Chronology of the Hindoos. 575 
gentlemen above alluded to attribute to them refpiSfively, not 
the interdiction but the refiifution of the tolar reckoning ; that 
of the Mahometans, impofed on the province by their more 
bigotted predeceflors, being found inconfiftent with the periodi- 
cal colieftion of the revenue, which depends on the harvefts (v). 
It is, in truth, extremely difficult to conceive, how a mode of 
computation, fo much at variance with the rational concerns 
of civilized people, can poffibly fubfift in any ftate of fociety 
above that of the paftoral and predatory tribes with whom it 
originated. 
As it appears, that the people of Slatn^ in the farther India, 
have borrowed their knowledge of aftronomy from the Hindoos, 
it will not be thought inconfiftent with the fubjed I am treat- 
ing, to add fome account of the chronological eras in ufe 
amongft them. Of thefe, one has been termed their civil,, 
and another their aftronomical era. The civil reckoning is by 
lunar years, confiding ordinarily of 12 months each, with an 
intercalation of 7 months in the period of 19 years, and com- 
mencing with the new moon that piecedes the winter ioiftice. 
This era is computed from the fuppofed time of the introduc- 
tion of their religion by Sommona-codom, 544 years before 
Chrift, or in the year of the Julian period 4169; and confe- 
quently 2333 years of it were expired in the month of De- 
cember, 1789 ; but by a cuftom which, though not without 
its parallel, wants to be fatisfadorily explained, they do not 
change the date, or count the fucceeding year 2334, till it 
meets the aftronomical reckoning in the montn of /ipril fol- 
lowing. 
The aftronomical era is founded immediately upon the tables 
and modes of calculation adopted from the Hindoos. The 
French aflxonomer, Dom. Cassini, by an ingenious deduction 
from 
