﻿368 THE SEVENTH DISCOURSE: 



from a palm than a Chinese from an Arab. They are 

 men, indeed, as the tea and the palm are vegetables; 

 but human sagacity could not, I believe, discover any 

 other trace of resemblance between them. One of the 

 Arabs, indeed (an account of whose voyage to India 

 and China has been translated by Renaudot) thought 

 the Chinese not handsomer (according to his ideas of 

 beauty) than the Hindus ; but even more like his own 

 countrymen in features, habiliments, carriage, man- 

 ners, and ceremonies : and this may be true, without 

 proving an actual resemblance between the Chinese 

 and Arabs, except in dre§s and complexion. The next 

 opinion is more connected with that of the Brahmens 

 than M. Pomp, probably, imagined ; for, though he 

 tells us expressly that by Scythians he meant the Turks, 

 or Tartars, yet the Dragon on the standard, and some 

 other peculiarities, from which he would infer a clear 

 affinity between the old Tartars and the Chinese, belong- 

 ed indubitably to those Scythians who are known to have 

 been Goths ; and the Goths had manifestly a common 

 lineage with the Iliudus, if his own argument, in the 

 preface to his Researches on the Similarity of Lan- 

 guage be, as all men agree that it is, irrefragable. 

 That the Chinese were anciently of a Tartarian stock, 

 is a proposition which I cannot otherwise disprove 

 for the present, than by insisting on the total dissimi- 

 larity of the two races in manners and arts, particularly 

 in the fine arts of imagination, which the Tartars, by 

 their own account, never cultivated ; but, if we show 

 strong grounds for believing that the first Chinese 

 were actually of an Indian race, it will follow that M. 

 Pauzv and the Arabs are mistaken. It is to the dis- 

 cussion of this new and, in my opinion, very interest- 

 ing point, that I shall confine the remainder of my 

 discourse. 



In the Sanscrit Institutes of civil and religious du- 

 ties, revealed, as the Hindus believe, by Menu, the son 

 of Brahma, we find the following curious passage : 



