OF THE HINDCS. £59 



heard. It is well known that elephants were called oxen 

 in the weft, and the ancient Romans had no other 

 name for them. It may be objedtcd, that if there had 

 been elephants, in thefa&ted ijles, the inhabitants would 

 have had names for them j but the Cymri arc certainly 

 a verv modern tribe, relatively to the times we aie 

 fpeaking of ; and probably there were no elephants or 

 crocodiles when they fettled there ; but, hearing of a 

 ftrange itory of battles between a large land animal 

 and an amphibious one, they concluded that theie two 

 animals could be no other than the ox and beaver, the 

 largelr. of the kind they were acquainted with, 

 nag ,ndhhd f'han, or the place of the nagndtli, or lord 

 of the elephantine race, is well known to the anti- 

 quaries of Juvemia. 



During the fixth dynajly came to pafs the famous 

 churning of the ocean, which is pofitively declared m 

 the fur ana to have happened in thtfea o\ nulk, or more 

 properly, as it is often called alfo the J flute Sea, which 

 iurrounds Xhtfacred ijles in theweit, and is thus deno- 

 minated according to the Treloca-derpan, bccaule it 

 wafhes the ihores of the ivhite ljland, the principal of 

 the fa cred i/Ies. The white ijland in Sanfcril , jiveia-d-ivip 

 or chira-dwip, is as famous in the eaft as it is in the 

 weft. It may ieem ftrange, that iflands fo remote 

 ifiould be known to the purdnics ; but t;he truth is, that 

 the vedas were not originally made known to mankind 

 in India. The Brdhnietis themfelves acknowledge that 

 they are not natives of India, but that they deteended 

 into the plains of Hindujlan through the pals of llcri- 

 d'zvar. 



The old continent is well defcribed in the paranar, 

 but more particularly the countries in which the vedas 

 where made public ; and in which the doctrine they 

 contain fiourifhed for a loftg time. Accordingly the 

 fa cred ijlcs'xw the w e ft , t h e c o u r. t r i es b o rd e r i n g o n the 

 Nile, and, lait of all, Indite, are better and more mi- 

 nutely 



