1848.] The Turaee and Outer Mountains of Kumaoon. 575 



removed from that of the idolators as they commonly plume them- 

 selves ; while it is certain that no people are more ingenious than the 

 Hindoos in concealing their ignorance on these subjects under the mist 

 of grandiloquent negatives. 



During the heat of the day, whether exhausted by their quarrel, 

 mollified by the brandy, or acting on the Shaksperian maxim that 

 " things without remedy should be without regard," the Brahman s 

 became more reconciled to the profanation of my presence, and entered 

 on a conversation from which I learned for the first time, that the 

 position in time of the Dwapur and Treta Yoogs had been inverted ; 

 the latter, which would have been the third in order had events followed 

 their natural course, having by the will of the gods, become in reality, 

 the second age ; while the Dwapur became the third. To what reform- 

 ation of the Indian Kalendar such a countermarch should be ascribed 

 would now be difficult to discover, and were the events historical, 

 would sorely puzzle the chronologist ; but where all is chimera and 

 fable, it is of no importance how the parts are arranged. During the 

 Golden age my informants agreed that men, and even women, were 

 very silent, and only used their tongues from urgent necessity ; a suffi- 

 cient proof, as I told them, that the Iron age was fully come. Their 

 dogmas on the mathematical ratios of virtue and vice in the Four ages 

 are calculated to exercise an injurious influence on the national morals ; 

 for where men are taught that crime and calamity are destined before- 

 hand to become more and more rife, they will commit every enormity 

 with a pious resignation and conformity to the will of heaven, and 

 " make guilty of their disasters, the sun, the moon, and the stars, as 

 if they were villains by an enforced obedience of planetary influence." 

 Would not a general reformation, bring about a state of affairs, which, 

 by contravening the statements of the Shasters, would, in fact, dis- 

 prove their divine origin ? But the prophecy is really working itself 

 out so far as the institutions of Hindooism are in question ; daily are 

 Brahmans less and less honored, kine more and more eaten, widows 

 less and less burned. The dominion of the English in Hindoosthan 

 was, they said, clearly predicted in the Poorans, with an assigned 

 duration which would satisfy even the proprietors of railway and India 

 stock, and fill with dismay the hearts of Parisian Journalists ; these 

 seers of Kumaoon, who know very little of the present, and, save the 



