Читать книгу Philological Proofs of the Original Unity and Recent Origin of the Human Race - Arthur James Johnes - Страница 5

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Influenced solely by its high elevation, De Pauw, Zimmerman, and Pallas concluded that Central Asia must have been the birthplace of the human race. To this conclusion the rigorous climate of those parts of it which were best known to them appeared to present an insuperable objection. But as Adelung observes, those regions of Central Asia which border upon the Indus have been shown by the accounts of travellers to fulfil all the requisite conditions in this respect. Had these celebrated writers been possessed of the information these accounts contain, they might have discovered in Cashmire a suitable locality for the first abode of man, in Tibet a fitting school of discipline to prepare him for the various climes and countries he was destined to inhabit!

Cashmire. Adelung's description of this enchanting country calls to mind in many of its features the “Happy Valley” in Rasselas!

[pg xxi]

The faculties with which man has been endowed enable him to contend with the most unfavorable climes: but not until these faculties have been ripened by Time and experience! At his first creation he required an abode where nature's free bounty would supply all his wants; in fine he needed, with reference even to his mere physical necessities, a Paradise! To this appellation no country in Asia can assert a better claim than the lovely land of Cashmire, which is, in fact, a mere Valley, separated by inaccessible mountains from India, Persia, and Tibet! Owing to its high elevation, the heat of the South is tempered into a perpetual Spring, and nature here puts forth all her powers to bring all her works, Plants, Animals, and Man, to the highest state of perfection! Cashmire is a region of fruitful hills, countless fountains and streams, which unite in the River Behut, that, like the Pison of Paradise, “compasseth the whole land!”

Bernier found here all Asiatic and European fruits in perfection. The Pisang, undoubtedly the same tree as the fig tree of the Book of Genesis,7 grows no where so large or so beautiful as in Cashmire!

Even the men of this country are distinguished among Asiatics by superior natural endowments, mental and physical. They have none of the Tartar physiognomy, but exhibit the finest features of the European race; while in genius and intelligence they surpass most other Oriental nations! Cashmire was at one time governed by kings of its own; it was afterwards subject to the Moguls of India, who ruled it with gentleness on account of its beauty! On their downfall it fell under the sway of the rude Affghans.

Tibet. This contiguous country unites within itself the temperatures and products of the most opposite of those [pg xxii] climes in which man was intended to dwell, combining mountains crowned with perpetual snow and icebergs, with valleys in which never-ending Summer blooms. Tibet also presents, in a native or indigenous state, the various Plants and Animals which have been domesticated by Man! Here are found in a wild state the Vine, the Rice-plant, the Pea, the Ox, the Horse, the Ass, the Sheep, the Goat, the Camel, the Pig, the Cat, and even the Reindeer, “his only friend and companion in the polar wastes.”8