M. Biot255 was, down to 1843, able to find that either of two solar
eclipses, which really occurred at that remote period, could have
been visible in China at all! I
As to Hindostán, the fiat of Klaproth256 stands unshaken by any
more recently discovered facts ; at the same time that the plurality
of later critics, out of Germany,267—a country where the affinities
of Sanscrit with Allemanie idioms had, indeed, superinduced a state
of rapture that is beginning to melt away—corroborate the modernness
of its annalists: “We are ignorant- of what was [only in the
7th century, b . c. !], in these remote times, the state of India.” * * *
“ The total want of materials has forced me to pass over in silence
the history and the antiquities of India. The political geography
of this vast country, even a long time after it had been inhabited by
the Mohammedans, is still very little known to us.”
Prinsep256 shattered the alleged antiquity of Ilindostanic inscriptions
; nothing, throughout the peninsula, ascending within four or
five generations of the modern age of Buddha, — assumed at the
6th century b . c.259
And, if art (vide Pulszky’s chapter, H. ante) be chosen as the criterion,
the previous investigations of Langlés had ruined the fabled
age of India’s structures ; “ because, according to the judicious observation
of Mr. Scott Waring (Hist, of the Mahrattas, p. 54), there
exists no authentic information anterior to the' establishment of the
Mussulmans in the peninsula (before the 14th century of the vulgar
era); and it would be superfluous td seek for some historical documents
in works written in Sanscrit.” * * * The pagoda of Djugger-
naut, begun in the 9th century, “ is a new proof in favor of our
opinion upon the modernness of the monuments of the Peninsula.”
* * * Ellora, by the Brahmans estimated at 7915 years old, was by
Muslim writers reduced to 900; and thus,- says Langlés, “ the date
of 600 to 700 years seems to me more probablé than that of 7915.”
These rock-temples present traces of Greek architecture : their ele-
255 Journal des Savants, Paris, 1843 ; l r article ; tirage à part, pp. 4-8.
256 Tableaux historiques de VAsie, Paris, 4to, 1826; pp. 2, 286.
257 D e G o b in e a u , (Inégalité des Races, I I , pp. 101—3),, has allowed himself to be somewhat
carried away as to Arian antiquity ; but his observations on old-school philologers* (p. 105)
seem to me to be correct.
258 Journal of the Asiatic Soc. of Bengal; Calcutta, 1828; V I I , pp. 156-67, 219-282:—
a n d S y k e s , Jour. R. Asiatic Soc., London, 1841 ; V I , Art. 14, Appendix I I I .
259 Monuments anciens et modernes de VHindoustan, Paris, folio, 1821; I, pp. 117, 131;
I I , 12-3, 66-8, 70, 169— 70, 184, 208. Cf. also B b ig g s , Aboriginal Race of India, R . Asiat.
Soc., June, 1852; pp. 7-9, 14. The Arian-Hindoos did not even conquer the Dekhàn much
before the 5th century of our era:—the modernnbss of Elephanta, Salsette, &c., was suspected
at sight by the judicious observer B i s h o p H e b e r (Narrative of a Journey through
the upper Provinces of India, London, 4to, 1828; I I , pp. 179, 192).
phants were' cut by foreign artists;'and “ the leaves of Acanthus
are badly drawn and capsized around the base of a pillar of Hindoo
style; so that this base gives the idea of a Corinthian capital turned
upside-down. The Hindoo zodiacs, too, are all Greek and modern!
We have seen that Palestine, Mesopotamia, and essentially Hindostán,
afford no stand-point for annual chronology, even to the year
B.C. 1000; and that, beyond the twenty-third century prior to our
era, at the outside, China fails to supply us with proofs of anything
more than a long previous unhistorieal existence. There are no
other lands, ^ except Egypt, whose historical period attains to par
rallel antiquity with the two first-named countries; notwithstanding
abundant evidence of Etrurian, Phoenician, and Lydian, civilizations
of much earlier date than 2850 years backwards from our time.
Pelasgic Greece falls into the latter category. Whether as nomads
or err ants, as the ancient or the old‘m “ the remembrance of these
most ancient inhabitants of Greece loses itself in transmythologieal
ages.” Their successors on Hellenic soil have left us no determinate
chronology beyond the Olympiads, beginning with the foot-race won
by Corcebus in the year b . c. 776;261 and these victories were not
arranged in their present order for 500 years later, viz., by one
Timseus of Sicily, about B. o. 264.
“ The Pelasgi and the other primitive populations of Greece,”
continues Maury, “ do not appear to have possessed any ancient
tradition upon cosmogony and the first ages of human society.
They were, in this respect, in the same ignorance,' in the same
vagueness, wherein the savage septs, of Asia, of Oceánica, and of
the Hew World, are still found, who have not been brought into
contact with more enlightened nations. One encounters nothing, in
fact, among the primitive Hellenes, analogous to the cosmogonies of
Genesis, of the books of Zoroaster, or the laws of Manou. Which
sufficiently proves, that the intellectual state of these Pelasgic tribes
was very far removed from that of the Israelitish, Persian, or Hindoo
peoples.’’ Like these Asiatics, the Greeks of a later day anthro-
morphosized inventions; or else made the proper name of a country,
a river, or a hill, the primordial human ancestor of a nation.263
“ Thus, in Elis, a personage whose name was taken from that of the
Olympic games, Aethlios, passed for the first king of the country,
and was regarded as the son of Zeus and Protogeneia.
So, likewise, in antiquity, the name of pretended inventors of
» A l f r e d M a u r y , Recherches sur la Religion, el le Cuite des Populations primitives de la
Mce, Paris, 8voJ, 1855; pp. 2, 20, 30-1, 201-4, '216-24.
261 A n t h o n , Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities, New York, 1843; pp. 67§-9.
“ Types of Mankind, pp. 549, 551-2, for parallel examples.