miration, by fuffering India, in exchange for the commodities thus richly ornamented, to engross the bullion of the whole world. Religion itself seems to have greatly promoted as well as fanctioned this art in India for, we have feen, in the fifth volume of this work, that, from the very dawn of their religious inftitution, the various cafts have been distinguished by different colours, it being the indifpenfable duty of the Brahmin, when in the morning he opens the portals of the pagoda for public worship, at their entrance, to mark the crowd of votaries on the forehead with the TILUK, a painted longi tudinal or parallel line, either of vermilion or faffron, as they may happen to belong to the fect of Veefhnu or Seeva. Brahma, Veeshnu, and Seeva, are themselves painted of three diftinct colours; and indeed all the deities in their pagodas are gaudily decorated in the fame manner as were thofe of their forefathers, the Chaldæans, according to the imagined colours of their feven dii majores, the planetary train. * As I am bound by my propofals to compare the progress in scientific attainment of the Indians with that of their Afiatic and Egyptian neighbours, neighbours, I fhall take that parallel furvey previously to any particular difcuffion of the proceffes employed by the Indians in painting on filk, cotton, and other materials. Plato is of opinion that the Egyptians had practised painting during ten thousand years.* Pliny, fomewhat more moderate in his calculation, fixes the period of its commencement at fix thousand years before his time. What particular object either of these authors could have in view, by pretending thus accurately to determine the epoch in queftion, it is difficult to fay; but, in various preceding accounts of Egyptian remains, prefented to the reader from Pococke and Norden, we have feen, that, both on the roofs of the temples of the Thebais, and on the walls of the grottoes that border on the Nile, the colours and gilding, after the lapfe of nearly three thousand years, had preserved unimpaired their dazzling brilliancy. This fingular phænomenon may in part be explained by the clearness of the atmosphere in a country where scarcely a cloud obfcures the horizon, and where very little rain falls, and partly in the fuperior excellence and durability of the colours themselves, which, in all likelihood, they obtained from India, or rather brought with them when their ancestors first emigrated from its fhores; fince the RED and the BLUE, the ftandard colours of that country, are particularly noticed by those travellers as the predominant ones.* * Those celebrated writers of antiquity, therefore, by fuch strong expreffions, could only have meant to deliver it as their opinion, that, for the depth and freshness of the colours, they were well calculated to have lafted during those extended periods. To be convinced, indeed, of that fuperior excellence, we need only attentively examine the hieroglyphic painting on the mummies in the British Museum, which cannot be of a date greatly inferior to three thousand years; for, both the gilding on the face of the one, and the pictured imagery on the other, are as fresh as if not above a century old. If we caft our eye back towards Affyria, in the temple of Belus, as defcribed by Diodorus, we shall find a very early and afto * Lucas, vol. i. p. 99. Pococke, vol. i. p. 199. Bruce's Travels, vol. i. p. 126. nishing nifhing fpecimen of this art in Afia. The hand of the painter had decorated the walls and the cieling with emblematical defigns allufive to the birth of nature and the firft principles of things: fome of the figures, like thofe of India, combining in one androginous body the two fexes, an undoubted perversion of that text, male and female created he them; and others being compounded of the parts of man and beast. This marked refémblance in the fymbolical paintings of the two nations affords another striking instance of the truth of the grand pervading argument of thefe volumes, founded on the bafis of Scripture, that Chaldæa (not Scythia, as Bailly contends) was the parent country of the Indians as well as of the whole human race. Let it not be forgotten that they could not have formed these vivid colours, or fixed them fo immutably, without a very confiderable advance in chemical fcience. The figures in thefe pieces of imagery were doubtless very rudely defigned and ill proportioned, fuch as might be naturally expected in the infancy of science; but the energy of the expreffion and the luftre of the colours are not affected by this conceffion. A farther evidence of the progress of the Affyrians in this art is afforded in the paintings which are recorded by the fame author to have decorated the walls of the magnificent caftle and palace, afterwards built, by Semiramis, at Babylon, on which were painted, to the life, all the kinds of animals in their natural colours; and, as these colours are expreffly faid by Diodorus to have been laid on the bricks, when newly made, and afterwards burnt in, it fhews that they understood the art of working in ENAMEL. We must not wonder, therefore, to find the Indians, in a few ages after, excelling in this kind of work as well as in the manufacture of the finest porcelain. With respect to Perfia, I confider what in preceding volumes has been related concerning the fplendid decorations of the roof of the cave of Mithra, the blue vault spangled with ftars of gold, the zodiacal constellations which emblazoned the walls, and the animals of that zodiac, all in their natural colours, as alone affording very ample proof of their advance in this art. That remarkable theological fymbol, also, which they used in thofe caverns, the ladder, with the feven gates named |