tion has been taken from the history of Cristna. However, we shall find hereafter, that, in all probability, it came from the same quarter of the world.
Mr. Maurice observes, 3dly, “That it has been, from the earliest periods, the savage custom of the despots of Asia, for the sake of extirpating one dreaded object, to massacre all the males born in a particular district, and the history of Moses himself exhibits a glaring proof how anciently, and how relentlessly it was practised.” The story of Moses, Pharaoh, and the order to murder the boys of the Israelites, will be shewn hereafter to have a certain mystical meaning much closer to the Indian Mythoses, particularly to that of the God Cristna, than Mr. Maurice would have liked, had he known it.
4th. “In his contest with the great serpent, Calija, circumstances occur which, since the story is, in great part, mythological, irresistibly impel me to believe that, in that, as in many other portions of this surprising legend, there is a reference intended to some traditional accounts, descended down to the Indians from the patriarchs, and current in Asia, of the fall of man, and the consequent well-known denunciation against the serpentine tempter.” This like the last particular proves nothing.
5th, “In regard to the numerous miracles wrought by Chreeshna, it should be remembered, that miracles are never wanting to the decoration of an Indian romance; they are, in fact, the life and soul of the vast machine; nor is it at all a subject of wonder that the dead should be raised to life, in a history expressly intended, like all other sacred fables of Indian fabrication, for the propagation and support of the whimsical doctrine of the Metempsychosis. The above is the most satisfactory reply in my power to give to such determined sceptics as Mr. Volney.”
11. The reasons of Mr. Maurice to account for the history of Cristna are so weak, that they evidently do not deserve a moment’s consideration; and, as well as Sir W. Jones’s happy and ingenious theory of interpolation, are only named in order that the Author may not be accused of suppressing them; that the reader may see how learned divines explain these matters; and that he may hear both sides. Mr. Maurice’s jeer upon miracles never being wanting to an Indian romance, is rather hard upon such of his friends as believe, or affect to believe, histories or romances where miracles are the very life and soul of the machine, to use his own expression; which, in fact, consist of miracles from one end to the other; and he seems to have forgotten that most of the early orthodox fathers believed in the Metempsychosis.
The reader will please to recollect that the circumstances related of Cristna come to us very unwillingly from the orthodox Jones and Maurice; whether any others of consequence would be found, if we had a translation of the whole Vedas, is as yet uncertain. Without any reflection on these gentlemen, it may be permitted us to say, that circumstances which did not appear important to them, might on these subjects appear of great consequence to others.
Sir William Jones strives to deceive himself into a belief, that all the cycles or statements of the different astronomical events related in the Hindoo books are the produce of modern back-calculations. Those books are brought from different nations of India, so remote and numerous, that it is almost impossible to suppose them all to be the effect of artifice; and, when united to the evident extreme antiquity of the Zodiacs, and some of the monuments of both India and Egypt, quite impossible. All this he did for fear his faith in the chronology of the Bible, which he did not know how to reconcile to that of the Indians, should be shaken. His incredulity is so great as to be absolutely ridiculous credulity. What a lamentable figure it exhibits of the weakness of mind, and the effect of early prejudice and partial education, in one of the greatest and very best of men!
In the same way that he finds a pretext to disguise to himself the consequences which follow from the great antiquity of the Indian temples, books, and astronomy, he finds an equally satisfac-
