On the Chronology of the Hindus

written in january 1788.

The great antiquity of the Hindus is believed so firmly by themselves, and has been the subject of so much conversation among Europeans, that a short view of their Chronological System, which has not yet been exhibited from certain authorities, may be acceptable to those, who seek truth without partiality to received opinions, and without regarding any consequences, that may result from their inquiries: the consequences, indeed, of truth cannot but be desirable, and no reasonable man will apprehend any danger to society from a general diffusion of its light; but we must not suffer ourselves to be dazzled by a false glare, nor mistake enigmas and allegories for historical verity. Attached to no system, and as much disposed to reject the Mosaick history, if it be proved erroneous, as to believe it, if it be confirmed by sound reasoning from indubitable evidence, I propose to lay before you a concise account of Indian Chronology extracted from Sanscrit books, or collected from conversations with Pandits, and to subjoin a few remarks on their system, without attempting to decide a question, which I shall venture to start, “whether it is not in fact the same with our own, but embellished and obscured by the fancy of their poets and the riddles of their astronomers.”

One of the most curious books in Sanscrit, and one of the oldest after the Véda's, is a tract on religious and civil duties, taken, as it is believed, from the oral instructions of Menu, son of Brahmaˊ, to the first inhabitants of the earth: a well-collated copy of this interesting law-tract is now before me; and I begin my dissertation with a few couplets from the first chapter of it: “The sun causes the division of day and night, which are of two sorts, those of men and those of the Gods; the day, for the labour of all creatures in their several employments; the night, for their slumber. A month is a day and night of the Patriarchs; and it is divided into two parts; the bright half is their day for laborious exertions; the dark half, their night for sleep. A year is a day and night of the Gods; and that is also divided into two halves; the day is, when the sun moves toward the north; the night, when it moves toward the south. Learn now the duration of a night and day of Brahmaˊ, with that of the ages respectively and in order. Four thousand years of the Gods they call the Crĭta, (or Satya) age; and its limits at the beginning and at the end are, in like manner, as many hundreds. In the three successive ages, together with their limits at the beginning and end of them, are thousands and hundreds diminished by one. This aggregate of four ages, amounting to twelve thousand divine years, is called an age of the Gods; and a thousand such divine ages added together must be considered as a day of Brahmaˊ: his night has also the same duration. The before mentioned age of the Gods, or twelve thousand of their years, multiplied by seventy-one, form what is named here below a Manwantara. There are alternate creations and destructions of worlds through innumerable Manwantara's: the Being Supremely Desirable performs all this again and again.”

Such is the arrangement of infinite time, which the Hindus believe to have been revealed from heaven, and which they generally understand in a literal sense: it seems to have intrinsick marks of being purely astronomical; but I will not appropriate the observations of others, nor anticipate those in particular, which have been made by two or three of our members, and which they will, I hope, communicate to the Society. A conjecture, however, of Mr. Paterson has so much ingenuity in it, that I cannot forbear mentioning it here, especially as it seems to be confirmed by one of the couplets just-cited: he supposes, that, as a month of mortals is a day and night of the Patriarchs from the analogy of its bright and dark halves, so, by the same analogy, a day and night of mortals might have been considered by the ancient Hindus as a month of the lower world; and then a year of such months will consist only of twelve days and nights, and thirty such years will compose a lunar year of mortals; whence he surmises, that the four million three hundred and twenty thousand years, of which the four Indian ages are supposed to consist, mean only years of twelve days; and, in fact, that sum, divided by thirty, is reduced to an hundred and forty-four thousand: now a thousand four hundred and forty years are one pada, a period in the Hindu astronomy, and that sum, multiplied by eighteen, amounts precisely to twenty-five thousand nine hundred and twenty, the number of years in which the fixed stars appear to perform their long revolution eastward. The last mentioned sum is the product also of an hundred and forty-four, which, according to M. Bailly, was an old Indian cycle, into an hundred and eighty, or the Tartarian period, called Van, and of two thousand eight hundred and eighty into nine, which is not only one of the lunar cycles, but considered by the Hindus as a mysterious number and an emblem of Divinity, because, if it be multiplied by any other whole number, the sum of the figures in the different products remains always nine, as the Deity, who appears in many forms, continues One immutable essence. The important period of twenty-five thousand nine hundred and twenty years is well known to arise from the multiplication of three hundred and sixty into seventy-two, the number of years in which a fixed star seems to move through a degree of a great circle; and, although M. Le Gentil assures us, that the modern Hindus believe a complete revolution of the stars to be made in twenty-four thousand years, or fifty-four seconds of a degree to be passed in one year, yet we may have reason to think, that the old Indian astronomers had made a more accurate calculation, but concealed their knowledge from the people under the veil of fourteen Menwantara's, seventy-one divine ages, compound cycles, and years of different sorts, from those of Brahmaˊ to those of Pátála, or the infernal regions. If we follow the analogy suggested by Menu, and suppose only a day and night to be called a year, we may divide the number of years in a divine age by three hundred and sixty, and the quotient will be twelve thousand, or the number of his divine years in one age: but, conjecture apart, we need only compare the two periods 4320000 and 25920, and we shall find, that among their common divisors, are 6, 9, 12 &c. 18, 36, 72, 144, &c. which numbers with their several multiples, especially in a decuple progression, constitute some of the most celebrated periods of the Chaldeans, Greeks, Tartars, and even of the Indians. We cannot fail to observe, that the number 432, which appears to be the basis of the Indian system, is a 60th part of 25920, and, by continuing the comparison, we might probably solve the whole enigma. In the preface to a Váránes Almanack I find the following wild stanza: “A thousand Great Ages are a day of Brahmaˊ; a thousand such days are an Indian hour of Vishnu; six hundred thousand such hours make a period of Rudra; and a million of Rudra's (or two quadrillions five hundred and ninety-two thousand trillions of lunar years), are but a second to the Supreme Being!” The Hindu theologians deny the conclusion of the stanza to be orthodox: “Time, they say, exists not at all with God; and they advise the Astronomers to mind their own business without meddling with theology. The astronomical verse, however, will answer our present purpose; for it shows, in the first place, that cyphers are added at pleasure to swell the periods; and, if we take ten cyphers from a Rudra, or divide by ten thousand millions, we shall have a period of 259200000 years, which, divided by 60 (the usual divisor of time among the Hindus) will give 4320000, or a Great Age, which we find subdivided in the proportion of 4, 3, 2, 1, from the notion of virtue decreasing arithmetically in the golden, silver, copper, and earthen, ages. But, should it be thought improbable, that the Indian astronomers in very early times had made more accurate observations than those of Alexandria, Bagdád, or Marághah, and still more improbable that they should have relapsed without apparent cause into error, we may suppose, that they formed their divine age by an arbitrary multiplication of 24000 by 180 according to M. Le Gentil, or of 21600 by 200, according to the comment on the Súrya Siddhánta. Now, as it is hardly possible, that such coincidences should be accidental, we may hold it nearly demonstrated, that the period of a divine age was at first merely astronomical, and may consequently reject it from our present inquiry into the historical or civil chronology of India. Let us, however, proceed to the avowed opinions of the Hindus, and see, when we have ascertained their system, whether we can reconcile it to the course of nature and the common sense of mankind.

The aggregate of their four ages they call a divine age, and believe that, in every thousand such ages, or in every day of Brahmaˊ, fourteen Menu's are successively invested by him with the sovereignty of the earth: each Menu, they suppose, transmits his empire to his sons and grandsons during a period of seventy-one divine ages; and such a period they name a Manwantara; but, since fourteen multiplied by seventy-one are not quite a thousand, we must conclude, that six divine ages are allowed for intervals between the Manwantara's, or for the twilight of Brahmaˊ's day. Thirty such days, or Calpas, constitute, in their opinion, a month of Brahmaˊ; twelve such months, one of his years; and an hundred such years, his age; of which age they assert, that fifty years have elapsed. We are now then, according to the Hindus, in the first day or Calpa of the first month of the fifty first year of Brahmaˊ's age, and in the twenty-eighth divine age of the seventh Manwantara, of which divine age the three first human ages have passed; and four thousand eight hundred and eighty-eight of the fourth.

In the present day of Brahmaˊ the first Menu was surnamed Swaˊyambhuva, or Son of the Self-existent; and it is He, by whom the Institutes of Religious and Civil Duties are supposed to have been delivered: in his time the Deity descended at a Sacrifice, and, by his wife, Sataruˊpaˊ, he had two distinguished sons, and three daughters. This pair was created, for the multiplication of the human species, after that new creation of the world, which the Bráhmans call Pádmacalpíya, or the Lotos-creation.

If it were worth while to calculate the age of Menu's Institutes, according to the Brahmans, we must multiply four million three hundred and twenty thousand by six times seventy-one, and add to the product the number of years already past in the seventh Manwantara. Of the five Menu's, who succeeded him, I have seen little more than the names; but the Hindu writings are very diffuse on the life and posterity of the seventh Menu, surnamed Vaivaswata, or Child of the Sun: he is supposed to have had ten sons, of whom the eldest was Icshwaˊcu; and to have been accompanied by seven Rishi's, or holy persons, whose names were, Casyapa, Atri, Vasishtha, Viswaˊmitra, Gautamá, Jamadagni, and Bharadwaˊja; an account, which explains the opening of the fourth chapter of the Gítá: “This immutable system of devotion, says Crishna, I revealed to Vivaswat, or the Sun; Vivaswat declared it to his son Menu; Menu explained it to Icshwaˊcu: thus the Chief Rishi's know this sublime doctrine delivered from one to another.”

In the reign of this Sun-born Monarch the Hindus believe the whole earth to have been drowned, and the whole human race destroyed by a flood, except the pious Prince himself, the seven Rishi's, and their several wives; for they suppose his children to have been born after the deluge. This general pralaya, or destruction, is the subject of the first Purána, or Sacred Poem, which consists of fourteen thousand Stanza's; and the story is concisely, but clearly and elegantly, told in the eighth book of the Bhágawata, from which I have extracted the whole, and translated it with great care, but will only present you here with an abridgement of it. “The demon Hayagriˊva having purloined the Védas from the custody of Brahmaˊ, while he was reposing at the close of the sixth Manwantara, the whole race of men became corrupt, except the seven Rishi's, and Satyavrata, who then reigned in Dravira, a maritime region to the south of Carnáta: this prince was performing his ablutions in the river Crĭtamálà, when Vishnu appeared to him in the shape of a small fish, and, after several augmentations of bulk in different waters, was placed by Satyavrata in the ocean, where he thus addressed his amazed votary: “In seven days all creatures, who have offended me, shall be destroyed by a deluge, but thou shalt be secured in a capacious vessel miraculously formed: take therefore all kinds of medicinal herbs and esculent grain for food, and, together with the seven holy men, your respective wives, and pairs of all animals, enter the ark without fear; then shalt thou know God face to face, and all thy questions shall be answered.” Saying this, he disappeared; and, after seven days, the ocean ‘began to overflow the coasts, and the earth to be flooded by constant showers, when Satyavrata, meditating on the Deity, saw a large vessel moving on the waters: he entered it, having in all respects conformed to the instructions of Vishnu; who, in the form of a vast fish, suffered the vessel to be tied with a great sea serpent, as with a cable, to his measureless horn. When the deluge had ceased, Vishnu slew the demon, and recovered the Véda's, instructed Satyavrata in divine knowledge, and appointed him the seventh Menu by the name of Vaivaswata.’ Let us compare the two Indian accounts of the Creation and the Deluge with those delivered by Moses. It is not made a question in this tract, whether the first chapters of Genesis are to be understood in a literal, or merely in an allegorical, sense: the only points before us are, whether the creation described by the first Menu, which the Bráhmans call that of the Lotos, be not the same with that recorded in our Scripture, and whether the story of the seventh Menu be not one and the same with that of Noah. I propose the questions, but affirm nothing; leaving others to settle their opinions, whether Adam be derived from ádim, which in Sanscrit means the first, or Menu from Nuh, the true name of the Patriarch; whether the Sacrifice, at which God is believed to have descended, allude to the offering of Abel; and, on the whole, whether the two Menu's can mean any other persons than the great progenitor, and the restorer, of our species.

On a supposition, that Vaivaswata, or Sun-born, was the Noah of Scripture, let us proceed to the Indian account of his posterity, which I extract from the Puránárt'haprecása, or The Purána's Explained, a work lately composed in Sanscrit by Raˊdhaˊcaˊnta Sarman, a Pandit of extensive learning and great fame among the Hindus of this province. Before we examine the genealogies of kings, which he has collected from the Purána's, it will be necessary to give a general idea of the Avatára's, or Descents, of the Deity: the Hindus believe innumerable such descents or special interpositions of providence in the affairs of mankind, but they reckon ten principal Avatára's in the current period of four ages; and all of them are described, in order as they are supposed to occur, in the following Ode of Jayadeˊva, the great Lyrick Poet of India.

1. “Thou recoverest the Véda in the water of the ocean of destruction, placing it joyfully in the bosom of an ark fabricated by thee; O Ceˊsava, assuming the body of a fish: be victorious, O Heri, lord of the Universe!

2. “The earth stands firm on thy immensely broad back, which grows larger from the callus occasioned by bearing that vast burden, O Ceˊsava, assuming the body of a tortoise: be victorious, O Heri, lord of the Universe!

3. “The earth, placed on the point of thy tusk, remains fixed like the figure of a black antelope on the moon, O Ceˊsˊava, assuming the form of a boar: be victorious, O Heri, lord of the Universe!”

4. The claw with a stupendous point, on the exquisite lotos of thy lion's paw, is the black bee, that stung the body of the embowelled Hiranyacasipu, O Ceˊsava, assuming the form of a man-lion: be victorious, O Heri, lord of the Universe.

5. By thy power thou beguilest Bali, O thou miraculous dwarf, thou purifier of men with the water (of Gangà) springing from thy feet, O Ceˊsava, assuming the form of a dwarf: be victorious, O Heri, lord of the Universe!

6. Thou bathest in pure water, consisting of the blood of Cshatriya's, the world, whose offences are removed and who are relieved from the pain of other births, O Ceˊsava, assuming the form of Parasˊu-Raˊma: be victorious, O Heri, lord of the Universe!

7. With ease to thyself, with delight to the Genii of the eight regions, thou scatterest on all sides in the plain of combat the demon with ten heads, O Ceˊsava, assuming the form of Raˊma-Chandra: be victorious, O Heri, lord of the Universe!

8. Thou wearest on thy bright body a mantle shining like a blue cloud, or like the water of Yamunà tripping toward thee through fear of thy furrowing plough share, O Ceˊsava, assuming the form of Bala-Raˊma: be victorious, O Heri, lord of the Universe!

9. Thou blamest, (oh, wonderful!) the whole Véda, when thou seest, O kind-hearted, the slaughter of cattle prescribed for sacrifice, O Ceˊsava, assuming the body of Buddha: be victorious, O Heri, lord of the Universe!

10. For the destruction of all the impure thou drawest thy cimeter like a blazing comet, (how tremendous!) O Ceˊsava, assuming the body of Calci: be victorious, O Heri, lord of the Universe!

These ten Avatára's are by some arranged according to the thousands of divine years in each of the four ages, or in an arithmetical proportion from four to one; and, if such an arrangement were universally received, we should be able to ascertain a very material point in the Hindu Chronology; I mean the birth of Buddha, concerning which the different Pandits, whom I have consulted, and the same Pandits at different times, have expressed a strange diversity of opinion. They all agree, that Calci is yet to come, and that Buddha was the last considerable incarnation of the Deity; but the Astronomers at Varánes place him in the third age, and Raˊdhaˊcaˊnt insists, that he appeared after the thousandth year of the fourth: the learned and accurate author of the Dabistán, whose information concerning the Hindus is wonderfully correct, mentions an opinion of the Pandits, with whom he had conversed, that Buddha began his career ten years before the close of the third age; and Goˊverdhana of Cashmír, who had once informed me, that Crishna descended two centuries before Buddha, assured me lately, that the Cashmírians admitted an interval of twenty-four years (others allow only twelve) between those two divine persons. The best authority, after all, is the Bhágawat itself, in the first chapter of which it is expressly declared, that “Buddha, the son of Jina, would appear at Cícat́a, for the purpose of confounding the demons, just at the beginning of the Caliyug.” I have long been convinced, that, on these subjects, we can only reason satisfactorily from written evidence, and that our forensick rule must be invariably applied, to take the declarations of the Bráhmans most strongly against themselves, that is, against their pretensions to antiquity; so that, on the whole, we may safely place Buddha just at the beginning of the present age: but what is the beginning of it? When this question was proposed to Raˊdhaˊcaˊnt, he answered: “of a period comprising more than four hundred thousand years, the first two or three thousand. may reasonably be called the beginning.” On my demanding written evidence, he produced a book of some authority, composed by a learned Góswámi, and entitled Bhágawatámrita, or, the Nectar of the Bhágawat, on which it is a metrical comment; and the couplet, which he read from it deserves to be cited: after the just mentioned account of Buddha in the text, the commentator says,

‘He became visible, the-thousand-and-second-year-of-the-Cali-age being past; his body of-a-colour-between-white-and-ruddy, with-two-arms, without-hair on his head.’

Cícat́a, named in the text as the birth place of Buddha, the Góswámi supposes to have been Dhermáranya, a wood near Gayà, where a colossal image of that ancient Deity still remains: it seemed to me of black stone; but, as I saw it by torch-light, I cannot be positive as to its colour, which may, indeed, have been changed by time.

The Bráhmans universally speak of the Bauddhas with all the malignity of an intolerant spirit; yet the most orthodox among them consider Buddha himself as an incarnation of Vishnu: this is a contradiction hard to be reconciled; unless we cut the knot, instead of untying it, by supposing with Giorgi, that there were two Buddhas, the younger of whom established the new religion, which gave so great offence in India, and was introduced into China in the first century of our era. The Cashmirian before mentioned asserted this fact, without being led to it by any question that implied it; and we may have reason to suppose, that Buddha is in truth only a general word for a Philosopher: the author of a celebrated Sanscrit Dictionary, entitled from his name Amaracósha, who was himself a Bauddha, and flourished in the first century before Christ, begins his vocabulary with nine words, that signify heaven, and proceeds to those, which mean a deity in general; after which come different classes of Gods, Demigods, and Demons, all by generick names; and they are followed by two very remarkable heads; first, (not the general names of Buddha, but) the names of a Buddha-in-general, of which he gives us eighteen, such as Muni, Sástrĭ, Muníndra, Vináyaca, Samantabhadra, Dhermarája, Sugata, and the like; most of them significative of excellence, wisdom, virtue, and sanctity; secondly, the names of a-particular-Buddha-Muni-who-descended-in-the-family-of-Saˊcya, (those are the very words of the original) and his titles are, Sácyamuni, Sácyasińha, Servárt'hasiddha, Saudhódani, Gautama, Arcabandhu, or Kinsman of the Sun, and Máyádévísuta, or Child of Maˊyaˊ: thence the author passes to the different epithets of particular Hindu Deities. When I pointed out this curious passage to Raˊdhaˊcaˊnt, he contended, that the first eighteen names were general epithets, and the following seven, proper names, or patronymicks, of one and the same person; but Raˊmaloˊchan, my own teacher, who, though not a Bráhman, is an excellent scholar and a very sensible unprejudiced man, assured me, that Buddha was a generick word, like Déva, and that the learned author, having exhibited the names of a Dévatà in general, proceeded to those of a Buddha in general, before he came to particulars: he added, that Buddha might mean a Sage or a Philosopher, though Budha was the word commonly used for a mere wise man without supernatural powers. It seems highly probable, on the whole, that the Buddha, whom Jayadeˊva celebrates in his Hymn, was the Sácyasinha, or Lion of Saˊcya, who, though he forbad the sacrifices of cattle, which the Véda's enjoin, was believed to be Vishnu himself in a human form, and that another Buddha, one perhaps of his followers in a later age, assuming his name and character, attempted to overset the whole system of the Bráhmans, and was the cause of that persecution, from which the Bauddhas are known to have fled into very distant regions. May we not reconcile the singular difference of opinion among the Hindus as to the time of Buddha's appearance, by supposing that they have confounded the Two Buddha's, the first of whom was born a few years before the close of the last age, and the second, when above a thousand years of the present age had elapsed? We know, from better authorities, and with as much certainty as can justly be expected on so doubtful a subject, the real time, compared with our own era, when the ancient Buddha began to distinguish himself; and it is for this reason principally, that I have dwelled with minute anxiety on the subject of the last Avatàr.

The Bráhmans, who assisted Abuˊlfazl in his curious, but superficial, account of his master's Empire, informed him, if the figures in the Ayíni Acbarì be correctly written, that a period of 2962 years had elapsed from the birth of Buddha to the 40th year of Acbar's reign, which computation will place his birth in the 1366th year before that of our Saviour; but, when the Chinese government admitted a new religion from India in the first century of our era, they made particular inquiries concerning the age of the old Indian Buddha, whose birth, according to Couplet, they place in the 41st year of their 28th cycle, or 1036 years before Christ, and they call him, says he, Foe the son of Moye or Maˊyaˊ; but M. De Guignes, on the authority of four Chinese Historians, asserts, that Fo was born about the year before Christ 1027, in the kingdom of Cashmír: Giorgi, or rather Cassiano, from whose papers his work was compiled, assures us, that, by the calculation of the Tibetians, he appeared only 959 years before the Christian epoch; and M. Bailly, with some hesitation, places him 1031 years before it, but inclines to think him far more ancient, confounding him, as I have done in a former tract, with the first Budha, or Mercury, whom the Goths called Woden, and of whom I shall presently take particular notice. Now, whether we assume the medium of the four last-mentioned dates, or implicitly rely on the authorities quoted by De Guignes, we may conclude, that Buddha was first distinguished in this country about a thousand years before the beginning of our era; and whoever, in so early an age, expects a certain epoch unqualified with about or nearly, will be greatly disappointed. Hence it is clear, that, whether the fourth age of the Hindus began about one thousand years before Christ, according to Goverdhan's account of Buddha's birth, or two thousand, according to that of Raˊdhaˊcaˊnt, the common opinion, that 4888 years of it are now elapsed, is erroneous; and here for the present we leave Buddha, with an intention of returning to him in due time; observing only, that, if the learned Indians differ so widely in their accounts of the age, when their ninth Avatàr appeared in their country, we may be assured, that they have no certain Chronology before him, and may suspect the certainty of all the relations concerning even his appearance.

The received Chronology of the Hindus begins with an absurdity so monstrous, as to overthrow the whole system; for, having established their period of seventy-one divine ages as the reign of each Menu, yet thinking it incongruous to place a holy personage in times of impurity, they insist, that the Menu reigns only in every golden age, and disappears in the three human ages that follow it, continuing to dive and emerge, like a waterfowl, till the close of his Manwantara: the learned author of the Puránárt'hapracása, which I will now follow step by step, mentioned this ridiculous opinion with a serious face; but, as he has not inserted it in his work, we may take his account of the seventh Menu according to its obvious and rational meaning, and suppose, that Vaivaswata, the son of Suˊrya, the son of Casyapa, or Uranus, the son of Mariˊchi, or Light: the son of Brahmaˊ, which is clearly an allegorical pedigree, reigned in the last golden age, or, according to the Hindus, three million eight hundred and ninety two thousand eight hundred and eighty-eight years ago. But they contend, that he actually reigned on earth one million seven hundred and twenty-eight thousand years of mortals, or four thousand eight hundred years of the Gods; and this opinion is another monster so repugnant to the course of nature and to human reason, that it must be rejected as wholly fabulous, and taken as a proof, that the Indians know nothing of their Sun-born Menu, but his name and the principal event of his life; I mean the universal deluge, of which the three first Avatár's are merely allegorical representations, with a mixture, especially in the second, of astronomical Mythology.

From this Menu the whole race of men is believed to have descended; for the seven Rishi's, who were preserved with him in the ark, are not mentioned as fathers of human families; but, since his daughter Ilaˊ was married, as the Indians tell us, to the first Budha, or Mercury, the son of Chandra, or the Moon, a male Deity, whose father was Atri, son of Brahmaˊ, (where again we meet with an allegory purely astronomical or poetical) his posterity are divided into two great branches, called the Children of the Sun from his own supposed father, and the Children of the Moon, from the parent of his daughter's husband: the lineal male descendants in both these families are supposed to have reigned in the cities of Ayódhyà, or Audh, and Pratisht'hána, or Vítóra, respectively till the thousandth year of the present age, and the names of all the princes in both lines having been diligently collected by Raˊdhaˊcaˊnt from several Purána's, I exhibit them in two columns arranged by myself with great attention.

SECOND AGE.

It is agreed among all the Pandits, that Raˊma, their seventh incarnate Divinity, appeared as king of Ayódhyà in the interval between the silver and the brazen ages; and, if we suppose him to have begun his reign at the very beginning of that interval, still three thousand three hundred years of the Gods, or a million one hundred and eighty-eight thousand lunar years of mortals will remain in the silver age, during which the fifty-five princes between Vaivaswata and Raˊma must have governed the world; but, reckoning thirty years for a generation, which is rather too much for a long succession of eldest sons, as they are said to have been, we cannot, by the course of nature, extend the second age of the Hindus beyond sixteen hundred and fifty solar years: if we suppose them not to have been eldest sons, and even to have lived longer than modern princes in a dissolute age, we shall find only a period of two thousand years; and, if we remove the difficulty by admitting miracles, we must cease to reason, and may as well believe at once whatever the Bráhmans chuse to tell us.

In the Lunar pedigree we meet with another absurdity equally fatal to the credit of the Hindu system: as far as the twenty-second degree of descent from Vaivaswata, the synchronism of the two families appears tolerably regular, except that the Children of the Moon were not all eldest sons; for king Yayaˊti appointed the youngest of his five sons to succeed him in India, and allotted inferior kingdoms to the other four, who had offended him; part of the Dacshin or the South, to Yadu, the ancestor of Crishna; the north, to Anu; the east, to Druhya; and the west, to Turvasu, from whom the Pandits believe, or pretend to believe, in compliment to our nation, that we are descended. But of the subsequent degrees in the lunar line they know so little, that, unable to supply a considerable interval between Bharat and Vitatˊha, whom they call his son and successor, they are under a necessity of asserting, that the great ancestor of Yudhishtˊˊhir actually reigned seven and twenty thousand years; a fable of the same class with that of his wonderful birth, which is the subject of a beautiful Indian Drama: now, if we suppose his life to have lasted no longer than that of other mortals, and admit Vitatˊha and the rest to have been his regular successors, we shall fall into another absurdity; for then, if the generations in both lines were nearly equal, as they would naturally have been, we shall find Yudhishtˊˊhir, who reigned confessedly at the close of the brazen age, nine generations older than Raˊma, before whose birth the silver age is allowed to have ended. After the name of Bharat, therefore, I have set an asterisk to denote a considerable chasm in the Indian History, and have inserted between brackets, as out of their places, his twenty-four successors, who reigned, if at all, in the following age immediately before the war of the Mahábhárat. The fourth Avatàr, which is placed in the interval between the first and second ages, and the fifth which soon followed it, appear to be moral fables grounded on historical facts: the fourth was the punishment of an impious monarch by the Deity himself bursting from a marble Column in the shape of a lion; and the fifth was the humiliation of an arrogant Prince by so contemptible an agent as a mendicant dwarf. After these, and immediately before Buddha, come three great warriours all named Raˊma; but it may justly be made a question, whether they are not three representations of one person, or three different ways of relating the same History: the first and second Raˊmas are said to have been contemporary; but whether all or any of them mean Rama, the son of Cuˊsh, I leave others to determine. The mother of the second Rama was named Cauˊshalyaˊ, which is a derivative of Cushala, and, though his father be distinguished by the title or epithet of Daˊsaratˊha signifying, that his War-chariot bore him to all quarters of the world, yet the name of Cush, as the Cáshmírians pronounce it, is preserved entire in that of his son and successor, and shadowed in that of his ancestor Vicucshi; nor can a just objection be made to this opinion from the nasal Arabian vowel in the word Râmah mentioned by Moses, since the very word Arab begins with the same letter, which the Greeks and Indians could not pronounce; and they were obliged, therefore, to express it by the vowel, which most resembled it. On this question, however, I assert nothing; nor on another, which might be proposed: “whether the fourth and fifth Avatàrs be not allegorical stories of the two presumptuous monarchs, Nimrod and Belus.” The hypothesis, that government was first established, laws enacted, and agriculture encouraged in India by Rama about three thousand eight hundred years ago, agrees with the received account of Noah's death, and the previous settlement of his immediate descendents.

THIRD AGE.

Here we have only nine and twenty princes of the solar line between Raˊma and Vrihadrana exclusively; and their reigns, during the whole brazen age, are supposed to have lasted near eight hundred and sixty-four thousand years, a supposition evidently against nature; the uniform course of which allows only a period of eight hundred and seventy, or, at the very utmost, of a thousand, years for twenty-nine generations. Pariˊcshit, the great nephew and successor of Yudhishtˊhir, who had recovered the throne from Duryoˊdhan, is allowed without controversy to have reigned in the interval between the brazen and earthen ages, and to have died at the setting in of the Caliyug; so that, if the Pandits of Cashmìr and Varánes have made a right calculation of Buddha's appearance, the present, or fourth, age must have begun about a thousand years before the birth of Christ,and consequently the reign of Icshwaˊcu, could not have been earlier than four thousand years before that great epoch; and even that date will, perhaps, appear, when it shall be strictly examined, to be near two thousand years earlier than the truth. I cannot leave the third Indian age, in which the virtues and vices of mankind are said to have been equal, without observing, that even the close of it is manifestly fabulous and poetical, with hardly more appearance of historical truth, than the tale of Troy or of the Argonauts; for Yudhishtˊhir, it seems, was the son of Dherma, the Genius of Justice; Bhiˊma of Pavan, or the God of Wind; Arjun of Indra, or the Firmament; Nacul and Sahadeˊva, of the two Cumaˊrs, the Castor and Pollux of India; and Bhiˊshma their reputed great uncle, was the child of Gangaˊ, or the Ganges, by Saˊntanu, whose brother Deˊvaˊpi is supposed to be still alive in the city of Calápa; all which fictions may be charming embellishments of an heroick poem, but are just as absurd in civil History, as the descent of two royal families from the Sun and the Moon.

FOURTH AGE.

In both families, we see, thirty generations are reckoned from Yudhishtˊhir and from Vrihadbala his contemporary, (who was killed, in the war of Bhárat, by Abhimanyu, son of Arjun and father of Pariˊcshit), to the time, when the Solar and Lunar dynasties are believed to have become extinct in the present divine age; and for these generations the Hindus allot a period of one thousand years only, or a hundred years for three generations; which calculation, though probably too large, is yet moderate enough, compared with their absurd accounts of the preceding ages: but they reckon exactly the same number of years for twenty generations only in the family of Jaraˊsandha, whose son was contemporary with Yudhishtˊhir, and founded a new dynasty of princes in Magadha, or Bahàr; and this exact coindicence of the time, in which the three races are supposed to have been extinct, has the appearance of an artificial chronology, formed rather from imagination than from historical evidence; especially as twenty kings, in an age comparatively modern, could not have reigned a thousand years. I, nevertheless, exhibit the list of them as a curiosity; but am far from being convinced, that all of them ever existed: that, if they did exist, they could not have reigned more than seven hundred years, I am fully persuaded by the course of nature and the concurrent opinion of mankind.

KINGS of MAGADHA.

Puranjaya, son of the twentieth king, was put to death by his minister Sunaca, who placed his own son Pradyoˊta on the throne of his master; and this revolution constitutes an epoch of the highest importance in our present inquiry; first, because it happened according to the Bhágawatámrĭta, two years exactly before Buddha's appearance in the same kingdom; next, because it is believed by the Hindus to have taken place three thousand eight hundred and eighty-eight years ago, or two thousand one hundred years before Christ; and lastly, because a regular chronology, according to the number of years in each dynasty, has been established from the accession of Pradyoˊta to the subversion of the genuine Hindu government; and that chronology I will now lay before you, after observing only, that Raˊdhaˊcaˊnt himself says nothing of Buddha in this part of his work, though he particularly mentions the two preceding Avatára's in their proper places.

KINGS of MAGADHA.

KINGS of MAGADHA.

This prince, of whom frequent mention is made in the Sanscrit books, is said to have been murdered, after a reign of a hundred years, by a very learned and ingenious, but passionate and vindictive, Bráhman, whose name was Chaˊnacya, and who raised to the throne a man of the Maurya race, named Chandragupta: by the death of Nanda, and his sons, the Cshatriya family of Pradyoˊta became extinct.

MAURYA KINGS.

On the death of the tenth Maurya king, his place was assumed by his Commander in Chief, Pushpamitra, of the Sunga nation or family.

SUNGA KINGS.

The last prince was killed by his minister Vasudeˊva, of the Cańńa race, who usurped the throne of Magadha.

CANNA KINGS.

A Súdra, of the Andhra family, having murdered his master Susarman, and seized the government, founded a new dynasty of

ANDHRA KINGS.

After the death of Chandrabiˊja, which happened, according to the Hindus, 396 years before Vicramaˊditya, or 452 B.C. we hear no more of Magadha as an independent kingdom; but Raˊdhaˊcaˊnt has exhibited the names of seven dynasties, in which seventy-six princes are said to have reigned one thousand three hundred and ninety-nine years in Avabhrĭti, a town of the Dacshin, or South, which we commonly call Decan: the names of the seven dynasties, or of the families who established them, are Abbíra, Gardabhin, Canca, Yavana, Turushcara, Bhurunda, Maula; of which the Yavana's are by some, not generally, supposed to have been Ionians, or Greeks, but the Turushcaras and Maula's are universally believed to have been Turcs and Moguls; yet Raˊdhaˊcaˊnt adds: “when the Maula race was extinct, five princes, named Bhúnanda, Bangira, Siśunandi, Yaśónandi, and Pravíraca, reigned an hundred and six years (or till the year 1053) in the city of Cilacilà,” which, he tells me, he understands to be in the country of the Maháráshtra's, or Mahráta's; and here ends his Indian Chronology; for “after Praviˊraca, says he, this empire was divided among Mléch'has, or Infidels.” This account of the seven modern dynasties appears very doubtful in itself, and has no relation to our present inquiry; for their dominion seems confined to the Decan, without extending to Magadha; nor have we any reason to believe, that a race of Grecian princes ever established a kingdom in either of those countries: as to the Moguls, their dynasty still subsists, at least nominally; unless that of Chengiz be meant, and his successors could not have reigned in any part of India for the period of three hundred years, which is assigned to the Maulas; nor is it probable, that the word Turc, which an Indian could have easily pronounced and clearly expressed in the Nágarì letters, should have been corrupted into Turushcara. On the whole we may safely close the most authentick system of Hindu Chronology, that I have yet been able to procure, with the death of Chandrabiˊja. Should any farther information be attainable, we shall, perhaps, in due time attain it either from books or inscriptions in the Sanscrit language; but from the materials, with which we are at present supplied, we may establish as indubitable the two following propositions; that the three first ages of the Hindus are chiefly mythological, whether their mythology was founded on the dark enigmas of their astronomers or on the heroick fictions of their poets, and, that the fourth, or historical, age cannot be carried farther back than about two thousand years before Christ. Even in the history of the present age, the generations of men and the reigns of kings are extended beyond the course of nature, and beyond the average resulting from the accounts of the Bráhmans themselves; for they assign to an hundred and forty-two modern reigns a period of three thousand one hundred and fifty-three years, or about twenty-two years to a reign one with another; yet they represent only four Canna princes on the throne of Magadha for a period of three hundred and forty-five years; now it is even more improbable, that four successive kings should have reigned eighty-six years and four months each, than that Nanda should have been king a hundred years and murdered at last. Neither account can be credited; but, that we may allow the highest probable antiquity to the Hindu government, let us grant, that three generations of men were equal on an average to an hundred years, and that Indian princes have reigned, one with another, two and twenty: then reckoning thirty generations from Arjun, the brother of Yudhisht'hira, to the extinction of his race, and taking the Chinese account of Buddha's birth from M. De Guignes, as the most authentick medium between Abuˊlfazl and the Tibetians, we may arrange the corrected Hindu Chronology according to the following table, supplying the word about or nearly, (since perfect accuracy cannot be attained and ought not to be required), before every date.

If we take the date of Buddha's appearance from Abuˊlfazl, we must place Abhimanyu 2368 years before Christ, unless we calculate from the twenty kings of Magadha, and allow seven hundred years, instead of a thousand, between Arjun and Pradyoˊta, which will bring us again very nearly to the date exhibited in the table; and, perhaps, we can hardly approach nearer to the truth. As to Rájà Nanda, if he really sat on the throne a whole century, we must bring down the Andhra dynasty to the age of Vicramaˊditya, who with his feudatories had probably obtained so much power during the reign of those princes, that they had little more than a nominal sovereignty, which ended with Chandrabiˊja in the third or fourth century of the Christian era; having, no doubt, been long reduced to insignificance by the kings of Gaur, descended from Goˊpaˊla. But, if the author of the Dabistàn be warranted in fixing the birth of Buddha ten years before the Caliyug, we must thus correct the Chronological Table:

This correction would oblige us to place Vicramaˊditya before Nanda, to whom, as all the Pandits agree, he was long posterior; and, if this be an historical fact, it seems to confirm the Bhágawatámrĭta, which fixes the beginning of the Caliyug about a thousand years before Buddha; besides that Balin would then be brought down at least to the sixth and Chandrabiˊja to the tenth century after Christ, without leaving room for the subsequent dynasties, if they reigned successively.

Thus have we given a sketch of Indian History through the longest period fairly assignable to it, and have traced the foundation of the Indian empire above three thousand eight hundred years from the present time; but, on a subject in itself so obscure, and so much clouded by the fictions of the Bráhmans, who, to aggrandize themselves, have designedly raised their antiquity beyond the truth, we must be satisfied with probable conjecture and just reasoning from the best attainable data; nor can we hope for a system of Indian Chronology, to which no objection can be made, unless the Astronomical books in Sanscrit shall clearly ascertain the places of the colures in some precise years of the historical age, not by loose traditions, like that of a coarse observation by Chiron, who possibly never existed, (for “he lived, says Newton, in the golden age,” which must long have preceded the Argonautick expedition) but by such evidence as our own astronomers and scholars shall allow to be unexceptionable.

A CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE, according to one of the

Hypotheses intimated in the preceding tract.