368 On Egypt and the Nile 



■region adjacent to the Nile: the country between the Cafpian and the Eux'me 

 had the names both of India and Ethiopia < 3 even Arachojia is called White 

 India by Is 1 dor us j and we have already mentioned the Yellow India o the 

 Verjian, and the Yellow Indians of the Turkifh, geographers. The more ve- 

 nerable emigrants from India were the Tddavas : they were the blamelefs and 

 pious Ethiopians, whom Homer mentions, and calls the remotsft of mankind. 

 Part of them, fay the old Hindu writers, remained in this country; and hence 

 we read of two Ethiopian nations, the weflern and the oriental : fome of them 

 lived far to the eail^ and they are the Fadavas, who flayed in India ; while 

 others reiided far to the weft, and they are the facred race, who fettled on the 

 ihores of the Atlantick, We are pofitively affured by Herodotus, that the 

 oriental Ethiopians were Indians -, and hence we may infer, that India was 

 known to the Greeks 9 in the age of Homer, by the name of eaftern Ethiopia: 

 fhey could not then have known it by the appellation of India, becaufe that 

 wordy whatever may be its original meaning, was either framed or corrupted 

 by the Per/iansp with whom, as long as their monarchs remained fatisfied 

 with their own territories, the Greeks had no fort of connection. They called 

 it alfo the land of Panchcea, but knew fo little of it, that, when they heard 

 of India, through their intereourfe with the Perfians, they fuppofed it to be 

 quite a different country. In Perfian the word Hindu means both an Indian 

 and any thing black, but whether, in the latter fenfe, it be ufed metaphori- 

 cally, or was an adjective in the old language of Perjia, I am unable to afcer- 

 fain.* it appears from the book of Esther, that India was known to the 

 Hebrews in Perjia by the name of Hodu, which has fome refemblance to the 

 word Tadu, and may have been only a corruption of it. Hindu cannot regu- 

 larly be derived, as an Englijh writer has fuggefted, from a Sanfcrit name of 

 die Moorv fmce that name is Indu; but it may be corrupted from 8indhu f 



