статья из англ. периодического издания The Monthly review за 1785 год, рецензия на книгу франц. автора d'Hancarville об истории Греции в связи с влиянием на нее других, более древних наций, к которым он причислял в первую очередь скифов или саков и считал именно их первыми мировыми завоевателями и распространителями культуры, правда родиной их он считал Среднюю Азию.

THE MONTHLY REVIEW, for NOVEMBER, 1785.
Art. I. Recherches sur l'Origine, l'Esprit, et les Progres des Arts de la Grece: i. e. Inquiries into the Origin, Spirit, and Progress of the Arts of Greece, and their Connection with the Arts and Religion of the most ancient Nations; with Observations on the ancient Monuments of India, Persia, the rest of Asia, Europe, and Egypt * (*The Author is M. D'Hancarville.).
4to. 3 Tom. including the Supplement. 3I. i8s. Appleyard, WimpoIe-street.
THIS valuable work unites an extensive, though not always the most accurate, erudition, to a consummate knowledge of ancient monuments and works of art. The antiquary, the artist, and the scholar will here find ample matter of instruction, and, at the same time, a wide field for criticism. Though in many points of erudition, our opinion be extremely different from that of this most laborious and ingenious Author; and though we think it altogether impossible to give any historical account of Grecian mythology that shall not be liable to innumerable objections; yet we heartily congratulate the lovers of antiquities and virtu, on a publication, which throws new light on innumerable monuments of great importance. By most, this work will be considered only as an hypothesis; but it must be allowed one of the most probable; in our opinion, the most probable of any that has yet appeared on the subject.
The fragments of the primitive theology of Greece, whether preserved in the works of poets and mythologists, or in the ancient monuments of engraving and sculpture, afford reason to believe, that the religion, as well as the arts and sciences of that country, were derived from a people anterior to the first colonies said to have been established there; a people whose transactions carry us back to ages altogether unknown in Grecian history. Our Author thinks, that he has discovered who this people were, whose ideas and conceptions concerning the Deity seem to have been widely diffused over the ancient world. To prove his hypothesis, he examines under what emblems or symbols this people from time immemorial represented the Supreme Mind, the Creator and Preserver of nature. These emblems he finds to have been adopted in most other countries of antiquity, countries the most distant from each other, among which history discovers not the smallest connection, and which could not have universally employed the same arbitrary signs or emblems, unless they had derived them from some common stock.
The Sacae (the Σκαι of Herodotus and Strabo) are described by the Greeks, as inhabiting a country beyond the Caspian Sea, and contiguous to India. They were the Homades of Sogdiana, a country separated from India by the lofty chain of Paropamisus, and extending to the eastern ocean. They conducted their herds into the vast regions which supply the sources of the Selinga, the Ganges, and the Indus. From this people, the most ancient of any, and inhabiting the most elevated territory in Asia, descends the religious worship that has been diffused through all parts of our continent, like the immense rivers which, rising among these eminences, spread themselves on all sides, and flow, in opposite directions, into remote oceans.
The most ancient army mentioned in history is that of the Sacae or Scythians, who extended their conquests to the Nile, and then, retracing their steps, employed fifteen years to subdue Asia, on which they imposed a moderate tribute*. (*Diod. Sicul. 1. 11. and Justin, 1. 11.) Their empire lasted fifteen hundred years; until Ninus, King of the Assyrians, delivered his country from the tribute imposed on it. The reign of Ninus is placed 2110 years before the Christian aera. The Scythians therefore conquered Asia 3610 years before that period. This nation represented the Deity under nine forms of the ox and serpent; emblems which are still preserved by their descendants, and which prevail in most parts of Asia that have not submitted to the Mahommedans. The more singular these emblems are, and the more remote the relation by which they are connected with the object they represent, the less probability there is that they should have been discovered by so many different nations; for the symbols of the ox and serpent are found on an astonishing variety of medals, struck in all the different provinces of Greece, in Europe, Asia, and Africa,— on an immense number of marbles and other monuments of ancient Italy, Egypt, Syria, India, Japan, China, Persia, Tartary, Scandinavia, and in all the countries formerly inhabited by the Celtae. The Israelites, incredibly attached to the worship of these emblems, continued to revere them, notwithstanding the express prohibition of the Deity himself, and the severe chastisements inflicted on them for their obstinacy in that particular. One of the heads of the Cherubims resembled that of an ox. The serpent of brass was the symbol of life; Jesus Christ himself proposes it as the type of his exaltation on the cross, and an emblem of the salvation which he was destined to procure for men. This reptile, which represented the good genius of the Phenicians, was the emblem of health among the Greeks; and although nothing appears less proper to recal the idea of the Divine Nature than the animals chosen for that purpose, yet the most authentic monuments, the most uniform traditions, the most respectable authorities assure us, that their worship was very widely extended in the ancient world, and still prevails in many parts of the modern.
The travels and conquests of the Scythians, who diffused this worship in the East, are mentioned by Trogus Pompeius and Diodorus Siculus. The latter says, they extended their dominion to the Eastern ocean. Diodorus lived in the time of Dionysius Periegetes, who considers the Eastern ocean as synonymous with the sea of India:
Orientalem vocunt atque Indicum fluctum maris.
Dionys. Perieg. v. 37.
The same Dionysius places a colony of Scythians near the river Indus. The most learned of the Indians preserved the ancient history of their country; from which it appeared that in the most remote ages, when men still lived in scattered villages, Bacchus, accompanied with a numerous army, came from the west, and over-ran all India: Diodor. Sicul. 1. ii. p. 151. The excessive heats having occasioned a malady among his troops, he sought on the mountains for fresher waters and a purer sky. Mount Meros was the farthest extent of his expedition. On this mountain, which abounded in ivy and wild vines, he built the city Nyssa, the same name that had been bestowed on a city on the Nile, which also formed the extremity of the Scythian conquests in very remote ages. The Nysseans peopled this new city, in the neighbourhood of the Oxidraci, who afterwards pretended to descend from Bacchus. The worship of this god was celebrated in the Arabian, as well as the Indian Nyssa, with the same ceremonies observed in Thrace, and in the Hebrides, on the western coast of Great Britain: Strabo Geogr. lib. xiv. and Dionys. Perieg. v. 568, & seq. Nyssa in Arabia and India, formed two boundaries of an empire which extended from the sea of China to the Northern ocean; an empire which lasted fifteen hundred years, and which preceded that of the Assyrians, commonly reckoned the most ancient. This immense conquest of the Scythians, mythology afterwards ascribed to Bacchus, whose worship was carried by the Scythians into Arabia and India. .
The name of the Oxidraci of India, who said they were descended from Bacchus, bears the impression of the people from whom they descended in reality. They came from the Oxidraci, inhabiting the banks of the Oxus. This river waters the country of the Bactrians of which Margiana makes a part. In this country are found those luxuriant vines, celebrated by Strabo: Geogr. 1. xi. p. 73. There, according to Oneficritus, the women displayed those dissoIute manners, and those abominable practices, which were afterwards imitated by the Bacchanals: Oneficr. ap. Calep. in Bactr. These women, who followed the Scythian army, occasioned the fable of the Menades, who were priestesses of Bacchus. When the Greeks worshipped this god under a human form, he always retained sufficient indications of his being originally represented by the ox, the great emblem of the Scythians. To Bacchus the Greeks always gave the long robe, called Bassara, worn by the Bactrian women, and the beard cut in the shape of a goat's, according to the custom of that people. Both customs prevailed in the Cassiterides, where the worship of Bacchus was celebrated with great pomp: Strabo, 1. iii. p. 175. In the Bacchae of Euripides, the god is introduced saying, that he had over-run Lydia, Phrygia, Bactriana, Media, Arabia, and all Asia, to the salt sea, i. e, the Indian ocean: Euripid. Bacchae, v. 13. In these verses Euripides comprehends most of the places into which the Scythians has carried their arms and their worship: a worship, according to St. Epiphany, of the highest antiquity, and far more ancient than Helenism and Judaism: J. Epiph. adv. Haeres. 1. 1.
The immensity of the Scythian conquests might make their reality suspected, did we not know the extraordinary achievements of the same nation in modern times, under the name of Tartars. As the waves of the sea follow, repel, and destroy each other, so the Sacae, pursuing the traces of their ancestors, established themselves, at various times, in the countries which they had anciently occupied. They expelled or subdued the nations whose origin was the same with their own. Having over-run China in the time of Fohi, they returned to that country towards the end of the 12th century, under the conduct of Zingis-khan. Koublai-khan, his grandson, completed the conquest of that vast empire; while his cousin, Bathusain, likewise of the Mogul race, subjected Russia to a tribute similar to that which the Scythians had formerly imposed on Asia. As the Scythians founded the two Nyssas, so the Tartars built Casan, and other cities on the Volga; and, establishing their colonies in the Crimea, diffused terror into Europe.
Before that aera, Zingis-khan penetrated into India, to which he gave the name of Mogul, a name thenceforth retained by that valuable region of the world. Tamerlane, descended in the female line from that conqueror, was a native of Sogdiana, the country of the Sacae. Animated by their example, he undertook the conquest of Asia; having made himself master of Persia, he proceeded to Bagdad, situated in the neighbourhood, of Hella, supposed to be the ancient Babylon, the royal seat of Ninus and Semiramis. The Scythian army anciently traversed the same countries in their return from Egypt. Tamerlane, pursuing the same route, penetrated to India, and conquered Dehli, where his posterity still reign. His dominion extended over Persia and Media; he entered into Galatia, defeated Bajazet between Ancyra and Cesarea, and took the former of those towns, in the year 1239. Having conquered the northern part of Asia Minor, he gained Syria from the Mammelucs of Egypt; so that his conquests exactly included those of his Scythian ancestors. He then returned to Samarcande; and, in his old age, meditated the conquest of China, which the Scythians had effected 5000 years before the age of Tamerlane.
The chronology adopted by this learned Author does not agree with the common explanations of the Mosaic writings: but as he professes the greatest respect for those writings, he thinks himself entitled to affirm, that their chronology has been misunderstood, and that Moses places the creation at a period far more remote than is generally believed. The profound researches of this great Antiquarian contain nothing inconsistent with revelation; but, on the contrary, tend to confirm the sacred history. They prove the knowledge of the true God, the Creator and Preserver, to have been extremely ancient. Having created the elements, the invisible God was typified in fire, the most striking and powerful of his works. As the Creator of matter, he was represented by great stones, of which there are examples in many parts of Europe, and particularly in our own island; and in all the countries inhabited by the Scythians, or any of their colonies. These stones have commonly the pyramidal form, an emblem of fire, or rather flame, which always rises in a pyramid. Thence the origin of Termini (Termes), to which the Pelasgi (or Scythians), the first inhabitants of Greece, give the organs of generation, denoting that the primitive Being, represented by these stones, was the principle of life. Among the Scythians, the wild bull derived its name from that of fire; it became, therefore, among that people, the principal emblem of the divinity. As the source of all animal life and existence, the Pan, or Whole, was represented by a goat; a symbol in which it is easy to recognise the ideas of a pastoral people, like the Scythians. Under the figure of a goat, the most ancient of the Egyptian gods was adored at Mendes. The reason is given by Diodorus Siculus, 1. i. p. 98. Hircum autem deificarunt, ut apud Graecos Priapum, propter genitalem partem. - This worship, as we learn from Strabo, degenerated into the most abominable superstition - Praeterea Mendes ubi Pan colitur, et Hircus animal - Hoc in loco Hirci cum mulieribus coeunt. Strabo, 1. xvii. p. 802.
The ancients themselves being so much inclined to abuse their figurative religion, it is not wonderful that the moderns should be extremely apt to misunderstand it. The obscene figures, continually occurring on the sepulchral monuments of the Greeks and Romans, are naturally construed into very unfavourable pictures of the manners of those nations. But our Author fully proves, that these licentious representations, seemingly so unsuitable to the solemnity of the tomb, were intended for expressions of piety. The generative principle in nature, which they denote, was acknowledged to preside over the dead. To the protection of this principle, or, in other words, to the protection of Deity, of which it was an emblem, the ancients looked in their last moments; and to this protection they were committed by the affectionate hopes of their friends.
Such is the outline of this very interesting work, which, on some future occasion, we may examine more particularly.

эта же статья на гугл-книгах:
http://books.google.ru/books?id=wK7kAAAAMAAJ&printsec=frontcover&hl=ru#v=onepage&q&f=false по выпадающему содержанию книги нажмите стр. 321

автор скорей всего вот этот
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre-Fran%C3%A7ois_Hugues_d\'Hancarville

кстати:
"Некоторые источники приписывают сакское происхождение Будде Гаутаме, его отец принадлежал к касте кшатриев. Титул Шакьямуни означает «мудрейший из саков». Но, возможно, что это одно из заблуждений. Будда принадлежал к индоарийскому племени, называемому сакья (не шака)." http://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Саки_(племена)