HISTORY OF CASHMIR: ©2* 



teriorto the heroes of the great war,* and we require therefore a considerable 

 addition to the years that elapsed between the first and third Gonerda. This 

 addition we may derive from the thirty-five nameless kings, whose insertion 

 probably was designed to fill up the chasm, and will allow two or three cen- 

 turies to be added to the interval : we shall then perhaps, as a matter of chro- 

 nological, though not historical accuracy, be near the truth, if we admit the 

 51 reigns, and give them an average length of 20 years, as we shall then 

 haveCRifsHNA alive about 1400 B. C. a computation which will agree well 

 enough with those which have been made by our most eminent scholars.f 



The period that intervenes between the first Gonerda and the coloniza- 

 tion of the country under Cas'yapa is stated in the original to be 1266 

 years : that the precise extent of this interval has not been recorded with 

 that precision which the author affects, may easily be granted, but there 

 is some reason to suspect that it is very near the truth, and in that case it 

 is of no small importance, as it gives probability to the whole scheme of 

 our conjectural chronology for the Hindu history, and furnishes an addi- 

 tional testimony to the veracity of the Mosaic record. 



If Gonerda the first lived about 1400 years before Christ, and 1266 years 

 intervened between his reign and the desiccation of Cashmir, we place that 

 event 2666 years before the Christian sera, and in fact within a near ap- 



* Sir Wm. Jones says 200 years, according to the Cashmirians, who boast of his (Buddha's) de- 

 scent in their kingdom, (A.R. i. 425.) If he alluded to the Raja Taringinf, and there is no other Cash- 

 mirian authority yet in the possession of Europeans, he must have beenmisinformed, as far as regards 

 the latter part of this statement ; the birth of Buddha, either the first or second, being no where men- 

 tioned in the work of Kalhana, to have occurred within the limits of Cashmir. 



t Mr. Colebrooke supposes the Vedas were not arranged in their present form earlier than the 

 14th century before the Christian aera, (A. R. vii. 24 ;) but V yasa the compiler was contemporary with 

 the heroes of the Mahabharat, consequently they flourished about the period assigned in the text. Ma- 

 jor Wilford computes the close of the great war, as having taken place B.C. 1370 (A. R. ix.) Dr. 

 Hamilton considers Sri Krishna to have lived somewhat later j or in the 12th century before our asia, 

 ( Genealogies of the Hindus, Introduction, p, 2L) 



