with NEWTON, that ancient mythology was nothing but historical truth in a poetical drefs, nor, with BACON, that it confifted folely of moral and metaphyfical allegories, nor with BRYANT, that all the heathen divinities are only different attributes and representations of the Sun or of deceased progenitors, but conceive that the whole fyftem of religious fables rose, like the Nile, from several distinct fources, yet I cannot but agree, that one great spring and fountain of all idolatry in the four quarters of the globe was the veneration paid by men to the vast body of fire, which " looks from his fole dominion like the God of this world;" and another, the immoderate respect shown to the memory of powerful or virtuous ancestors, especially the founders of kingdoms, legislators, and warriors, of whom the Sun or the Moon were wildly fuppofed to be the parents.

III. The remains of architecture and Sculpture in India, which I mention here as mere monuments of antiquity, not as fpecimens of ancient art, feem to prove an early connection between this country and Africa: the pyramids of Egypt, the coloffal ftatues described by PAUSANIAS and others, the sphinx, and the HERMES Canis, which laft bears a great resemblance to the Varábávatár, or the incarnation of VISHNU in the form of a Boar, indicate the style and mythology of the

fame indefatigable workmen, who formed the vaft excavations of Cánárab, the various temples and images of BUDDHA, and the idols, which are continually dug up at Gayá, or in its vicinity. The letters on many of those monuments appear, as I have before intimated, partly of Indian, and partly of Abyffinian or Ethiopick, origin; and all these indubitable facts may induce no ill-grounded opinion, that Ethiopia and Hindustan were peopled or colonized by the fame extraordinary race; in confirmation of which, it may be added, that the mountaineers of Bengal and Babar can hardly be distinguished in some of their features, particularly their lips and nofes, from the modern Abyffinians, whom the Arabs call the children of Cu'sH: and the ancient Hindus, according to STRABO, differed in nothing from the Africans, but in the ftraitness and fmoothness of their hair, while that of the others was crifp or woolly; a difference proceeding chiefly, if not entirely, from the respective humidity or drynefs of their atmofpheres: hence the people who received the first light of the rifing fun, according to the limited knowledge of the ancients, are faid by APULEIUS to be the Arü and Ethiopians, by which he clearly meant certain nations of India; where we frequently fee figures of BUDDHA with

curled hair apparently defigned for a reprefentation of it in its natural state.

IV. It is unfortunate, that the Silpi Sáftra, or collection of treatifes on Arts and Manufactures, which must have contained a treasure of useful

information on dying, painting, and metallurgy, has been fo long neglected, that few, if any, traces of it are to be found; but the labours of the Indian loom and needle have been univerfally 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 feveral paffages in fcripture, and particularly from a beautiful chapter in EZEKIAL containing the most authentick delineation of ancient commerce, of which Tyre had been the principal mart. Silk was fabricated immemorially by the Indians, though commonly afcribed to the people of Serica or Tancut, among whom probably the word Ser, which the Greeks applied to the filk-worm, fignified gold; a sense, which it now bears in Tibet. That the Hindus were in early ages a commercial people, we have many reafons to believe; and in the first of their facred lawtracts, which they fuppofe to have been revealed

by MENU many millions of years ago, we find a curious paffage on the legal intereft of money, and the limited rate of it in different cafes, with an exception in regard to adventures at fea; an exception, which the sense of mankind approves, and which commerce abfolutely requires, though it was not before the reign of CHARLES I. that' our own jurisprudence fully admitted it in refpect of maritime contracts.

We are told by the Grecian writers, that the Indians were the wifeft of nations; and in moral wisdom, they were certainly eminent: their Niti Sáftra, or Syftem of Ethicks, is yet preferved, 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 firft translated from the Sanfcrit, in the fixth century, by the order of BUZERCHUMIHR, or Bright as the Sun, the chief physician and afterwards Vezir of the great ANU'SHIREVA'N, and are extant under various names in more than twenty languages; but their original title is Hitópadėfa, or Amicable Inftruction; and, as the very existence of Esop, whom the Arabs believe to have been an Abyffinian, appears rather doubtful, I am not difinclined to suppose, that the firft moral fables, which appeared in, Europe, were of Indian or Ethiopian origin.

The Hindus are said to have boasted of three inventions, all of which, indeed, are admirable, the method of inftructing by apologues, the decimal fcale adopted now by all civilized nations, and the game of Chefs, on which they have fome curious treatises; but, if their numerous works on Grammar, Logick, Rhetorick, Mufick, all which are extant and acceffible, were explained in some language generally known, it would be found, that they had yet higher pretenfions to the praise of a fertile and inventive genius. Their lighter Poems are lively and elegant; their Epick, magnificent and fublime in the highest degree; their Purána's comprise a series of mythological Hiftories in blank verse from the Creation to the fuppofed 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 metaphyficks, and fine discourses on the being and attributes of GOD. Their most ancient medical book, entitled Chèreca, is believed to be the work of SIVA; for each of the divinities in their Triad has at least one facred compofition afcribed to him; but, as to mere human works on Hiftory and Geography, though they are faid to be extant in Cafbmir, it has not been yet in my power to procure them. What their astronomical and mathematical writings contain, will