288 HINDOO ASTRONOMY. 



the Bramins has received fiirther illustration from some of 

 their books of science, which have been discovered by the 

 zealous exertions of members of the Asiatic Society. One 

 of the most curious books in Sanscrit, and one of the 

 oldest after the Vedas, is a tract on religious and civil du- 

 ties, taken, as it is believed, from the oral instructions of 

 Menu, son of Brama, to the first inhabitants of the earth. 

 Sir W. Jones has translated, and given in the Asiatic Re- 

 searches, a part of this work, which seems to relate to as- 

 tronomy. It runs thus : — " The sun causes the division of 

 the day and night, which are of two sorts, — those of men 

 and those of the gods : the day for the labour of all crea- 

 tures in their several employments, the night for their 

 slumber. A month is a day and a night of the patriarchs, 

 and it is divided into two parts ; the bright half is their day 

 for laborious exertions, the dark half their night for sleep, 

 A year is a day and night of the gods, and that is also di- 

 vided into two halves ; the day is when the sun moves 

 towards the north, the night when he moves towards the 

 south. Learn now the duration of a night and day of 

 Brama, with that of the ages respectively and in order. 

 Four thousand years of the gods they call the critica (or 

 satyd) age, and its limits at the beginning and at the end 

 are in like manner as many hundreds. In the three succes- 

 sive ages, together with their limits at the beginning and 

 end of them, are thousands and hundreds diminished by 

 one. This aggregate of four ages, amounting to 12,000 

 divine years, is called an age of the gods ; and 1000 such 

 divine ages added together must be considered as a day of 

 Brama : his night also has the same duration. The before- 

 mentioned age of the gods, or 20,000 of these years multi- 

 plied by 71, form what is named a manamntara. There 

 are alternate creations and destructions of the world threugh 

 innumerable mamvantaras : the being supremely desirable 

 performs all this again and again." This specimen of 

 Hindoo chronology, which is believed to have been revealed 

 from heaven, is sufficient to show that clouds and darkness 

 must for ever hang over the origin of Indian science, and 

 how difficult a task it must be to elicit from such a mass of 

 absurdity any thing that can be relied on as an approxima- 

 tion to truth in regard to astronomy. The immense long 

 periods spoken of in the preceding quotation have given 



