of Merchants and Travellers points him out as the conductor of colonies to distant regions, and the founder of that commercial intercourse among men, which neceffarily results from extending the line of civilized fociety. The learned Bochart, in his Phaleg*, ftrongly contending that the Phoenician deity Hermes was no other than Canaan, the fon of Ham, endeavours to prove this point from the very etymon of his name, for Cnaan, or Canaan, fignifies trader, which is the exact import of the Celtic Merc, or Mercator. He explains the wings generally drawn and sculptured on the head and feet of this Phoenician deity as allufive to the devotion of that people to navigation and commerce, and symbolical of the fails of thofe fwift veffels that wafted them, in queft of tin, to the remote regions of the Caffiterides, on the coaft of Britain. Founded, probably, on ancient traditions refpecting his univerfal agency in the poft-diluvian ages, was the pleasant Greek fable recorded by Lucian, in one of his dialogues, who defcribes this deity as having stolen the trident of Neptune, the arrows of Apollo, the fword of Mars, the forceps of Vulcan, and the girdle of Venus.†

Phaleg, lib. i. cap. 2+ See the Dialogue of Vulcan et Apollo.

Independently, however, of mythological fymbols and thofe religious rites, upon the difcuffion of which I fhall enter at large in the next fection, the hypothefis for which I contend is farther confirmed by the very ftriking fimilitude of certain civil festive cuftoms immemorially established in these islands to those at this day flourishing in the Eaft; customs of which the antiquary has in vain endeavoured in Western climes to explore the origin or account for the inftitution.

THE FIRST OF APRIL,

OR THE ANCIENT FEAST OF THE VERNAL EQUINOX, EQUALLY OBSERVED IN INDIA

AND BRITAIN.

THE firft of April was anciently obferved in Britain as a high and general festival, in which an unbounded hilarity reigned through every order of its inhabitants; for the fun at that period of the year entering into the fign Aries, the new year, and with it the season of rural sports and vernal delight, was then fuppofed to have commenced. The proof of the

great

great antiquity of the obfervance of this an nual feftival, as well as the probability of its original establishment in an Asiatic region, arifes from the evidence of facts afforded us by aftronomy, which fhall presently be adduced. Although the reformation of the year by the Julian and Gregorian calendars, and the adaptation of the period of its commencement to a different and far nobler fyftem of theology, have occafioned the festival sports, anciently celebrated in this country on the firft of April, to have long fince ceased; and although the changes occafioned, during a long lapfe of years, by the shifting of the equinoctial points, have in Afia itself been productive of important aftronomical altera tions as to the exact æra of the commencement of the year; yet on both continents fome very remarkable traits of the jocundity, which then reigned, remain even to these diftant times. Of those preferved in Britain, none of the least remarkable or ludicrous is that relic of its pristine pleasantry, the general practice of making APRIL FOOLS, as it is called, on the first day of that month; but this Colonel Pearce, in a paper publifhed in the second volume of the Afiatic Refearches, has proved to have been an immemorial cuftom among the Hindoos,

E 3

Hindoos, at a celebrated festival holden about the fame period in India, which is called the Huli feftival. I fhall infert the account in the Colonel's own words: " During the Huli, when mirth and feftivity reign among Hindoos of every clafs, one fubject of diverfion is to fend people on errands and expeditions, that are to end in difappointment, and raise a laugh at the expense of the person fent. The Huli is always in March, and the last day is the general holiday. I have never yet heard any account of the origin of this English cuf tom; but it is unquestionably very ancient, and is ftill kept up even in great towns, though lefs in them than in the country: with us, it is chiefly confined to the lower clafs of people, but in India high and low join in it, and the late Suraja Doulah, I am told, was very fond of making Huli fools, though he was a Muffulman of the highest rank. They carry the joke here so far, as to fend letters making appointments, in the name of perfons, who, it is known, must be absent from their houfe at the time fixed upon; and the laugh is always in proportion to the trouble given."* The leaft inquiry into the ancient customs of Perfia, or the minuteft acquaintance with

Afiatic Refearches, vol. ii. p. 334.

the

the general aftronomical mythology of Afia, would have taught Colonel Pearce, that the boundless hilarity and jocund fports prevalent on the first day of April in England, and during the HULI festival of India, have their origin in the ancient practice of celebrating with feftival rites the period of the vernal equinox, or the day when the new year of Perfia anciently began. I have added, below, the order of the Indian months, as they are enumerated by Sir William Jones himself, in the Afiatic Researches, and have added the English names of our corresponding months, and tranflations of the Sanfcreet appellations of the afterifms.