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sion of the Persian empire," says our author, " into Iran and Turaii, 

 has been a source of perpetual dissensions between the Persians and 

 Tartars, as the latter have taken every opportunity of passing the 

 Oxus, and laying waste the districts of Khorasan ; they have even 

 pushed their conquests so far, as to overturn the power of the califs, 

 and afterwards to raise a mighty empire on the banks of the 

 Ganges*." 



Of the unceasing contests carried on between these jealous and 

 warlike nations, it was impossible for so powerful a race as the In- 

 dians to be unconcerned spectators. To the aid of one or the other 

 of the contending parties they were compelled to send a considerable 

 army, and the vanquished enemy generally took the earliest oppor- 

 tuipdty of revenging the affront, by the plunder of India in its most 

 vulnerable parts. Whosoever conquered, they were infallibly the 

 ultimate victims. The Tartars were animated to the attack by the 

 thirst of plunder only ; the Persians, in addition to that incentive, 

 were goaded on by their religious principles, for their zealous adora- 

 tion of the solar orb and elementary fire, to which, in the early 

 periods of their empire, no temples were erected, and indeed, in the 

 latter, only perforated domes were elevated to protect the sacred 

 flame from the violence of wind and rain ; the same impetuous zeal, 

 I say, which led them, in their invasion of Egypt, to burn the 

 magnificent temples of the Thebais, in which the grossest rites of 

 bestial idolatry flourished, urged them to carry on implacable war 

 against the kindred superstitions of India, where the animals and 

 objects, by which the attributes of Deity were symbolized, were 

 mistaken for deities themselves, and filled the Sabian devotee with 

 indignation, and horror. The reader shall presently be presented 

 with a direct proof of this, on the authority of the Persian historian 



* Short Hist, o Prsia, p. 43. 



