ON THE HINDUS.' 423 



affinity, both in the roots of verbs, and in the forms of 

 grammar, than could poflibly have been produced bv 

 accident; fo ftrong, indeed, that no philologer could 

 examine them all three without believing them to have 

 fprung from fome common fource, which, perhaps, no 

 longer exift's. There is a fimilar reafon, though not 

 quite fo forcible, for fuppofmg that both the Gothick 

 and the Celtick, though blended with a very different 

 idiom, had the fame origin with the Sanfcrit ; and the 

 old Perjian might be added to the fame family, if this 

 were the place for difcuffing any q-ueftion concerning 

 the antiquities of Perfia. 



The characters, in which the languages of India were 

 originally written, are called Nagari, from Nagara, a 

 city, with the word Diva fometimes prefixed, becaufe 

 they are believed to have been taught by the Divinity 

 himfelf, who prefcribed the artificial order of them in 

 a voice from heaven. Thefe letters, with no greater 

 variation in their form, by the change of ftraight lines to 

 curves, or converfeiy, than the Cufick alphabet has re- 

 ceived in its way to India, are itill adopted in more 

 than twenty kingdoms and ftates, from the borders of 

 Cajligar and Khoten, to Rama's Bridge, and from the 

 Sindhu to the river of Siam. Nor can I help believing, 

 although the polilhed and elegant Devanagari may not 

 be fo ancient as the monumental chara6ters in the ca- 

 verns of Jarafandha, that the fquare Chaldiack letters, 

 in which inoft Hebrew books are copied, were origi- 

 nally the fame, or derived from the fame prototype, 

 both with the Indian and Arabian characters. That the 

 Phcnician, from which the Greek and Roman alphabets 

 were formed by various changes and inverfions, had a 

 fimilar origin, there can be little doubt : and the in- 

 fcriptions at Canarah, of which you now poffefs a mofl 

 accurate copy, feem to be compounded of Nagari and 

 Ethiopick letters, which bear a clofe relation to each 



other. 



