84! ORIGIN AND DECLINE OF THE 



that religion ; and his name was DEVEwr-PATr. All 

 the missionaries to China, were really Tacshacas, or 

 Peish-cara-Brdhmem, in the strictest sense of the 

 word, as well as the pious Moravians : and Paul the 

 Apostle was a Tacshaca, and a Peish-cara-Brdhmen : 

 and, by the account of Mr. Wrede in his narrative 

 of the Christians of St. Thome, they were formerly 

 Peish-cdras : for, says he, they were in fact the only, 

 «r at least, the principal merchants in the country, 

 till the arrival of the Arabs. 



The ingenious Mr. Joinville, on the authority of 

 several treatises in the Magad' hi language, the names: 

 of which he r.ibntions, says, that there were even 

 Kings among these Peish-cdra-Brdhmens, in the Pew- 

 insula, to the number thirty-five :* from the context, 

 it appears, that some were in a collateral, and others 

 in a successive line. The names of their kingdoms, 

 or rather their Metropolitan Cities, were Solo-patan ; 

 Mahd-patan (now Pat an, the J5«iVawfi5 of Ptolemy in 

 the Dekhin, on the banks of the Gdddveri, to the 

 southward of Dowletahad) ; Curu (now Cauri, or 

 Coyr) ; Gadahare (Gaiida) ; Mdcanda, (now Mahd- 

 mnda'pilli) ; and Cds'i. This is confirmed in the 

 Bhdgavat, Vdyu, and Brahndndd-purdn'as, in whicli 

 it is declared f that Aryyd, or 'Saca, and ^Sdlava was 

 the name of a dynasty of Kings in India ; and who 

 were to be immediatel}^ followed by the invasion of 

 numerous swarms of other foreign tribes; and of the 

 djTiasty of these 'Sacas, there were five and twenty 

 Kings, according to the Purdrias in tlie chapters on 

 futurity. 



Solo-pdtan was a sea-port town, according to Cos- 

 * Ah. Res. Tol. vii. p. 443. <• In the Sections on Futurity. 



