Arabs and Tartars were originally distinct races, while the Hindus, Chinese, and Japanese proceeded from another ancient stem, and that all the three stems may be traced to Iran, as to a common centre, from which it is highly probable that they diverged in various directions about four thousand years ago, may seem to have accomplished my design of investigating the origin of the Asiatic nations: but the questions which I undertook to discuss, are not yet ripe for a strict analytical argument; and it will first be necessary to examine with scrupulous attention all the detached or insulated races of men, who either inhabit the borders of India, Arabia, Tartary, Persia, and China, or are interspersed in the mountainous and uncultivated parts of those extensive regions. To this examination I shall, at our next annual meeting, allot an entire discourse; and if, after all our inquiries, no more than three primitive races can be found, it will be a subsequent consideration whether those three stocks had one common root; and, if they had, by what means that root was preserved amid the violent shocks which our whole globe appears evidently to have sustained,

DISCOURSE VIII.

DELIVERED FEBRUARY 24, 1791.

ON THE BORDERERS, MOUNTAINEERS, AND ISLANDERS OF ASIA.

Observations on the Idumeans, their arts and sciences.-The written Abyssinian language.-The Islands near Yemen.On the Sanganians.-Origin of that singular people called Gipsies. Inhabitants of the Indian islands.-People of Tibet. -Tartars.-Armenians.-Greeks.-Phrygians.-And Phoni

cians.

GENTLEMEN,

We have taken a general view, at our five last annual meetings, of as many celebrated nations, whom we have proved, as far as the subject admits of proof, to have descended from three primitive stocks, which we call for the present Indian, Arabian, Tartarian; and we have nearly traveled over all Asia, if not with a perfect coincidence of sentiment, at least with as mach unanimity as can be naturally expected in a large body of men, each of whom must assert it as his right, and consider it as his duty, to decide on all points for himself; and never to decide on obscure points without the best evidence that can possibly be adduced. Our travels will this day be concluded; but our historical researches would have

been left incomplete, if we had passed without attention over the numerous races of borderers, who have long been established on the limits of Arabia, Persia, India, China, and Tartary; over the wild tribes residing in the mountainous parts of those extensive regions; and the more civilized inhabitants of the islands annexed by geographers to their Asiatic division of this globe.

Let us take our departure from Idume near the gulf of Elanitis, and having encircled Asia, with such deviations from our course as the subject may require, let us return to the point from which we began; endeavouring, if we are able, to find a nation, who may clearly be shown, by just reasoning from their language, religion, and manners, to be neither Indians, Arabs, nor Tartars, pure or mixed; but always remembering, that any small family detached in an early age from the parent stock, without letters, with few ideas beyond objects of the first necessity, and consequently with few words, and fixing their abode on a range of mountains, in an island, or even in a wide region, before uninhabited, might in four or five centuries, people their new country, and would necessarily form a new language, with no perceptible traces, perhaps, of that spoken by their ancestors. Edom or Idume, and Erithrea or Phenice, had originally, as many believed, a similar meaning, and were derived from words denoting a red colour; but whatever be their derivation, it seems indubitable, that a race of men were anciently settled in Idume and in Median, whom the oldest and best Greek authors call Erythreans, who were very distinct from the Arabs; and whom, from the concurrence of many strong testimonies, we may

safely refer to the Indian stem. M. D'Herbelot mentions a tradition (which he treats indeed as a fable) that a colony of those Idumeans had migrated from the northern shores of the Erythrean sea, and sailed across the Mediterranean to Europe, at the time fixed by chronologers for the passage of Evander with his Arcadians into Italy, and that both Greeks and Romans were the progeny of these emigrants: it is not on vague and suspected traditions that we must build our belief of such events; but Newton, who advanced nothing in science without demonstration, and nothing in history without such evidence as he thought conclusive, asserts from authorities which he had carefully examined, that the Idumean voyagers "carried with them both arts and sciences, among which were their astronomy, navigation, and letters; for in Idume," says he, 66 they had letters and names for constellations before the days of Job, who mentions them." Job, indeed, or the author of the book which takes its name from him, was of the Arabian stock, as the language of that sublime work incontestibly proves; but the invention and propagation of letters and astronomy are by all so justly ascribed to the Indian family, that if Strabo and Herodotus were not grossly deceived, the adventurous Idumeans, who first gave names to the stars, and hazarded long voyages in ships of their own construction, could be no other than a branch of the Hindu race: in all events, there is no ground for believing them of a fourth distinct lineage; and we need say no more of them, till we meet them again on our return under the name of Phenicians.

As we pass down the formidable sea, which rolls

over its coral bed between the coast of the Arabs, or those who speak the pure language of Ismaïl, and that of the Ajams, or those who mutter it barbarously, we find no certain traces on the Arabian side, of any people who were not originally Arabs of the genuine or mixed breed: anciently, perhaps, there were Troglodytes in part of the peninsula, but they seem to have been long supplanted by the Nomades, or wandering herdsmen; and who those Troglodytes were, we shall see very clearly, if we deviate a few moments from our intended path, and make a short excursion into countries very lately explored, on the Western or African side of the Red Sea.

That the written Abyssinian language, which we call Ethiopic, is a dialect of old Chaldean, and sister of Arabic and Hebrew, we know with certainty; not only from the great multitude of identical words, but (which is a far stronger proof) from the similar grammatical arrangement of the several idioms: we know at the same time, that it is written like all the Indian characters, from the left hand to the right, and that the vowels are annexed, as in Dévanagarì, to the consonants; with which they form a syllabic system extremely clear and convenient, but disposed in a less artificial order than the system of letters now exhibited in the Sanscrit grammars; whence it may justly be inferred, that the order contrived by Pánini or his disciples is comparatively modern; and I have no doubt, from a cursory examination of many old inscriptions on pillars and in caves, which have obligingly been sent to me from all parts of India, that the Nágarì and Ethiopian letters had at first a similar form. It