With this view I shall successively examine the chronology of the principal nations whose annals profess to go back to the commencement of things—the Aryan (including the Indian, the Persian, the Greek, and the Roman), the Babylonian, the Chinese, Phœnician, and Egyptian. Indian Chronology.—There was a time when the Indian (Aryan) chronology was believed to attain to the most remote antiquity of all, and this belief was sustained by the apparently irrefragable testimony of astronomical evidence. Who upholds this evidence now? On this head I must refer to Cardinal Wiseman’s seventh lecture (“On Science and Revealed Religion”), where the reader will find a clear and careful precis of the discussion on the subject between Bailly and Delambre, the Edinburgh Review and Bentley, to which I am not aware that anything of consequence has to be added.
If, on the other hand, we turn to what I am exclusively directing my attention—the strict historical investigation—we find that the cautious inquiries of such men as Sir W. Jones and Heeren concur in placing the Aryan invasion at the antecedently very probable date, from the point of view of Scripture, of some 2000 years B.C.
At the present moment the discussion takes the form of philological inquiry, and into the antiquity (upon internal evidence) of the ancient Sanscrit literature. In so far, therefore, as it is philological, it belongs to the indirect argument, which I am now excluding. In so far as the Sanscrit literature is historical, I have discussed the testimony which it brings in the preceding chapter. Professor Rawlinson, however, in his recent “Manual of Ancient History,” refuses to discuss the question, as he does not regard the Maha-Bharata and Ramayana as “trustworthy sources of history,” and commences his Persian history with the accession of Cyrus, previously to which he does not consider the Aryan migration and settlement to have been completed. Apart, then, from the peculiar line of argument to which I shall presently refer, it would appear that the Indian chronology, as reconstructed from history and tradition, falls easily within the lines, not only of the LXX., but of the Hebrew version.
The Indians, it is true (“Hales’ Chron.,” i. 196), themselves say that their history goes back 432,000,000 years. Although Hales gives a solution which may be deemed satisfactory, I think that, if considered in connection with the Babylonian computation, it will be seen that, though inexact in their figure, they are accurate in their tradition. The primary figure in their (Indian) calculation—432,000—is arrived at through the extended multiplication of the Chaldean sossos, neros, and saros, or of their own traditional figures corresponding to them (vide infra). In the Chaldean system (vide Rawlinson, “Anc. Mon.,” i.), 6 and 10 were employed as alternate multipliers. Thus a “soss” = 60 years (10 × 6), a “ner” = 600 (60 × 10), a “sar” = 3600 (600 × 6); and if the multiplication be continued, the next figure would be 36,000 (3600 × 10), next 216,000 (36,000 × 6). The Indian figure 432,000,[49] is made up of twice 216,000.
Professor Rawlinson (“Anc. Mon.,” i. 192) gives in detail, and endorses a remarkable eclaircissement of M. Gutschmid on the mythical traditions of Assyrian chronology. Babylonian Chronology.—Rawlinson says—
“Assuming that the division between the earlier and later Assyrian dynasty synchronises with the celebrated era of Nabonassar (747 B.C.), which is probable, but not certain, and taking the year B.C. 538 as the admitted date of the conquest of the last Chaldæan king by Cyrus, he obtains for the seventh or second Assyrian dynasty 122 years (747 to 625). Assuming, next, that B.C. 2234, from which the Babylonians counted their stellar observations, must be a year of note in Chaldæan history, and finding that it cannot well represent the first year of the second or Median dynasty, since in that case eleven kings of the third dynasty would have reigned no more than thirty-four years, he concludes it must mark the expulsion of the Medes and accession of the third dynasty (which he regards as a native dynasty). From his previous calculations, it follows that the fourth dynasty began B.C. 1976; between which and B.C. 2234 are 258 years, a period which may be fairly assigned to eleven monarchs. This much is conjecture ... the proof now suddenly flashes on us. If the numbers are taken in the way assigned, and then added to the years of the first or purely mythical dynasty, we get 36,000, equal to the next term, to the sar (saros, vide supra), in the Babylonian system of cycles.”
It will be more apparent in the following table from Rawlinson, i.e.—
| Years. | B.C. | |||
| Mythical | 86 Chaldæans | 34,800 | ||
| Historical |  | 8 Medes | 224 | 2458 |
| 11 [Chaldæans] | (258) | 2234 | ||
| 49 Chaldæans | 458 | 1976 | ||
| 9 Arab | 245 | 1518 | ||
| 45 [Assyrian] | 526 | 1273 | ||
| 8 [Assyrian] | 122 | 747 | ||
| 6 Chaldæans | 87 | 625 | ||
| 36,000 | ||||
Chinese Chronology.—The Chinese, also—though, be it observed, the Chinese of modern date, according to Klaproth (“Mem. Relatifs. à l’Asie,” i. 405; Klaproth places the commencement of the uncertain history of China 2637 B.C., the certain history 782 B.C.),[50] in the first year of our era, but more systematically in the ninth century—forged a mythological history, which carried the empire back 2,276,000 years (another calculation, 3,276,000). He adds, however, that the Chinese themselves do not consider the Wai-ki, the authority for these statements, to be historical.
Again, if we allow ourselves to be entangled in certain astronomical disputations, the question may become complicated and confused; but the astronomical discussion must depend, in the end, upon a point which history must determine—i.e. whether the astronomical knowledge and observations referred to had come down in primitive tradition, or had been imported at a later date. Although it need not exclude a belief in a tradition of primitive knowledge of astronomy, yet the doubt will ever cause a fatal uncertainty in any calculations, since, if the knowledge, or the knowledge of the particular observations and facts, had at any time been imported, they might have calculated back their eclipses, as has been proved to have been done in India.