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On Egypt and the Nixe 



ever named larchas, which . may be a corruption of Arfia, or Arcfia, oz? 

 poffibly, of Yasca, the name of a fage, who wrote a gloiTary for the Vedas, 

 nor was the Ganges ever confidered as a mate deity; bat the fon of Ganga, 

 or GA'n geVa, was a celebrated hero. According to the Hindu legends, when 

 Capila had ■ deftroyed the children of S agar a, and his army of Cutila- 

 cifas had migrated to another dwipa, the Indian monarch was long inconfo- 

 lable; but his great grandfon Bhagi'rat'ha conducted the prcfent Ganges 

 to the fpot, where the allies of his kindred lay.; and they were no fooner 

 touched by the divine water, than the fixty thoufand princes fprang to life 

 again : another fiery is, that, when the Ganges and other great rivers were fwoln 

 to inch a degree, that the goddefs of ,, Earth was apprehenfive of a general 

 .inundation, Bhagi'rat'ha (leaving ;1 oJier holy men to take care of inferi- 

 ■. our rivers) led the Ganges, from him named BhdgirafB, to the ocean, and 

 rendered her falutary to the earth, inftead of deftru&ive to it. Thefe tales 

 areobvioufly the fame in fubflance with that told by I arch as, but with fome 

 variations and additional circumflances. Apollonius mofl certainly had no 

 knowledge of the Indian language; nor is it on the whole credible, that he 

 was ever in India or Ethiopia, or even at Babylon : he never wrote an account 

 of his travels ; but the fophift Philostratus, who feems to have had a 

 particular defign in writing the hiftory of his life, might have pofTened valua- 

 ble materials, by the occafional ufe of which he impofed more eaiily on the 

 publick. Some traveller might have converfed with a fet of ignorant Sannya* 

 Jis, who had, what moil of them now have, an imperfect knowledge of 

 ancient legends concerning the Devatas ; and the defcription, which Phi- 

 lostratus gives, of the place in the hills, where the fuppofed Brdhmens 

 refided, correfponds exactly with a place called Trilod-ndrdyana in the P«- 

 ransy which has been defcribed to me from the information of Sannydfis, who 

 ignorantly call it ^riyogi-ndrdyan } but for a particular account of it, I muifc 



