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FLAMES, which shall consume . the spheres and all living crea- 

 tures*." After this dissolution of the mundane system, the Hindoos, 

 not less than the Platonists of old, believe that a new world will 

 spring up, like a phrenix, out of the ashes of the former, and a new 

 Satya commence its vast career. 



To return to mythology : by the white colour of the horse in the 

 Calci-Avatar, its brilliancy and purity may be typified. Its expanded 

 wings, and its exalted station, which is properly on celestial ground, 

 naturally remind us of the Pegasus, which the Greeks elevated 

 to the sphere, and the flying warriors, Perseus and Bellerophon ; 

 nor ought the stamping of the foot of Pegasus, which, according to 

 some of their mythologists, produced the celebrated fountain Hippo- 

 crene, or Parnassus, to be entirely forgotten. These concurring cir- 

 cumstances evince some connection, in very remote aeras, between 

 the Indians and Greeks, probably by the way of Egypt ; and the fact 

 of that connection is placed beyond all dispute, by the sequel of the 

 Greek fable relative to Perseus and Andromeda being so accurately 

 detailed by the Indian astronomers under the resembling appellations 

 of PARASICA and ANTARMEDA, as given in the former volume-f ; 

 of which the reader Avill be pleased to recollect, that one principal 

 object was to shew the origin of the Egyptian and Greek legends 

 in India. But it is high time that we should quit these fablers for 

 the consideration of the more important objects connected with the 

 express intention of the tenth Avatar, which was to designate the 

 end of time and the dissolution of nature. 



Although, as I have before observed, the romantic notion enter- 

 tained by the ancients of the destruction of the world, when a com- 

 plete zodiacal revolution shall have been effected, was in great part 

 the result of astronomical calculation, it was not wholly so. Over 



* Sonnerat's Voyages, vol. i. p. 37, Calcutta, octavo edit. f See vol. i. p. 356. 



