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IV.

despotic system of Turkish government, founded SE C T. on such illiberal fanaticism as has extinguished science in Egypt, in Assyria, and in Greece, its three favourite mansions in ancient times, was prevented from extending its dominion over Europe, and from suppressing liberty, learning, and taste, when beginning to make successful efforts to revive there, and again to bless, to enlighten, and to polish mankind.

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APPENDIX.

SHALL now endeavour to fulfil an engagement which I came under, to make some observations upon the genius, the manners, and institutions of the people of India, as far as they can be traced from the earliest ages to which our knowledge of them extends. Were I to

enter upon this wide field with an intention of surveying its whole extent; were I to view each object which it presents to a philosophical inquirer, under all its different aspects, it would lead me into researches and speculations, not only of immense length, but altogether foreign from the subject of this disquisition. My inquiries and reflections shall therefore be confined to what is intimately connected with the design of this work. I shall collect the facts which the ancients have transmitted to us concerning the institutions peculiar to the natives of India, and by comparing them with what we now know of that country, endeavour to

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deduce such conclusions as tend to point out the circumstances which have induced the rest of mankind, in every age, to carry on commercial intercourse to so great an extent with that country.

Or this intercourse there are conspicuous proofs in the earliest periods concerning which history affords information. Not only the people contiguous to India, but remote nations, seem to have been acquainted, from time immemorial, with its commodities, and to have valued them so highly, that in order to procure them they undertook fatiguing, expensive, and dangerous journeys. Whenever men give a decided preference to the commodities of any particular country, this must be owing either to its possessing some valuable natural productions peculiar to its soil and climate, or to some superior progress which its inhabitants have made in industry, art, and elegance. It is not to any peculiar excellence in the natural productions of India, that we must ascribe entirely the predilection of ancient nations for its commodities; for, pepper excepted, an article, it must be allowed, of great importance, they are little different from those of other tropical countries; and Ethiopia or Arabia might have fully supplied the Phenicians, and other trading people of antiquity, with the spices, the perfumes, the precious stones, the gold and silver, which formed the principal articles of their commerce.

WHOEVER then wishes to trace the commerce with India to its source, must search for it, not so much in any peculiarity of the natural productions of that country, as in the superior improvement of its inhabitants. Many facts have been transmitted to us, which, if they are examined with proper attention, clearly demonstrate, that the natives of India were not only more early civilised, but had made greater progress in civilisation than any other people. These I shall endeavour to enumerate, and to place them in such a point of view as may serve both to throw light upon the institutions, manners, and arts of the Indians, and to account for the eagerness of all nations to obtain the productions of their ingenious industry.

By the ancient Heathen writers, the Indians were reckoned among those races of men which they denominated Autochthones or Aborigines, whom they considered as natives of the soil, whose origin could not be traced. By the inspired writers, the wisdom of the East (an' expression which is to be understood as a description of their extraordinary progress in science and arts) was early celebrated. In order to illustrate and confirm these explicit testimonies concerning the ancient and high civilisation of the inhabitants of India, I shall take a view of their rank and condition as individuals; of their civil policy; of their laws

Diod. Sic. lib. ii. p. 151.

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1 Kings, iv. 31.

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