﻿ON THE TARTARS. 39 



self, before he departed from Bengal, told me, that 

 he was greatly perplexed by finding in a very ac- 

 curate and old copy of the Tuzuc, which he designed 

 to republish with considerable additions, a particular 

 account, written wiqestio?iably by Taimur, of his own 

 death. No evidence, therefore, has been adduced 

 to shake my opinion, that the Moguls and Tartars, 

 before their conquest of India and Persia, were wholly 

 unlettered ; although it may be possible, that, even 

 without art or science, they had, like the Huns, both 

 warriors and lawgivers in their own country some 

 centuries before the birth of Christ. 



If learning was ever anciently cultivated in the 

 region to the north of India, the seats of it, I have 

 reason to suspect must have been Eighur, Cashghar, 

 Khata, Chin, Tancut, and other countries of Chinese 

 Tartary, which lie between the thirty-fifth and forty- 

 fifth degrees of northern latitude ; but I shall, in an- 

 other discourse, produce my reasons for supposing 

 that those very countries were peopled by a race allied 

 to the Hindus, or enlightened at least by their vici- 

 nity to India and China , yet in Tancut, which by 

 some is annexed to Tibet, and even among its old 

 inhabitants, the Seres, we have no certain accounts of 

 uncommon talents or great improvements : they were 

 famed, indeed, for the faithful discharge of moral 

 duties, for a pacific disposition, and for that longe- 

 vity which is often the reward of patient virtues and a 

 calm temper ; but they are said to have been wholly 

 indifferent in former ages to the elegant arts, and even 

 to commerce ; though Fadlullah had been informed, 

 that near the close of the thirteenth century many 

 branches of natural philosophy were cultivated in 

 Cam-cheu, then the metropolis of Serica. 



We may readily believe those, who allure us, that 



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