572 COSMOS. 



tions imparted a peculiar character to the warlike aggressions 

 of a more southern race the Arabs. 



Remarkable for its form, and distinguished as a detached 

 branch of the slightly articulated continent of Asia, is situated 

 the peninsula of Arabia, between the Red Sea and the Persian 

 Gulf, the Euphrates and the Syro-Mediterranean Sea.* It is 

 the most western of the three peninsulas of Southern Asia, and 

 its vicinity to Egypt, and to a European sea-basin, gives it 

 signal advantages in a political no less than a commercial 

 point of view. In the central parts of the Arabian Peninsula 

 lived the tribe of the Hedschaz, a noble and valiant race, un- 

 learned, but not wholly rude, imaginative, and, at the same 

 time, devoted to the careful observation of all the processes of 

 free nature, manifested in the ever-serene vault of heaven, 

 and on the surface of the earth. This people, after having 

 continued for thousands of years almost without contact with 

 the rest of the world, and advancing chiefly in Nomadic 

 hordes, suddenly burst forth from their former mode of life, 

 and acquiring cultivation from the mental contact of the 

 inhabitants of more ancient seats of civilisation, converted 

 and subjected to their dominion the nations dwelling between 

 the Pillars of Hercules and the Indus, to the point where the 

 Bolor chain intersects the Hindoo Coosh. They maintained 

 relations of commerce, as early as the middle of the ninth 

 century, simultaneously with the northern countries of 

 Europe, with Madagascar, Eastern Africa, India, and China ; 

 diffused languages, money, and Indian numerals, and founded 

 a powerful and long-enduring communion of lands united 

 together by one common religion. In these migratory 

 advances great provinces were often only temporarily occu- 

 pied. The swarming hordes, threatened by the natives, only 

 rested for awhile, according to the poetical diction of their 



the Asiatic horde, under Batu, the grandson of Ghengis Khan. But 

 the earliest introduction of Buddhism among the Mongolians took 

 place in the year 1247, when, in the east, at Leang-tscheu, in the 

 Chinese province of Schensi, the sick Mongolian Prince Godan caused 

 the Sakya Pandita, a Thibetian archbishop, to be sent for, in order to 

 cure and convert him. (Klaproth in a manuscript fragment. " Ueber 

 die Verbreitung des Buddhismm im ostlichen und nordlichen Asien") 

 The Mongolians have never occupied themselves with the conversion cxf 

 conquered nations. 

 * See p. 295. 



