THEORY OF THE EARTH. 153 



also come down to us from the Jews and Greeks, 

 which they had derived variously from the Chal- 

 deans, the Persians, and the Indians ; and it is a 

 most remarkable circumstance, that all these na- 

 tions form only one original race, resembling each 

 other in their physiognomies, and even in many 

 conventional matters, such as their divinities, the 

 names of the constellations, and even in the roots 

 of their languages.* 



The Hindoos, perhaps the most anciently ci- 

 vilized people on the face of the earth, and who 

 have least deviated from their originally establish- 

 ed forms, have unfortunately no history. Among 

 an infinite number of books of mystical theology 

 and abstruse metaphysics, they do not possess a 

 single volume that is capable of affording any dis- 

 tinct account of their origin, or of the various 

 events that have occurred to their communities. 

 Their Maha-Bharata, or pretended great history, 

 is nothing more than a poem. The Pouranas are 

 mere legends ; on comparing which with the Greek 

 and Latin authors, it is excessively difficult to es- 



* For the analogy of the languages of India, Persia, and our west- 

 ern world, see the Mithridates of Adelung. On the analogy of the 

 deities of the Indians, Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans, consult the 

 works of Jablonsky and Gatterer, already cited ; as also the Memoir of 

 Sir William Jones, with the notes of M. Langles, in the first volume 

 of the French translation of the Calcutta Memoirs, p. 192, et seq. The 

 identity of the constellations, especially of the signs of the Zodiac, be- 

 tween the Hindoos and the most western nations, with the names 

 given to the days of the week, &c. are now universally known, 



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