﻿378 THE SEVENTH DISCOURSE t 



" clearly perceive their sacred illapses." These are im- 

 perfect traces indeed, but they are traces of an affinity 

 between the religion of Menu and that of the Chinas, 

 whom he names among the apostates from it. M. Le 

 Gentil observed, he says, a strong resemblance between 

 the funeral rites of the Chinese and the Sraddha of the 

 Hindus -, and M. Ballly, after a learned investigation, 

 concludes, that " Even the puerile and absurd stories 

 " of the Chinese fabulists, contain a remnant of an- 

 " cient Indian history, with a faint sketch of the first 

 " Hindu ages." As the Bauddhas, indeed, were 

 Hindus, it may naturally be imagined that they car- 

 ried into China many ceremonies practised in their own 

 country ; but the Bauddhas positively forbade the im- 

 molation of cattle ; yet we know that various animals, 

 even bulls and men, were anciently sacrificed by the 

 Chinese ; besides which we discover many singular 

 marks of relation between them and the old Hindus : 

 as in the remarkable period of four hundred and thirty-* 

 tivo thousand, and the cycle of sixty years ; in the 

 predilection for the mystical number nine ; in many 

 similar fasts and great festivals, especially at the sols- 

 tices and equinoxes ; in the just-mentioned obsequies 

 consisting: of rice and fruits offered to the manes of 

 their ancestors ; in the dread of dying childless, lest 

 such offerings should be intermitted ; and, perhaps, in 

 their common abhorrence of red objects, which the 

 Indians carried so far, that Menu himself, where he al- 

 lows a Brahmen to trade, if he cannot otherwise sup- 

 port life, absolutely forbids "his trafficking in any sort 

 "•' of red cloths, whether linen or woollen, or made 

 " of woven bark." All the circumstances, which have 

 Been mentioned under the two heads of Literature and 

 Religion, seem collectively to prove (as far as such a 

 question admits proof) that the Chinese and Hindus 

 were originally the same people; but having been se- 

 parated near four thousand years, have retained few 

 strong features of their ancient consanguinity, especi- 

 ally as ihz Hindus have preserved their old language and 



