A DISSERTATION, &c. CHAPTER I. General Account of the SANSCREET LANGUAGE, Grammar, and Alphabet. The high Antiquity and wide Diffufion of that Language · over the Eastern Region of Afia. — An Investigation of the SCIENCES of the Brabmins, not hitherto difcuffed in the Indian Antiquities. ASTRONOMY, neceffarily cultivated, in the remoteft Periods, by a Race devoted to Agriculture, and immemorially addicted to the SABIAN SUPERSTITION. A retrospective Survey of the great Outlines of this Science, as anciently known in India. GEOMETRY proved to have flourished among them, from its Connection with the former Science in its advanced State, as well as from their maffy Style of Architecture, &c. &c. — MEDICINE, the Devotion of the ancient Indians to BOTANICAL Refearches, induced an intimate Acquaintance with that Branch of the Science. The Neceffity of providing Remedies against the Bites of Serpents, and other noxious Reptiles abounding in India, promoted their farther Progress in it. -The Sanfcreet Treatifes on Medicine confift principally of Receipts preferved from Age to Age, and carefully handed down from Father to Son. The ancient Indians proved to have been not ignorant of Anatomical Diffections, though regarded with Abhorrence by the modern Brahmins. Low State of the Science among CHEMISTRY, a Knowledge of this Science, effentially important in various Branches of Indian Manufactures; proved in their AGNEE-ASTRA, cr Fire-Weapons used in Battle; as well as other warlike Inftruments employed by a People whofe fecond Tribe is entirely military. the latter. THE 'HE doctrine that afferts the derivation of all the nations of the earth, however widely and variously difperfed, from one grand parent parent ftock, according to the hypothefis adopted throughout thefe volumes, a doctrine equally confonant to the voice of Scripture and the annals of India, implies that, in the remote period previous to the difperfion of the human race, they used, in common, one primæval language, radically the fame, and, at the confufion of Babel, only varied in the mode of its pronunciation; in other words, that it was a confusion of the lip, and not an alteration of language, which took place on that catastrophe; a labial failure, as Mr. Bryant judiciously expreffes himself,* which, in effect, proved fufficient to frustrate their impious defign in rearing that mighty fabric. The vestiges of this primordial language, in every dialect of the ancient world, are clearly traced in the elaborate work of M. Court de Gebeline; and, though Sir William Jones, in one of his later differtations,† feems to doubt the existence of the remains of this univerfal language, yet, in various preceding effays, that great linguist unequi * See Analyfis of Ancient Mythology, vol. iii. p. 30. † On the Origin of the Families of Nations, in the third volume of Afiatic Researches. |