The five principal nations, who have in different ages divided among themselves, as a kind of inheritance, the vast continent of Asia, with the many islands depending on it, are the Indians, the Tartars, the Arabs and the Persians: who the severally were, whence, and when they came, where they now are settled, and what advantage a more perfect knowledge of them all may bring to our European world, will be shown , I trust, in five distinct essays; the last of which will demonstrate the connexion or diversity between them, and solve the great problem, whether they had any common origin, and whether that origin was the same, which we generally ascribe to them. 24/25
I begin with India, not because I find reason to believe it the true centre of population or of knowledge, but, because it is the country, which we now inhabit, and from which we may best survey the regions around us, as, in popular language, we speak of the rising sun, and of his progress through the Zodaic, although it had long been imagined, and now demonstrated, that he is himself the centre of our planetary system. Let me here promise, that , in all the se inqueries concerning the history of India, I shall confine my researched downwards to the Mohammedan conquests at the beginning of the eleventh century, but extend them upwards, as high as possible, to the earliest authentic records of the human species.
India then, on its most enlarged scale, in which the ancients appear to have understood it, comprises an area of near forty degrees on each side including a space almost as large as all Europe; being divided on the west from Persiaa by the Arachosian mountains, limited on the east by the Chinese part of the Peninsula, confined on the north by the wild Tartary, and extending to the south as far as the isles of Java. This trapezium, therefore , comprehends the stupendous hills of Potyid or Tibet, the beautiful valley of Kashmir, all the domains of Indoscythians, the countires of Nepal and Bhtan, Camrup or Asam, together with Siam, Ava, Racan, and the bordering kingdoms, as far as China of the Hindus or Sin of the Arabian geogrphers; not to mention the whole western peninsula with the celebrated Sinhala, or lion-like men, at the southern extremity. By India in short, I mean the whole extent of country, in which the primitive languages of the Hindus prevail at this day with more of less of their ancient purity, and in which the Nagari letters are still used with more or less deviation from their original form.
The Hindus themselves believe their own country, to which they give the epithet madhyama or Central, and Punyabhumi, or the land of virtues, to have been the portion of Bharat, one of the nine brothers, whose father had dominion of the whole earth; and they present the mountain Himalaya as lying to the north, and to the Vidhya, called Vindian by the Greeks, beyond which the Sindhu runs in several branches to the sea…
The domain of Bharat they consider as the middle of the Jambudwipa, which the Tibetans also call the Land of Zambu, and the appellation is extremely remarkable; for Jambu is the Sanscit name of a delicate fruit called Jaman by the muslemans, and by us roseapple; but the largest and the richest fort is named Amrita, or Immortal; and the Mythologists of Tibet apply the fame word to a celestial tree bearing ambrosial fruit, and adjoining to four vast rocks, from which as many sacred rivers derive their several streams.
The inhabitants of this extensive tract are described by Mr Lord with great exactness, and with picturesque elegance peculiar to our ancient language: “A people, says he, presented themselves to mine eyes, clothed in linen garments somewhat low descending , of a gesture and garb, as I may say, maidenly and well neigh effeminate, of a countenance shy and somewhat estranged, yet smiling out a glozed and bashful familiarity.” Mr. Orme, the Historian of India, who unites an exquisite taste for every fine art with an accurate knowledge of Asiatic manners, observes, in his elegant preliminary Dissertation , that this “country has been inhabited from the earliest antiquity by a people who have no resemblance, either in their figure or in their manners, with any of the nations contiguous with them” and that, “although conquerors have established themselves at different times in different parts of India, yet the original habitants have lost very little of their original character.” The ancients, in fact, give a description of them, which our early travelers confirmed, and our own personal knowledge of the nearly verifies; as you will perceive from a passage in the Geographical Poem of Dionysius which the analyst of ancient Mythology has translated with great spirit:
“To th’ east a lovely country wide extends
“INDIA, whose borders the wide ocean bounds;
“On this the sun, new risinf from the main,
“Smiles please’d , and sheds his early orient beam.
“Th’ inhabitants are swart , and in their locks
“Betry the tint of the dark hyacinth.
“Various their functions; some the rock explore,
“And from the mine extract the latent gold;
“Some labour at the woof with cunning skill,
“And manufacture linen; others shape
“And polish iv’ry with nicest care;
“Many retire to rivers shoal, and plunge
“To seek the beryl flaming in its bed,
“Or glittering diamond. Oft the jasper’s found
“Green, but diaphanous; the topaz too
“Of ray serene and pleasing; last of all
“The lovely amethyst, in which combine
“All the mild shades of purple. The rich soil,
“Wash’d by a thousand rivers, from all sides
“Pours on the natives wealth without control.”
Their sources of wealth are still abundant even after so many revolutions and conquests; in their manufacturers of cotton they still surpass all the world; and their features have, most probably, remained unaltered since the time Dionysius; nor we reasonably doubt how degenerate and abased for eve the Hindus may now appear, that in the same early age they were splendid in arts and arms, happy in government, wise in legislation, and eminent in various knowledge: but, since their civil history beyond the middle of the nineteenth century from the present time, is involved in the cloud of fables, we seem to possess only four general media of satisfying our curiosity concerning it; namely, first, their Languages and Letters ;
secondly, their Philosophy and Religion; thirdly, the actual remains of their old Sculpture and architecture; and fourthly, the written memorial s of their Sequence and arts.
1. It is much to lamented, that neither the Greeks, who attended Alexander into India, nor those who were long connected with it under the Bactrian Princes, have left us any means of knowing with accuracy, what vernacular languages they found in this Empire. The Mohammedans, we know, heard the people of proper Hindustan, or India on a limited scale, speaking a Bhasha, or living tongue of a very singular construction, the purest dialect of which was current in the districts round Agra, and chiefly on poetical grounds of Mat’hura; and this is commonly called the idiom of Vraja. Five words in six, perhaps, of this language were derived from the Sanscrit, in which books of religion and science were composed, and which appears to have been fprmed by an exquisite grammatical arrangement, as the name itself implies, from some unpolished idiom; but the basis of the Hindustani, particularly the inflexions of the Hindustani, particularly the inflexions and regimen of verbs, differed widely from both those tongues, as Arabick differs from Persian, or German from Greek. Now the general effect of the conquest is to leave the current language of the conquered people unchanged, or very little altered, in its ground-work, but to blend with it a considerable number of exotic names both for things and for actions; as it has happened in very country, that I can recollect, where the conquerors have not preserved their own tongue unmixed with that of the natives, like the Turks in Greece, and the Saxons in Britain; and this analogy might induce us to believe, that the pure Hindi, whether of Tartarian or Chaldean origin, was primeval in Upper India, into which the Sanscrit was introduced by conquerors from other kingdoms in some very remote age; for we cannot, doubt that the language of the Veda’s was used in the great extent of the country, which has before been delineated, as long as the religion of the Brahma has prevailed.
The Sanscrit language whatever be its antiquity, is of a wonderful structure; more perfect than the Greek, more exquisitely refined than either, yet bearing with both of them a stronger affinity, both in roots of verbs and in the forms of grammar, than could possibly have been produced by accident; so strong indeed, that no philologer could examine them all three, without believing them to have sprung from some common source, which, perhaps, no longer exists; there is a familiar reason, though not quite forcible, for supposing that both the Gothick and the Celtick, though blended with a very different idiom, had the same origin with the Sanscrit; and the Old Persian might be added to the same family, if this were the place for discussing any question concerning the antiquities of Persia. 34
These letters, with no greater variation in their form by the change of the straight lines to curves, or conversely, than the Cusick alphabet has received in its way to India, are still adopted on more than twenty kingdoms and states, from the border of Cashgar and Khoten to Rama/s bridge, and from Sindhu to Siam; nor can I help believing, althrough the polished and elegant Devanagari may not be so ancient as the monumental characters in the Caverns of Jarasandha, that the square Chaldaick letters, in which Hebrew books are copied, were originally the same, or derived from the same prototype, both with the Indian and Arabic characters: that the Phoenician, from which the Greek and Roman alphabets were formed by various changes and inversions, had a familiar origin, there can be little doubt ; and inscriptions at Canarah, of which you now possess a most accurate copy, seem to be compounded of Nagari and Ethiopick letters, which bear a clos relation to each other, both in the mode of writing fromthe left hand, and in the singular manner of connecting the vowels with consonants. These remarks may favour an opinion entertained by many, that all symbols found, which at first, probably, were only crude outlines of the different organs of speech, and had a common origin: the symbols of ideas, now used in China, and Japan, and formerly, perhaps in Japan, and formerly, perhaps in Egypt and Mexico, are quite of a distinct nature; but it is very remarkable, that the order of sounds in the Chinese grammars corresponds nearly with that observed in Tibet, and hardly differs from that which the Hindus consider as the invention of their Gods .
Of the Indian reigion and philosophy I shall here say but little; because a full account of each woud require a separate volume: it will be sufficient in this differentiation to assume what might be proven 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 professors of those philosophical tenets, which the Ionick and attick writers illustrated with all the beauties of their melodious language. On one hand we see the trident of NEPTUNE, the eagle of JUPITER, the Satyrs of BACCHUS, the bow of CUPID and the chariot of the Sun; on another we hear thw cymbals of RHEA, the sone of Muses, and the pastoral tales of APOLLO NOMIUS. In more retired scenes, in groves, and in seminaries of learning, we may perceive the Brahmans and Sarmanes, mentioned by CLEMENS, disputing in the forms of logick, or discoursing on the vanity of human enjoyments, on the immortality of the soul, her emancipation from the eternal mind, her debasement, wanderings, and final union with her source. The six philosophical schools, whose principles are explained in the Dersana Sastra, comprise all the metaphysicks of the old Academy, the Stoa, the Lyceum; nor is it possible to read the Vedanta, or the many fine compositions in illustration of it without believing, that PYTHAGORAS and PLATO derived their sublime theories from the same fountain with the sages 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 same with BUDDH, whose rites were probably imported into India nearly at the same time, though received much later by the Chinese, who soften his name into FO.
This may be a proper place to ascertain 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 Christian Missionaries 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 several dates, we may fix of VISHNU, in the year one thousand and fourteen before birth of CHRIST, or two thousand seven hundred and ninety-nine years ago. Now the Cashmirians, who boast of his desent in their kingdom, assert that he appeared on earth about two centuries after CRISHNA the Indian APOLLO, who took so decided a part in the war of MMahabharat; and, if an Etymologist were to suppose, that the Athenians had embellished their poetical history of PANDION’S expulsion and the restoration of the AEGEUS with the Asiatick tale of the PANDUS and YUDHISTHIR, neither of which words they could have articulated, I should not hastily decide his conjecture: certain it is , that Pandumandel is called by the Greeks the country of PANDION. We have therefore determined another interesting epoch, by fixing the age of CRISHNA near the three thousandth year from the present time; and, as the three first Avatars, or descents of VISHNU, relate no less clearly to an Universal Deluge, in which eight persons only were saved, than the fourth and fifth do to the punishment of impiety and the humiliation of the proud, we may for the present assume, that the second, or silver, age of the Hindus was subsequent to the dispersion form Babel; so that we have only a dark interval about a thousand years, which were employed in the settlement of nations, the foundation of states or empires, and the cultivation of civil society. The great incarnate Gods of this intermediate age are both named RAMA but with different epithets; one of whom bears a wonderful resemblance to the Indian BACCHUS, and his wars are the subject of several heroic poems. He is represented as descendent from SURYA, or the Sun, as the husband of SITA, and the son of a princess named CAUSELYA: it is very remarkable, that the Peruvians, whose Incas boasted of the same descent, styled their great festival Ramasitoa; whence we may suppose, that South America was peopled by the same race, who imported into the farthest parts of Asia the rites and fabulous history of RAMA. These rites and this history are extremely curious; and, although I cannot believe with NEWTON, that ancient mythology was nothing but historical truth in a poetic dress, nor with BACON, that it consisted solely of moral and metaphysical 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 system of religious fables rose, like the Nile, from several distinct sources, yet I can not 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 sole 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 supposed to be the parents. III. The remains of architecture and sculpture in India, which I mention here as mere monuments of antiquity, not as specimens of ancient art, seem to prove an early connection between this country and Africa: the pyramids of Egypt, the colossal statues described by PAUSANIANS and others, the sphinx, and the HERMES Cains, which last bears a great resemblance to the Varahavatar, or incarnation of VISHNU in the form of a Boar, indicate the style and mythology of the same indefatigable workmen, who formed the vast excavations of Canarah, the various temples and images of BUDDHA, and the idols, which are continually dug up at Gaya, or in its vicinity. The letters on many of those monuments appear, as I have before intimated, partly od Indian, and partly of Abyssinian or Ethiopick, origin; and all thse indubitable facts may induce no ill-grounded opinion, that Ethiopea and Hisndutan were peopled or colonized by the same extraordinary race; in confirmation of which, it may be added, that the mountaineers of Bengal and Behar 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 nothing from the Affricans, but in 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 APAULEIUS to be the Aru and Ethiopians, by which he meant certain nations of India; where we frequently see the figures of BUDDHA with curled hir apparently designed for representation of it in its natural shape. IV. It is unfortunate that Silpi Sastra, or collection of treatises on Arts and Manufactures, which must have contained a treasure of useful information on dying, painting, and metallurgy, has so long been 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: …and the Egyptians yet more, as we learn from several passages in scripture, and particularly from a beautiful chapter in EZEKIAL 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 ti the people of Serica or Tancut, among whom probably the word Ser, which the Greeks applied to 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 curious passage on the legal interest of money, and the limited rate of it in different cases, with an exception with regard to adventures of the 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 of maritime contracts. We are told by the Grecian writers that the Idians were the wisest of nations; and in moral wisdom, they were certainly eminent: their Niti Sastra, or System of Ethicks, is yet preserved, and the Fables of VISHNUSERMAN, whom we ridiculously call Pilpay, are the most beautiful, if not the most ancient. The Hindus are said to have boasted of three inventions, all of which, indeed, are admirable, the method of instructing by apologues, the decimal scale, adopted now by civilized nations, the game of chess, on which they have some curious treatises; but, if their numerous work on Grammar, Logick, Rhetorick, Musick, all which are extant and accessible, were explained in some languages generally known, it would be found, that they had yet higher pretensions to the praise of a fertile and inventive genius. The lighter poems are ively and elegant; their Epick, magnificent and sublime in the highest degree. Their Puranas comprise a series of mythological Histories inblank verse from creation to the supposed incarnation of BUDDHA; and their Vedas, as far as we can judge from the compendium of them, which is called Upanishat, abound with noble speculations in metaphysicks, and fine discourses on the being and attributes of GOD. Their most ancient medical book, entitles Cherecca, is believed to be the work of Siva. 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 YAVANACHARYA, because he had travelled, we are told, into Ionia: if this be true, he might have conversed with PYTHAGORAS; this atleast is undeniable, that a book on astronomy in Sanscrit bears the title of Yavana Talica, 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, Ethiopeans, and Egyptians, the Phoenicians, the Greeks, and Tuscans, the Scythians or Goths, and Celts, the Chinese, Japanese, and Peruvuans; 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 shall be the object of future Discourses;