never apply it (I speak of the learned among` them) to themselves or to their country: themselves, according to Father VISDELOU, they describe as the people of HAN, or of fome other illuftrious family, by the memory of whofe actions they flatter their national pride; and their country they call Chúm-cuë, or the Central Kingdom, representing it in their symbolical characters by a parallelogram exactly biffected: at other times they distinguish it by the words Tien-bia, or What is under Heaven, meaning all that is valuable on Earth. Since they never name themselves with moderation, they would have no right to complain, if they knew, that European authors have ever spoken of them in the extremes of applaufe or of cenfure: by fome they have been extolled as the oldest and the wifeft, as the most learned and most ingenious, of nations; whilft others have derided their pretenfions to antiquity, condemned their government as abominable, and arraigned their manners as inhuman, without allowing them an element of science, or a fingle art, for which they have not been indebted to fome more ancient and more civilized race of men. The truth perhaps lies, where we usually find it, between the extremes; but it is not my defign to accuse or to defend the Chinefe, to deprefs or to aggrandize them: I fhall confine myself to the dif

cuffion of a question connected with my former discourses, and far lefs eafy to be folved than any hitherto started. "Whence came the fingular

I people, who long had governed China, before "they were conquered by the Tartars?" On this problem, the folution of which has no concern, indeed, with our political or commercial interests, but a very material connection, if I miftake not, with interefts of a higher nature, four opinions have been advanced, and all rather peremptorily afferted, than supported by argument and evidence. By a few writers it has been urged, that the Chinese are an original race, who have dwelled for ages, if not from eternity, in the land, which they now poffefs; by others, and chiefly by the miffionaries, it is infifted, that they sprang from the fame stock with the Hebrews and Arabs; a third affertion is that of the Arabs themselves and of M. PAUW, who hold it indubitable, that they were originally Tartars defcending in wild clans from the fteeps of Imaus; and a fourth, at least as dogmatically pronounced as any of the preceding, is that of the Brábmens, who decide, without allowing any appeal from their decifion, that the Chinas (for so they are named in Sanfcrit) were Hindus of the Chatriya, or military, class, who, abandoning the privileges of their tribe, rambled in different bodies to the north-east of Bengal; and, forgetting by degrees

the rites and religion of their ancestors, established separate principalities, which were afterwards united in the plains and valleys, which are now poffeffed by them. If any one of the three last opinions be juft, the first of them must neceffarily be relinquished; but of those three, the first cannot poffibly be fuftained; because it refts on no firmer support than a foolish remark, whether true or falfe, that Sem in Chinese means life and procreation; and because a tea-plant is not more different from a palm, than a Chinese from an Arab they are men, indeed, as the tea and the palm are vegetables; but human fagacity could not, I believe, difcover any other trace of resemblance between them. One of the Arabs, indeed, an account of whofe voyage to India and China has been tranflated by RENAUDOT, thought the Chinese not only handsomer (according to his ideas of beauty) than the Hindus, but even more like his own countrymen in features, habiliments, carriages, manners and ceremonies; and this may be true, without proving an actual resemblance between the Chinese and Arabs, except in dress and complexion. The next opinion is more connected with that of the Bráhmens, than M. PAUW, probably, imagined; for though he tells us exprefsly, that by Scythians he meant the Turks or Tartars; yet the dragon on the ftandard, and some other peculiarities, from

which he would infer a clear affinity between the old Tartars and the Chinese, belonged indubitably to those Scythians, who are known to have been Goths; and the Goths had manifeftly a common lineage with the Hindus, if his own argument, in the preface to his Researches, on the fimilarity of language, be, as all men agree that it is, irrefragable. That the Chinese were anciently of a Tartarian stock, is a propofition, which I cannot otherwife difprove for the prefent, than by infifting on the total diffimilarity of the two races in manners and arts, particularly in the fine arts of imagination, which the Tartars, by their own account, never cultivated; but, if we show strong grounds for believing, that the first Chinese were actually of an Indian race, it will follow that M. PAUW and the Arabs are mistaken it is to the difcuffion of this new and, in my opinion, very interesting point, that I fhall confine the remainder of my discourse.

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In the Sanferit Inftitutes of Civil and Religious Duties, revealed, as the Hindus believe, by MENU, the fon of BRAHMA', we find the following curious paffage: "Many families of the "military class, having gradually abandoned the "ordinances of the Véda, and the company of

Brábmens, lived in a state of degradation; as "the people of Pundraca and Odra, thofe of "Dravira and Cambója, the Yavanas and Sacas,

"the Páradas and Pablavas, the Chinas and "fome other nations." A full comment on this text would here be fuperfluous; but, fince the testimony of the Indian author, who, though certainly not a divine perfonage, was as certainly a very ancient lawyer, moralift, and historian, is direct and positive, disinterested and unsuspected, it would, I think, decide the question before us, if we could be fure, that the word China fignified a Chinefe, as all the Pandits, whom I have separately confulted, affert with one voice: they affure me, that the Chinas of MENU fettled in a fine country to the north-eaft of Gaur, and to the east of Cámarùp and Népàl; that they have long been, and still are, famed as ingenious artificers; and that they had themfelves feen old Chinese idols, which bore a manifest relation to the primitive religion of India before BUDDHA's appearance in it. A wellinformed Pandit showed me a Sanferit book in Cafbmirian letters, which, he faid, was revealed by SIVA himself, and entitled Sactisangama: he read to me a whole chapter of it on the hetero dox opinions of the Chinas, who were divided, fays the author, into near two hundred clans. I then laid before him a map of Asia; and, when I pointed to Cashmir, his own country, he inftantly placed his finger on the north-western provinces of China, where the Chinas, he faid,