but the Chinese confider him as a native of India, the Brahmans infift, that he was born in a foreft near Gayá, and many reafons may lead us to suspect, that his religion was carried from the weft and the fouth to those eastern and northern countries, in which it prevails. On the whole we meet with few or no traces in Scythia of Indian rites and fuperftitions, or of that poetical mythology, with which the Sanferit poems are decorated; and we may allow the Tartars to have adored the Sun with more reafon than any fouthern people, without admitting them to have been the fole original inventors of that univerfal folly we may even doubt the originality of their veneration for the four elements, which forms a principal part of the ritual introduced by ZER'ATUSHT, a native of Rai in Perfia, born in the reign of GUSHT ASP, whofe fon PASH'UTEN is believed by the Párfi's to have refided long in Tartary at a place called Cangidiz, where a magnificent palace is faid to have been built by the father of CYRUS, and where the Perfian prince, who was a zealot in the new faith, would naturally have diffeminated its tenets among the neighbouring Tartars.

Of any Philofophy, except natural Ethicks, which the rudeft fociety requires and experience teaches, we find no more veftiges in Afiatick Scythia than in ancient Arabia; nor would the

name of a Philofopher and a Scythian have been ever connected, if ANACHARSIS had not vifited Athens and Lydia for that inftruction, which his birthplace could not have afforded him but ANACHARSIS was the fon of a Grecian woman, who had taught him her language, and he foon learned to defpise his own. He was unqueftionably a man of a found understanding and fine parts; and, among the lively fayings, which gained him the reputation of a wit even in Greece, it is related by DIOGENES LAERTIUS, that, when an Athenian reproached him with being a Scythian, he answered: my country is, indeed, a difgrace to me, but thou art a difgrace to thy country.'. What his country was, in regard to manners and civil duties, we may learn from his fate in it; for when, on his return from Athens, he attempted to reform it by introducing the wife laws of his friend SOLON, he was killed on a hunting party with an arrow fhot by his own brother, a Scythian Chieftain. Such was the philofophy of M. BAILLY'S Atlantes, the first and most enlightened of nations! We are affured, however, by the learned author of the Dabiftàn, that the Tartars under CHENGIZ and his defcendants were lovers of truth and would not even preserve their lives by a violation of it: DE GUIGNES afcribes the same veracity, the parent of all virtues, to the Huns;

;

and STRABO, who might only mean to lash the Greeks by praising Barbarians, as HORACE extolled the wandering Scythians merely to fatirize his luxurious countrymen, informs us, that the nations of Scythia deferved the praise due to wisdom, heroick friendship, and justice; and this praise we may readily allow them on his authority, without fuppofing them to have been the preceptors of mankind.

As to the laws of ZA MOLXIS, concerning whom we know as little as of the Scythian DEUCALION, or of ABARIS the Hyperborean, and to whose story even HERODOTUS gave no credit, I lament, for many reasons, that, if ever they existed, they have not been preserved: it is certain, that a system of laws, called Yáfác, has been celebrated in Tartary fince the time of CHENGIZ, who is faid to have republished them in his empire, as his institutions were afterwards adopted and enforced by TAIMU'R; but they feem to have been a common, or traditionary, law, and were probably not reduced into writing, till CHENGIZ had conquered a nation, who were able to write.

III. Had the religious opinions and allegorical fables of the Hindus been actually borrowed from Scythia, travellers must have discovered in that country fome ancient monuments of them, fuch as pieces of grotesque sculpture, images of

the Gods and Avatárs, and infcriptions on pillars or in caverns, analogous to thofe, which remain in every part of the western peninfula, or to thofe, which many of us have feen in Babàr and at Banáras; but (except a few detached idols) the only great monuments of Tartarian antiquity are a line of ramparts on the weft and eaft of the Cafpian, afcribed indeed by ignorant Mufelmans to Yájúj and Májuj, or Gog and Magog, that is to the Scythians, but manifeftly raised by a very different nation in order to ftop their predatory inroads through the paffes of Caucafus. The Chinefe wall was built or finished, on a fimilar conftruction and for a fimilar purpose, by an Emperor, who died only two hundred and ten years before the beginning of our era; and the other mounds were very probably constructed by the old Perfians, though, like many works of unknown origin, they are given to SECANDER, not the Macedonian, but a more ancient Hero fuppofed by fome to have been JEMSHID. It is related, that pyramids and tombs have been found in Tátáriftàn, or western Scythia, and fome remnants of edifices in the lake Saifan; that vestiges of a deserted city have been recently discovered by the Ruffians near the Cafpian fea, and the Mountain of Eagles; and that golden ornaments and utenfils, figures of elks and other quadrupeds in metal, weapons of

various kinds, and even implements for mining, but made of copper instead of iron, have been dug up in the country of the Tbúdes; whence M. BAILLY infers, with great reason, the high antiquity of that people: but the high antiquity of the Tartars, and their establishment in that country near four thousand years ago, no man disputes; we are inquiring into their ancient religion and philosophy, which neither ornaments of gold, nor tools of copper, will prove to have had an affinity with the religious rites and the sciences of India. The golden utenfils might possibly have been fabricated by the Tartars themselves; but it is poffible too, that they were carried from Rome or from China, whence occafional embaffies were fent to the Kings of Eigbùr. Towards the end of the tenth century the Chinese Emperor dispatched an ambassador to a Prince, named ERSLA'N, which, in the Turkifb of Conftantinople, fignifies a lion, who refided near the Golden Mountain in the fame station, perhaps, where the Romans had been received in the middle of the fixth century; the Chinese on his return home reported the Eighùris to be a grave people, with fair complexions, diligent workmen, and ingenious artificers not only in gold, filver, and iron, but in jafper and fine ftones; and the Romans had before described their magnificent reception in a rich palace