more accurate practice in astronomy than the Hindūs seem to possess; for it is evident that their knowledge in science and learning, instead of being improved, has greatly declined from what it appears to have been in the remote ages of their history. And, besides, for what purpose should they take such pains? It may possibly be answered, from the vanity of wishing to prove the superior antiquity of their learning to that of other nations. We confess that the observation, unsupported by other proofs, appears to us unworthy of men of learning, whom we should expect to find resting their arguments on scientific proofs only.”[1]
No doubt it is extremely difficult to arrive, on this subject, at mathematical certainty or proof, but yet it may probably be safely concluded that, if preconceived notions respecting danger to the literal meaning of the Mosaic text had not stood in the way, no difficulty would have been found in admitting the sufficiency of the evidence of the Hindoo antiquity. It strongly calls to recollection the struggle and outcry made against Walton and others for asserting that the Mazoretic points, in the Hebrew language, were of modern adoption. As long as the discovery was supposed to endanger the religion, the proofs were pronounced to be altogether insufficient; but as soon as it had been shewn that the religion was in no danger, the truth of the new theory was almost universally admitted. Exactly similar would be the case of the Hindoo astronomical periods if it could be shewn that religion was not implicated in the question. The author has no doubt of the side of the question which any unprejudiced person will take, who will carefully read over the works of Playfair, and the Edinburgh Review, upon this subject, and Craufurd’s Researches, and his Sketches.[2]
However, there is a passage in Arrian, which proves that one of the great leading facts, which forms a point of striking similarity between the Cristna of India and the Christ of Europe, was not taken from the Gospels after Jesus’s death, but was actually a story relating to Cristna, in existence in the time of Alexander the Great. The reader has seen already all the curious circumstances narrated in the Gospel histories, and by Athanasius and Eusebius, respecting the city of Matarea in Egypt, to which place Jesus fled from Herod. He has also seen that it was at Mathura of India, where the holy family of Cristna resided in his infancy. In a future part of this work I shall shew, that Hercules and Bacchus are both the same, the Sun—one in Taurus, the other in Aries. Then the following passage from the Edinburgh Review, of the article Asiatic Researches, Vol. XV. p. 185, will prove most clearly, and beyond all doubt, that the history of Cristna, his residence at Matarea, &c., cannot have been copied from the histories in the spurious Gospels; but must have been older than the time of Alexander the Great.
“Arrian (Ch. viii.) proceeds to relate that Hercules was fifteen centuries later than Bacchus. We have already seen that Bacchus was Siva; and Megasthenes distinctly points out what Indian divinity is meant by Hercules. ‘He was chiefly adored (says Arrian) by the Suraseni, who possess two large cities, Methora and Clissobora. The Jobares, a navigable river, flows through their territories.’ Now Herichrisna, the chief of the Suraseni, was born in the metropolis of their country, Mathura: and the river Jamuna flows through the territory of the Suraseni, Mathura being situated on its banks, and called by Ptolemy, Matura Deorum; which can only be accounted for by its being the birth-place of Christna;” in fact, of the triplicate God Brahma, Cristna, and Seeva, three in one and one in three—the Creator, the Preserver or Saviour, and the Destroyer or Regenerator. The great city of Mathura or Methora, and the river
