620 ON THE DIONYSIACS OF NONNUS, &c. 



Strabo, and other writers on India. This is capable of easy explanation. 

 There can be no doubt that an active intercourse subsisted between India 

 and Egypt in the early ages of Christianity, by way of the Red Sea, car- 

 ried on by both Arab and Indian vessels. The ancient fictions, and it may 

 be added laws of the Hindus, and the vestiges of their race, language, and 

 religion found in distant countries, particularly in the Eastern archipelago, 

 prove that there was a time when they were enterprising navigators, and 

 that they were, as Nonnus asserts, accustomed to naval tactics. That 

 they should visit Egypt — that some of them, probably many, were to be 

 found at Alexandria and other cities of that country, is therefore nothing 

 unaccountable, and from them Nonnus, himself an Egyptian, might easily 

 have collected much more valuable accessions to his long and elaborate 

 composition than those which it actually affords. The few analogies that 

 it does present, may be received in evidence of the existence of the story of 

 the Mahdbhdrat as early as the fifth century of our era, but throws no fur- 

 ther light upon the history of ancient India, and gives no additional weight 

 or consistency to the Grecian fables of the conquests or origin of 

 Bacchus. a 



END. 



