Chap. IV. ANTIENT METAPHYSICS. 321 



ther nation. Now, I defire to know, what other nation there was, 

 in thofe very antient times, that could have invented fo great an 

 art and of more difficult invention than any other. Some, as I have 

 obferved, think that the Phoenicians may have been the inventors 

 of this art; and that the Egyptians may have got it from them. But 

 I think I have fhown *, that it is not only in the higheft degree im- 

 probable, but even impoffible, that fuch a nation as the Phoenicians 

 Ihould have invented a langUAge of art, the moft wonderful of all 

 arts, and, at the fame time, of the moft difficult invention ; and I 

 have ihown alfo, that it is highly probable that, as they antiently 

 lived in the neighbourhood of the Egyptians, they got this art, as 

 well as other nations did, from the Egyptians. And they borrow- 

 ed one thing from the Egyptians, which no other nation did, I mean 

 circumcifionf ; for the Colchians, who pradtifed circumcifion, were 

 a colony of Egyptians; and the Jews were diredled by their God 

 to ufe that rite. 



* 



Taking it, therefore, for granted, that the Egyptians invented the 

 language of art they rauft have ufed, I am to inquire, in this chapter, 

 whether Ofiris, with the other arts he brought with him to India, did 

 not alfo bring the art of language. If the language of India were a 

 barbarous jargon, fuch as the languages I have mentioned in the firft 

 volume of the Origin of Language, it might be thought to have been 

 invented by themfelves, or learned from fome other barbarous na- 

 tion in their neighbourhood. But if it can be ihown to be a lan- 

 guage of the greateft art, fuch as never could have been invented by 

 the Indians, in the ftate they were in when Ofiris came among them, 

 nor by any other nation in the world except the Egyptians, it will 

 follow of courfe, that it mufl: have been imported by Ofiris. Now, 

 the original language of India, of which all the other languages 



Vol. IV. S f fpoken 



* See p. 277. of this vol. 



'• See Vol. I. of Origin of Language, p. 632. (2d edition). 



