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I am convinced, is so and I have endeavoured so to explain the system by which dates are recorded, that those who have an opportunity of referring to original documents, may be enabled with ease to correct those errors, which it has cost me much pain to avoid, but of which I may nevertheless have been guilty.

In favour of the pedigree being postdiluvian, it will, I am aware, be urged that those European authors who have treated on the subject all agree that Budha of the Lunar dynasty married the daughter of Noah, the prince who was saved in the ark. This is true. But it is equally so, that the belief is confined to Europeans only. For the Hindu records expressly state, that Ila was the daughter of that Menu, from whom the whole world was peopled, whose Antara commenced with the Lotos creation just 3888000 suppositious years, equal to 900 years, before the commencement of the Cali age. But finding an account of the Menu from whom the Solar and Lunar dynasties descended in the works of Sir William Jones, Europeans in general, without taking the trouble to examine the Hindu account, or attending to dates, very boldly assert that Ila was the daughter of Noah. Whereas it has been proved from the account, as given by this author, that the Menu of whom Rhadacanta was treating, was born just 3892888 years

before he wrote. Sir William wrote in the 4888th year of the Cali age, answering to A. D. 1788, and therefrom placing the Antara, which he calls the reign of this Menu, in the first year of the creation And then tells us, that Ila who married Budha, was his daughter, and consequently the daughter of Adam.

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* Became ruler of a province about a. M. 426.

+ Born A. M. 236.

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Here commences the interval or chasm in the Lunar pedigree, which we have just seen represented as fatal, not only to Hindu chronology, but to Hindu history in general: as an absurdity sufficient to overthrow their whole system. An unprejudiced mind, however, will consider it as a collateral proof of the truth and accuracy of the Hindu records. For, in nearly all antediluvian accounts, the same omission of two generations occurs; in our Scripture, which ever text we follow,

the contemporaries of Cainan and Mahalaleel are omitted; the Hebrew text is as follows.

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The Hebrew text of our Bible not only omits the two generations, but speaks of Irad in a stile very different to that used when his posterity are spoken of. It is not recorded that Enoch begat Irad: which would have been the phrase used, if he had been his son; but that "unto Enoch was born Irad*," which is equally, if not more, applicable to the third or fourth generation, than to the next. For when the generations follow

*Gen. iv. 18.

without interruption, we read in the same verse

Irad begat Mehujael, and Mehujael begat Mathusael, and Mathusael begat Lamech;" evincing that Irad was not the son of Enoch, although he descended from him. The Arabians have a similar omission of two generations. One author, to make the age of Lamech accord with the legend which he relates, places Lamech the son of Mathusael as the contemporary of Enoch, the son of Jared, of the race of Seth, and informs us, that Cain, being old and weary of the world, continually haunted by the reflection of the murder of Abel, was in the habit of retiring to the jungles, far from the haunts of men. That Lamech, being likewise advanced in years and very bad-sighted, was accompanied in his field sports by a youth, who hearing a rustling among the bushes, occasioned, as he supposed, by a wild beast, directed the arm of his master towards the spot from whence the sound issued; who, drawing his bow, pierced the heart of his great sire. Shocked at the crime of parricide, in the moment of despair, he seized a stone and killed the youth who had directed his arm towards the fatal spot, and on his return home: said unto his wives Adah and Zillah; "Hear my voice, ye wives of Lamech, hearken unto my speech for I have slain a man to my wounding, and a young man to my hurt." I do not contend

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