-42 ON THE HINDU 



That is, '* Fiom the year of Saca take 421 : — 

 " having put the remainder down in two places, 

 " let one of them be divided by ten, and the quo- 

 " tient taken from tlie other, the residue is the 

 " precession in minutes/' 



Hence many of the Hindus have, erroneously, 

 concluded that Vara'ha Mihfra must have lived 

 in the year 421 of Saca, or A. D. 499. I^ut surely 

 there is not the smallest foundation to draw any 

 such inference from the passage, for, he might have 

 jiverl at the present time and given the same rule. 

 In fact, it might, with equal propriety, be pre- 

 tended that he lived at the beginning of the Ca/i 

 Vag, because he assumed the planets to have been 

 in a line of mean conjunction in the first point of 

 Aries at that time. Not satisfied, however^ with 

 thus stretching a point in favour of the antiquity 

 of their author, they go something farther, and en- 

 deavour from the following verse of the Navaratna, 

 which they generally quote, to refer him to the era 

 of Vicrama'ditya, fifty-six years before Christ, 

 or upwards of oOO years still earlier than the former. 



HHT^ws cr:?^t 7>iil^^ero 1 



That is, " Dhanvaxtari, Cshapaxaca, Ama- 

 RASI^fHA, S'ax'cu, Bj::'ta'labhatta, Ghatacak- 



