﻿OT THE HINDUS. 1*3 



Such is the arrangement of infinite time, which 

 the Hindus believe to have been revealed from Hea*. 

 ven, and which they generally understand in a literal 

 sense: it seems to have intrinsic marks of being purely 

 astronomical ; but I will not appropriate the observa- 

 tions of others, nor anticipate those in particular, 

 which have been made by two or three of our mem- 

 bers, and which they will, I hope, communicate to 

 the Society. A conjecture, however, of Mr. Pater- 

 son has so much ingenuity in it, that I cannot forbear 

 mentioning it here, especially as it seems to be con- 

 firmed by one of the couplers just cited : he supposes, 

 that, as a month of mortals is a day and night of the 

 patriarchs, from the analogy of its bright and dark 

 halves, so, by the same analogy, a day and night of 

 mortals might have been considered by the ancient 

 Hindus as a month of the lower world ; and then a 

 year of such months will consist only of twelve days 

 and nights, and thirty such years will compose a 

 lunar year of mortals ; whence he surmises that the 

 four million three hundred and twenty thousand years, 

 of which the four Indian ages are supposed to consist, 

 mean only years of twelve days \ and, in tact, thac 

 sum divided by thirty, is reduced to an hundred and 

 forty -four thousand : now a thousand four hundred and 

 forty years are one pads, a period in the Hindu as- 

 tronomy ; and that sum multiplied by eighteen, 

 amounts precisely to twenty -five thousand nine hun- 

 dred and twenty, the number of years in which the 

 fixed stars appear to perform thrir long revolution 

 eastward. The last mentioned sum is the product 

 also of an hundred and forty -four, which, according to 

 M. Badly, was an old Indian cycle, into an hundred 

 and eighty, or the Tartarian period, called Van, and 

 of two thousand } eight hundred and eighty into nine, which 

 is not one only of the lunar cycles, cut considered 

 by the Hindus as a mysterious number and an emblem 

 of Divinity, because, if it be multiplied by any other 



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