96 ON THE REVOLUTIONS OF 



that of the birth, the reign, or the death of Vicramaditjia, whose name 

 it bears *. 



Again, the most of the Indian records contradict, by intrinsic and 

 very obvious characters, the antiquity which these people attribute to 

 them. Their Vedas or sacred books, revealed, as they say, by Brahma 

 himself, at the beginning of the world, and arranged by Viasa (a name 

 which only signifies a collector) at the beginning of the present age, 

 and — if we may judge of them by the calendar which is annexed, and 

 to which they refer, as well as by the position of the colures which 

 this calendar points out — may go as far back as 3200 years, which 

 would closely approach the epoch of Moses f. Perhaps even those 

 who have faith in the assertion of Megasthenes t, that in his time the 

 Indians were ignorant of the art of writing ; those who will reflect that 

 none of the ancients have made mention of the sujDerb temples, the 

 immense pagodas, those remarkable monuments of the religion of the 

 Brahmins ; those who know that the epochs of their astronomical 

 tables have been subsequently C5.1culated, and inaccurately done ; and 

 that their treatises on astronomy are modern and antedated, will be 

 inclined to discredit still farther this pretended antiquity of the Vedas. 



Yet in the midst of all the Brahminical fables, there occur points of 

 coincidence with the historical monuments in the more western nations, 

 which must astonish us. Thus their mythology determines the suc- 

 cessive deluges which the surface of the globe has experienced, and 

 is yet fated to experience ; and it is only from a period rather less than 

 5000 years that they derive that which last occurred §. One of those 

 revolutions, which they in reality place much more remote, is described 

 in terms precisely corresponding with the Mosaic account ||. 



M. Wilfort even assures us, that, in another event of this mythology, 

 a person figured very much resembling Deucalion in origin, name, ad- 

 ventures, and even in the name and adventures of his father %. 



* See Bentley on the Hindoo Asti-onomical Systems, and their Unison with His- 

 tory, Mem. de Calcutta, vol. viii, page 243 of the 8vo. edition. - 



t See the Mem. of Mr. Colebrooke on the Vedas, Mem. de Calcutta, vol. viii, of 

 the 8vo. edition, p. 493. 



X Megasthenes, apud Strabo, lib. xv, p. 709. Almel. 



§ That which prodxiced the present age or cali-yug (the earth's age) is made 4927 

 years or 3102 years before Christ (1825). See Legentil, Voyage to India, v. i, p. 

 535. Bentley, Mem. de Calcutta, v. 8, ed. 8vo. p. 212. According to the Samari- 

 tan text, the deluge of Noah was only fifty-nine years more remote. 



II The person named Satyavrata plays the same part as Noah, and saves himself 

 with seven couples of holy persons. See Sir William Jones, Mem. de Calcutta, v. i, 

 p. 230, Svo. ed. and in the Bagvadam (or Bagvata) translated by de Fouehe d'Obson- 

 ville, p. 212. 



y\ Cala Javana, or in the common language, Cal-yun, to whom his partisans may 

 have given the epithet of diva, deo, or god, having attacked Crishna, the Indian 

 Apollo, at the head of the northern nations (the Scythians, whence sprung Deucalion, 



