and ISLANDERS of Asia, 



*3 



be not, as I mould rather imagine, derived from the Pahiav), they are probably 

 an invention of fome learned Armenian in the middle of the fifth century. 

 Moses of Khoren, than whom no man was more able to elucidate the 

 fubjecT:, Has inferted in his hiftorical work a difquifition on the language of 

 Armenia, from which we might colled: fome curious information, if the pre- 

 fent occafion required it; but to all the races of men, who inhabit the 

 branches of Caucafus and the northern limits of Iran, I apply the remark, 

 before announced generally, that ferocious and hardy tribes, who retire 

 for the fake of liberty to mountainous regions, and form by degrees a fepa- 

 rate nation, muft alfo form in the end a feparate language by agreeing on 

 new words to exprefs new ideas ; provided that the language, which they 

 carried with them, was not fixed by writing and fufficiently copious. The 

 Armenian damfels are faid by Str abo to have facrifked in the temple of the 

 goddefs Anaitis, whom we know, from other authorities, to be the 

 NA'Hi'D,.or Venus, of the old Perjians ; and it is for many reafons high- 

 ly probable, that one and the fame religion prevailed through the whole em- 

 pire of Cyrus. 



Having travelled round the continent, and among the iflands, of AJia] 

 wc come again to the coafr. of the Mediterranean ; and the principal nations 

 of antiquity, who firft demand our attention, are the Greeks and Phrygians, 

 who, though differing fomewhat in manners,, and perhaps in dialed, had 

 an apparent affinity in religion as well as in language: the Dorian, Ionian, 

 and Kalian families having emigrated from- Europe, to which it is univer- 

 fally agreed that they firft pafled from Egypt, I can add nothing to what 

 has been advanced concerning them in former difcourfes ; and, no written 

 monuments of old Pbrygia being extant, I mall only obferve, on the autho- 

 rity of the Greeks^ that the grand object of myfterious worfhip in that 



