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worft of criminals in a state of punishment after death, and of which he could not, he fays, even think without shivering.

"In truth, our firft inquiry, concerning the languages and letters of the Tartars, prefents us with a deplorable void, or with a prospect as barren and dreary as that of their deferts. The Tartars had no literature; (in this point all authorities appear to concur;) the Turks had no letters; the Huns, according to PROCOPIUS, had not even heard of them; the magnificent CHENGIZ, whofe empire in-. cluded an area of near eighty fquare degrees, could find none of his own MONGALS, as the beft authors inform us, able to write his difpatches; and TAIMUR, a favage of strong natural parts, and paffionately fond of hearing hiftories read to him, could himself neither write nor read.

"Of any philofophy, except natural ethics, which the rudeft fociety requires and experience teaches, we find no more vestiges in Afiatic Tartary and Scythia, than in ancient Arabia; nor would the name of a philofopher. and a Scythian have been ever connected, if Anacharfis had not vifited Athens and Lydia for that inftruction which his birth-place

could

could not have afforded him. But ANACHARSIS was the son of a Grecian woman, who had taught him her language, and he foon learned to defpife his own. He was unquestionably a man of a found understanding and fine parts; and among the lively fayings which gained him the reputation of a wit even in Greece, it is related by DIOGENES LAERTIUS, that when an Athenian reproached him with being a Scythian, he answered, 'My country is indeed a disgrace to me, but thou art a disgrace to thy country.'

"Had the religious opinions and allegorical fables of the Hindoos, as M. Bailli, and after him M. D'Ancarville and others, have afferted, been actually borrowed from Scythia, travellers must have discovered in that country fome ancient monuments of them, fuch as pieces of grotefque fculpture, images of the Gods and Avatars, and infcriptions on pillars or in caverns, analogous to those which remain in every part of the western peninfula, or to those which many of us have seen in Bahar and at Banaras ; but (except a few detached idols) the only great monuments of Tartarian antiquity are a line of ramparts on the weft and east of the Cafpian, afcribed indeed

by ignorant Mufelmans to YAJUJ and MAJUJ, or Gog and Magog, that is to the Seythians, but manifeftly raised by a very different nation, in order to ftop their predatory inroads through the paffes of Caucafus.

"From ancient monuments, therefore, we have no proof that the Tartars were themfelves well inftructed, much less that they inftructed-the world; nor have we any ftronger reafon to conclude, from their general manners and character, that they had made an early proficiency in arts and feiences: even of poetry, the most universal and most natural of the fine arts, we find no genuine fpecimens afcribed to them, except fome horrible warfongs, expreffed in Perfian by ALI OF YEZD, and poffibly invented by him. After the conqueft of Perfia by the Mongals, their princes, indeed, encouraged learning, and even made aftronomical obfervations at Samarkand; and, like the Turks, became polifhed by mixing with the Perfians and Arabs, though their very nature, as one of their own writers confeffes, had before been like an incurable diftemper, and their minds clouded with ignorance. Thus alfo the Mancheu monarchs of China have been patrons of the learned and ingeni

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ous; and the Emperor TIEN LONG is, if he be now living, a fine Chinese poet. In all thefe inftances the Tartars have resembled the Romans; who, before they had fubdued Greece, were little better than tigers in war, and fauns or fylvans in science and art."-Sir W. Jones's Effay on the Tartars, in Afiatic Researches, vol. ii. p. 223.

Thus far Sir W. Jones, who investigated this argument of M. Bailli in a region of Afia not very remote from the ancient refidence of the vaunted race who were the objects of his panegyric. In truth, the people, to whom M. Bailli's defcription is moft applicable, are the northern progeny of Brahmins fettled near the Caucafus, and in Thibet, where very celebrated colleges of learned Indians were anciently established, particularly at Naugracut and Cashmere; in which latter region it is fuppofed very confiderable treasures of ancient Sanfcreet literature are depofited, which have not yet been examined. Indeed, in exprefs confirmation that the Brahmins, and confequently the fciences of India, have not always flourished in a fituation fo immediately fouthern, as of late æras they have chofen, I am able, upon the high authority of Mr. Haftings,

Haftings, to affert that an immemorial tradition prevails at Benares, that they originally came from a region fituated in forty degrees of northern latitude.

In addition to the affertion of Sir W. Jones, cited above, that the ancient inhabitants of Scythia were little better than favages, without science and without even the advantage of a written language, though the dialects spoken among them were almost as numerous as their tribes, we are favoured with the following important intelligence, fo directly elucidatory as well as corroborative of the hypothefis on which this Differtation is founded. After acquainting us that the character of Thibet is evidently Indian, and that the Brahmin religion has immemorially flourished in that region, he afferts that the priests of Buddha have been found fettled even in Siberia, (of which indeed the famous medal found amidst the ruins of a Siberian temple, and engraved in the fifth volume of Indian Antiquities, is an unequivocal proof,) and that rolls of Thibetian (that is, Indian) writing have been brought even from the borders of the Cafpian. Admitting that thefe priests of Buddha, using the Indian letters and versed in

the

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