I consider this to be very important, because the Samaritan computation not only agrees with the Hindoo in system, but it adopts the error, using its favourite number 72 instead of 71; and again, the Hindoo error of 2160 instead of 2152.
Colonel Wilford says, “The year of the death of Vicramarca and that of the manifestation of Sal’-ba-han, are acknowledged to be but one and the same, and they are obviously so; according to the Cumarica-chanda, that remarkable year was the 3101st of the Cali Yuga, and the first of the Christian æra, thus coinciding also with the Samaritan text, which is a remarkable circumstance.”[1]
With respect to the time fixed by Eusebius for the age of the world before Christ, we must recollect that it is very different from all the others, because at the time when he and his master, Constantine, were settling and establishing the Christian religion—destroying by the agency of Theodoret such gospel histories as they thought wrong, and substituting such as they thought right—they may be fairly supposed to have had information on these subjects, which may very easily have been lost in later times. I think no one will believe that it was by accident, that the number of the years of the Sun’s precession in a sign, (2160,) the number of Eusebius, (5200,) and the eight cycles, agreed with the doctrines of Juveual and Censorinus and the eight Avatars of India.[2]
Every part of this curious mythos betrays marks of a system founded originally in error, but at this day lost, and made out by expedients or doubtful calculations: and when we reflect upon the fact stated by Josephus, that the Jews had a knowledge from their ancestors of the beautiful cycle of the Neros, we need not be surprised that their chronology should shew proofs of their knowledge of the precession of the equinoxes, as the Samaritan, I think, does. When Josephus says that the Jews had the Neros, he of course means the Israelitish nation, the descendants of Abraham.
CHAPTER III.
SUBJECT CONTINUED.—TWO CYCLES. JOSHUA STOPS THE SUN AND MOON.—JEWISH INCARNATIONS.—MILLENIUM. PRITCHARD. PLATO.—JEWISH AND CHRISTIAN AUTHORITIES FROM DR. MEDE.—PLUTARCH AND OTHER WESTERN AUTHORS ON THE 600-YEAR CYCLE.—THE HINDOOS HAD DIFFERENT SYSTEMS.—OBSERVATIONS ON PYTHAGORAS, &c.—LA LOUBÈRE ON THE WORD SIAM.
1. As we have the two small cycles 600 and 608, we have in like manner two systems of chronology depending upon them. The first is Eusebius’s. It begins with the egress of Noah from the
- ↑ Asiat. Res. Vol. X. p. 122.
- ↑ Methodius, Bishop of Tyre, states, that in the year of the world 2100, there was born unto Noah a fourth son, called Ioni-thus. (Nimrod, Vol. I. p. 4.) This has certainly a mythological appearance and looks as if it was meant for the 2160 years, the precessional time between Taurus and Aries. If this 2100 be added to the 3100 years which the Hindoos place between the flood and Christ, it exactly makes up the date fixed on by Eusebius, 5200 years for the age of the world. The word Ioni, we know the meaning of, and may not the Thus mean the black? for it is often written Ioni-chus. Perhaps it may allude in some way to a schism which took place between the followers of Taurus and the Ioni, which I shall treat of presently, and the followers of the Yoni alone. Other chronicles confirm the existence of this Ioni-thus as a son of Noah. He was a famous astrologer and prophet. “He held the region from the entering in of Etham to the sea, which region is called Heliochora, because the sun riseth there.”
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