THEORY OF THE EARTH. 195 



or at least among the nation which had bequeath- 

 ed them its knowledge. But the whole of this 

 system, invented with so much lahour, falls to the 

 ground of itself, now that it is proved that this 

 epoch has been adopted but of late, from calcula- 

 tions made backwards, and even false in their re- 

 sults .* 



Mr Bentley has discovered that the tables of 

 Tirvalour, on which the assertion of Bailley espe- 

 cially rested, must have been calculated about 

 1281 of the Christian era, or 540 years ago, and 

 that the Surya-Siddhanta, which the Brahmins 

 regard as their oldest scientific treatise on astro- 

 nomy, and which they pretend to have been re- 

 vealed upwards of 20,000,000 of years ago, could 

 not have been composed at an earlier period than 

 about 760 years from the present day f . 



Solstices and equinoxes indicated in the Pou- 

 ranas, and calculated according to the positions 

 which seem to be attributed to them by the signs 



* See Laplace, Expose du Systeme du Monde, p. 330 ; 

 and the Memoir of Mr Davis, on the Astronomical Calcula- 

 tions of the Indians. Calcutta Memoirs, vol. ii. p. 225, Svo. 

 edition. 



t See Mr Bentley 's Memoirs on the Antiquity of the Su- 

 rya-Siddhanta, Calcutta Memoirs, vol. vi. p, 540 ; and on the 

 Astronomical Systems of the Indians, ibid., vol. via*, p. 195. 

 of the Svo edition. 



