24t ANTIENT METAPHYSICS. Book IL 



muft have had with fo many foreigners fettled in their country, the 

 Hindoos, that is the native Indians, preferve the antient form of 

 poUty, by which the people were divided into fo many claffes, or 

 cciftsy as the Indians call them, kept diftindl from one another, and 

 not intermixed by marriages. The firft of thefe cafts is the Bra- 

 mins, who are precifely what the Priefts in Egypt were ; for they 

 have the care of the religion of the country. They are the coun- 

 cillors of the Rajahs or antieat Princes of the country ; and they 

 are the depofitai-ies of the arts and fciences, which the Egyptians 

 imported into India, and particularly of that language, of moil won- 

 derful art, called the Shanfcrit, and which I hope to be able to prove 

 was the antient language of Egypt. They have alfo a military caft, 

 which they call Rajaputs: and who are fo much fitted, both by their 

 nature and education, to ije foldiers, that, as I am informed by our 

 ■officers who hav^? been ia Jnuia, they are the beft men among our 

 Seapoys, when thev can be got j but it is no^ eafy to get them, as 

 they are of lb uigaiiied a eg^. rAad, befides thtfe two higheit calls, 

 they have inferior calls, fuch as thoie. . ot fanners, herdimen, &;c.; 

 and which are all kept feparate from one another, as the fame claifes 

 were in Egvpt. And, as the Egyptians were fo happy under their 

 government, rliC Indians, I am told, are likewife very happy un- 

 der the fame form of government, notwithflanding all the diilur- 

 bances that they have met with in later times from foreigners ; but 

 which hive made them alter nothing of their culloms and manners. 

 Mr Raftings, who is a man of great fenfe and obfervation as well 

 as of learning, and who was 32 years in India, and governor there 

 for 13 of theie years, tells me, that he thinks them the happleft peo- 

 ple he has ever known : And, as to their polity, he fays, that their 

 diviiion into cafts, (a fmgularity of the Egyptian government, which 

 is only preferved in India), makes all theix bufinefs of life go on 

 much better than it would otherwife do; as they have there no man 

 t)f many trades, but every man has a bufmefs of his own, to which 

 he wholly applies himfelf. And, indeed, that the divifion of the 



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