As a farther proof of this hypothesis, we are informed that the sepoys who joined the British army in Egypt, under Lord Hutchinson, imagined that they found their own temples in the ruins of Dendera, and were greatly exasperated at the natives for their neglect of the ancient deities, whose images are still preserved. So strongly, indeed, were they themselves impressed with this identity, that they proceeded to perform their devotions with all the ceremonies practised in their own land. There is a resemblance, too, in the minor instruments of their superstition, the lotus, the lingam, and the serpent,which can hardly be regarded as accidental; but it is, no doubt, in the immense extent, the gigantic plan, the vast conception which appear in all their sacred buildings, that we most readily discover the influence of the same lofty genius, and the endeavour to accomplish the same mighty object. The excavated temple of Guerfeh Hassan, for instance, reminds every traveller of the cave of Elephanta. The resemblance, indeed, is singularly striking; as are, in fact, all the leading principles of Egyptian architecture to that of the Hindoos. They differ only, it has been observed, in those details of the decorative parts, which trifling points of difference in their religious creeds seem to have suggested to each; but many even of the rites and emblems are precisely the same, especially those of the temples dedicated to Iswara, the Indian Bacchus. In truth, in most respects they are so much alike that the same workman might almost be supposed to have superintended the execution of them in both countries. In India and in Egypt the hardest granite mountains have been cut down into the most striking, if not the most beau

tiful, fronts of temples adorned with sculpture. In both countries large masses of rock have been excavated into hollow chambers, whose sides are decorated with columns and statues of men and animals carved out of the same stone; and in each are found solid blocks of many hundred tons weight, separated from the adjoining mountain and lifted up into the air. By whom and by what means these wonderful efforts have been accomplished is a mystery sunk too deep in the abyss of time ever to be revealed. To Greece neither country is indebted for any part of its architecture, while she has evidently taken many hints from them. Except at Alexandria and Antinoë, no edifice strictly Grecian appears in Egypt. But we need only compare the monolithic temples of Nubia with those of Mahabulipoor, the excavations of Guerfeh Hassan with those of Elephanta, and the grottos of Hadjur Silsili, as described by Pococke, with the caverns of Ellora, to be convinced that these sacred monuments of ancient days derived their origin from the same source.

A resemblance of a corresponding nature has been discovered in the religious usages of the Chinese, compared with those of the Egyptians, particularly in what is called the Feast of Lamps,—a festival, annually observed by the latter people, and graphically described by Herodotus in his second book. This coincidence in a ceremony so little likely to suggest itself to the minds of men who had no intercourse with one another, led M. de Guignes to conclude that the first inhabitants of China must have

• See Legh's Journey in Egypt and Nubia, and Quarterly Review, vol. xvi. p. 18.

been a colony from Egypt. But it is easy to account for all such facts upon a much more obvious as well as a more rational hypothesis. No one can have failed to remark, that among the most ancient nations there is a great similarity in point of tradition, habits, opinions, knowledge, and history. The Babylonians, the Egyptians, the Assyrians, the Hindoos, and the descendants of Abraham, held many things in common respecting the creation of the world, the great deluge, the dispersion of the human race, and the first institution of laws and religious worship. Hence we may conclude that the general agreement in these particulars, which we contemplate among the more primitive tribes of mankind, ought to be ascribed to the instruction which they had received while as yet they were but one family, or to the traditionary tenets which had spread with the diverging lines of their generations, though derived originally from the same primeval source.

But by far the most striking point of resemblance between the inhabitants of Egypt and of India is the institution of castes,-that singular arrangement which places an insuperable barrier between different orders of men in the same country, and renders their respective honours, toils, and degradation, strictly hereditary and permanent. Before the invention of letters, indeed, mankind may be said to have been perpetually in their infancy; whence arose the expedient, founded in a view of the public good, of compelling sons to cultivate the arts which had originated in their family, and to follow the professions whereby their fathers had acquired distinction. In allusion to the four classes into which the natives are divided, the Hindoos maintain that, of

their god, Nara-Yana, the mouth became a priest, the arm was made a soldier, the thigh was transformed into a husbandman, and from his feet sprang the servile multitude. The narrative of Herodotus bears evidence to the same institution at an early period among the Egyptians. He indeed divides the fourth caste into several subordinate sections,-tradesmen, shepherds, interpreters, and pilots, and thereby presents the appearance of a still more minute distinction than prevails in the East; but his statement, when compared with that of Diodorus Siculus at a later epoch, removes every shadow of doubt in regard to the identity of the principle from which this political arrangement must have originally proceeded. The last-named historian reduces the orders to three,-priests, including men of rank; the military; and artisans. It is obvious, however, that as husbandmen and labourers are omitted, we must comprehend in the third grade all the classes who practise those arts which are necessary to the subsistence, the comfort, and the ornament of human life.

We may also mention, as in some degree connected with the division of labour now described, that medical science, even before the days of Herodotus, must have been very carefully studied, if we may draw such a conclusion from the fact that, at the period when he wrote, one physician was confined to one disease. There are, he adds, a great many who practise this art; some attend to disorders of the eyes, others to those of the head ; some take care of the teeth, others are conversant with all diseases of the intestines; whilst many attend to the cure of maladies which are less conspi

cuous.

The historian could not have mentioned a circumstance more characteristic of a people advanced to a high degree of civilization. Of the Babylonians, among whom he also travelled, he relates that they have no professors of medicine, but that they carry their sick into some public square, with the view of getting advice from any one who may happen to have been afflicted with the same illness. The passengers in general, says he, interrogate the sufferer in regard to the nature of his malady, in order that, if any one of them has been attacked with a similar disease himself, or seen its operation on a third person, he may communicate the process by which his own recovery was effected, or by which, in any other instance, he has known the distemper to be removed. No one may pass by a diseased individual in silence, or without inquiry into the symptoms of his complaint.t

But, to return to the main subject now before us, we may take leave to express our conviction that, in proportion as the antiquities of Egypt shall be brought into a clearer light, the evidence will become more satisfactory in favour of an early intercourse between Hindoostan and the upper regions of the Nile. It is already ascertained that the arts, as practised in the Thebaid, and even in the neighbourhood of Memphis, must have descended from Ethiopia, the style of sculpture in the latter being in several respects superior to any specimen of that kind of workmanship hitherto discovered in Egypt. The temples, too, on the banks of the river above the cataracts, bear a closer resemblance to those of

* Herodotus, Euterpe, chap. 84.

+ Ib. Clio, chap. 197.