THE SURFACE OF THE GLOBE. 95 



M. Wilfort has endeavoured to derive from these Pouranas a sort of 

 concordance with our ancient western chronology, — a concordance 

 which unfolds, at every line, the hypothetical nature of its foundation ; 

 and which, besides, can only be admitted by entirely rejecting the 

 dates given by the Pouranas themselves *. 



The lists of kings which the pundits, or Indian doctors, have pre- 

 tended to compile from these Pouranas, are only plain catalogues 

 without details, or decked with absurd ones, little short of the Chal- 

 deans or Egjrptians ; or those which were framed for the nations of 

 the north, by Trithemus and Saxo the grammarian |. These lists are 

 far from coinciding ; none of them supposes either a history, registers, 

 or records ; their very foundation has probably no other source than 

 the fictitious work of the poets, from whose compositions they may 

 have derived their origin. One of the Indian pundits, who supplied M. 

 "Wilfort with these, confessed that he filled up at his pleasure, with ima- 

 ginary names, the spaces that occurred between celebrated kings f ; and 

 he added, that his predecessors had done the same. If this be true of 

 the lists which the English now obtain, why should it not be so vrith 

 reference to those which Abou-Fazel has given as extracts from the 

 annals of Cashmere §, and which, besides, though fiUed with fiction, 

 only refer to 4300 years back, of which more than 1200 are filled 

 with the names of princes, the extent of whose reigns are not deter- 

 mined. 



The very era whence the Indians now calculate their years, begin- 

 ning fifty-seven years before Christ, and which bears the name of a 

 prince called Vicramaditjia, or Bickermadjit, bears it only by a kind of 

 convention ; for we find, according to the synchronisms attributed 

 to Vicramaditjia, that there were three, and perhaps eight or nine, 

 princes of this name, who have all had similar legends, and who have 

 all been at war with a prince called Saliwahanna ; and what is more, 

 thev do not accurately know if this fifty-seventh year before Christ be 



* See the great work of M. Wilfort on the Chronology of the Kings of Magadha 

 and the Indian Emperors, and on the epochs of Vicramaditjia (or Bikermadjit) and 

 Salivahanna. Mem. de Calcutta, tome ix, p. 82. 8vo. edit. 



f Sir William Jones on Hindoo Chronology, Mem. de Calcutta, vol. ii, p. Ill, 

 Svo. ed. French translation, p. 164. See also M. Wilfort on the same suhject, ibid, 

 vol. V, p. 241 ; and the lists which he gives in his work mentioned above, vol. ix, p. 

 116. 



X Wilfort, Mem. de Calcutta, in Svo. vol. ix, p. 133. 



§ In the Ayeen-Acbery. vol. ii, p. 138 of the English translation. See also Hee- 

 ren, Commerce of the Ancients, 1st vol. part ii, page 329. 



