﻿OF THE HINDUS lJJC 



In the lunar pedigree we meet with another absur- 

 dity equally fatal 10 the credit of the Hindu system. 

 As far as the twenty-second degree of descent from 

 Vaivasivata, the synchronism of the two families 

 appears tolerably regular, except that the Children 

 of the Moon were not all eldest sons; for king Yay- 

 ati appointed the youngest of: his five sons to succeed 

 him in India, and allotted inferior kingdoms to the 

 other four, who had offended him ; part of the 

 dacshin, or the south, to Yadu, the ancestor of 

 Criskna ; the north to Anu, the east to Druhya, 

 and the west to Turvasu, from whom the Pandits 

 believe, or pretend to believe, in compliment to our 

 nation, that we are descended. But of the subse- 

 quent degrees in the lunar line they know so little, 

 that, unable to supply a considerable interval between 

 Bharat and Vital ha, whom they call son and suc- 

 cessor, they are under a necessity of asserting, than 

 the great ancestor of Yudhisln ' hir actually reigned 

 seven-arid-twenty thousand years ; a fable of the same 

 class with that of his wonderful birth, which is the 

 subject of a beautiful Indian drama. Now, if we 

 suppose his life to have lasted no longer than that of 

 other mortals, and admit Vitufha and the rest to have 

 been his regular successors, we shall fall into another 

 absurdity ; for then, if the generations in both lines 

 were nearly equal, as they would naturally have" been, 

 we shall find Yudhishfhir, who reigned confessedly 

 at the close of the brazen age, nine generations older 

 than Rama, before whose birth the silver age is al- 

 lowed to have ended. After the name of. Bharat, 

 therefore, 1 have set an asterisk, to denote a consider- 

 able chasm in the Indian history, and have inserted 

 between brackets, as out of their places, his tiventy- 

 four successors, who reigned, if at ail, in the fol- 

 lowing age, immediately before the war of ih.^ Mahal- 

 harat. The fourth Avatar, which is placed in the 

 interval between the first and second ages, and the 



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