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the notable circumstance of his being chosen king, or chief, as 

 Creeshna was, of the young shepherds, his companions ; together 

 with the complete fulfilment of the prophecy in the subversion of 

 the throne of Astyages :* let any person, I say, compare this sin- 

 gular narration with what he has read concerning Creeshna in the 

 preceding pages, and he will not only be convinced of the truth of 

 the assertion of Sir William Jones, that the Indian and Iranian 

 annals were originally the same, at least as to their general purport, 

 but that Herodotus had actually consulted them, and not fabrica- 

 ted, as his calumniators have asserted, an idle romance to please 

 the fabulous mythologists of Greece. But concerning the different 

 degrees of credit which ought to be given to the two only authentic 

 historians of Cyrus, Herodotus and Xenophon, an observation or 

 two will occur in a subsequent chapter relative to the second, or 

 Caianian, dynasty of Persia, in which Cyrus ranks the third; and 

 it is time that we quit this extended Avatar for that of BUDDHA, 

 the next in order of succession. 



* Herodotus, lib. i. p. 81. et seq. 



