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The Monthly review. New and improved ser (1792)
The Monthly review New and improved ser - 1792 Author:Unknown Author Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: Itruft, (fays he,) I have proved in the firft volume of my hiffory, that the perfonages, who are (aid to have flourifhed ib many thoufand years in the earlieft a... more »ges, were of celejtitd, not terreflrial origin; and that their empire was the empire of imagination in the flcies, not of real power in this globe of earth; and that the day and year of Brahma, and the day and year of mortals, are of a nature widely different ; that the whole jargon of the Tugs, or grand periods, and ccmfequently all thofe prefumptuous aflertions of the Brahmins, relative to the earth's antiquity, have no foundation but in the great folar and Innar cycles, or planetary revolutions ; and that Chaldea, not India, was the parent country of mankind.' We fh.iil, hereafter, fee and examine the proofs of this af- fertion : at prefent, we will only take notice that Mr. Maurice deems the fyftem, which he has adopted, the only bafis on which any folid hirtory of antient India can be founded. What firft fuggefted this hypothecs to the author, was an accurate inspection of thefalar and lunar zodiacs of India, inferted in the fecond volume of Afiatlc Refearches. This hypothefis he here curforily unfolds. After paying fome genteel and deferved compliments to Mr. Coftard and Dr. Rutherford, he adds : ' 1 mpreflVd with ideas on the fubjecl fimilar to thofe that fwayed Mr. Coftard's mind ; but at the fame time convinced that the hiftory U it read in the heavens, neither alluded to the Grecian, nor wholly to the Egyptian mythology, I have adventuroufly launched into a new region of hiftorical inveftigation, and have attempted to give, from the ample and recording tablet of the fkies, the real hiftory of the fir it grand family of the poltdiluvian world.' Next to thefe higher motives, one principal inducement for Mr...« less