cording to RALEIGH,* but, in China, according to SHUCKFORD, the virtuous patriarch planted the vine, and established the first happy post-diluvian kingdom. Here, they affert, during the extended and peaceful reign of that great patriarch, the renovated genius of man had ample time and opportunity to improve and expand itself; here virtue exulted in the fostering fmile of a pious fovereign, and science shot up vigorously beneath the protecting wing of power, invested at once with the PATERNAL, the PATRIARCHAL, and the REGAL, authority. The arguments, however, which have been adduced by these writers, in favour of their darling hypothefis, and which I fhall faithfully prefent to the reader in my Hiftory, are fpecious, but not solid; ingenious, but not convincing. If they possessed still greater fpeciousness and ftill more refined ingenuity, they would be totally inadmiffable, fince they oppose the tenor of that Sacred Book, by which all Christians are bound to regulate their belief, fince they are repugnant to the whole stream of tradition, and fince they are * Confult Sir Walter Raleigh's Hiftory of the World, book i. chap. vii. p. 74, ed. folio, 1677. + See Shuckford's Connection of the facred and profane Hif tory, vol. i. p. 101, ed. oct. 1728. are made in direct contradiction to an infinite variety of evidence, engraved on the medals and monuments of Afia, of undoubted authenticity and of the most venerable antiquity. The fyftem which I have to propofe, and which, from a few fragments in ancient writers I shall, in the Indian history, endeavour to establish, by no means oppofes Scripture, violates probability, or outrages common sense and received tradition. It reaches nearly the fame end and establishes facts nearly fimilar, without referring to fuch harsh and improbable means: and, if it does not allow that extended point of latitude to the claims to remote antiquity of the Hindoo nation, which the former hypothefis does, in point of date, yet it falls only about a century short of that hypothefis. In fact, it nearly ascends to the utmost point of all genuine chronology in India, the commencement of the CALI YUG, or prefent age of the world's duration. For the outlines of the fyftem which I have adopted, I profefs myself indebted to the profound investigation of Mr. BRYANT, concerning the migration and dispersion of nations. Throughout that most elaborate performance, I have endeavoured to avail my felf felf of many useful and important hints, which the SOLID JUDGEMENT and DEEP ERUDITION of the author, when unwarped by a brilliant fancy, enable him to afford the historian. From arguments which I fhall hereafter endeavour to extend and amplify, Mr. BRYANT infifts upon a migration of the feveral branches of the great family that furvived the deluge, LONG ANTECEDENT to the confufion of tongues at Babel, and the confequent fuppofed difperfion of all mankind. That migration, he labours to demonftrate, took place, not from the plain of Shinar, but from the region of Ararat, where the ark rested. He contends, that neither the confufion of tongues nor the difperfion itself was univerfal, but would confine those two circumstances to the daring and rebellious race, who were engaged in the erection of that ftupendous monument of human ambition and folly, the tower of Babel. His arguments are particularly forcible on that point, fo truly important, if indeed that point can be established on a solid basis in an historical inquiry like. the present, concerning the antiquity and difputed priority of the different Asiatic nations: fome authors contending for the fuperior antiquity of the Scythians or Tartars, fome for for the Chinese, and others for the Indians. Mr. Bryant's idea is that by the term confounding the language, we ought to understand merely the confounding of the lip, or mode of pronunciation; and this labial failure he afterwards explains, by defcribing it as an utter inability to speak clearly and intelligibly, an incapacity to articulate their words.* With respect to the afferted difperfion of the human race from that fpot over the whole earth, he avers from authorities, which I must also hereafter adduce, with fome additional observations of an Indian kind, and relative to the Sanfcreet annals, that the Hebrew word CoL ARETZ, tranflated, the whole earth, will likewife bear a very different translation: that the word CoL is often used in the sense of every, and that ARETZ, thọugh frequently meant to express the earth, occurs continually in the Old Teftament, in the fignification of land, or province; as in the remarkable and pertinent inftance of Aretz Shinar, the land of Shinar; Aretz Canaan, the land of Canaan; Aretz Cufh, the land of Cufh; and, he obferves, the pfalmift ufes both the terms precifely in the sense here attributed to them. Their found is gone * Analysis of Ancient Mythology, vol. iii. p. 31. out out into every land; Col Aretz, in omnem terram.* When I first commenced this undertaking, I ingenuously acknowledge that the expensive volumes of Mr. Bryant were not in my poffeffion; and when I was at Oxford, I had but curforily inspected that learned work. Convinced, however, that the pure primæval theology of India, as described by Sir William Jones, and as, throughout this differtation, faithfully reprefented by myfelf, could only be derived from the genuine unadulterated principles that distinguished the virtuous line of SHEM, yet staggered by the univerfal prevalence in India, as well in ancient as in modern periods, of the grofs and multiform idolatry of HAM, I remained for a long time involved in the deepest fufpence and in the most painful perplexity. The farther I advanced in thefe Indian researches, the more ftriking appeared the contraft; the wider and more irreconcileable the difference. Educated, however, in principles that taught me to look to Chaldæa as to the PARENT-COUNTRY of the world, the nurse of rifing arts, and the fountain whence human knowledge has * Pfalm xix. verfe |