or Ethiopic origin; and all these indubitable facts may induce no ill-grounded opinion, that Ethiopia and Hindustan were peopled or colonized by the same extraordinary race; in confirmation of which, it may be added, that the mountaineers of Bengal and Bahar can hardly be distinguished in some of their features, particularly their lips and noses, from the modern Abyssinians, whom the Arabs call the children of Cush. And the ancient Hindus, according to Strabo, differed in nothing from the Africans, but in the straightness and smoothness of their hair, while that of the others was crisp or woolly; a difference proceeding chiefly, if not entirely, from the respective humidity or dryness of their atmospheres. Hence the people who received the first light of the rising sun, according to the limited knowledge of the ancients, are said by Apuleius to be the Arü and Ethiopians, by which he clearly meant certain nations of India; where we frequently see figures of Buddha with curled hair, apparently designed for a representation of it in its natural state.

IV. It is unfortunate that the Silpi Sástra, or Collection of Treatises on Arts and Manufactures, which must have contained a treasure of useful information on dying, painting, and metallurgy, has been so long neglected, that few, if any traces of it are to be found; but the labours of the Indian loom and needle have been universally celebrated; and fine linen is not improbably supposed to have been called Sindon, from the name of the river near which it was wrought in the highest perfection. The people of Colchis were also famed for this manufacture; and the Egyptians yet more, as we learn from several passages in Scripture, and particularly from a beautiful chapter in Ezekiel, containing the most

authentic delineation of ancient commerce, of which Tyre had been the principal mart. Silk was fabricated immemorially by the Indians, though commonly ascribed to the people of Serica or Tancut, among whom probably the word Sèr, which the Greeks applied to the silk-worm, signified gold; a sense which it now bears in Tibet. That the Hindus were in early ages a commercial people, we have many reasons to believe; and in the first of their sacred law tracts which they suppose to have been revealed by Menu many millions of years ago, we find a curious passage on the legal interest of money, and the limited rate of it in different cases, with an exception in regard to adventures at sea; an exception which the sense of mankind approves, and which commerce absolutely requires; though it was not before the reign of Charles I. that our own jurisprudence fully admitted it in respect to maritime contracts.

We are told by the Grecian writers, that the Indians were the wisest of nations; and in moral wisdom they were certainly eminent. Their Níti Sástra, or System of Ethics, is yet preserved; and the Fables of Vishnuserman, whom we ridiculously call Pilpay, are the most beautiful, if not the most ancient collection of apologues in the world. They were first translated from the Sanscrit in the sixth century, by the order of Buzerchumihr, or Bright as the Sun, the chief physician, and afterwards Vezír, of the great Anúshireván, and are extant under various names in more than twenty languages; but their original title is Hitópadésa, or Amicable Instruction: and, as the very existence of Æsop, whom the Arabs believe to have been an Abyssinian, appears rather doubtful, I am not disinclined to sup

pose that the first moral fables which appeared in Europe were of Indian or Ethiopian origin.

The Hindus are said to have hoasted of three inventions, all of which, indeed, are admirable; the method of instructing by Apologues; the decimal Scale, adopted now by all civilized nations; and the game of Chess, on which they have some curious treatises: but, if their numerous works on Grammar, Logic, Rhetoric, Music, all which are extant and accessible, were explained in some language generally known, it would be found that they had yet higher pretensions to the praise of a fertile and inventive genius. Their lighter poems are lively and elegant; their epic, magnificent and sublime in the highest degree. Their Purána's comprise a series of mythological Histories, in blank verse, from the Creation to the supposed incarnation of Buddha: and their Védas, as far as we can judge from that compendium of them which is called Upanishat, abound with noble speculations in metaphysics, and fine discourses on the being and attributes of God. Their most ancient medical book, entitled Chereca, is believed to be the work of Siva: for each of the Divinities in their Triad has at least one sacred composition ascribed to him. But as to mere human works on History and Geography, though they are said to be extant in Cashmír, it has not been yet in my power to procure them. What their astronomical and mathematical writings contain, will not, I trust, remain long a secret: they are easily procured, and their importance cannot be doubted. The philosopher whose works are said to include a System of the Universe, founded on the principle of attraction and the central Position of the Sun, is named Yavan Achárya, because he had traveled,

we are told, into Ionia. If this be true, he might have been one of those who conversed with Pytha goras. This at least is undeniable, that a book on Astronomy in Sanscrit bears the title of Yavana Jática, which may signify the Ionic Sect. Nor is it improbable that the names of the Planets and Zodiacal Stars, which the Arabs borrowed from the Greeks, but which we find in the oldest Indian records, were originally devised by the same ingenious and enterprising race, from whom both Greece and India were peopled; the race who, as Dionysius describes them,

- first assayed the deep,

And wafted merchandise to coasts unknown.
Those who digested first the starry choir,

Their motions mark'd, and call'd them by their names.'

Of these cursory observations on the Hindus, which it would require volumes to expand and illustrate, this is the result; that they had an immemorial affinity with the old Persians, Ethiopians, and Egyptians; the Phenicians, Greeks, and Tuscans; the Scythians or Goths, and Celts; the Chinese, Japanese, and Peruvians; whence, as no reason appears for believing that they were a colony from any one of those nations, or any of those nations from them, we may fairly conclude that they all proceeded from some central country, to investigate which will be the object of my future Discourses; and I have a sanguine hope that your collections, during the present year, will bring to light many useful discoveries; although the departure for Europe of a very ingenious member, who first opened the inestimable mine of Sanscrit literature, will often deprive us of accurate and solid information concerning the languages and antiquities of India.

firee.

DISCOURSE IV.

DELIVERED FEBRUARY 15, 1787.

ON THE ARABS.

Remarks on the old inhabitants of India.-Similarity of language, 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