﻿ON INDIAN CHRONOLOGY. 399 



To what purpose, it may be a^ked, have we ascer- 

 tained the age of Munis? Who was Parasara f Who 

 was Garga? With whom were they contemporary, 

 or with whose age may theirs be compared ? What 

 light will these inquiries throw on the history of In- 

 dia or of mankind ? 1 am happy in being able to 

 answer those questions with confidence and precision. 



All the Brahmens agree, that only one Parasara is 

 named in their sacred records ; that he composed the 

 astronomical book before cited, and a law-tract, which 

 is now in my possession ; that he was the grandson of 

 Vasishfha, another astronomer and legislator, whose 

 works are still extant, and who was the preceptor of 

 Rama, king diAyodhya ; that he wa^the father of 

 Vyasa, by whom the Vedas were arranged in the form 

 which they now bear, and whom Crishna himself 

 names with exalted praise in the Gita ; so that, by the 

 admission of the Pandits themselves, we find only 

 three generations between two of the Ramas, whom 

 they consider as incarnate portions of the divinity ; and 

 Parasara might have lived till the beginning of the 

 Caliyuga, which the mis:aken doctrine of an oscilla- 

 tion in the cardinal points has compelled the Hindus 

 to place 1920 years too early. This error, added 

 to their fanciful arrangement of the four ages, has 

 been the source of many absurdities ; for tr^ey insist 

 that Valm'iC) whom they cannot but allow to have been 

 contemporary with Ramachandra, lived in the age of 

 Vyasa, who consuked him on the composition of the 

 Mahabharat, and who was personally known to Bala-- 

 ramd, the brother of Crishna. When a very learned 

 Brahmen had repeated to me an agreeable story of a 

 conversation between Valmic and Jyasa, I expressed 

 my surprize at an interview between two bards, whose 

 ages were separated by a period of 864,000 years ; 

 but he soon reconciled himself to so monstrous an 

 anachronism, by observing that the longevity of the 



