Page:Ancient Accounts of India and China.djvu/402

360 diffuse in our Remarks thereon, to the end that no one may be preposessed by the Authority of a Learned Man who pronounced upon he knew not what, who in his very Outset is guilty of a gross Mistake upon the Word Sinæ averring the Portuguese to be the first who so called the People he would have to be called Seres. Our two Arabs use the Word Sin they were there in the ninth Century, and the Portuguese went not to China till the sixteenth. Now they called the People of this vast Empire by the Name of Sin; because the Persians and Tartars had so called them, Ages before the Portuguese conducted their Fleets to the Indies.

FINIS

INDEX