Note 4 — CHAPTER 1

Nilab from nil, ‘blue,’ and ab, ‘water’; hence the name of the Nile in Egypt and in India [?]. Sind, or Sindhu, appears to be a Scythian word: Sin in the Tatar, t sin in Chinese, ‘river.’ [It is Sanskrit, meaning ‘divider.’] Hence the inhabitants of its higher course termed it aba sin, ‘parent stream’; and thus, very probably, Abyssinia was formed by the Arabians; ‘the country on the Nile,’ or aba sin. [Abyssinia is ‘land of the Habashi, or negroes.’]