﻿ON THE CHINESE. 367 



between the extremes ; but it is not my design to ac- 

 cuse or to defend the Chinese, to depress or to aggran- 

 dize them : 1 shall confine myself to the discussion of 

 a question connected with my former discourses, and 

 far less easy to be solved than any hitherto started : 

 " Whence came the singular people, who long had 

 * c governed China , before they were conquered by the 

 " Tartars?" On this problem (the solution of which 

 has no concern, indeed, with our political or com- 

 mercial interests, but a very material connection, if I 

 mistake not, with interests of a higher nature) four^ 

 opinions have been advanced, and all rather peremp- 

 torily asserted than supported by argument and evi- 

 dence. By a few writers it has been urged, that the 

 Chinese are an original race, who have dwelt for 

 ages, if not from eternity, in the land which they 

 now possess ; by others, and chiefly by the missiona- 

 ries, it is insisted that they sprang from the same stock 

 with the Hebrews and Arabs ; a third assertion is 

 that of the Arabs themselves and of M. Pauw, 

 who hold it indubitable, that they were originally 

 Tartars descending in wild clans from the steeps 

 of Imaus ; and a fourth, at least as dogmatically 

 pronounced as any of the preceding, is that of 

 the Brahmens, who decide, without allowing any ap- 

 peal from their decision, that the Chinas (for so they 

 are named in Sanscrit) were Hindus of the Cshatriya, 

 or military class, who, abandoning the privileges of 

 their tribe, rambled in different bodies to the north- 

 east of Bengal ; and, forgetting by degrees the rites 

 and religion of their ancestors, established separate 

 principalities, which were afterwards united in the plains 

 and valleys, which are now possessed by them. If any 

 one of the three last opinions be just, the first of them 

 must necessarily be relinquished; but of those three, 

 the first cannot possibly be sustained, because it rests 

 on no firmer support than a foolish remark, whether 

 true or false, that Sem in Chinese means life and pro- 

 Creation - 9 and because a tea-plant is not more different 



