A Key to the Chronology of the Hindus Author:Alexander Hamilton 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: great Buddhas (prophets) correspond in point of date with those of Adam, Enoch, Noah, and Moses, of the Hebrew Scripture, smiles with contempt at those Europeans... more » who attempt to regulate Chronology, by rejecting that of their established church for the Septuagint or Samaritan text: Those who attempt to convert the Brahmans to Christianity must recollect, that there is scarcely any Christian virtue, which was not enjoined by their great Buddha nearly five thousand years ago; and handed down to the present day. If, then, we wish to convince them, that an incarnation of the Deity took place 1814 years ago; or in the Cali year 3102, we must divest ourselves of that intolerant spirit, with which sarcasms have been thrown against their religion, their morality, and their chronology. One author tells us, " that if a " Sooda should get by heart, nay even if he should " read or listen to the sacred books, the law con- " demns him to a most cruel death." Whereas, from a conviction that the Vedas are too abstruse for the generality of the people, a body of laws named Smyrta were composed, consisting of 18 books divided under the heads of the duty of religion, of justice, and of the punishment, or expiation of crimes. These were compiled for This code is formed from the ordinances of Menu the son chapter{Section 4the information of mankind in general; but for the further information of the lower casts in religious knowledge, the Pasupata and Pancharatra, with innumerable other works, were composed. The study of the Veda is enjoined to the three first casts ; and the study of the latter works to the fourth, to whom, from their subordinate stations, and want of erudition, the Vedas were unintelligible. Thus an institution, wisely and humanely ordained to make religious knowledge general, ...« less