uERAS AND DATES. 329 



nomy. But in the fyflem of Meya now in ufe that 

 cycle is now totally unneceffary, nor does it in fact 

 belong to it, as the Culpa alone in the latter, contains 

 all the leiier cycles of the revolutions of the planets , 

 nodes, &c. within the period of its durations. 



Meya the fuppofcd author of Surya Sidlian/a, lived 

 in the Satya yug of the '28th Maha yug, of the 7 tli 

 Manwantara of the fifty-firft year of Brahma s life, 

 and probably finding the Puranic fyflem either incon- 

 venient, or not fufficientiy corredt, he invented 

 the prefent one on a much larger fcale, extending the 

 duration of a Manwantara to 308448000 years, and 

 fimpliried the fyftem by making the yugs, &c. to de- 

 pend on folar motion alone ; by which means, all the 

 periods in his fyftem begin invariably on the frrit day 

 of ByfukJi, the moment the fun enters Aries in the 

 Hindu fphere, which circumftance alone, mult form 

 a molt Unking difference between it, and the Puranic 

 fyftem. 



In the Surya Sid/ianfa, Meya has flated the obli- 

 quity of the ecliptic in his time at 24°, from whence 

 Mr. S. Davis, a gentleman to whom the public is 

 under very confiderable obligations, for his valuable 

 paper on the agronomical computations of the/////, 

 publifhed in the Jijiatic Refearches, computed that 

 fuppoiing the obliquity of the ecliptic to have been 

 accurately obferved by the nncient Hindus as twenty- 

 four degrees, and that its decreafe had been from that 

 time half a fecond a year, the age or date of the 

 Surya Sidhanta (in 1 780) would be 3840 years; there- 

 fore Meya muft have lived about the year IQ56 of 

 the creation. 



The Hindu books place Porosu Ram one of the in- 



ate divinities in the 8th Manwantara of the F, ■ - 



fa fyftem, and ib they do Vyasa, and Osothamo, 



Voj V. X the 



