own natural gait: they have not learned the dialea of Perfia, but have wholly forgotten that of their ancestors. A very confiderable part of the old Tartarian language, which in Afia would probably have been loft, is happily preserved in Europe; and, if the groundwork of the western Turkish, when feparated from the Perfian and Arabick, with which it is embellished, be a branch of the loft Oghúzian tongue, I can affert with confidence, that it has not the leaft refemblance either to Arabick or Sanferit, and muft have been invented by a race of men wholly diftinct from the Arabs or Hindus. This fact (alone overfets the fyftem of M. BAILLY, who confiders the Sanferit, of which he gives in feveral places a moft erroneous account, as a fine monument of his primeval Scythians, the precep• tors of mankind and planters of a fublime philofophy even in India ;' for he holds it an inconteftable truth, that a language, which is dead, fuppofes a nation, which is deftroyed; and he feems to think fuch reasoning perfectly decisive of the queftion, without having recourfe to aftronomical arguments or the fpirit of ancient inftitutions for my part, I defire no better proof than that, which the language of the Brábmans affords, of an immemorial and total difference between the Savages of the Mountains, as the old

Chinefe juftly called the Tartars, and the ftudious, placid, contemplative inhabitants of these Indian plains.

II. The geographical reafoning of M. BAILLY may, perhaps, be thought equally fhallow, if not inconfiftent in fome degree with itself. 'An 'adoration of the fun and of fire, says he, must ' neceffarily have arifen in a cold region: therefore, it must have been foreign to India, Per'fia, Arabia; therefore, it must have been de'rived from Tartary.' No man, I believe, who has travelled in winter through Babàr, or has even paffed a cold season at Calcutta within the tropick, can doubt that the folar warmth is often desirable by all, and might have been confidered as adorable by the ignorant, in thefe climates, or that the return of spring deserves all the salutations, which it receives from the Perfian and Indian poets; not to rely on certain hiftorical evidence, that ANTARAH, a celebrated warriour and bard, actually perished with cold on a mountain of Arabia. To meet, however, an objection, which might naturally be made to the voluntary settlement, and amazing population, of his primitive race in the icy regions of the north, he takes refuge in the hypothefis of M. BUFFON, who imagines, that our whole globe was at first of a white heat, and has been gradually cooling from the poles to the equator; so that the Hy

perborean countries had once a delightful tem perature, and Siberia itself was even hotter than the climate of our temperate zones, that is, was in too hot a climate, by his first proposition, for the primary worship of the fun. That the temperature of countries has not fuftained a change in the lapfe of ages, I will by no means infist; but we can hardly reason conclufively from a variation of temperature to the cultivation and diffufion of science: if as many female elephants and tigreffes, as we now find in Bengal, had formerly littered in the Siberian forefts, and if their young, as the earth cooled, had fought a genial warmth in the climates of the fouth, it would not follow, that other favages, who migrated in the fame direction and on the fame account, brought religion and philofophy, language and writing, art and fcience, into the fouthern latitudes.

We are told by ABU"LGHA'ZI, that the primitive religion of human creatures, or the pure adoration of One Creator, prevailed in Tartary during the first generations from YA'FET, but was extinct before the birth of OGHU'z, who reftored it in his dominions; that, fome ages after him, the Mongals and the Turcs relapsed into grofs idolatry; but that CHENGIZ was a Theift, and, in a converfátion with the Muhammedan Doctors, admitted their arguments for

the being and attributes of the Deity to be unanfwerable, while he contefted the evidence of their Prophet's legation. From old Grecian authorities we learn, that the Maffagete worflipped the fun; and the narrative of an embaffy from JUSTIN to the Khákàn, or Emperor, who then refided in a fine vale near the fource of the Irtish, mentions the Tartarian ceremony of purifying the Roman Ambassadors by conducting them between two fires: the Tartars of that age are reprefented as adorers of the four elements, and believers in an invisible spirit, to whom they facrificed bulls and rams.

Modern

travellers relate, that, in the feftivals of fome Tartarian tribes, they pour a few drops of a confecrated liquor on the statues of their Gods; after which an attendant sprinkles a little of what remains three times toward the fouth in honour of fire, toward the weft and east in honour of water and air, and as often toward the north in honour of the earth, which contained the reliques of their deceased ancestors: now all this may be very true, without proving a national affinity between the Tartars and Hindus; for the Arabs adored the planets and the powers of nature, the Arabs had carved images, and made libations on a black ftone, the Arabs turned in prayer to different quarters of the heavens; yet we know with certainty, that the Arabs are a distinct race

from the Tartars; and we might as well infer, that they were the fame people, because they had each their Nomades, or wanderers for pafture, and because the Turcmans, defcribed by IBNU ARABSHAH and by him called Tátár's, are, like moft Arabian tribes, paftoral and warlike, hofpitable and generous, wintering and fummering on different plains, and rich in herds. and flocks, horses and camels; but this agreement in manners proceeds from the fimilar nature of their feveral deferts and their fimilar choice of a free rambling life, without evincing a community of origin, which they could scarce have had without preserving some remnant at least of a common language.

Many Lamas, we are affured, or Priests of BUDDHA, have been found fettled in Siberia; but it can hardly be doubted, that the Lamas had travelled thither from Tibet, whence it is more than probable, that the religion of the Bauddha's was imported into fouthern, or Chinefe, Tartary; fince we know, that rolls of Tibetian writing have been brought even from the borders of the Cafpian. The complexion of BUDDHA himself, which, according to the Hindus, was between white and ruddy, would perhaps have convinced M. BAILLY, had he known the Indian tradition, that the laft great legiflator and God of the Eaft was a Tartar;