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men so admirable for their wisdom and so renowned for their 

 austerities. It is the duty of the historian to explore the secret 

 springs of great public events, and notwithstanding his invasion of 

 India, as related by Herodotus, is generally considered to have been 

 the result of ambition and avarice united, I have very good au- 

 thority, which shall presently be adduced, for announcing that 

 religion, a vehement desire of overturning the Brahmin superstition, 

 and erecting upon its ruins the pure theism of Zeratusht, was the 

 principal inducement to that irruption. In fact, that superstition, 

 from the multiplied idols, bestial, human, and compounded of both 

 forms, that crowd the walls of the Indian pagodas, which, though 

 to the devout Indian they only present the idea of the personified 

 attributes of God, yet to the abhorrent Persian appeared as so many 

 direct objects of adoration, added to the innumerable pagodas them- 

 selves, which at that time covered the face of the country, must 

 have been extremely offensive to a zealous advocate of the reformed 

 religion of Persia ; and thus Hystaspes, while he respected the 

 Brahmins for their love of science and their devotion to philosophy, 

 might deem himself bound, at all hazards, to attempt their conver- 

 sion, and, like Cambyses in Egypt, to root out the very vestiges of 

 an idolatry so base and abominable. Such was the powerful incite- 

 ment, or, at least, such was the plausible pretence, that, in after-ages, 

 urged on the furious Mahmud, and the still more sanguinary Timur, 

 to overwhelm with desolation the fairest region, and devote to sla- 

 very and massacre the happiest people, of Asia. 



There is no occasion for our entering any farther into the history 

 of events in Persia during this long reign, than as those events bear 

 reference to India. For that reason, we shall pass over, as irrelevant 

 to our subject, all that is related by Herodotus concerning the long 

 sack and subsequent capture of Babylon by this monarch, and his 

 subjugation of the Thracian territory. In respect to the same writer's 



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