a district of Hindustan, in the Maharrata territories, and province of Malwah. It is a wild and uncultivated country, much covered with jungle; but where cultivated it is of great fertility, being intersected by the Sopra and Gilligisind Rivers.

in Ancient Geography, a city of ancient Egypt, sacred to the sun, and on that account called by the Greeks Heliopolis. It was remarkable for the wisdom and learning of its priesthood, and for the spacious building in which they cultivated the studies of philosophy and astronomy. The priests of On were esteemed more noble than all the other priests of Egypt. They were always privy councillors and ministers of state; and therefore, when Pharaoh resolved to make Joseph his prime minister, he very wisely gave him in marriage a daughter of the priest of On, thereby incorporating him into the most venerable caste in Egypt. Bishop Warburton thinks that the superior nobility of the priests of On was chiefly owing to their high antiquity and great learning. That they were much addicted to the study of astronomy, we know from the testimony of Strabo; and indeed nothing is more probable than that they should have been attached to the study of that system over which their god, the Sun, presided, not only in his moral, but also in his natural capacity. The learned prelate affirms, that whether they received the doctrine from original tradition, or invented it at hazard, which last supposition he thinks more probable, it is certain they taught that the Sun is in the centre of its system, and that all the other bodies move round it in perpetual revolutions. "This noble theory," he continues, "came with the rest of the Egyptian learning into Greece (being brought thither by Pythagoras, who received it from Chaephis a priest of On); and after having given the most distinguished lustre to his school, it sunk into obscurity, and suffered a total eclipse throughout a long succession of learned and unlearned ages, till these times restored its ancient splendour, and immovably fixed it on the unerring principles of science."