﻿OF THE HINDUS. 127 



four thousand eight hundred years of the Gods ; and 

 this opinion is another monster so repugnant to the 

 course of nature and to human reason, that it must 

 be rejected as vvhollv fabulous, and taken as a proof, 

 that the Indians know nothing of their sun-born Menu 

 but his name and the principal event of his life; I 

 mean the universal deluge, of which the three first 

 Avatars are merely allegorical representations, with a 

 mixture, especially in the second, of astronomical 

 mythology. 



From this Menu the whole race of men is believed 

 to have descended ; lor the seven R'ishis, who were 

 preserved #ith him in the ark, are not mentioned as 

 fathers of human families; but, since his daughter 

 I/a was married, as the Indians tell us, to the first 

 Buddha, cr Mercury, the son of Chandra, or the 

 Moon, a male-deity, whose father was Atri, son of 

 Brahma, (where again we meet with an allegory 

 purely astronomical or poetical) his posterity are di- 

 vided into two great, branches, called the Children of 

 the Sun, from his own supposed father, and the Child- 

 ren of the Moon, from the parent of his daughter's 

 husband. The lineal male descendants in both these 

 families are supposed to have reigned in the cities of 

 Ayodhya, or AudJi, and Pratishfhana, or Vitora, re- 

 spectively till the thousandth year of the present age, 

 and the names of all the princes in both lines having 

 been diligently collected by Radhacant from several 

 Puranas, I exhibit them in two columns, arranged by 

 myself with great attention. 



