Our questions have but little to do with geography, but we shall, perhaps, be permitted to express in a few words our astonishment respecting the town of Bourges. The Trévoux Dictionary asserts that "it is one of the most ancient in Europe; that it was the seat of empire of the Gauls, and gave laws to the Celts."
I will not combat the antiquity of any town or of any family. But was there ever an empire of Gaul? had the Celts kings? This rage for antiquity is a malady which is not easily cured. In Gaul, in Germany, and in the North there is nothing ancient but the soil, the trees, and the animals. If you will have antiquities go to Asia, and even there they are hardly to be found. Man is ancient, but monuments are new; this has already been said in more articles than one.
If to be born within a certain stone or wooden limit more ancient than another were a real good it would be no more than reasonable to date the foundation of the town from the giants' war, but since this vanity is in no wise advantageous let it be renounced. This is all I have to say about Bourges.
BRACHMANS—BRAHMINS.
Courteous reader, observe, in the first place, that Father Thomassin, one of the most learned men of modern Europe, derives the Brachmans from the Jewish word barac, by a c—supposing, of course, that the Jews had a c. This barac, says he, signified to fly; and the Brachmans fled from the towns—supposing that there were any towns.
Or, if you like it better, Brachmans comes from barak by a k, meaning to bless or to pray. But why might not the Biscayans name the Brahmins from the word bran? which expresses—I will not say what. They had as good a right as the Hebrews. Really, this is a strange sort of erudition. By rejecting it entirely, we should know less, but we should know it better.
Is it not likely that the Brahmins were the first legislators, the first philosophers, the first divines, of the earth? Do not the few remaining monuments of ancient history form a great presumption in their favor? since the first Greek philosophers went to them to learn mathematics; and the most ancient curiosities, those collected by the emperors of China, are all Indian, as is attested by the relations in Du Halde's collection.
Of the Shastah, we shall speak elsewhere. It is the first theological book of the Brahmins, written about fifteen hundred years before the Vedah, and anterior to all other books.
Their annals make no mention of any war undertaken by them at any time. The words "arms," "killing," "maiming," are to be found neither in the fragments of the Shastah that have reached us, nor in the Yajurvedah, nor in the Kormovedah. At least, I can affirm that I have not seen them in either of these two latter collections; and it is most singular that the Shastah, which speaks of a conspiracy in heaven, makes no mention of any war in the great peninsula between the Indus and Ganges.