not, I trust, remain long a secret: they are easily procured, and their importance cannot be doubted. The Philofopher, whose works are faid to include a system of the universe founded on the principle of Attraction and the Central pofition of the fun, is named YAVAN ACHARYA, because he had travelled, we are told, into Ionia: if this be true, he might have been one of those, who converfed with PYTHAGORAS; this at leaft is undeniable, that a book on aftronomy in Sanfcrit bears the title of Yavana Jática, which may fignify the Ionic Sect; nor is it improbable, that the names of the planets and Zodiacal ftars, which the Arabs borrowed from the Greeks, but which we find in the oldeft Indian records, were originally devised by the fame ingenious and enterprising race, from whom both Greece and India were peopled; the race, who, as DIONYSIUS defcribes them,

'first affayed the deep,

' And wafted merchandize to coafts unknown, 'Thofe, who digefted firft the starry choir,

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

Of these curfory 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 Perfians, Ethiopians, and Egyptians, the Phenicians, Greeks,

and Tufcans, 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 thofe nations from them, we may fairly conclude that they all proceeded from fome central country, to investigate which will be the object of my future Difcourfes; and I have a fanguine hope, that your collections during the present year will bring to light many useful difcoveries; although the departure for Europe of a very ingenious member, who first opened the inestimable mine of Sanfcrit literature, will often deprive us of accurate and folid information concerning the languages and antiquities of India.

THE FOURTH

ANNIVERSARY DISCOURSE,

DELIVERED 15 FEBRUARY, 1787.

BY

THE PRESIDENT.

GENTLEMEN,

I HAD the honour last year of opening to you my intention, to difcourfe at our annual meetings on the five principal nations, who have peopled the continent and islands of Afia; fo as to trace, by an historical and philological analysis, the number of ancient stems, from which those five branches have feverally fprung, and the central region, from which they appear to have proceeded: you may, therefore, expect, that, having submitted to your confideration a few general remarks on the old inhabitants of India, I fhould now offer my fentiments on fome other nation, who, from a fimilarity of language, religion, arts, and manners, may be supposed to have had an early connection with the Hindus; but, fince we find fome Afiatick nations totally diffimilar to them in all or most of those particulars, and fince the difference will strike you more forcibly by an immediate and clofe comparison,

I design at present to give a short account of a wonderful people, who seem in every respect fo strongly contrafted to the original natives of this country, that they must have been for ages a distinct and feparate race.

For the purpose of these discourses, I confidered India on its largest scale, describing it as lying between Perfia and China, Tartary and Java; and, for the fame purpose, I now apply the name of Arabia, as the Arabian Geographers often apply it, to that extensive Peninsula, which the Red Sea divides from Africa, the great Affyrian river from Iràn, and of which the Erythrean Sea washes the base; without excluding any part of its western fide, which would be completely maritime, if no ifthmus intervened between the Mediterranean, and the Sea of Kolzom that country in short I call Arabia, in which the Arabick language and letters, or fuch as have a near affinity to them, have been immemorially current.

Arabia, thus divided from India by a vast ocean, or at least by a broad bay, could hardly have been connected in any degree with this country, until navigation and commerce had been confiderably improved: yet, as the Hindus and the people of Yemen were both commercial nations in a very early age, they were probably the first inftruments of conveying to the western

world the gold, ivory, and perfumes of India, as well as the fragrant wood, called álluwwa in Arabick and aguru in Sanfcrit, which grows in the greatest perfection in Anam or Cochinchina. It is poffible too, that a part of the Arabian Idolatry might have been derived from the fame fource with that of the Hindus; but fuch an intercourfe may be confidered as partial and accidental only; nor am I more convinced, than I was fifteen years ago, when I took the liberty to animadvert on a paffage in the History of Prince KANTEMIR, that the Turks have any just reason for holding the coaft of Yemen to be a part of India, and calling its inhabitants Yellow Indians.

The Arabs have never been entirely fubdued; nor has any impreffion been made on them, except on their borders; where, indeed, the Phenicians, Perfians, Ethiopians, Egyptians, and, in modern times, the Othman Tartars, have feverally acquired settlements; but, with these exceptions, the natives of Hejàz and Yemen have preferved for ages the fole dominion of their deserts and pastures, their mountains and fertile valleys: thus, apart from the rest of mankind, this extraordinary people have retained their primitive manners and language, features and character, as long and as remarkably as the Hindus themselves. All the genuine Arabs of