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kernels of nervalam, both draftic purgatives. The quickfilver must be rubbed with the juice of wild cotton till the glo bules are invifible, and the other ingredients carefully powdered to be made into pills with the fame juice. Among the other remedies, cauftics were chiefly tried.

It is pleafing to reflect, that, of the many ferpents fuppofed to be venomous, fo few are really fo; and even thefe do not, in every inftance, inflict a fatal wound. No inftance of the bite of the viper proving fatal, in Europe, can be ascertained; and, though death fometimes happens from the bites of Indian ferpents, recovery from the wounds of thofe which are fupposed to be the most poisonous, is not uncommon.

The mangoofe is the enemy of fnakes, and often kills them, though it is fometimes wounded by them, and killed in its turn. The effects of the bites of fnakes, on fnakes, are very uncertain. They fometimes feem not to ftrike with their poifonous fangs; and fometimes, even when these act, the wound is innocent.

The organs of all poifonous faakes are fo nearly the fame, that, in general, the defcriptions of Tyfons, Ranby, and Nichols (apud Mead), are fufficient to give an adequate idea of them. Diffections, however, of fome of the poisonous ferpents of India, illuftrated with plates, are fubjoined.

This fplendid publication is illuftrated by forty-four coloured plates, befides the two defcriptive anatomical ones just mentioned. We need not fay that the whole is highly interesting, and merits particular attention.

Afiatic Refearches; or Tranfactions of the Society, inftituted in Bengal, for inquiring into the Hiftory and Antiquities, the Arts, Sciences, and Literature of Afia. Vol. II. III. IV 4to. Elmily and Bremner.

THAT it is the duty of a journalist to keep pace with the expectations of the public, and his intereft to anticipate curiofity, rather than to weary it by procrastination, we are fully fenfible but delays are fometimes unavoidable. On the prefent occafion, we cannot offer any other excufe, than that the work languished in hands which were themselves torpid, and long waited in vain for the more active moments of vigour and health. Three fucceeding volumes have fince reached us; and the only reparation that we can make is, to give a more connected view of fome fubjects which would otherwife have been frittered by divifion, and to offer, as a whole, what might not have made a fuitable impreffion in its more diftant parts. It will be obvious that we now allude to

the difcourfes of the late fir William Jones, of which we mean, in the present article, to give a connected account; and the other effays will not experience any injury, when we are enabled to bring with us, in our examination, fubfequent difcoveries to illuftrate the opinions of the authors.

As the first volume of this work occurred in our fixty-ninth yolume, it may be neceffary to premife, that the late prefident, in his anniverfary difcourfes, examined the hiftory of the five nations, which principally overfpread or conquered the continent of Afia. The defign was not taken up in the early periods of the inftitution; for the firft effay on this fubject was contained in the third anniversary addrefs.

The fourth difcourfe is in the volume now before us; and it relates to the Arabs, a nation differing effentially from the Hindoos.

Their eyes are full of vivacity, their speech voluble and articulate, their deportment manly and dignified, their apprehenfion quick, their minds always prefent and attentive; with a spirit of independence appearing in the countenances even of the lowest among them. Men will always differ in their ideas of civilization, each measuring it by the habits and prejudices of his own country; but if courtesy and urbanity, a love of poetry and eloquence, and the practice of exalted virtues, be a jufter measure of perfect fociety, we have certain proof, that the people of Arabia, both on plains and in cities, in republican and monarchical states, were eminently civilized for many ages before their conquest of Persia.'

The language of Arabia is equally distinct from that of Hindoftan, copious in a very great degree, not varied (like that of the Hindoos) by compound words, but by an elegant and fublime circumlocution. The elements or roots are triliteral, and therefore fufceptible of more numerous combinations than those of Hindoftan, the roots of which are biliteral. The language continues, in a great measure, unchanged; for, though fome impreffions have been made on the borders, Arabia has never been conquered.

The religion of Arabia was once a pure theifm; but it foon degenerated into an idolatry refembling the Persian.

We are told, that a ftrong refemblance may be found between the religions of the pagan Arabs and the Hindus; but though this may be true, yet an agreement in worshipping the fun and ftars will not prove an affinity between the two nations: the powers of God reprefented as female deities, the adoration of ftones, and the name of the idol Wudd, may lead us indeed to fufpect, that fome of the Hindu fuperftitions had found their way into Arabia; and though we have no traces in Arabian history of such a

conqueror or legiflator as the great Sefac, who is faid to have raised pillars in Yemen as well as at the mouth of the Ganges, yet fince we know, that Sácya is a title of Buddha, whom I fuppofe to be Woden, fince Buddha was not a native of India, and fince the age of Sefac perfectly agrees with that of Sácya, we may form a plaufible conjecture that they were in fact the fame perfon who travelled eastward from Ethiopia, either as a warrior or as a law-giver, about a thousand years before Christ, and whose rites we now fee extended as far as the country of Nifon, or, as the Chinese call it, Japuen, both words fignifying the Rifing Sun. Sácya may be derived from a word meaning power, or from another denoting ve getable food; so that this epithet will not determine whether he was a hero or a philofopher; but the title Buddha, or wife, may induce us to believe that he was rather a benefactor than a destroyer of his fpecies: if his religion, however, was really introduced into any part of Arabia, it could not have been general in that country; and we may fafely pronounce, that before the Mohammedan revolution, the noble and learned Arabs were theifts, but that a ftupid idolatry prevailed among the lower orders of the people.'

In arts and fciences, the Arabs were deficient. Their active exercifes on horfeback, and their military expeditions, engaged them by day; and the hours of darkness or leifure were amufed by poetry and rhetoric.

Few monuments of antiquity remain in Arabia. The cabah of Mecca, indeed, is of a very early period; but for what purpose it was originally defigned, has not been afcertained. It is too fmall for a patriarchal manfion, and may have been a temple or a tomb. The fuppofed houfes of the people of Thamud are ftill to be feen in the excavations of rocks, the original habitations of the rude ancestors of every race; and history or tradition, in Arabia, may be faid to commence from the fettlement of Yocktan, the fon of Eber, in the peninfula, about 3600 years ago.

The fifth difcourfe refpects the Tartars, the inhabitants of the vast region to the north of Perfia, India, and China. Thefe form a race diftinct from all that furround them; but, from every account, their first establishment, as a nation, does not extend beyond the common eaftern period of 3600 years.

The language of Tartary was oral only: but those who lived on the borders, from their connection with a more civilifed race, may have occafionally learned to write it. The written Tartarian language, however, was more probably · the work of their neighbours in Thibet, India, or China. The only remain of this tongue is the modern Turkish, which differs from it little more than the Portuguese from the Spanish.

The religion of Tartary was the theifm which originally prevailed in the eaft; but the inhabitants at length borrowed different fyftems from their neighbours.

Many lamas, we are affured, or priests of Buddha, have been found fettled in Siberia; but it can hardly be doubted, that the lamas had travelled thither from Tibet, whence it is more than probable, that the religion of the Buddha's was imported into fouthern Chinefe Tartary; fince we know, that rolls of Tibetian writs ing have been brought even from the borders of the Cafpian. The complexion of Buddha himself, which, according to the Hindus, was between white and ruddy, would perhaps have convinced M. Bailly, had he known the Indian tradition, that the last great legiflator and god of the east was a Tartar; but the Chinese confider him as a native of India; the Brahmins infift, that he was born in a forest near Gayâ; and many reasons may lead us to fufpect, that his religion was carried from the weft and the fouth to thofe eastern and northern countries, in which it prevails. On the whole, we meet with few or no traces in Scythia of Indian rites and fuperftitions, or of that poetical mythology with which the Sanfcrit poems are decorated; and we may allow the Tartars to have adored the fun with more reason than any fouthern people, without admitting them to have been the fole original inventors of that univerfal folly we may even doubt the originality of their veneration for the four elements, which forms a principal part of the ritual introduced by Zerátufht, a native of Rai in Perfia, born in the reign of Gufhtasf, whose fon Pafhúten is believed by the Parfi's to have refided long in Tartary, at a place called Cangidir, where a magnificent palace is faid to have been built by the father of Cyrus, and where the Perfian prince, who was a zealot in the new faith, would naturally have diffeminated its tenets among the neighbouring Tartars.'

The remains of antiquity in western Scythia have excited great attention, and affifted M. Bailly's fanciful hypothefis ; but the line of ramparts, defigned to reprefs the predatory inroads of the Scythians through the paffes of Caucafus, fhow that fomething valuable and worthy of prefervation existed in this country; and, when we meet with an enlightened view of ancient commerce, we fhall, perhaps, find that through these regions the bulk of the commercial objects of the east once paffed. In fcientific acquifitions, the Tartars never advanced beyond their infancy. They have left no monuments of their proficiency in these respects.

The fixth difcourfe (the fourth that comprises the history of the eastern nations) relates to Perfia. This term we must fill ufe, though it is, in reality, only the appellation of one of the provinces of Iran, the true name of the whole king

dom; as, with genuine claffic bigotry, we ftill call the Forat the Euphrates, and Khofrau, Cyrus.

The language of Perfia was three-fold. That of the court called Deri, a refined and elegant dialect of the Parsì-the Pahlavi, the language of the earliest heroes-and a religious language, called Zend-are enumerated. On a minute examination, it appears that the Pahlavi was the Chaldaic, and the Parsì, as well as the Zend, almost a pure Sanscrit.

From an expelled fect which retired to India, we learn that the first monarch, and the founder of the first religion in Perfia, was Mahabad. His inftitution was that of the religion and civil polity of Hindoftan, which was afterwards reformed by Zeratufht (Zoroafter), with the addition of fome fubordinate genii and a few ceremonies, and the establishment of the worship of ONE TRUE GOD. It is poffible, that Pythagoras might have known this reformer of the Perfian religion; but there is no evidence that thefe great men had any intercourfe. The religion of Zoroafter continued, till it was fuperfeded by that of Mohammed. The conclu fion of this part is of too much confequence to be given in any words but thofe of the author.

It has been proved, by clear evidence and plain reafoning, that a powerful monarchy was established in Iràn long before the Affyrian, or Pífhdádì, government; that it was in truth a Hindu monarchy, though if any chufe to call it Cufian, Cafdean, or Scythian, we fhall not enter into a debate on mere names; that it fubfifted many centuries; and that its history has been ingrafted on that of the Hindus, who founded the monarchies of Ayodhya and Indrapreftha; that the language of the first Perfian empire wast the mother of the Sanfcrit, and confequently of the Zend and Parfi, as well as of Greek, Latin, and Gothick; that the language of the Affyrians was the parent of Chaldaick and Pahlavi; and that the primary Tartarian language alfo had been current in the fame empire; although, as the Tartars had no books, or even letters, we cannot with certainty trace their unpolifhed and variable idioms. We discover therefore in Perfia, at the earliest dawn of history, the three diftinct races of men, whom I described on former occafions as poffeffors of India, Arabia, Tartary; and whether they were collected in Iran from diftant regions, or diverged from it, as from a common center, we fhall easily determine by the following confiderations.

Let us obferve in the first place the central pofition of Iran, which is bounded by Arabia, by Tartary, and by India; whilst Arabia lies contiguous to Iràn only, but is remote from Tartary," and divided even from the skirts of India by a confiderable gulf; no country, therefore, but Perfia feems likely to have fent forth its colonies to all the kingdoms of Afia. The Brahmans could

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