CHRISTIAN HELIGION in INDIA. 33 



decree, that no father, during the course of that year, 

 should presume to Hft up from the ground, or bru)g 

 up a new-born male child. However, those among 

 the Conscript Fathers, whose wives were with child, 

 had the decree suppressed : and these prophecies and 

 prodigies were afterwards applied to Augustus, who 

 was born during the considate of M. Tullius Ci- 

 cero* sixty-three years before Christ; but fifty- 

 six according to several writers in the east, such as 

 the author of the Lebtarikh and others. Hence it is, 

 that NicoLo DE CoNTi, who was in Bengal, and 

 other parts of India in the fifteenth century, insists 

 that Vicrama'ditya was the same with Augustus, 

 and that his period was reckoned from the birth of 

 that Emperor, fift3^-six years B. C. 



In the year II9 B. C. in the time of Marius, such 

 direful prodigies appeared, that the sacred college 

 of Heteuria, on being consulted, declared that the 

 eighth revolution of the world was at an end : and 

 that another, either for the better, or the worse, was 

 going to take placef: and Juvenal, who lived in 

 the first century, declares that he lived in this ninth 

 revolution, which was then going on J: for the 

 Etruscans reckoned twelve of these revolutions, 

 each of one thousand years, according to some : but 

 according to others, these twelve revolutions consti- 

 tuted what they called the great year. 



It may be asked, what prophecies are to be found 

 in the Furaiias concerning this Saviour and avenger. 

 I observed before, that the Hindus would have it, 



* See Supplement to TiT. Liv. cii. Decad. c. Hg. 

 t Plutarch in Syllam, p. 456. 

 I Juvenal, Satyr, xiii, v. 28. 



D 



