Sanscrit Writing and Language. 129 



apogee correctly, which could not be distant by any great interval from the time 

 when those tables were constructed. By similar calculations applied to the 

 Moon's ascending node, the Sun's apogee, Venus, Mars, the Moon, Jupiter, 

 Saturn, Mars's aphelion, he got for each calculation a number of years which 

 could not be very different from the age of the Surya Siddhanta ; and the mean 

 result of the ten operations gave that age, at the time of their being made, some- 

 what less than 731 years. 



From the foregoing result, combined with other considerations, Mr. Bentley 

 very justly drew the following conclusion. " Therefore, any Hindu work in 

 which the name of Varaha or his system is mentioned, must evidently be 

 modern ; and this circumstance alone totally destroys the pretended antiquity of 

 many of the Puranas and other books, which, through the artifices of the 

 Brahmanical tribe, have been hitherto deemed the most ancient in existence." — 

 Asiatic Researches, vol. vi, p. 574. To this it was objected by a cotemporary 

 writer, that the Varaha who wrote the astronomical treatise was a different person 

 from Varaha Mihira ; — an objection which has no ground whatever to rest on 

 except the assertion of the very persons whose veracity is called in question, and 

 to which, besides, our author gave the following answer. " It was not necessary 

 that the name of Varaha Mihira should occur in the Puranas to prove them mo- 

 dern ; for, putting Varaha and his system altogether out of the question, yet still 

 the names, not only of the princes in whose reigns he lived, but also of several 

 others, down to the last Mohammedan conquest, with the years of each reign, are 

 to be found in some of the Puranas ; a most certain proof that these works are 

 not the genuine monuments of primeval times." — Asiat. Resear. vol. viii, p. 201. 

 To this reply of Mr. Bentley I must add, that he has, by his astronomical proof, 

 completely identified the age of Varaha, the author of the system in question, 

 with that of Varaha Mihira, which falls inside the limits within which Indian 

 chronological dates can be securely depended on ; or in other words, he has 

 proved that the Varaha who wrote the Surya Siddhanta lived at a time when it 

 is known to a certainty, from historic records, that a person of that name lived ; 

 so that here, in some degree, history lends her aid, in verification of the result to 

 which science had by a different route conducted us. 



But a far more decisive and convincing proof of the correctness of Mr. 

 Bentley's method is supplied by the method itself; as may be perceived from his 



VOL. XVIII. R 



