fuggeftion of their defcent from the Chinese, whom they surpass in feveral of the mechanical arts, and, what is of greater confequence, in military fpirit; but they do not, I understand, mean to deny, that they are a branch of the same ancient stem with the people of China; and, were that fact ever fo warmly contefted by them, it might be proved by an invincible argument, if the preceding part of this discourse, on the origin of the Chinefe, be thought to contain just reasoning. In the first place, it seems inconceivable, that the Japanese, who never appear to have been conquerors or conquered, fhould have adopted the whole fyftem of Chinefe literature with all its inconveniences and intricacies, if an immemorial connexion had not fubfifted between the two nations, or, in other words, if the bold and ingenious race, who peopled Japan in the middle of the thirteenth century before CHRIST, and, about fix hundred years afterwards, established their monarchy, had not carried with them the letters and learning, which they and the Chinefe had poffeffed in common; but my principal argument is, that the Hindu or Egyptian idolatry has prevailed in Japan from the earliest ages; and among the idols worshipped, according to KÆMPFER, in that country, before the innovations of SA'CYA or BUDDHA, whom the Japanese alfo call AMIDA,

many

we find of those, which we fee every day in the temples of Bengal; particularly the goddefs with many arms, reprefenting the powers of Nature, in Egypt named Isis and here ISA'NI' or Isı', whofe image, as it is exhibited by the German traveller, all the Brábmans, to whom Į fhowed it, immediately recognized with a mixture of pleasure and enthusiasm. It is very true, that the Chinese differ widely from the natives of Japan in their vernacular dialects, in external manners, and perhaps in the strength of their mental faculties; but as wide a difference is obfervable among all the nations of the Gothick family; and we might account even for a greater diffimilarity, by confidering the number of ages, during which the several swarms have been fe parated from the great Indian hive, to which they primarily belonged. The modern Japanese gave KÆMPFER the idea of polished Tartars; and it is reasonable to believe, that the people of Japan, who were originally Hindus of the martial clafs and advanced farther eastward than the Chinas, have, like them, infenfibly changed their features and characters by intermarriages with various Tartarian tribes, whom they found loosely fcattered over their ifles, or who afterwards fixed their abode in them.

Having now fhown in five difcourfes, that the Arabs and Tartars were originally diftinct races,

may

while the Hindus, Chinese, and Japanese proceeded from another ancient ftem, and that all the three stems may be traced to Iràn, as to a common centre, from which it is highly probable, that they diverged in various directions about four thousand years ago, I seem to have accomplished my defign of investigating the origin of the Afiatick nations; but the questions, which I undertook to discuss, are not yet ripe for a strict analytical argument; and it will first be neceffary to examine with fcrupulous attention all the detached or infulated races of men, who either inhabit the borders of India, Arabia, Tartary, Perfia, and China, or are interspersed in the mountainous and uncultivated `parts of those extensive regions. To this examination I fhall, at our next annual meeting, allot an entire difcourfe; and if, after all our inquiries, no more than three primitive races can be found, it will be a fubfequent confideration, whether thofe three ftocks had one common root, and, if they had, by what means that root was preserved amid the violent fhocks, which our whole globe appears evidently to have fuftained.

THE EIGHTH

ANNIVERSARY DISCOURSE,

DELIVERED 24 FEBRUARY, 1791.

BY

THE PRESIDENT.

GENTLEMEN,

WE have taken a general view, at our five laft annual meetings, of as many celebrated nations, whom we have proved, as far as the subject admits of proof, to have defcended from three primitive stocks, which we call for the present Indian, Arabian, Tartarian; and we have nearly travelled over all Afia, if not with a perfect coincidence of fentiment, at least, with as much unanimity, as can be naturally expected in a large body of men, each of whom muft affert it as his right, and confider it as his duty, to decide on all points for himself, and never to decide on obfcure points without the best evidence, that can poffibly be adduced: our travels will this day be concluded, but our hiftorical refearches would have been left incomplete, if we had paffed without attention over the numerous

ON THE BORDERERS, MOUNTAINEERS, &c. 163

races of borderers, who have long been established on the limits of Arabia, Perfia, India, China, and Tartary; over the wild tribes refiding in the mountainous parts of those extensive regions; and the more civilized inhabitants of the islands annexed by geographers to their Afiatick divifion of this globe.

Let us take our departure from Idume near the gulf of Elanitis, and, having encircled Afia, with fuch deviations from our courfe as the fubject 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 fhown, by juft reasoning from their language, religion, and manners, to be neither Indians, Arabs, nor Tartars, pure or mixed; but always remembering, that any fmall family detached in an early age from their parent ftock, without letters, with few ideas beyond objects of the first neceffity, and confequently 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 neceffarily form a new language with no perceptible traces, perhaps, of that spoken by their ancestors. Edom or Idume, and Erythra or Phanice, had originally, as many believe, a fimilar meaning, and were derived from words denoting a red colour;