age

female deities, the adoration of stones, and the name of the Idol WUDD, may lead us indeed to fufpect, that some of the Hindu fuperftitions had found their way into Arabia; and though we have no traces in Arabian History of such a conqueror or legislator as the great SES AC, who is faid to have raised pillars in Yemen as well as at the mouth of the Ganges, yet, fince we know, that SA CYA is a title of BUDDHA, whom I fuppose to be WODEN, fince BUDDHA was not a native of India, and fince the of SESAC perfectly agrees with that of SA'CYA, we may form a plaufible conjecture, that they were in fact the fame person, who travelled eastward from Ethiopia, either as a warriour or as a lawgiver, about a thousand years before CHRIST, and whofe rites we now fee extended as far as the country of Nifon, or, as the Chinese call it, Japuen, both words fignifying the Rifing Sun. SA CYA may be derived from a word meaning power, or from another denoting vegetable food; fo that this epithet will not determine, whether he was a hero or a philosopher; but the title BUDDHA, or wife, may induce us to believe, that he was rather a benefactor, than a destroyer, of his fpecies: if his religion, however, was really introduced into any part of Arabia, it could not have been general in that country; and we may fafely pronounce, that before the Mohammedan

4

revolution, the noble and learned Arabs were Theifts, but that a ftupid idolatry prevailed among the lower orders of the people.

I find no trace among them, till their emigration, of any Philofophy but Ethicks; and even their fyftem of morals, generous and enlarged as it seems to have been in the minds of a few illuftrious chieftains, was on the whole miferably depraved for a century at least before. MUHAMMED: the distinguishing virtues, which they boasted of inculcating and practising, were a contempt of riches and even of death; but, in the age of the Seven Poets, their liberality had deviated into mad profufion, their courage into ferocity, and their patience into an obftinate fpirit of encountering fruitless dangers; but I forbear to expatiate on the manners of the Arabs in that age, because the poems, entitled Almoállakát, which have appeared in our own language, exhibit an exact picture of their virtues and their vices, their wisdom and their folly; and show what may be conftantly expected from men of open hearts and boiling paffions, with no law to control, and little religion to restrain, them.

III. Few monuments of antiquity are preferved in Arabia, and of those few the best accounts are very uncertain; but we are affured, that inscriptions on rocks and mountains are still seen in various parts of the Peninsula;

which, if they are in any known language, and if correct copies of them can be procured, may be decyphered by easy and infallible rules.

The firft ALBERT SCHULTENS has preserved in his Ancient Memorials of Arabia, the most pleafing of all his works, two little poems in an elegiack ftrain, which are faid to have been found, about the middle of the feventh century, on fome. fragments of ruined edifices in Hadramùt near Aden, and are supposed to be of an indefinite, but very remote, age. It may naturally be asked: In what characters were they written? Who decyphered them? Why were not the original letters preserved in the book, where the verfes are cited? What became of the marbles, which Abdurrahman, then governor of Yemen, most probably sent to the Khalifah at Bagdad? If they be genuine, they prove the people of Yemen to have been herdfmen and warriours, ⚫ inhabiting a fertile and well-watered country 'full of game, and near a fine fea abounding ' with fish, under a monarchical government, ⚫ and dreffed in green filk or vefts of needlework,' either of their own manufacture or imported from India. The measure of these verses is perfectly regular, and the dialect undistinguishable, at leaft by me, from that of Kuraish; fo that, if the Arabian writers were much addicted to literary impoftures, I should strongly suspect

them to be modern compofitions on the instability of human greatness, and the confequences of irreligion, illuftrated by the example of the Himyarick princes; and the fame may be fufpected of the firft poem quoted by SCHULTENS, which he afcribes to an Arab in the age of

SOLOMON.

The supposed houses of the people called Thamùd are alfo ftill to be seen in excavations of rocks; and, in the time of TABRIZI the Grammarian, a caftle was extant in Yemen, which bore the name of ALADBAT, an old bard and warriour, who firft, we are told, formed his army, thence called álkhamis, in five parts, by which arrangement he defeated the troops of Himyar in an expedition against Sanáà.

Of pillars erected by SESAC, after his invafion of Yemen, we find no mention in Arabian hiftories; and, perhaps, the ftory has no more foundation than another told by the Greeks and adopted by NEWTON, that the Arabs worshipped URANIA, and even BACCHUS by name, which, they fay, means great in Arabick: but where they found fuch a word, we cannot discover: it is true, that Beccab fignifies a great and tumultuous crowd, and, in this fenfe, is one name of the facred city commonly called Meccah.

The Cabab, or quadrangular edifice at Meccab, is indisputably so ancient, that its original

use, and the name of its builder, are lost in a cloud of idle traditions. An Arab told me gravely, that it was raised by ABRAHAM, who, as I affured him, was never there: others afcribe it, with more probability, to ISMAIL, or one of his immediate defcendants; but whether it was built as a place of divine worship, as a fortress, as a fepulchre, or as a monument of the treaty between the old poffeffors of Arabia and the fons of KIDAR, antiquaries may dispute, but no mortal can determine. It is thought by RELAND to have been the manfion of fome ancient Patriarch, and revered on that account by his pofterity; but the room, in which we now are as fembled, would contain the whole Arabian edifice; and, if it were large enough for the dwelling-house of a patriarchal family, it would feem ill adapted to the pastoral manners of the Kedarites: a Perfian author infifts, that the true name of Meccab is Mabcadah, or the Temple of the Moon; but, although we may smile at his etymology, we cannot but think it probable, that the Cabab was originally defigned for religious purposes. Three couplets are cited in an Arabick Hiftory of this Building, which, from their extreme fimplicity, have lefs appearance of imposture than other verses of the fame kind: they are ascribed to ASAD, a Tobbá, or king by fucceffion, who is generally allowed to have reign