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is clearly discernible, from the history of the progress of know- 
ledge, and from the early refinement of oriental philosophy. If 
Greece could once boast of her Athens, India still preserves the 
remains of her Benares, where the doctrines of the Egyptian school 
were, perhaps, understood and taught, long before they were heard 
from the lips of Pythagoras and Plato. In the Institutes of Menu 
we discover traces of enlarged policy and legislative wisdom, 
which would not disgrace the laws of Solon and Lycurgus; and 
these were promulgated at a time when the Grecian slates were 
hordes of wandering barbarians. It is to the East that we are 
indebted for the grand outlines of those metaphysical and political 
theories, Avhich, being transfused into the writings of the Grecian 
sages, are still perused with avidity, and regarded with vene- 
ration.” 
“ if the calculations of the Indian Brahmins now appear more 
exact than the early observations made in Egypt, Greece, or other 
ancient nations, yet they are not sufficiently correct to establish 
any certain conclusions, and still less to invalidate the authority 
of the only authentic history of the world. The Grecians were 
the first practical astronomers to whose observations we are in- 
debted ; and the science of the Egyptian, of the Chaldrean, or even 
of the Indian school, would have been involved in enigma and ob- 
scurity, if it had not been reflected to us by the labours of Ptolemy 
and Hipparchus.” 
“ Though a difficulty may occur in fixing the precise period, 
when the reveries of fancy and fiction were substituted by the 
Hindoos in the place of historical truth; yet it is certain, on the 
authority of Albumazar, a celebrated astronomer, that before the 
