though long attributed to Arabian ingenuity, is the undoubted fruit of Indian genius; for, various treatifes on this useful fcience, as well as geometry, are alluded to in Sir William Jones's Differtation (the last which he wrote) on the Philofophy of India; and, being in Sanfcreet, they must neceffarily be of an age far anterior to that of Archimedes, the great practical geometrician of Greece. With refpect to the substance of thefe treatises, that is ftill among the Indian defiderata; though probably this will not long be the cafe, if Mr. Davis fhould fortunately have health and leisure to pursue the peculiar line of ftudy which he has chofen for his province, and by which he has already been enabled fo fuccefsfully to elucidate the abstruse mathematical fciences of the Brahmins.

The great advance, alfo, which we shall hereafter fee the ancient Indians had made in mufic, a fcience in which founds are expreffed by lines or chords accurately divided and arranged according to geometrical rules, exhibits an additional proof of their progrefs in this

Afiatic Refearehes, vol. iv. p. 178, London, quarto edit.

fpecies

fpecies of neceffary knowledge. But what most of all proves their attachment to this science, as well as their exalted opinion concerning it, is, that, in their mysterious and hieroglyphic theology, they were accustomed to apply the figures and characters used in it to illuftrate their ideas of the fanctity and perfection of the Deity. They transferred their geometrical fpeculations from body to spirit; and, from measuring terreftrial objects, they attempted to define fubjects immeafurable, infinite, eternal. They compared the Deity to a CIRCLE, that most perfect and comprehenfive of all mathematical figures, whofe centre is every where but whose circumference is no where to be found; and in allufion to the ancient doctrine of a certain plurality, which it has been demonftrated in preceding pages they believed to exift in the divine nature, they defignated it by the expreffive fymbol of an equilateral TRIANGLE. Hence the winged globes that decorate the front of all the Egyptian temples, and the triangular columns in memorial of their facred triad, at the entrance of most of the Indian pagodas.

MEDICINE.

To a minute inveftigation of the peculiar virtues and qualities contained in certain plants and herbs the old Indians were naturally incited by the vast variety and beauty of those innumerable vegetable productions that cover the face of that fertile region. Thefe in many places grow up spontaneously; many, applied to facred uses, the minifters of religion reverently cherished; and many the hand of traffic diligently cultivated for exportation. Her rich fpices and aromatics of every kind, her coftly gums, and fragrant nards, of fovereign efficacy in the healing art, exceed all calculation in number and value.

Their beauty, number, and variety, indeed, could not fail of being most attentively marked by a race, who lived almost wholly in the open air; who ranged through vaft forests, barefoot, in penances and in distant pilgrimages; or refided in delicious groves; and, if the fcenes of the Sacontala reprefent them justly, who cultivated in delicious gardens the facred

plants

plants of cufa, bilva, the lotos, the fandal, and other trees, for the fervice of the temples.

The Brahmins in those ages exclusively professed the medical fcience; and it was abfolutely neceffary for those who subsisted on the vegetable productions of the earth to be well informed of the falutary or noxious quality of the roots on which they fed. Their advance in this science, confequently, must have been very gradual: it depended upon long and intenfe obfervation of the effect on the human constitution, produced by the different species of herbs and plants cultivated in the garden or growing wild in the field; and wisdom, in many inftances, could only have been obtained by fatal experience. They alfo fedulously observed the effect of different plants upon animals; and as Melampus, a Greek, devoted to the concerns of pastoral life, from obferving that goats were purged after eating the bitter root hellebore, administered it afterwards with fimilar effect to man, and was therefore confidered as the inventor of that branch of the fcience; fo, doubtless, the Brahmins, in the boundless forefts of India, were guided to the use or re

jection

jection in phyfic of the various vegetables that fpring up fpontaneously in that more exuberant foil.* The venomous tribes of reptiles, beautiful.

I beg permiffion to infert in this place a note, fraught with information highly illuftrative of the fubject under confideration, from the elaborate Hiftory of the Origin of Medicine, published fome years ago by my learned friend Dr. Lettfom.

"The ancients inform us, that the vulnerary virtues of dittany were firft learned from the ftag; Plin. l. xxv. c. 53. Theophraft. 1.ix. c. 16. That the fame animal purges itself by means of fefeli; Aelian, 1. xiii. c. 50. That men learned that the ligneous part of caffia was laxative from the ape; Fallop. Purg. Simplic. 35. That the mungoufe, a fpecies of ferret, eats a certain root, after which he attacks the ferpent with impunity; Kæmpfer. Exot. Fafc. iii. c. 10. Auct Herb. Amb. c. 37, 53. G. ab Orta, 1.i. c. 44. et Loch, in Diff. On which account it is used in malignant difeafes. - That the deer wounds its eyes when they are inflamed with the point of a rufh, and the goat with the bramble; Geopon. 1. xviii. c. 18. Plin, l. viii. c. 50, Aelian. 1, vii. c. 14. That the tortoife defends itself against the bite of à ferpent by origanum; Aelian. Anim. 1. vi. c. 11. That the bear, by means of the arum, opens its inteftines, almost collapfed during winter; idem, 1. vi. c. 3. That the fame animal licks up ants as an antidote, when poisoned by eating the mandrake; Plin. l. viii. c. 27. — That jays, partridges, and blackbirds, purge themselves with the leaves of laurel during their moulting; idem. That pigeons, cocks, and doves, ufe pellitory, and ducks and geefe ftone-crop, for the fame purpose; idem. That hawks cure their eyes by the juice of the hawk-weed; Aelian. Anim. 1. ii. c. 43. That the serpent cafts the skin off its eyes by the application of fennel; idem, l. ix. c. 16. That partridges, ftorks, and wood-pigeons, heal their wounds by origanum; idem, 1. v. c. 46. That, from dogs eating certain herbs, in order to purge themselves, the Egyp