THEORY OF THE EARTH. 153 



These lists are far from corresponding ; none of 

 them supposes a history, or registers, or records ; 

 the very basis on which they rest may have been 

 purely imagined by the poets from whose works 

 they have been extracted. One of the pundits 

 who furnished Mr Wilfort with them, acknow- 

 ledged that he had arbitrarily filled up the spaces 

 between the celebrated kings with imaginary 

 names *, and avowed that his predecessors had 

 done the same. If this be true of the lists ob- 

 tained by the English at the present day, how 

 should it not be so of those given by Abou-Fa- 

 zel, as extracts from the annals of Cachmere f , 

 and which, besides, full of fables as they are, do 

 not extend farther back than 4300 years, of 

 which more than 1200 are occupied with names 

 of princes whose reigns, in as far as regards their 

 duration, remain undetermined. 



Even the era, accordingly, from which the In- 

 dians count their years at the present day, which 

 commences fifty seven years before Christ, and 

 __^ _ -^_______ 



on the same subject, Ibid. vol. v. p. 241. and the lists 

 which he. gives in his essay cited above, vol. ix. p. 116. 



* Wilfort, Calcutta Mem. 8vo. vol. ix. p. 133. 



t In the Ayeen-Acbery, vol. ii. p. 138, of the English 

 transl. See also Heeren, Commerce of the Ancients, vol. i. 

 part ii. p. 329. 



