Asiatic Researches, Volume 1

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Page 429 - The Sanscrit language, whatever be its antiquity, is of a wonderful structure; more perfect than the Greek, more copious than the Latin, and more exquisitely refined than either; yet bearing to both of them a stronger affinity, both in the roots of verbs, and in the forms of grammar, than could possibly have been produced by accident; so strong, indeed, that no philologer could examine them all three without believing them to have sprung from some common source, which, perhaps, no longer exists.
Page 252 - He, desiring to raise up various creatures by an emanation from His own glory, first created the waters, and impressed them with a power of motion ; by that power was produced a golden egg, blazing like a thousand suns, in which was born Brahma, self-existing, the great parent of all rational beings.
Page 432 - Bacon, that it consisted solely of moral and metaphysical allegories, nor with Bryant, that all the heathen divinities are only different attributes and representations of the Sun or of deceased progenitors, but conceive that the whole system of religious fables rose, like the Nile, from several distinct sources, yet I cannot but agree, that one great spring and fountain of all idolatry in the four quarters of the globe was the veneration paid by men...
Page xii - Ilijjus to the mouths of the Ganges: on your left are the beautiful and celebrated provinces of Iran or...
Page 429 - Chaldaic letters, in which most Hebrew books are copied, were originally the same, or derived from the same prototype, both with the Indian and Arabian characters: that the Phenician, from which the Greek and Roman alphabets were formed by various changes and inversions, had a similar origin, there can be little doubt...
Page 429 - ... so strong, indeed, that no philologer could examine them all three without believing them to have sprung from some common source, which perhaps no longer exists. There is a similar reason, though not quite so forcible, for supposing that both the Gothick and the Celtick, though blended with a very different idiom, had the same origin with the Sanscrit; and the old Persian might be added to the same family, if this were the place for discussing any question concerning the antiquities of Persia.
Page 163 - The great rock is about fifty or one hundred yards from the sea ; but close to the sea are the remains of a pagoda built of brick, and dedicated to Sib, the greatest part of which has evidently been swallowed up by that element; for the door of the innermost apartment, in which the idol is placed, and before which there are always two or three spacious courts surrounded with walls, is now washed by the waves, and the pillar used to discover the meridian at the time of founding the pagoda, is seen...
Page 253 - ... creatures by the name of Brahma. That God, having dwelled in the Egg, through revolving years, Himself meditating on himself, divided it into two equal parts ; and from those halves formed the heavens and the earth, placing in the midst the subtle ether, the eight points of the world, and the permanent receptacle of waters.
Page 401 - Cosha is as follows; the accused is made to drink three draughts of the water, in which the images of the Sun, of Devi, and other deities...
Page 240 - O thou tamer of enemies, the three worlds will be plunged in an ocean of death ; but, in the midst of the destroying waves, a large vessel sent by me for thy use shall stand before thee. Then...

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