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For although the Saugata justly argues that the Di\dnity may teach men often, and I should add always, yet, if we have discovered by large induction, that the Divine method of teaching men is by providence and blessing upon experience and aspiration, we may expect that method to be maintained with some such regularity as other great processes in nature and history, except where extraor- dinary results may seem called for by extraordinary need, and again certified by no common witness. Moreover, such wonders, as I have before hinted, will be less probable, in proportion as they are less instructive. For instance, if a religious book should tell us of an incarnate Divinity holding up a mountain as a parasol, merely in order to protect certain Gojpis* or shep- herdesses from a thmider-shower, we ought in all soberness to ask whether such a story is credible; what moral lesson can it convey ; or with what sort of stories is it mingled, and by what curious contemporaries attested, that we should believe a thing so much at variance with the Divine government of the world? What, indeed, should we be better for believing it? " It is only in passing that I throw out the suggestion, if the doctrines about the Deity recorded in sacred books are very obvious, the fact of their being trivial will rather detract from their value ; or, again, if they are quite contradictory to our * This is told of Crisbna in the Sri Bhdgavai Purdna. 238 WONDERS, AND GOODNESS. reason, or if tliey tend to any impnrity, such a character of in- struction is not likely to have proceeded from the Author of our mind and soul, or of our intellectual and moral being; for I suppose we are not seeking any other Deity than the One who inspires us to conceive and feel our best thoughts or emotions. Yet I have already admitted that religious doctrines may trans- cend, and even be expected to transcend, our comprehensions ; hence for religious books to contain things different from what we should have expected, is not alone a just ground of objection to them. But we may reasonably accept such statements in things beyond our judgments, if all that accompanies them in things falling within the ken of our minds is both credible and easily verified. That is to say, if the writers of the books lived among a people accustomed to scrutinise facts ; if they never disguise their own faults or ignorances ; if they give you place and time and number, with evident desire to be accurate, and so as to be consistent with what we know from other quarters, or can reasonably conjecture, in such a case our general acceptance of the history for sound reasons may extend to some things which, if they had stood alone, or not in such good company, might have startled us as extraordinary. " You see by this time why we must require in a religious discussion, which is carried on so systematically as the present is, a firm ground- work of history. Will you then permit me to ask you, since no persons are able to inform me better, what has been the course of your stream of history in India, and what are the great epochs which you set up in it as landmarks?" " Do you mean," asked Vidy^chdrya here, " to inquire about the Divine ages?" "Why no," answered Blancombe; "for that might not only revive the difficult question, which we before glanced at, how far the idea of Time can apply to the eternal Spirit, but it would also provoke you to mention periods, which can have little to do with the history of man, being formed possibly upon observation of the stars, and which moreover are so vast as utterly to bewilder me. I remember, \ EARLY HINDU CHRONOLOGY EXTRAVAGANT. 239 for instance, reading in a quotation from one of yonr books* that a human year is only a day with the gods, and that four thou- sand years of the gods, each (I suppose) consisting of about three himdred and sixty such days, make up a Divine age, and four Divine ages make an age of the gods, while it requires a thousand such Divine ages to make a single day of Brahmd,, and as many to make his night. Again, some have said th^t it re- quires a thousand of Brahmd's days to make an hour of Vishnu, and six hundred thousand such hours to make a period of Rudra, Now, since you, my friend, have instructed me that Eudra means Siva, whom you especially worship, it is clear that any account you might give me of the Divine ages would be rather alarming, even if after all we escaped the question about the nature of Time itself. But such periods have evidently nothing to do with human history, or at least nothing with history so far back as it is likely to concern us, or we to remember it. Hence, if you please, I had rather waive all discussion of those Divine ages, in which some say that thousands of years are put on or off at pleasure, while others again think that they trace astronomical calculations in them ; and we will start more mo- destly with some striking event in the generations of men. When, for example, would you place the events of the Mah4- bhdrata, or the great war between the sons of Pdndu and Kuru?" "It is generally agreed," answered the A'ch^ya, "that the great war took place at the end of the Brazen {Dwdpara) age, or at the beginning of the Kalis,ge, which is now in progress. That would be just four thousand nine hundred and fifty-five years ago, the present year (. e. 1854, a. d.) being the seventeen hundred and * Compare Sir Wm. Jones's Works, VoL I. pp. 180—360. ColebTX>oke, Vol. n. pp. 474 — 5. H. H. Wilson, Vishnu Purdna, and Lectures. Lassen, I.A.B.n, p. 500. The aggregate of the four ages would be, 4,320,000 years ; out of which the Kali age has 432,000. The identity of the figures, excepting cyphers, is worth noticing. But a ManwaiUara, (or a dispensation of humanity) is, according to Wilson's Sanscrit Lexicon, 308,448,000 years, and the Calpa, or period of fourteen such dispensations, would be 4,318,172,000 years, or nearly three cyphers mora 240 PERIOD OF ANCIENT DYNASTIES. Beventy-sixth of the Saca, or Sdliv&hana'R, era." " But you see, I suppose," observed Blancombe, " that even this is a very long time." "Perhaps so," answered the other. "When I say long," proceeded Blancombe, " I mean long as compared to any other human history; for this great war is of course not the earliest event in the annals of India." " Very far from it," answered the other, " for Edma, the great king of Oude, who extended his conquests to Ceylon, and was, indeed, an incarnation of Vishnu, lived before the Brazen age, though after the Silver had ended; and from H^ma up to Icshwaku, who is the first de- scendant of Vaivaswata, recorded as having reigned at Oude, there are fifty-five according to the B.4mdyana, but according to the Vishnu Pur&na more than sixty generations of princes. The Vaivaswata, whom you mention, is also, if I mistake not, called Manu?" here asked Blancombe. " He is," answered the other, " the last of the Manus, to whom Brahmd has committed the peopling of the world, and therefore the father of the present race of mankind." "He stands then, apparently for Adam," proceeded Blancombe, " or rather, perhaps, for mankind con- ceived generically, since I recollect that when the word enters into compounds, it clearly means man. From Icshwaku then to R&ma you have about sixty generations of solar princes reigning at Oude (Ayodhya), beside a parallel lunar dynasty reigning at Vit6ra (Pratishthdna). What then may we suppose to have been the interval between Edma and Yudhishthira?" " Clearly from what has been said," answered the other, " the entire Brazen age apj)ears to have intervened. For, the Brazen age begins after Bdma, and ends with Paricshit, the successor of Yudhishthira. During that interval, there appear to have been twenty-nine kings who were descendants of the Sun, whether they reigned at Oude, or rather perhaps at Canouj, and their reigns are said to have lasted about eight hundred and sixty- four thousand years." "You mention the number with as perfect tranquillity of mind," observed Blancombe, smiling, " as if it was usual for men to live about thirty thousand years. PEBIOD OP ANCIENT DYNASTIES. 241 Suppose, however, we merely strike off the thousand, and con- jecture the number tentatively to have been eight hundred and sixty-four years.