OR THE BURNING OF THE DEAD. 87 
made of copper; whence he reasonably concludes, that the use 
of iron had been unknown in those regions when these monu- 
ments were erected. This might seem to carry us as far back 
as to the times of the Massagetz ; who, as we learn from Hr- 
Ropotus, used no iron, having all their weapons made of 
brass *. From the same venerable historian, we learn the great 
respect which the Scythians had for the tombs of their ances- 
tors. That intelligent traveller SrranLenzerc informs us, that 
these monuments contain earthen urns of different sizes f. 
He does not say, however, that bones have been found in any 
of them. It affords a strong presumption that many tribes of 
the Scythians anciently burned their dead, that the Chinese 
Tartars, who are said to be the descendants of those Scythians 
whose tombs are to be seen on the river Jenisei, still retain 
this mode ft. 
Perhaps the first notices which we have of this custom, in 
ancient history, occur in the slender accounts that have been 
handed down to us concerning the manners of some of the na- 
tions of Hindostan. How early they burned their dead we are 
not informed. But we certainly know, that, before the time of 
Axexanver of Macedon, they erected funeral piles for the li- 
ving. Quintus Curtius, from Troeus, asserts, that those who 
were called Wise Men, when they saw the infirmities of age 
_ approaching, ordered their pyres to be raised, and cheerfully 
devoted themselves to the flames §. The same thing is assert- 
ed by Ciemens of Alexandria concerning the Gymnosophists. 
Speaking 
"Ove piv yap & ctingecs nae) dedeis nde cooydeuis, ywrnol rec medvree xeewvras. Clio, c. 215. 
4p Description of the North and East parts of Europe and Asia, p. 364, 365, 
t Ibid. p. 365. 367. § Hist. lib. viii. 
