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Show 484 THE MONOGF.NISTS AND M. Biot255 was, down to 1843, able to find that either of two solar eclipses, which really occnrrcd at that remote period, could have ],con visible in O!tina at all ! As to Jiindostan, th fiat of Klaproth 256 stands unshaken by any m.orc recently uiAcovcrc<l facts; at the same time that the plurality of later critics, ont of Gcrmany,257-a conntt·y whore the affinities of Sanscrit with Allomanic idioms had, indeed, superinduced a state of rapture that iFJ beginning to melt away-corroborate tho modernHess of its anmtlists: "We arc 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 gcograpl1y of this vast country, even a long time after it had been inhabited by the Mohammedans, is still very little known to us." Prinsep 256 shattered the alleged antiquity of IJindostanic inscl'iptions; nothing, thronghout the peninsula, ascending within four or jivo generations of the modern age of Buddha, -asaumed at the Gth century B. c.2!i9 And, if art (vide Pulszky's chapter, II. ante) be chosen as the criterion, the previons investigations of Langles had ruined the fabled age of India's structures; "because, according to the judicious obf! crvation of Mr. Scott Waring (Hist. of tlte Malt1·attas, p. 54), there exists no authentic information anterior to tho establishment of the Mussulmans in the peninsula (before the 14th century of the vulgar ora); and it woulu be supodl.uous to seek for some historical documeuts in worl~s written in Sanscrit." * * * The pagoda of Djuggernaut, begun m tho 9th ccntm·y, "is a new proof in favor of our opinion upon tho modernness of the monuments of the Peninsula." * * * Ellora, by the Brahmans estimated at 7915 years 0ld, was by Muslim writol's reduced to 900; and thus, says Langles, "the date of 600 to 700 years seems to me more probable than that of 7915." These rock-temples present traces of Greek architecture: their ole- 2M Jozmwl des Savants, PnriR, 1843; 1• article; tirngo i). pnrt, pp. 4-8. 200 Tableaux Mstoriques de l'Asie, Paris, 4to, 1826; pp. 2, 286. 267 D~ GonrNrMn, (ln{galiM des Races, II, pp. 101-3), Lns nllowcd himself to bo somewhnt c:m·iod nwny ns to At·ian antiquity; but his obaervntions on old-school pbilologors (p. 105) ~com to me to be correct. ~ Journal of tho Asiatio Soc. of Bengal; Calcutta, 1828; VII, pp. 156-67, 219-282 :IIU! 9SYK~B, Jour. R .. Asiatic Soo., London, 1841; VI, Art. 14, Appendix III. Afonmnents ancwu et modemes de l' Ilindoustan Po.ris folio 1821 · I pp 117 131 · 11, 12-ll, 66-8, 70, 169-70, 184, 208. Cf. also Bn:aos, A~origin,al Rae: of Ind~a, n,,' AR,iat: R•>c., .June, 1852; pp. 7-9, 14. Tho Arinn-Uinuoos did not ovon oonquor tho Dokhil.n much boforo the ~th century of our om :-tho modernness of Eloplmutn, Salsettc, &c., was suspected nt srght by tho .iudi~ions observer Brsuo1• Tf@Ell (Narrative of a Journey throug/1 tho up pet· Provmces of India, Loudon, 4to, 1828; II, pp. 179, 192). 1'11E POLYGRNJSTS. phants were cut by foreign artists; and "the leaves of .Acanthus arc badly drawn aud capsized around the base of a pillar of Ilindoo style; so that this base gives the idea of a Corinthian capital turnc<l up iuc-down." Tho IIindoo zodiacs, too, at·c all Greek and modern! W c have soon that Palestine, Mesopotamia, and essentially Ilindostan, aflord no stand-point for annual chronology, even to the yeat• n. c. 1000; and that, beyond the twenty-third century prior to out· era, at the outside, China fails to supply us with proofs of anything more than a long previous unhistorical existence. There arc no othel' lands, except Egypt, whose historical period attains to parallel antiquity with the two :first-named countries; notwithstanding abundant evidence of Etrurian, .Pho:mician, aud Lydian, civilizationt~ of much earlier date than 2850 years backwards from our time. Pelasgic Greece falls into the lattcl' category. "Whether as nomads or errants, as the ancient or the old, 200 "the remembrance of these most ancient inhabitants of Greece loses itself in transmythological ages." Their successors on IIollcnic soil have left us no determinate chl'onology beyond the Olympiads, beginning with the foot-race won by Coroobus in the year D. c. 776; 261 and these victorie.s were not arranged in their present order for 500 years later, v1z., by one 'l'imrous of Sieily, about D. c. 264. "The Pclas()'i and the other primitive populations of Greece," b . continues Maury, "do not appcat· 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 samo vagueness, wherein the savage sopts of Asia, of Oceanica, an~ of the Now World, arc still found, who have not been bronght mto contact with more enlightened nations. Ono encounters nothing, in fact among tho primitive llcllencs, analogous to the cosmogonies of Gc1~csis, of the books of Zoroaster, or the laws of Manou. Which sufficiently proves, that the intellectual state of these Pclasgic tribe:; was very far removed from that of the Israclitish, Persian, or IIindoo peoples." Like these Asiatics, the Greeks of a later d.ay antht·omorphosized inventions; o: else _made the proper name of a co!~nt'r;~ a river, or a hill, the pnmordutl human ancestor of a natt~n. "Thus, in Elis, a personage whose name was taken from that of tho Olympic games, Aethlios, passed for the :first king of the country, and was ro()'arded as the son of Zeus and Protogcucia. "So, lik~wise, iu antiquity, tho name of pretended inventors of 2ro ALFR~:O MAURY, Recherches sur la Religion et le Calle des Population., primitive& de ta Grace, Paris, 8vo, 1855; pp. 2, 20, 80-L, 201-1 , 21G-24. :Wl ANTHON, Dictionary of Greek and Roman Arttiqrtities, New York, 1848; pp. 678-9. 262 Types of .Manki11d, pp. 549, 651-2, for parallel examples. ) , |
