﻿ON THE TARTARS. 33 



with few or no traces in Scythia of Indian rites and 

 superstitions, or of that poetical mythology with 

 which the Sanscrit poems are decorated ; and we may 

 allow the Tartars to have adored the Sun with more 

 reason than any southern people, without admitting 

 them to have been the sole original inventors o( that 

 universal foil v. We may even doubt the originality of 

 their veneration for the four elements, which forms a 

 principal part of the ritual introduced by Zeratusht, a 

 native of Rai in Persia, born in the reign of Gush- 

 tasp, whose son Pashuten is believed by the Parsis 

 to have resided long in Tartary, at a place called Can- 

 gidiz, where a magnificent palace is said to have been 

 built by the father of Cyrus, and where the Persian 

 prince, who was a zealot in the new faith, would na- 

 turally have disseminated its tenets among the neigh- 

 bouring Tartars. 



Of any philosphy, except natural ethics, which the 

 rudest society requires and experience teaches, we find 

 no more vestiges in Asiatic Scythia than in ancient Ara- 

 bia; nor would the name of a philosopher and a. Scythian 

 have ever been connected, if Anacharsis had not vi- 

 sited Athens and Lydia for that instruction, which his 

 birth-place could not have afforded him : but Ana- 

 charsis was the son of a Grecian woman, who had 

 taught him her language ; and he soon learned to de- 

 spise his own. He was unquestionably a man of a 

 iound understanding and fine parts ; and, among the 

 lively sayings which gained him the reputation of a 

 wit even in Greece, it is related by Diogenes Laert'ms, 

 that, when an Athenian reproached him with being a 

 Scythian, he answered, ' My country is, indeed, a dis- 

 6 grace to me, but thou art a disgrace to thy country.' 

 What his country was, in regard to manners and civil 

 duties, we may learn from his rate in it; for when, on 

 his return from Athens, he attempted to reform it by 

 introducino the '.vise fowz of his friend Solon, he was 

 Vol. II. D 



