XVIII. ON THE CHRONOLOGY OF THE HINDUS. BY CAPTAIN FRANCIS WILFORD. THE accompanying genealogical table is faithfully extracted from the VISHNU purána, the BHAGAVAT, and other puránas, without the leaft alteration whatever. I have collected numerous MSS. and with the affiftance of fome learned Pundits of Benares, who are fully fatisfied of the authenticity of this table, I exhibit it as the only genuine chronological record of Indian hiftory that has hitherto come to my knowledge. It gives the utmoft extent of the chronology of the Hindus; and as a certain number of years only can be allowed to a generation, it overthrows at once their monftrous fyftem, which I have rejected as abfolutely repugnant to the courfe of nature, and human reafon. Indeed their fyftems of geography, chronology, and hiftory, are all equally monftrous and abfurd. The circumference of the earth is faid to be 500,000,000 yojanas, or 2,456,000,000 British miles: the mountains are afferted to be 100 yojanas, or 491 British miles high. Hence the mountains to the fouth of Benares are faid, in the puránas, to have kept the holy city in total darkness, till Matra-deva growing angry at their infolence, they humbled themselves to the ground, and their highest peak now is not more than 500 feet high. In Europe fimilar notions once prevailed; for we are told that the Cimmerians were kept in continual darkness by the interpofition of immenfely high mountains. In the CA'LICA purána, it is faid that the mountains have funk confiderably, fo that the highest is not above one yojana, or five miles high. When When the Puranics fpeak of the kings of ancient times, they are equally extravagant. According to them, king YUDHISHTHIR reigned feven and twenty thousand years; king NANDA, of whom I fhall fpcak more fully hereafter, is faid to have poffeffed in his treafury above 1,584,000,000 pounds fterling, in gold coin alone: the value of the filver and copper coin, and jewels, exceeded all calculation; and his army confifted of 100,000,000 men. Thefe accounts geographical, chronological, and hiftorical, as abfurd and inconfiftent with reafon, must be rejected. This monftrous fyftem feems to derive its origin from the ancient period of 12,000 natural years, which was admitted by the Perfians, the Etrufcans, and, I believe, alfo by the Celtic tribes; for we read of a learned nation in Spain, which boafted of having written hiftories of above fix thoufand years. : The Hindus ftill make use of a period of 12,000 divine years, after which a periodical renovation of the world takes place. It is difficult to fix the time when the Hindus, forfaking the paths of hiftorical truth, launched into the mazes of extravagance and fable. MEGASTHENES, who had repeatedly visited the court of CHANDRA GUPTA, and of courfe had an opportunity of converfing with the beft informed perfons in India, is filent as to this monftrous fyftem of the Hindus on the contrary, it appears, from what he fays, that in his time they did not carry back their antiquities much beyond fix thoufand, or even five thousand years, as we read in fome MSS, He adds alfo, according to CLEMENS of Alexandria, that' the Hindus and the Jews were the only people, who had a true idea of the creation of the world, and the beginning of things. There was then an obvious affinity between the chronological fyftems of the Jews and the Hindus. We are well acquainted with the pretenfions of the Egyptians and Chaldeans to antiquity. This they never attempted to conceal. It." |