Part 54

See Mr Colebrooke’s Memoir on the Vedas, Calcutta Memoirs, vol. viii. p. 493. 8vo edition.

Megasthenes apud Strabonem, lib. xv. p. 709. Almel.

The epoch which gave birth to the present age, Caliyug (the earthen age,) 4927 years before the present day, or 3200 years before Christ. See Legentil, Voyage aux Indes, t. i. p. 253.;--Bentley, Calcutta Memoirs, vol. viii. of the 8vo edition, p. 212. This period is only fifty-nine years farther back than the deluge of Noah, according to the Samaritan text.

The person named Satyavrata plays the same part as Noah, by saving himself with fourteen saints. See Sir W. Jones, Calcutta Memoirs, vol. i. p. 230. 8vo edition;--also in the Bagvadam, or Bagavata, translated by Fouché d’Obsonville, p. 212.

Cala-Javana, or, in common language, Cal-Yun, to whom his partisans might have given the epithet, deva, deo, (dieu, god), having attacked Chrishna (the Indian Apollo), at the head of the northern nations (the Scythians, of whom was Deucalion, according to Lucian), was repulsed by fire and water. His father Garga had for one of his surnames Pramathesa (Prometheus); and, according to another legend, he was devoured by the eagle Garuda. These particulars have been extracted by Mr Wilfort (in his Memoir upon Mount Caucasus, Calcutta Memoirs, vol. vi. p. 507, 8vo edition), from the Sanscrit drama, entitled Hari-Vansa. Mr Charles Ritter, in his Vestibule of the History of Europe before Herodotus, concludes that the whole fable of Deucalion was of foreign origin, and had been brought into Greece along with the other legends of that part of the Grecian worship which had come from the north, and which had preceded the Egyptian and Phenician colonies. But if it be true that the constellations of the Indian sphere have also names of persons celebrated in Greece, that Andromeda and Cepheus are represented under the names of Antarmadia and Capiia, &c. we should perhaps be induced to draw, with Mr Wilfort, a conclusion quite the reverse. Unfortunately the authenticity of the documents referred to by this writer has been doubted among the learned.

About 4000 years before the present time. See Bentley, Calcutta Memoirs, vol. viii. p. 226. of the 8vo edition, Note.

See Plato’s Timæus and Critias.

Euterpe, chap. xcix. et seq.

Herodotus thought he had discovered relations of figure and colour between the Colchians and Egyptians; but it is infinitely more probable that those dark-coloured Colchians of which he speaks, were an Indian colony, attracted by the commerce anciently established between India and Europe, by the Oxus, the Caspian Sea, and the Phasis. See Ritter, Vestibule of Ancient History before Herodotus, chap. i.

Euterpe, chap. cxliii.

Ibid. cxliv.

Euterpe; cxli.

Ibid. clix., and in the fourth Book of the Kings, chap. 19, or in the second of the Paral. chap. 32.

Syncell. p. 40.

Syncell. p. 51.

Ibid. p. 91. et seq.

Diod. Sic. lib. i. sect. 2.

Tacit. Annal. lib. ii. cap. 60.

N. B.--According to the interpretation given by Ammianus, lib. xvii. cap. 4., of the hieroglyphics on the obelisk of Thebes, which is at present in Rome in the place of St John of Latran, it appears that a Rhamestes was styled, after the eastern manner, lord of the habitable earth; and that the history told to Germanicus was only a commentary on this inscription.

Pliny, lib. xxxvi. cap. 8, 9, 10, 11.

That of Ramestes in Ammian. loc. cit.

Stromat. lib. vi. p. 633.

See the “Precis du Systeme Hieroglyphique des Anciens Egyptiens,” by M. Champollion the younger, p. 245; and his Letter to the Duke de Blacas, p. 15 et seq.

This important bas-relief is engraved in the second volume of M. Caillaud’s Voyage à Meroë, Plate xxxii.

Syncell, p. 59.

Canon, p. 355.

The whole ancient mythology of the Brahmins has relation to the plains or the course of the Ganges, where their first establishments were evidently formed.

The descriptions of the ancient Chaldean monuments have a strong resemblance to what we see of those of the Indians and Egyptians; but these monuments are not equally well preserved, because they were only built of bricks dried in the sun.