from the Ancient Books of the Hindus. 463 



REMARKS 



On the preceding Essay 



By the President. 



SINCE I am perfuaded, gentlemen, that the learned EfTay on Egypt and 

 the Nile, which you have juft attentively heard, has afforded you equal de- 

 light with that, which I have myfelf received from it, I cannot refrain from 

 endeavouring to increafe your fatisfaclion, by conferring openly, that I have at 

 •length abandoned the greater!: part of that natural diftruft and incredulity, 

 which had taken porTeflion of my mind, before I had examined the fources, 

 from which our excellent affociate Lieutenant Wilford has drawn fo great 

 a variety of new and interefting opinions. Having lately read again and 

 again, Doth alone and with a Pandit, the numerous original paifages in the 

 Pur anas and other Sanfcrit books, which the- writer of the differtation ad- 

 duces in fupport of his affertions,. I am happy in bearing tefHmony to his 

 perfect good faith and general accuracy both in his extracts and in the trans- 

 lations of them ; nor mould I decline the trouble of annexing literal verfions 

 of them all, if our third volume were not already filled with a fufficient ftore 

 of curious, and (my own part being excepted) of valuable, papers z there are 

 two, however, of Mr. Wil ford's extracts from the Pur anas, which de- 

 ferve a verbal tranflation ; and I, therefore, exhibit them word for word, 

 with a full conviction of their genuinenefs and antiquity. 



The firft of them is a little poem, in the form of the hymns afcribed to 

 Orpheus, in praife of the Nila, which all the Brahmens allow to be a fa- 

 cred river in Cufha-dwip, and which we may confidently pronounce to be the 

 Nile: it is taken from the Scanda-purdn, and fuppofed to be the compofition 



