﻿ON THE TARTARS. 2$ 



the same Gothic tree. The dialect of the Moguls, in 

 which some histories of Taimur and his descendants 

 were originally composed, is called in India, where a 

 learned native set me right when I used another word, 

 Turd ; not that it is precisely the same with the Turk- 

 ish of the Othmanlus, but the two idioms differ, per- 

 haps, less than Swedish and German, or Spanish and 

 Portuguese, and certainly less than Welsh and Irish, 

 In hope of ascertaining this point, I have long search- 

 ed in vain for the original works ascribed to Taimur 

 and Baher ; but all the Moguls with whom I have 

 conversed in this country, resemble the crow in one 

 of their popular fables, who, having long affected to 

 walk like a pheasant, was unable, after all, to acquire 

 the gracefulness of that elegant bird, and in the mean 

 time forgot his own natural gait. They have not 

 learned the dialect of Persia, bu thave wholly forgot- 

 ten that of their ancestors. A very considerable part 

 of the old Tartarian language, which in Asia would 

 probably have been lost, is happily preserved in Eu- 

 rope ; and, if the groundwork of the western Turkish, 

 when separated from the Persian and Arabic, with 

 which it is embellished, be a branch of the lost Oghu- 

 %ian tongue, I can assert with confidence that it has 

 not the least resemblance either to Arabic or Sanscrit^ 

 and must have been invented by a race of men wholly 

 distinct from the Arabs or Hindus. This fact alone 

 oversets the system of M. Badly, who considers the 

 Sanscrit, of which he gives in several places a most 

 erroneous account, as * A fine monument of his prime - 

 1 vol Scythians, the preceptors of mankind, and plant- 

 * ers of a sublime philosophy even in India j' for he 

 holds it an incontestable truth, that a language -which 

 is dead, supposes a nation which is destroyed; and he 

 seems to think such reasoning perfectly decisive of 

 the question, without having recourse to astronomical 

 arguments, or the spirit of ancient institutions. For 

 my parr, 1 desire no better proof than that which the 



