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part of the Persian empire, and therefore had Sesostris conquered India, here would have been another considerable addition to his glory, and the priest of Vulcan would have mentioned this as well as Scythia, as an instance of his exceeding the power and domiminion of Darius. But the truth was, neither Darius nor Sesostris had ever subjugated India; for, as Justin remarks, Semiramis and Alexander the Great were the only two persons that entered this country.* The accounts of the victories of Sesostris given by Manetho, both in the Chronicon of Eusebius, and in Josephus, agree very well with Herodotus, and confine his expeditions to Europe and Asia, and make no mention of his entering India. To this agree all the accounts we have of the several pillars erected by him. in memory of his conquests; which were found in every country where he had been; but we have no account of any such monuments of him in India. Ctesias, perhaps, might imagine he had been in this country, and from him Diodorus might have it; but though Ctesias' Assyrian history has by the best writers been thought worthy of credit, yet his accounts of India were not so well written, but were full of fiction and mistakes. It appears from what all other writers have

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Justin. lib. 1 c. 2. Indiæ bellum intulit; quò præter illam & Alexandrum nemo intravit.

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offered about Sesostris, that he never was in India, and therefore he cannot be the person who first settled the polity of these kingdoms.

It may perhaps be thought more difficult to say who this Indian Bacchus was, than to prove that Sesostris was not the person. The ancient writers have made almost an endless confusion, by the variety of names which they sometimes give to one person, and sometimes calling various persons by one and the same name. Diodorus Siculus was sensible of the many difficulties occasioned hereby, when he was to treat of the Egyptian gods. Several persons have been called by the name of Bacchus, at least one in India, one in Egypt, and one in Greece; but we must not confound them one with the other, especially when we have remarkable hints by which we may sufficiently distinguish them. 1. For, the Indian Bacchus was the first and most ancient of all who bore that name. 2, He was the first who pressed the grape and made wine.f 3, He lived in these parts before there were any cities in India. 4, They say he was twice born, and that he was nourished in the thigh of Jupiter. These are the particulars - which the heathen wri ters give of the Indian Bacchus; and from all

I have followed the accounts which are given of Sesostris; though I shall have occasion hereafter to remark how far they go beyond what is true: Sesostris was not so great a conqueror as he is represented.

d Lib. 1. p. 21. Rhodoman,

Id. lib. 4.

Id. lib. 3. p. 197. Edit. ■ Id. lib. ii.

h

these hints it must unquestionably appear that he was Noah, and no other. Noah being the first man in the post-diluvian world, lived early enough to be the most ancient Bacchus; and Noah, according to Moses, was the first who made wine. Noah lived in these parts as soon as he came out of the ark, earlier than any cities were built in India; and as to the last circumstance of Bacchus being twice born, and brought forth out of the thigh of Jupiter, Diodorus gives us an unexpected light into the true meaning of this tradition. He says, "That Bacchus was said to be twice born, because in Deucalion's flood he was thought to have perished with the rest of the world, but GoD brought him again as by a second nativity into the sight of men, and they say mythologically, that he came out of the thigh of Jupiter." It seems very probable that this had been the ancient Indian tradition, in order to perpetuate the memory of Noah's preservavation; and Diodorus, or the writers, from whom he took it, have corrupted it but very little. Deucalion's flood is a western expression; the Greeks indeed called the ancient Flood, of which they had some imperfect traditions, sometimes the flood of Ogyges, and

h Gen. ix. 20.

1 Δις δ' αυτός την γενεσιν εκ Διος παραδεδόσθαι, δια το δοκειν μετά των άλλων εν τω κατα τον Δευκαλίωνα κατακλσύμω φθαρήναι και τότες της καρπες, και μετα την επομβρίαν παλιν αναφυενίας, ωσπερει δευτεραν επιφανειαν ταύτην υπαρξαι το Θεό παρ' ανθρώποις, καθ' ην εκ το Λιος μηρος γενεσθαι παλιν τον Θεόν τε τον μυθολογεσι Diodorus lib. 3, p. 196.

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sometimes of Deucalion; but I cannot think, that the name of Deucalion was ever in the ancient Indian antiquities; and the tradition itself not being understood by the Greeks, is applied to the vine of Bacchus, instead of himself. For it was not the vine more than any other tree, but the vine-planter, who was so wonderfully preserved, as it is hinted by this mythological tradition. I think I need offer no more upon this particular; for any one, who impartially weighs what I have already put together, will admit that Noah was the Indian Bacchus; and that the heathen writers had at first short hints or memoirs, that after the deluge. he came out of the ark in the place I have formerly hinted near to India: that he lived and died in these countries, and that his name was famous amongst his posterity, for the many useful arts he taught them, and instructions he gave them, for their providing and using the conveniences of life; though we now have in the remains of these writers little more than this and a few other fabulous relations about him. The particular which Diodorus mentions, that Bacchus went out of the west into India with an army, is a fiction of some western writer: no western king or army ever conquered India, before Alexander the Great; for Semiramis only made some unsuccesful attempts towards it. And it is remarkable, that Diodorus himself was not assured of the truth of this fact; for he expressly informs us, that though the Egyptians contended that this Bacchus was a native of their country; yet the Indians, who ought to be allowed to know their own history best, denied it, and asserted as positively, that Bacchus was originally of their coun

try; and that having invented and contrived the culture of the vine, he communicated the knowledge of the use of wine to the inhabitants of the other parts of the world.

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Noah lived three hundred and fifty years after the Flood,' and died about the time when Abraham was born. He began to be a husbandman and planted a vine. yard soon after the flood; he was the first that obtained leave for men to eat the living creatures; and by teaching this, and putting his children, upon the study and practice of planting and agriculture, he laid the first foundation for raising a plentiful maintenance for great numbers of people in the several parts of the world. It is very probable that men, whilst they were but few, lived a ranging and unsettled life, moving up and down, killing such of the wild beasts of the field, or fowls of, the air, as they liked for food, or which came in their way; and gathering such fruits of the earth, as the wild trees or uncultivated fields spontaneously offered." But when mankind came to mnltiply, this course of life must grow very inconveninent; therefore Noah, as his children in creased, taught them how to live a settled life, and by tilling the ground increase the quantity of pro

Diodrus lib. 4. p. 210.

m Ver. 20.

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I Gen. ix. 29.

" Gen ix. See vol. i. b. 2.

• See Ovid Metam. Fab. 3.

Contentique cibis nullo cogente creatis,
Arbuteos fœtus, montanaque fraga legebant.
Cornaque & in duris hærentia mora rubetis;

Et quæ deciderant patula Jovis arbore glandes.

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