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Buddha left in Tibet and China the precise epoch of his appear- 

 ance, real or imagined, in India ; and their information, which had 

 been preserved in writing, was compared by the Christian mission- 

 aries and scholars with our own era. Couplet, De Guignes, Giorgi, 

 and Bail! y, differ a little in their accounts of this epoch, but that of 

 Couplet seems the most correct. On taking, however, the medium 

 of the four several dates, we may fix the time of Buddha, or the 

 ninth great incarnation of Veeshnu, in the year one thousand and 

 fourteen before the birth of Christ, or two thousand seven hundred 

 and ninety-nine years ago. Now the Cashmirians, who boast of his 

 descent in their kingdom, assert that he appeared on earth about 

 two centuries after Creeshna, the Indian Apollo, who took so de- 

 cided a part in the war of the Mahabbarat ; and, if an etymologist 

 were to suppose that the Athenians had embellished their poetical 

 history of Pand ion's expulsion and the restoration of ^geus with the 

 Asiatic tale of the Pandoos and Judishter, neither of which words 

 they could have articulated, his conjecture ought not hastily to be 

 derided. Certain it is, that Pandumandel is called by the Greeks the 

 country of Pandion. 



The following are two Sanscreet lines, taken from an ancient book 

 of high authority, and cited by our author for the purpose of fixing 

 the precise time of the appearance of this Avatar in India. The obser- 

 vations that follow will advance us still farther in the history of this 

 obscure character. 



" Asau vyactah calerabclasaliasradvvitay gat, 



" Murtili patalaverna'sya dwibhuja cliicurojj'liita ; or, 



" He became visible, the thousand and second year of the Cali 

 age being past ; his body of a colour between white and ruddy, with 

 two arms, without hair on his head," (that is, as a penitent.) 



Cicata, named in the text as the birth-place of Buddha, he tells us 

 is supposed to have been Dhermaranya, a wood near Gaya, where a 



