Zoroaster lived, according to Eudoxus and Aristotle (compared with Hermippos) 6350 or 6300 B. C. This points to a time of Zoroastrians migrating towards India, or having migrated, returning again. Accept the latter, and the beginning of the 6402 years lies very near the first period, and the Indianizing of the Aryans. Those accounts about Zoroaster are (as Eudoxus already proves) pre-Alexandrian, therefore not Indian, but Aryan. Do not the hymns of the Rig-veda, of which several are attributed to the kings of the Tretâ period, contain hints on that schism? If it really occurred in the Punjab some reminiscence would have been left there of it. The Zend books (wretched things) only give negative evidence.
The Brahmans of the most sinful period have of course smothered all that is historical in prodigies, and this wretched taste long appeared to the Germans as wisdom; whilst they despised the (certainly superficial) but still sensible English researches [pg 463] of Sir W. Jones and Co., as philistering! One must oppose this more inflexibly than even that admirable Lassen does. (N. B. Has Colbrooke anything on this? or Wilson?)
There may have been two points of contact between the Aryans and the kingdoms on the Euphrates before the expedition of Semiramis.
a. By means of the Zoroastrian Medo-Babylonian kingdom, which had its capital in Babylon from 2234 B. C. (1903 before Alexander) for about two centuries.
b. In the oldest primitive times, by the Turanian-Cushite or North African kingdom of Nimrod, which cannot be placed later than in the seventh chiliad. The Egyptians had a tradition of this, as is proved according to my interpretation by the historical germ in the story in the Timæos of the great combat of Europe and Asia against the so-called Atlantides: but these are uncertain matters.
That is a general sketch of my frame-work. If you are able to do anything with it, I make you the following proposition: You will send me an open letter in German (only without your Excellency, and as I beg you will always write to me, as friend to friend), in which you will answer my communication. Send me beforehand a few reflections and doubts for my text, which I must send away by the 15th of May. Your open letter must be sent in in June, if possible before the 15th, in order to appear before the 15th of July as an Appendix to my text of Book V. b. (fourth division) first half. I can do nothing in the matter; everything here is wanting. I cannot even find German books here. Therefore keep Lassen's maps, if you have them. I have in the mean time helped myself by means of Ritter and Kiepert to find the old kingdoms and the sacred Sarasvatî. That satisfies me for the present.
Soon a sign of life and love to your sorely tormented but faithful B.
[72.]
I have laid before you my restoration of the text of Megasthenes, and added a few preliminary thoughts on the possibility of the restoration of his traditions, and something of my restoring criticism. I have not however been able to rest since that time, without going to the very ground of the matter, to see if I am on a side-path, or on the right road. I now send you the summary of the two chapters which I have written since then.
I. The restoration of the list of Megasthenes. (153 kings in 6402 years.)