Sanscrit Writing and Lan^uase. 115 



.-J, >*,»W .^<*,./g M/l*^ 



their way into the forests of Germany; — without any conceivable motive for 

 their adopting such a course, and withcfut either the courage or the energy that 

 must have been requisite for putting it into execution. Surely the bare state- 

 ment of this hypothesis is sufficient to expose its monstrous improbability ; the 

 Ganges might almost as easily be conceived to have in days of old flowed back- 

 ward to water the wilds of Siberia. Oh no ! The larger currents of human 

 emigration have never taken such a direction as that here fancied ;* it has always 

 been, on the contrary, the hardy sons of the north who, in search of more genial 

 climes and more fertile soils, have made incursions towards the south ; and the 

 admixture of German with the languages of Persia and India, can be accounted 

 for only by the supposition of numerous hordes of Germans having formerly 

 made good their settlement in those countries. 



The correctness of this view of the subject history supports, not only by 

 recording analogous cases of emigration, but still farther by supplying us, — there 

 is some reason to think,— even with the very identical instance which occasioned 



from this point, instead of continuing their route by land, they embarked on the Black Sea, and made 

 a descent upon the coasts of Greece." — Baron Cuvier's Lectures on the Natural Sciences. With 

 respect to the prohahility here stated, therie are two points which I beg to submit to the reader's 

 consideration. Supposing a body of five or six hundred thousand Indians, with their wives and 

 children, were now to force their way to the eastern shores of the Black Sea: 1°. is there in the 

 entire of that sea, even at the present day, shipping sufficient to convey such a multitude on the 

 voyage pointed out by the Baron ? 2°. even granting the shipping there to be sufficient for the pur- 

 pose in question, is it ever collected, the whole of it together, on the eastern shore, or if it were, 

 would the Indians, in the imagined case, be able to prevent the dispersion and escape of by far its 

 greater part ? 



* The strangeness of the hypothesis under consideration reminds one of Seneca's fanciful pre- 

 diction, that Indians should settle on the banks of the Arras or the Wolga; and Persians on the 

 Elbe and the Rhine. 



" Indus gelidum potat Araxem ; 

 Albim PerssB, Rhenumque bibunt." 



SeneccB Medea, Act. ii, vv. 373-4. 



How very different in its bearing upon the same point is the prophecy of Noah ! In this pro- 

 phecy — the oldest but one in the Bible, and which history, as far back as it reaches, remarkably 

 verifies, — it is foretold, not that Asiatic nations should settle in Europe, but on the contrary, that 

 Europeans should establish their residence in Asia. " God shall enlarge Japheth, and he shall dwell 

 in the tents of Shem." — Gen, ix. 27. 



P 2 



