ON THE HINDUS. 425 



metaphyficks of the old A cademy, the Stoa, the Lyceum; 

 nor is it poffible to read the Veddnta, or the many fine 

 compofitions in illuftration of it, without believing that 

 Pythagoras and Plato derived their fublime theories 

 from the fame fountain with the fages of India. The 

 Scythian and Hyperborean do&rines and mythology, 

 may alfo be traced in every part of thefe eaftern re- 

 gions ; nor can we doubt that Wod, or Oden, whofe 

 religion, as the northern hiftorians admit, was intro- 

 duced into Scandinavia by a foreign race, was the fame 

 with Buddh, whofe rites were probably imported into 

 India nearly at the fame time, though received much 

 later by the Chinefe, who foften his name into FO'. 



This may be a proper place to afcertain an important 

 point in the Chronology of the Hindus ; for the priefts 

 of Buddha left in Tibet and China, the precife epoch of 

 his appearance, real or imagined, in this Empire; and 

 their information, which had been preferved in writing, 

 was compared by the Chrijlian miffionaries and fcho- 

 lars with our own era. Couplet, De Guignes, Giorgi, 

 and Bailly, differ a little in their accounts of this epoch ; 

 but that of Couplet feems the moft correft. On taking, 

 however, the medium of the four feveral dates, we 

 may fix the time of Buddha, or the ninth great incar- 

 nation of ViJJinu, in the year dne thoufand and fourteen 

 before the birth of Chrijl, or two thoufand f even hundred 

 and ninety- nine years ago. Now the CdJJimirians, who 

 boaft of his defcent in their kingdom, affert that he 

 appeared on earth about two centuries after QriJJina, the 

 Indian Apollo, who took fo decided a part in the war 

 of the Mdhabhdrat ; and if an etymologifi were to 

 fuppofe that the Athenians had embellifhed their poe- 

 tical hiftory of Pandion' s expuW'ion, and the reftoration 

 of Mgeus, with the Ajiatick tale of the Pdndus and Yud- 

 hiJJitir, neither of which words they could have articu- 



Vol. I. G g lated, 



