The Ancient History of Asia and Remarks on the Atlantis of Plato, To Which Are Added, Observations on the Learning of the Ancient Brahmans, in a Series of Letters Addressed to M. de Voltaire, in Two Volumes (Vols. I and II)

London: J. Coxhead, 1814. 1st Edition . Hardcover. Very Good. 12mo - over 6¾ - 7¾" tall. Two volumes in original bindings, leather at spine and corners and marbled boards. viii, 280 pp, 345 pp. Bindings in quite good shape, with hinges uncracked or lightly started if at all. Light wear to board edges, with corners lightly worn through in places. Water stain to fore-edge of many pages of Volume 2, largely in the margin, and not preventing pages from opening or turning. Texts free of noted marks. Bookplates of Henry Howard of Greystoke, who lived in an honest to God castle, to front pastedown of both volumes. The work is comprised mostly of letters from the author to Voltaire, and responses from the latter, on the subject of Atlantis and its geographic location, arguing from the dissemination of astrological lore, mythology, religion, and language. The author argues that Atlantis was located not in its classically supposed position in the Atlantic Ocean but in the Arctic, covered over time by the cooling of the Earth. The author draws eclectically "upon science, classical mythology, linguistics, and orientalism to substantiate his case, and argued that the Brahmans who shaped Indian civilization were Sanskrit-speaking Atlanteans. His theories reflected many of the prevailing ideas of the age, such as the climate determinism of Montesquieu and Buffon and the superiority of the dynamic West over the decadent Orient. Though Bailly did not racialize the Atlanteans, his works laid the foundations for the subsequent emergence of the Aryan myth." - David Allan Harvey