fpreads Egypt with a gentle and gradual advance of its fertilizing waters, but the rapidity and overwhelming violence of a torrent pouring down from, Paropamifus, the Gauts, and other high mountains in various regions of India, would not fail to beat down and obliterate every barrier which man, in the infancy of agriculture, could erect against its rage; and, as the first settlements of his race doubtless took place in the Higher Afia, and nearest the region where the ark rested, I confider the long-contefted question, whether the Indians or the Egyptians were the first inventors of this fcience, to be in confequence very much in favour of the former. But a stronger and still more conclufive argument, in favour of the latter pofition, feems to be the impoffibility of otherwise exactly proportioning the rate after which every individual zemindar, or land-holder, was equally in the most early and the most recent periods of the Indian empire affeffed, and which univerfally depended upon the quantity of ground poffeffed and cultivated by him. The ancient claffical writers affert, that the tax paid to the government in India was the fourth part of the produce of the.

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foil;

foil; but, upon Sanfcreet authority, near two thousand years old, I can affert that it was at that period, and probably previously to it, the fixth part only of that produce; for, to that purport, in the Sacontala, does the Emperor Dushmanta decifively exprefs himself.* Similar accounts, I am aware, may be found in Herodotus and Diodorus Siculus concerning the mode of collecting the tribute in Egypt; but, throughout this work, both Egyptians and Ethiopians are considered as an emigrated race, originally Indians, and to the parent country, therefore, when cuftoms are fo ftrikingly fimilar, the honour of invention cannot with juftice be denied.

As the Egyptians had with immenfe labour dug the vast lake Moris, and other ample refervoirs for the waters of the retiring Nile against the period of drought; so alfo have the ancient Indians formed, by the niceft rules of geometrical proportion, in every quarter of their empire that required it, fquare tanks of prodigious magnitude for the fame purpose. In their ftupendous efforts in architecture particularly, the triangu

Sacontala, act v. P. 53.

lar

lar pyramid, the circle, the fquare, and the cone, for ever occur in the internal or external parts of their temples. And by what means was it poffible for such ponderous ftones, as, for instance, those that crown the fummit of the grand portal of Chillambrum, forty feet long, and five broad, to be raised to the altitude of one hundred and twentytwo feet, but by the aid of geometry joined to mechanics? From what other fource has it arifen that the amazing coloffal carved work and images in Salfette and Elephanta, of stupendous antiquity, are executed according to the rules of fuch just proportion as they are reprefented to be by Mr. Hunter and others who have accurately examined them? and that fuch lofty columns, richly adorned with mythological fculptures, are seen elevated to a vaft height in every province of Hindoftan? In respect to astronomy, it was abfolutely neceffary that they fhould be poffeffed of a very ample portion of geometrical skill to fix fo precisely, as they have, the position of their pagodas, in order that their four fides fhould face the four cardinal points; pagodas, many of them erected in the remotest periods of their empire;

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empire; and to form thofe ancient astronomical tables mentioned above which have fo highly excited the aftonishment of the literati of Europe.

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It was long fuppofed that the ten numerical characters of ARITHMETIC were the invention of the Arabians: that nation, however, only introduced them into Europe, and confess themselves obliged to the Indians for them, among whom they were immemorially ufed. A nation, indeed, fo devoted to commerce, as the Indians, could not carry on their concerns without this aid; and, while the polished governments of Rome and Greece were awkwardly ufing, for the purpose of enumeration, the letters of the alphabet, this wife and ingenious people, by the invention of the figures in question, were performing, with the utmost facility, the most complex calculations. Indeed, their adroitnefs in this refpect has often been the admiration of foreigners, as a Banyan merchant, by the operation of memory only, and without pen or paper, is faid to fum up his accounts with the greatest accuracy; and even the vulgar Indian, with his fingers, drawing the fymbols of arithmetic in the

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fand,

fand, will go, with eafe and celerity, through the moft intricate numerical details.

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art of ready computation was effentially neceffary where the property was fo various, where the annual revenues both of the fovereign and of many individuals among his fubjects were so immenfe, and where fuch accuracy was neceffary with respect to the number, weight, and measure, of the commodities trafficked in. Connected with geometry and arithmetic is the invention of the balance, a fymbol early exalted to the zodiac by the Brahmin aftronomers, and in all likelihood alfo the product of the genius of this commercial people. The advance of the ancient Indians in mechanic fcience of every kind muft, for the reafons above-mentioned, have been very early and very great; and, in fact, like the venerable fabricators of Stonehenge and Abury, they feem to have been in poffeffion of fome fecrets in that fcience which have not been tranfmitted to their pofterity.

The fame fpecies of injuftice that would rob them of the honour of inventing the decimal scale, the Indians appear to have suffered in regard to ALGEBRA, which, though

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