DIVERSITY OF RACES. 181 



would seem to indicate a peculiar foreign agency ; since every 

 such institution in modern nations, of which an origin has been 

 recorded, is known to have sprung from the advent of foreigners, 

 superior either in authority or in native powers. That such was 

 the case in at least one of the ancient nations, we have the 

 clearest evidence in the distinctive character of the sacred caste 

 of the Hindoos, which is acknowledged to be of foreign ex- 

 traction.* 



But further, all the traditions of the East refer the origin of 

 its literary and religious castes to the distant North. Thither the 

 Magi and the Zendish priests of Western Asia point as to the 

 home of their heroes and their gods.f From thence, in remote 

 antiquity, came down the Brahmins of India, diffusing through- 

 out the South a foreign culture.^ The Chaldeans are said to 

 have been strangers in Assyria, whose native land was far among 

 the Highlands of Upper Asia. The priests of Lao-tseu, from 

 whose system the great Confucius drew the elements of his 

 practical philosophy, trace back the wanderings of their sect to 

 the same regions of the North.] That the same early teachers 

 found their way to the Nile as to the Ganges, is shown from the 

 fact that, of all nations, no two have ever had more dissimilar 

 languages, or a more identical cultivation, than Egypt and India.^f 

 Hence we conclude that the ancient civilization of the East was 

 there introduced by foreigners, who were so few as to be unable 

 to change the native tongues of the lands they civilized, as also 

 that it emanated all from those same lofty table-lands of the bold 

 Tartar, from which Asia has recruited its dynasties from time 

 immemorial. 



To this tendency of tradition to assign to oriental advance- 

 ment, dating back with much certainty to diluvian ages, a still 

 more ancient original in the regions tow r ard the Arctic, the 

 accounts of travelers who have penetrated thither add much cor- 

 roborative evidence. They tell us that over the vast snow-fields 

 of Siberia and the bleak uplands of Tartary, where now roam a 



*Heeren's Asia, vol. 3, p. 279 and 280. Ib., vol. 4, p. 563. 



fPrichard, vol. 4. p. 12 and 49. || Ib., vol. 4, p. 485. 



j Ib., vol. 4, p. 244. lib., vol. 2, p. 217. 



