94 ON The revolutions of 



continents and the establishment of nations, are compelled to have re- 

 course to the Indians, to the Chaldeans, and the Egyptians, three 

 people who in fact appear the most anciently civilized of the Cauca- 

 sian race ; but three people singularly resembling each other, not only 

 in temperament, through the climate and the nature of the soil which 

 they inhabit, but stUl more so in the political and religious constitu- 

 tion which they had framed, but whose testimony this very similarity 

 of constitution must render equally suspicious *. 



With all three, an hereditary caste was exclusively charged with the 

 care of religion, law, and science ; with all three, this caste had its 

 allegorical language and its secret doctrines ; to all three was reserved 

 the privilege of reading and explaining the sacred books in which all 

 the doctrines had been revealed by the gods themselves. 



We may easily divine what history would become in such hands ; 

 but without any great efforts of reason, we may learn it from the fact 

 itself, in examining what has occurred amongst the only one of the 

 three nations now existing, namely, the Indians. 



In truth, they have no history remaining. Amidst the voluminous 

 records of mystic theology, or abstract metaphysics, which the Brah- 

 mins are possessed of, and which the indefatigable perseverance of 

 English industry has made known to us, there is nothing which 

 throws any light over the origin of the nation or the changes of their 

 society. They even pretend that their religion forbids them to preserve 

 the remembrance of the present age, the age of misfortune f. 



According to the Vedas, the first revealed works, and the founda- 

 tion of all the Hindoo religion, the literature of this people, like that 

 of the Greeks, began by two epochs, the ' Ramaian ' and the ' Mahaba- 

 rat,' a thousand times more marvellous than the ' Iliad ' and ' Odyssey,' 

 although we perceive in them some outlines of a metaphysical nature, 

 of the kind usually termed sublime. The other poems, which, with 

 these two, form thegreat body of the Pouranas, are only romances or ver- 

 sified legends, written at various periods, by various authors, and not 

 less wild in their fictions than the great works mentioned. It has 

 been thought that in some of these writings, deeds, or the names of 

 men somewhat resembling those mentioned by the Greeks and Latins, 

 may be traced ; and it is principally from the similarity of names that 



* This similarity of institutions goes to so great an extent, that it is quite natural 

 to suppose that they had a common origin. We must not forget that many ancient 

 authors have thought that the Egj^tian institutions came from Ethiopia ; and that 

 LynceUus, p. 151, positively says that the Ethiopians came from the borders of the 

 Tndus in the time of King Amenophis. 



t See Polier, Mythology of the Hindoos, vol. i, pp. 89 — 01. 



