PREFACE
...nifest traces of the Shanscrit. The meagre remnants of Coptic antiquities afford no scope for comparison between that idiom and this primitive tongue : but there still exists sufficient grounds for conjecture that Egypt has but a disputable claim to its long boasted originality in language, in policy and in religion. In support of this opinion I shall mention only one circumatance. The Raja of Kishenagur, who is by much the most learned and able antiquary which Bengal has produced within this century, has very lately affirmed, that he has in his own possession Shanscrit books which give an account of a communication formerly subsisting between India and Egypt; wherein the Egyptians are constantly described as disciples, not as instructors and as seeking that liberal education and those sciences in Hindostan, which none of their own countrymen had sufficient knowledge to impart. The few passages which are extant in the ancient Greek authors respecting the Bracmans at the same time that they receive a fresh light from this relation, very strongly corroborate its authenticity.
But though these several proofs of the former prevalence of
the Shanscrit are now thinly scattered over an immense continent, and interspersed with an infinite variety of extraneous matter, arrising from every possible revolution in the manners...
