Hindia (from hin, hon, hinta = lowness, or Hindes, low countries) must have been a common or appellative name for many countries; which appellation the ancients extended so far as Arabia and Egypt, and mentioned sometimes three Indias. 32. “This opinion is confirmed by the splendid accounts of almost all the historians of antiquity who had mentioned these countries; and among other Asiatic authors by two Syrian historians, Abulferagius and Abulfida, in their ‘Dynasties and Annals,’ and consequently must have been the same central country, whence, according to Sir William Jones’s opinion, the Chinese, Tartars, Indians, Persians, Syrians, Arabians, Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, Gauls, Goths, Germans, and the Sclavonians derived their civilisation or culture in their arts and sciences. There is also, according to Niebuhr, existing in the inland countries of Arabia, an ancient tradition, that they were civilised by a people which descended from the environs of Samarcund. 33. “In the eastern and north-western parts of Europe there are many vestiges of the ancient Buddhism and of Sanskrit words among all the peoples, who but of late (after the time of Charlemagne) were converted to the Christian faith by means of the sword. But the most numerous monuments thereof are Sanskrit words used by Greek and Roman writers in their accounts relating to ancient Thrace (Rumelia), Macedonia, and the countries on both sides of the Danube, Servia, Pannonia, and Dacia. 34. “I beg leave to give a few instances of my assertion. Pannonia is a literal translation of the Sanskrit word ‘sarbiya,’ now applied to a province on the south side of the Danube, of which Belgrade is the capital, formerly belonging to Hungary, now [23] under Turkish dominion. Dacia, or, after Greek orthography, Dakia (the modern Lower Hungary, Transylvania, Moldavia, Wallachia, Bessarabia), was probably an appellative name for those countries, on account of their being abundant in grapes, from the Sanskrit word ‘dakh’ or ‘dak,’ [24] signifying ‘the grape,’ in the form of the adjective ‘dakhia,’ or ‘dakia,’ ‘the graped.’ This is confirmed by other historical facts. Ancient geographers and historians mention the Agathyrsi (in the same countries probably I enumerated above). Thyrsus is Bacchus’ rod with the winded vines, and was an emblem of wine. The great river Dnieper, in the south-western part of modern Russia, is called by the ancients Borysthenes. This is a Hungarian name signifying ‘the wine—godded’ (the river being taken for the country), from ‘bor,’ ‘wine,’ and ‘isten,’ ‘god,’ with the adjective affix ‘es,’ equivalent to the English ‘ed.’