to have been the year of the holy nativity.” This is the same as Marsham and Hevelius who fix the Christian æra, calculating from the Hebrew, at exactly 4000 years from the creation.
In calculating periods, a variation of several years has arisen from a very natural cause: one author or translator speaks of the tenth year, another uses the same expression, and, without any ill intention, calls it ten years: this, again, is followed by another, who makes the ten years into the eleventh year, and this again into the twelfth. A similar variation is exhibited in the Indian Cali Yug, which is placed 3000, 3001, 3002 years before Christ,
Dr. Hales has given many very satisfactory reasons why the difference of one or two, in chronological calculations, cannot be admitted to impugn them, chiefly on account of the different methods of speaking of the same number, by different persons. It is not necessary to repeat them.[1]
In addition to what Dr. Hales has said, it may, perhaps, be useful to observe, that a difference of 1 in chronological calculations can seldom be reasonably used as an argument against any conclusion to which there is no other objection, in consequence of authors often neglecting to keep distinct the last and first numbers of series, whence it happens that one unit is counted twice over. Colonel Wilford says, “It is also to be observed, that where we put 0 at the beginning of a chronological list, the Hindoos put 1, as we used to do formerly: and that year should be rejected in calculations: but this precaution is often neglected, even in Europe.”[2]
The Hindoo astronomical accounts having been found to make a great impression on the public mind, an attempt was made in the sixth volume of the Asiatic Researches to remove it, by a gentleman, before noticed, of the name of Bentley. His essay was attacked in the Edinburgh Review, to which he replied in the eighth volume of the above-mentioned work.
He states that there are only three Hindoo systems of astronomy now known. The first is called Brahma Calpa, the second Padma Calpa, the third Varaha Calpa. I shall not trouble my reader with the details, but merely with certain results. Mr. Bentley states (p. 212) the Cali Yug to have commenced 3101 years before Christ. In the Brahma Calpa, (p. 225,) a Maha or great Yug or Calpa consists of 2400 years, which great Yug was divided into four other Yugs; of course these were 600 years each. The beginning of this 2400 was 3164 years B. C., and it ended 764 years B. C. Here, in the division into four, we have clearly four ages or yugs of 600 years each. I think the Neros cannot be denied here.
In a future page I shall explain how this Brahma Calpa arose, which is unknown to the present Brahmins.
If from 3164 we take 764 and add a Neros 600, we shall have exactly five Neroses between the commencement of the system and the birth of Christ, which commencement we shall afterward see must have been meant, according to this system, for the date of the flood, and of the Cali Yug. I think the four divisions obviously prove, that the sum of 2400 years is only a part of a system consisting of Neroses; and, as we shall soon see, of the ten incarnations, in reality Neroses, spoken of in the first chapter and fourth section of the present book of this work.
In the next system, the Padma Calpa, a Calpa is called 5000 years; but the term called Brahma’s life consists of 387,600,000 years. Mr. Bentley says, (p. 220,) “By this table it will appear, that the Satya, or golden age, as we may call it, of the first system, began on the same year that the third Mauwantara of the second system did; that is, the year before Christ 3164.” Here is evidently the same system; and being the same, the Neros must be at the bottom, however carefully hidden: I have, therefore, no occasion to add any thing more at present.
In Usher’s Chronology, the death of Shem, when he was exactly the age of a Neros or 600 years old, took place 502 years after the flood: this we shall find of consequence. One of the Hindoo
