OK THE BURNING OF THE DEAD. 87 



made of copper ; whence he reasonably concludes, that the use 

 of iron had been unknown in those regions when these monu- 

 ments were erected. This might seem to carry us as far back 

 as to the times of the Massagetae ; who, as we learn from He- 

 rodotus, used no iron, having all their weapons made of 

 brass *. JFrom the same venerable historian, we learn the great 

 respect which the Scythians had for the tombs of their ances- 

 tors. That intelligent traveller Strahlenberg informs us, that 

 these monuments contain earthen urns of different sizes f . 

 He does not say, however, that bones have been found in any 

 of them. It affords a strong presumption that many tribes of 

 the Scythians anciently burned their dead, that the Chinese 

 Tartars, who are said to be the descendants of those Scythians 

 whose tombs are to be seen on the river Jenisei, still retain 

 this mode J. 



Perhaps the first notices which we have of this custom, in 

 ancient history, occur in the slender accounts that have been 

 handed down to us concerning the manners of some of the na- 

 tions of Hindostan. How early they burned their dead we are 

 not informed. But we certainly know, that, before the time of 

 Alexander of Macedon, they erected funeral piles for the li- 

 ving. Quintus Curtius, from Trogus, asserts, that those who 

 were called Wise Men, when they saw the infirmities of age 

 approaching, ordered their pyres to be raised, and cheerfully 

 devoted themselves to the flames §. The same thing is assert- 

 ed by Clemens of Alexandria concerning the Gymnosophists. 



Speaking 



* *0«e ptlv yetg Ij ot.iytf.ae, Kit) u^eut *<** c"<*yseg«j, %nXx.<f tk irdvTti ■fcg.unou. Clio, c. 215. 



*f Description of the North and East parts of Europe and Asia, p. 364, 365, 

 % Ibid. p. 365. 367. § Hist. lib. viii. 



