﻿ON THE CHINESE. 375 



consider ir. The Buddha of the Hindus is unquestion- 

 ably the Foe ot China ; but the great progenitor of 

 the Chinese is also named by them Fo-hi, where the 

 second monosyllable si . r . seems, a victim. Now 



the ancestor of that military tribe, whom the Hindus 

 call the Chandravansa, or Children of the Moo?i, was, 

 according to their Puranas or legends, Buddha, or the 

 gei ius of the planet Mercury, irom whom, in the 

 fifth degree, descended a prince named Druhya; whom 

 his father Yayati sent in exile to the east or" Hin- 

 dustan, with this imprecation, " May thy progeny be 

 " ignorant of the Veda" The name of the banished 

 prince could not be pronounced by the modern Chinese; 

 and, though I dare not conjecture that the last sylla- 

 ble of it has been changed into Yao, I may neverthe- 

 less observe that Yao was the fifth in descent from 

 Fo hi , or at least the fifth mortal in the first imperial 

 dynasty ; that all Chinese history before him is consi- 

 dered by the Chinese themselves as poetical or fabulous; 

 that his father Ti-co, like the Indian king Yayati, was 

 the first prince who married several women ; and that 

 Fo-hi, the head of their race, appeared, say the Chi- 

 nese, in a province of the west, and held his court in 

 the territory of Chin, where the rovers, mentioned by 

 the Indian legislator, are supposed to have settled. 

 Another circumstance in the parallel is very remark- 

 able : — According to Father De Premare, in his tract 

 on Chinese Mythology, the mother of Fo-hi was the 

 Daughter of Fleavcn, surnamed Flower-loving; and 

 as the nymph was walking alone on the bank ot a rk 

 with a similar name, she found herself on a sudden 

 encircled by a rainbow ; soon after which she became 

 pregnant, and at the end of twelve years was delivered 

 of a son radiant as herself, who, among other titles, 

 had that of Sui, or Star of the Year. Now, in the 

 mythological system of the Hindus, the nymph Rohh 

 who presides over the fourth lunar mansion, was the 

 favourite mistress of Soma, or the Moon, among 

 Bb 3 



