﻿1*2 ON THE CHRONOLOGY 



fifth which soon followed it, appear to be moral fa- 

 bles grounded on historical facts. The fourth was the 

 punishment of an impious monarch, by the Deity 

 himself bursting from a marble column in the shape 

 of a lion ; and the fifth was the humiliation of an 

 arrogant prince, by so contemptible an agent as a 

 mendicant dwarf. After these, and immediately 

 before Buddha, come three great warriors, all named 

 Rama ; but it may justly be made a question, whe- 

 ther they are not three representations of one person, 

 or three different ways of relating the same history. 

 The first and second Ramas are said to have been 

 contemporary ; but whether all or any of them mean 

 Rama, the son of Cush, 1 leave others to determine. 

 The mother of the second Rama was named Cau- 

 shalya, which is a derivative of Cushala, and, though 

 his father be distinguished by the title or epithet of 

 JDasarafha, signifying that his war- chariot bore him 

 to all quarters of the world ; yet the name of Cush, 

 as the Cashnirians pronounce it, is preserved entire 

 in that oi his sen and successor, and shadowed in 

 that of his ancestor I'icucshi; nor can a just objec- 

 tion be made to this opinion from the nasal Arabian 

 vowel in the word Ramah, mentioned by Moses, since 

 the very word drab begins with the same letter, 

 which the Greeks and Indians could not pronounce ; 

 and they were obliged, therefore, to express it by 

 the vowel which most resembled it. On this 

 question, however, I assert nothing; nor on ano- 

 ther, which might be proposed: " Whether the 

 " fourth and fifth Avatars be not allegorical stories 

 c * of the two presumptuous monarchs, himrod and 

 t( Be/us ?' The hypothesis, that government was 

 first established, laws enacted, and agriculture en- 

 couraged in India by Rama about three thousand 

 eight hundred years ago, agrees with the received 

 account of Noah's death, and the previous se:tle- 

 ment of his immediate descendants. 



