DISCOURSE IV.

DELIVERED FEBRUARY 15, 1787.

ON THE ARABS.

Remarks on the old inhabitants of India.-Similarity of lan. guage, religion, arts, and manners.-On the Arabs; and the knowledge of their language possessed by the Europeans.On the Sanscrit, Greek, Persian, and German languages.Religion of the Arabs.-Their monuments of antique art.Dr. Johnson's opinion on the imperfections of unwritten languages. On the knowledge of Hindu law and Sanscrit literature.

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 Asia, so as to trace, by an historical and philological analysis, the number of ancient stems 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 consideration a few general remarks on the old inhabitants of India, I should now offer my sentiments on some other nation, who, from a similarity of language, religion, arts, and manners, may be supposed to

have had an early connexion with the Hindus; but, since we find some Asiatic nations totally dissimilar to them in all or most of those particulars, and since the difference will strike 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 so strongly contrasted to the original natives of this country, that they must have been for ages a distinct and separate

race.

For the purpose of these discourses, I discovered India on its largest scale, describing it as lying between Persia and China, Tartary and Java; and, for the same purpose, I now apply the name of Arabia, as the Arabian geographers often apply it, to that extensive peninsula which the Red Sea divides from Africa, the great Assyrian river from Iran, and of which the Erythrean Sea washes the base, without excluding any part of its western sides, 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 Arabic language and letters, or such as have a near affinity to them, have been immemorially current.

Arabia, thus divided from India by a vast 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 considerably improved; yet, as the Hindus and the people of Yemen were both commercial natious 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

Alluwwa in Arabic, and Aguru in Sanscrit, which grows in the greatest perfection in Anam, or Cochinchina. It is possible too that a part of the Arabian idolatry might have been derived from the same source with that of the Hindus; but such an intercourse may be considered 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 passage in the History of Prince Kantemir, that the Turks have any just reason for holding the coast of Yemen to be a part of India, and calling its inhabitants Yellow Indians.

The Arabs have never been entirely subdued, nor has any impression been made on them, except on their borders; where, indeed, the Phenicians, Persians, Ethiopians, Egyptians, and, in modern times, the Othman Tartars, have severally acquired settlements; but, with these exceptions, the natives of Hejaz and Yemen have preserved for ages the sole dominion of their deserts 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 isle of Hinzuan, whither many had come from Maskat for the purpose of trade; and those of Hejaz, whom I have met in Bengal, form a striking contrast to the Hindu inhabitants of those provinces: their eyes are full of vivacity, their speech voluble and articulate, their deportment manly and dignified, their apprehension 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 juster measure of perfect society, we have certain proofs that the people of Arabia, both on plains and in cities, in republican and monarchical states, were eminently civilized for many ages before their conquest of Persia.

It is deplorable, that the ancient history of this majestic race should be as little known in detail before the time of Dhu Yezen, as that of the Hindus before Vicramaditya; for, although the vast historical work of Alnuwairi, and the Murujuldhahab or Golden Meadows of Almasuudi, contain chapters on the kings of Himyar, Ghasan, and Hirah, with lists of them, and sketches of their several reigns; and although genealogical tables, from which chronology might be better ascertained, are prefixed to many compositions of the old Arabian Poets, yet most manuscripts are so incorrect, and so many contradictions are found in the best of them, that we can scarce lean upon tradition with security, and must have recourse to the same media for investigating the history of the Arabs, that I before adopted in regard to that of the Indians, namely, their language, letters, and religion, their ancient monuments, and the certain remains of their arts; on each of which heads I shall touch very concisely, having premised that my observations will in general be confined to the state of Arabia before that singular revolution at the beginning of the seventh century, the effects of which we feel at this day from the Pyrenean moun

tains and the Danube, to the farthest parts of the Indian Empire, and even to the Eastern islands.

I. For the knowledge which any European who pleases may attain of the Arabian language, we are principally indebted to the university of Leyden : for, though several Italians have assiduously laboured in the same wide field, yet the fruit of their labours has been rendered almost useless by more commodious and more accurate works printed in Holland; and, though Pocock certainly accomplished much, and was able to accomplish any thing, yet the academical ease which he enjoyed, and his theological pursuits, induced him to leave unfinished the valuable work of Maidani which he had prepared for publication; nor, even if that mine of Arabian philology had seen the light, would it have borne any comparison with the fifty dissertations of Hariri, which the first Albert Schultens translated and explained, though he sent abroad but few of them, and has left his worthy grandson, from whom perhaps Maidani also may be expected, the honour of publishing the rest: but the palm of glory in this branch of literature is due to Golius, whose works are equally profound and elegant; so perspicuous in method, that they may always be consulted without fatigue, and read without langour, yet so aburdant in matter, that any man who shall begin with his noble edition of the Grammar compiled by his master Erpenius, and proceed with the help of his incomparable dictionary, to study his History of Taimur by Ibni Arabshah, and shall make himself complete master of that sublime work, will understand the learned Arabic better than the deepest scholar at Constantinople or at Mecca. The Arabic