this were the place for difcuffing any question concerning the antiquities of Perfia.

The characters, in which the languages of India were originally written, are called Nágari, from Nagara, a city with the word Déva fometimes prefixed, because they are believed to have been taught by the Divinity himself, who prescribed the artificial order of them in a voice from heaven. These letters, with no greater variation in their form by the change of straight lines to curves, or conversely, than the Cufick alphabet has received in its way to India, are still adopted in more than twenty kingdoms and states, from the borders of Cafbgar and Khoten, to Rama's bridge, and from the Sindhu to the river of Siam; nor can I help believing, although the polished and elegant Devanagari may not be fo ancient as the monumental characters in the caverns of Jarafandha, that the fquare Chaldaick letters, in which moft Hebrew books are copied, were originally the fame, or derived from the fame prototype, both with the Indian and Arabian characters: that the Phenician, from which the Greek and Roman alphabets were formed by various changes and inversions, had a fimilar origin, there can be little doubt; and the inscriptions at Canárah, of which you now poffefs a moft accurate copy, feem to be compounded of Nágari and Ethio

pick letters, which bear a close relation to each other, both in the mode of writing from the left hand, and in the fingular manner of connecting the vowels with the confonants. These remarks may favour an opinion entertained by many, that all the fymbols of found, which at firft, probably, were only rude outlines of the different organs of speech, had a common origin: the fymbols of ideas, now used in China and Japan, and formerly, perhaps, in Egypt and Mexico, are quite of a distinct nature; but it is very remarkable, that the order of founds in the Chinese grammars corresponds nearly with that obferved in Tibet, and hardly differs from that, which the Hindus confider as the invention of their Gods.

II. Of the Indian Religion and Philosophy, I fhall here fay but little; because a full account of each would require a separate volume: it will be fufficient in this differtation to affume, what might be proved beyond controversy, that we now live among the adorers of those very deities, who were worshipped under different names in old Greece and Italy, and among the profeffors of those philofophical tenets, which the Ionick and Attick writers illuftrated with all the beauties of their melodious language. On one hand we fee the trident of NEPTUNE, the eagle of JUPITER, the fatyrs of BACCHUS, the bow of CUPID,

and the chariot of the Sun; on another we hear the cymbals of RHEA, the fongs of the Mufes, and the paftoral tales of APOLLO NOMIUS. In more retired scenes, in groves, and in seminaries of learning, we may perceive the Brahmans and the Sarmanes, mentioned by CLEMENS, dif puting in the forms of logick, or discoursing on the vanity of human enjoyments, on the immortality of the foul, her emanation from the eternal mind, her debasement, wanderings, and final union with her fource. The fix philofophical schools, whose principles are explained in the Derfana Saftra, comprife all the metaphyficks of the old Academy, the Stoa, the Lyceum; nor is it poffible to read the Védánta, or the many fine compofitions in illuftration of it, without believing, that PYTHAGORAS and PLATo derived their fublime theories from the fame fountain with the fages of India. The Scythian and Hyperborean doctrines and mythology may also be traced in every part of these eastern regions; nor can we doubt, that WOD or ODEN, whose religion, as the northern historians admit, was introduced into Scandinavia by a foreign race, was the fame with BUDDH, whofe rites were probably imported into India nearly at the fame time, though received much later by the Chinese, who foften his name into FO'.

This may be a proper place to afcertain an

important point in the Chronology of the Hindus; for the priests of BUDDHA left in Tibet and China the precise epoch of his appearance, real or imagined, in this Empire; and their information, which had been preserved in writing, was compared by the Chriftian Miffionaries and scholars with our own era. COUPLET, DE GUIGNES, GIORGI, and BAILLY, differ a little in their accounts of this epoch, but that of Couplet seems the most correct: on taking, however, the medium of the four feveral dates, we may fix the time of BUDDHA, or the ninth great incarnation of VISHNU, in the year one thousand and fourteen before the birth of CHRIST, or twa thousand feven hundred and ninety-nine years ago, Now the Cashmirians, who boast of his descent in their kingdom, affert that he appeared on earth about two centuries after CRISHNA the Indian APOLLO, who took fo decided a part in the war of the Mabábbárat; and, if an Etymologist were to fuppofe, that the Athenians had embellished their poetical history of PANDION'S expulfion and the restoration of EGEUS with the Afiatick tale of the PA NDUS and YUDHISHTIR, neither of which words they could have articulated, I should not haftily deride his conjecture: certain it is, that Pándumandel is called by the Greeks the country of PANDION, We have, therefore, determined another intereft

ing epoch, by fixing the age of CRISHNA near the three thousandth year from the present time; and, as the three firft Avatars, or descents of VISHNU, relate` no less clearly to an Universal Deluge, in which eight persons only were faved, than the fourth and fifth do to the punishment of impiety and the humiliation of the proud, we may for the prefent affume, that the second, or filver, age of the Hindus was fubfequent to the difperfion from Babel; fo that we have only a dark interval of about a thousand years, which were employed in the fettlement of nations, the foundation of ftates or empires, and the cultivation of civil fociety. The great incarnate Gods of this intermediate age are both named RA'MA but with different epithets; one of whom bears a wonderful resemblance to the Indian BACCHUS, and his wars are the fubject of feveral heroick poems. He is represented as a defcendent from SURYA, or the SUN, as the husband of SI'TA', and the son of a princess named CAUSELYA': it is very remarkable,. that the Peruvians, whofe Incas boafted of the fame defcent, styled their greatest festival Ramafitoa; whence we may suppose, that South America was peopled by the fame race, who imported into the fartheft parts of Afia the rites and fabulous hiftory of RAMA. Thefe rites and this history are extremely curious; and, although I cannot believe