelve figns and twenty-feven manfions are mentioned, by the feveral names before exhibited, in a Sanferit vocabulary by the first of those Indian authors, and the second of them frequently alludes to Robinì and the reft by name in his Fatal Ring, his Children of the Sun, and his Birth of CUMA'RA; from which

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