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tended to protect and adorn. In truth, the FEUDAL SYSTEM seems 

 to have originated in the East, perhaps first in the wide plains of India; 

 and, by the northern hordes that inundated Europe, and over- 

 whelmed the Roman empire, towards the close of the fourth century, 

 it was imported into Europe ; whose system of laws and government 

 gradually experienced, from that introduction, a considerable 

 change. By the same hardy race, the descendants of the Tartar 

 tribes that tenanted the north of Asia, were introduced ARMORIAT, 

 B E A R i N G s, which originally were nothing more than the hieroglyphic 

 symbols, mostly of a religious allusion, that distinguished the banners 

 of the potentates of Asia : for instance, in India, Veeshnu had the 

 eagle, Seeva the bull, Rama the falcon, engraved on their banners ; 

 animals respectively sacred to them in their system of mythology. 

 The ancient standard of the Tartars displayed the sun rising behind 

 a recumbent lion ; the eagle of the sun was engraved on that of 

 Persia, Avhose inhabitants worshipped that orb; and it will be remem- 

 bered that the Hebrew tribes had also their sacred symbolic devices, 

 descriptive of their office, character, or situation. 



Had the Indians continued thus united, according to the original 

 intention of their legislator, they would probably have remained, 

 if not unmolested, at least unconquered, by that swarm of foreign, 

 particularly Persian and Tartar, invaders, which harassed, in every 

 aera, their devoted country. But the great distance of many of the 

 provinces governed by those subordinate princes, from the capital of 

 the reigning Maharajah, added to the amazing strength of those 

 lofty fortresses that abound in every region of India, some utterly in- 

 accessible to an enemy, and others impregnable by any force that 

 could be brought against them in those days, were a perpetual 

 temptation to the feudal sovereigns of those provinces to violate the 

 grand national compact, to withhold the stipulated tribute, and en- 

 gage in acts of rebellion against the supreme constituted authority . 



