"The Hindus are said to have boasted of three inventions, all of which, indeed, are admirable, the method of instructing of apologues, the decimal scale adopted now by all civilised nations, and the game of chess, on which they have some curious treatises; but, if their numerous works on grammar, logick, rhetorick, musick, all which are extant and accessible, were explained in some language generally known, it would be found, that they had yet higher pretentions to the praise of a fertile and inventive genius. Their lighter poems are lively and elegant; their epick, magnificent and sublime in the highest degree; their Puranas comprise a series of mythological histories in blank verse from the Creation to the supposed incarnation of Buddha; and their Vedas, as far as we can judge from that compendium of them, which is called Upanishat, abound with noble speculations in metaphysicks, and fine discourses on the being and attributes of God. Their most ancient medical book, entitled Chereca [Charak], is believed to be the work of Siva; for each of the divinities in their Triad has at least one sacred composition ascribed to him; but, as to mere human works on history and geography, though they are said to be extant in Cashmir, it has not been yet in my power to procure them. What their astronomical and mathematical writings contain, will not, I trust, remain long a secret: they are easily procured, and their importance cannot be doubted. The philosopher, whose works are said to include a system of the universe founded on the principle of attraction and the central position of the sun, is named Yavan Acharya, because he had travelled, we are told, into Ionia: if this be true, he might have been one of those, who conversed with Pythagoras; this at least is undeniable, that a book on astronomy in Sanscrit bears the title of Yavana Jatica, which may signify the Ionick Sect; nor is it improbable, that the names of the planets and Zodiacal stars, which the Arabs borrowed from the Greeks, but which we find in the oldest Indian records, were originally devised of the same ingenious and enter-prizing race, from whom both Greece and India were peopled…"