ly neceflary to public fafety; for among the duties of magiftrates prefcribed by the Pundits, one is, that he fhall erect a strong fort in the place where he chufes to "refide; and fhall build a wall on "all the four fides of it, with tow"ers and battlements, and fhall "make a full ditch around it." Of thefe fortreffes several remain, which, both from the appearance of the buildings, and from the tradition of the natives, must have been conftructed in very remote times. Mr. Hodges has published views of three of thefe, one of Chunar Gur, fituated upon the river Ganges, about fixteen miles above the city of Benares; the fecond, of Gwalior, about eighty miles to the fouth of Agra; the third of Bidjegur, in the territory of Benares. They are all, particularly Gwalior, works of confiderable magnitude and ftrength. The fortreffes in Bengal, however, are not to be compared with feveral in the Deccan. Affeergur, Burhampour, and Dowlatabad, are deemed by the natives to be impregnable; and I am affured, by a good judge, that Affeergur is indeed a molt ftupendous work, and fo advantageously fituated that it would be extremely difficult to reduce it by force.

"Nor is it only from furveying their public works that we are juftified in afferting the early proficiency of the Indians in elegant and ufeful arts: we are led to form the fame conclufion by a view of thofe productions of their ingenuity, which were the chief articles of their trade with foreign nations. Of these the labours of the Indian loom and needle have, in every age, been the most celebrated; and fine linen is conjectured, with fome probability, to have been called by the ancients

Sindon, from the name of the river Indus or Sindus, near which it was wrought in the highest perfection. The cotton manufactures of India feem anciently to have been as much admired as they are at present, not only for their delicate texture, but, for the elegance with which fome of them are embroidered, and the beautiful colour of the flowers with which others are adorned. From the earlieft period of European intercourfe with India, that country has been diftinguifhed for the number and excellence of the substances for dying various colours, with which it abounded. The dye of the deep blue colour in highest estimamation among the Romans bore the name of Indicum. From India too, the fubftance ufed in dying a bright red colour, feems to have been imported; and it is well known that both in the cotton and filk_ftuffs which we now receive from India, the blue and the red are the colours of most confpicuous luftre and beauty. But however much the ancients may have admired thefe productions of Indian art, fome circumftances, which I have already mentioned, rendered their demand for the cotton manufactures of India, far inferior to that of modern times; and this has occafioned the information concerning them which we receive from the Greek and Roman writers to be very imperfect. We may conclude, however, from the wonderful refemblance of the ancient ftate of India to the modern, that, in every period, the productions of their looms were as various as beautiful. The ingenuity of the Indians in other kinds of workman fhip, particularly in metals and in ivory, is mentioned with praife by ancient authors, but without any particular defcription of their nature. Of these

early

early productions of Indian artists, there are now fome fpecimens in Eurose, from which it appears that they were acquainted with the method of engraving upon the hardest ftones and gems; and, both in the elegance of their defigns and in neat nefs of execution, had arrived at a confiderable degree of excellence. An ingenious writer maintains, that the art of engraving on gems was probably an Indian invention, and certainly was early improved there, and he fupports this opinion by feveral plaufible arguments: The Indian engraved gems, of which he has published defcriptions, appear to be the workmanship of a very remote period, as the legends on them are in the Sanfkreet language, "But it is not only from the improved state of mechanic arts in India that we conclude its inhabitants to have been highly civilized; a proof of this, ftill more convincing, may be deduced from the early and extraordinary productions of their genius in the fine arts. This evidence is rendered more interefting, by being derived from a fource of knowledge which the laudable curiofity of our countrymen has opened to the people of Europe within thefe few years. That all the fcience and literature poffefled by the Brahmins, were contained in books written in a language, understood by a

few only of the most learned among them, is a fact which has long been known; and all the Europeans fettled in India during three centuries, have complained that the Brahmins obftinately refused to inftruct any perfon in this language. But at length, by addrefs, mild treatment, and a perfuafion, that the earneftnefs with which inftruction was folicited, proceeded not from any intention of turning their religion into derision, but from a defire of acquiring a perfect knowledge of their fciences and literature, their fcruples have been overcome. Seyeral British gentlemen are now completely matters of the Sanskreet language. The mysterious veil, formerly deemed impenetrable, is removed; and, in the course of five years, the curiofity of the public has been gratified by two publications as fingular as they were unexp &ted. The one is a tranflation, by Mr. Wilkins, of an Episode from the Mahabarat, an Epic poem, in high eftimation among the Hindoos, compofed, according to their account, by Kreefhna Dwypayen Veias, the most eminent of all their Brahmins, above three thousand years before the Chriftian æra, The other is Sacontala, a dramatic poem, written about a century before the birth of Chrift, tranflated by fir William Jones."

SIR

έσ

hall offer

HE word China, concern fome new remarks, is well known to the people, whom we call the Chinefe; but they never apply it (I fpeak of the learned among them) to themselves or to their country: themselves, according to Father Vifdelou, they defcribe as the pecple of Han, or of fome other illuftribus family, by the memory of whofe actions they flatter their national pride; and their country they call chum cue, or the central kingdom, reprefenting it in their fymbolical characters by a parallelogram exactly biffected: at other times they diftinguish it by the words tien-hia, or what is under heaven, meaning all that is valuable on earth. Since they never name themselves with moderation, they would have no right to complain, if they knew, that European authors have ever spoken of them in the extremes of applaufe or of cenfure: by fome they have been extolled as the oldeft and the wifeft, as the most learned and most ingenious, of nations; whilft others have derided their pretenfions to antiquity, condemned their government as abominable, and arraigned their manners as inhuman, without allowing them an element of science; or a fingle art, for which they have not been indebted to fome more ancient and more civilized race of men. The truth perhaps iies, where we ufually find it, between the extremes; but it is not my defign to accufe or to defend the Chinefe, to deprefs or to aggrandize

them: I thall confine myself to the

difcuffion of a queftion connected

with my former dif ourfes, and far lefs eafy to be folved than any hitherto ftarted. "Whence came the "fingular people, who long had "governed China, before they were "conquered by the Tartars?" On this problem, the folution of which has no concern, indeed, with our political or commercial interefts, but a very material connection, if I miftake not, with interests of a higher nature, four opinions have been advanced, and all rather peremptorily afferted, than fupported by argument and evidence. By a few writers it has been urged, that the Chinese are an original race, who have dwelled for ages, if not from eternity, in the land, which they now poffefs; by others, and chiefly by the miffionaries, it is in fifted, that they fprang from the fame ftock with the Hebrews and Arabs; a third affertion is that of the Arabs themselves and of M. Pauw, who hold it indubitable, that they were originally Tartars defcending in wild clans from the fteeps of Imaus; and a fourth, at leaft as dogmatically pronounced as any of the preceding, is that of the Bráhmens, who decide, without allowing any appeal from their deci. Gion, that the Chinas (for fo they are named in Sanfcrit) were Hindus of the Cihatriya, or military clats, who, abandoning the privileges of their tribe, rambled in different bodies to the north-east of Bengal ; and, forgetting by degrees the rites

and

ftill are, famed 'as ingenious antificers; and they had themfelves feen old Chinese idols, which bore a manifest relation to the primitive religion of India before Buddha's appearance in it. A well-informed Pandit fhowed me a Sanferit book in Cashmirian letters, which, he faid, was revealed by Siva himself, and entitled Satifangama: he read to me a whole chapter of it on the heterodox opinions of the Chinas, who were divided, fays the author, into near two hundred clans. I then laid before him a map of Afia; and, when I pointed to Cafl. mir, his own country, he inftantly placed his finger on the north-weftern provinces of China, where the Chinas, he faid, firft eftablished themselves; but he added, that Mahachina, which was alfo mentioned in his book, extended to the eaftern and fouthern oceans. I believe, nevertheless, that the Chinese empire, as we now call it, was not formed when the laws of Menu were collected; and for this belief, fo repugnant to the general opinion, I am bound to offer my reafons. If the outline of history and chronology for the last two thoufand years be correctly traced, (and we muft be hardy fcepticks to doubt it) the poems of Cálida's were compofed before the beginning of our era: now it is clear, from internal and and external evidence, that the Ràmayan and Mahabharat were confiderably older than the productions of that poet; and it appears from the ftyle and metre of the Dherina Saftra revealed by Menu, that it was reduced to writing long before the age of Valmic or Vyáfa, the fecond of whom names it with ap plaufe: we shall not, therefore, be thought extravagant, if we place the compiler of thofe laws between a thousand and fifteen hundred

8

years before Chrift; efpecially as Buddha, whofe age is pretty well afcertained, is not mentioned in then; but, in the twelfth century before our era, the Chinese empire was at leaft in its cradle. This fact it is neceffary to prove; and my first witnefs is Confucius himself. 1 know to what keen fatire I fhall expofe myfelf by citing that philofopher, after the bitter farcasms of M. Pauw against him and against the tranflators of his mutilated, but valuable, works; yet I quote without fcruple the book entitled Lù Yu, of which I poffefs the original with a verbal translation, and which I know to be fufficiently authentick for my prefent purpofe: in the fecond part ofwhich Con-fut-fu declares, that "Although he, like other men, "could relate, as mere leffons of "morality, the hiftories of the first "and fecond imperial houses, yet, "for want of evidence, he could "give no certain account of them.” Now, if the Chinese themselves do not even pretend, that any historical monument exifted, in the age of Confucius, preceding the rife of their third dynasty, about eleven hundred years before the Christian epoch we may juftly conclude, that the reign of Vuvam was in the infancy of their empire, which hardly grew to maturity till fome ages after that prince; and it has been afferted by the learned Europeans, that even of the third dynasty, which he has the fame of having raised, no unfufpected memorial can now be produced. It was not till the eighth century before the birth of our Saviour, that a small kingdom was erected in the province of Shen-fi, the capital of which ftood nearly in the thirty-fifth degree of northern latitude, and about five degrees to the weft of Si-gan: both the country and its metropolis

were