FINIS.
[A1]. The reader will find a very learned and interesting dissertation on the astronomy of these and other nations of antiquity, in Lalande’s Astronomie, liv. ii. W. B.
[A2]. Our orator might well pass on, without noticing more particularly the fabulous annals of the Chaldeans. They assigned to the reigns of their ten dynasties, 432 thousand years: and Lalande observes, that this number, 432, augmented by two or by four noughts, frequently occurs in antiquity. This prodigious number of years expresses, according to the notions of the inhabitants of India, the duration of the life of a symbolical cow: in the first age, this cow, serving as a vehicle for innocence and virtue, advances with a firm step upon the earth, supported by her four feet; in the second, or silver age, she becomes somewhat enfeebled, and walks on only three feet; during the brazen, or third age, she is reduced to the necessity of walking on two; finally, during the iron age, she drags herself along; and, after having lost, successively, all her legs, she recovers them in the succeeding period, all of them being reproduced in the same order.
The Bramins thus make up their fabulous chronological account of the age of the world; viz.
| The duration of the first age, | 1,728,000 | years |
| The second | 1,296,000 | do. |
| The third | 864,000 | do. |
| The fourth will continue | 432,000 | do. |
| Making the total duration of the world | 4,320,000 | years. |
Mr. Lalande remarks, that these four ages have a relation to the numbers 4, 3, 2, 1, which seem to announce some other thing than an historical division. Therefore, to give this fabulous duration of the world some semblance of truth. Mr. Bailly[[A2a]] rejects, in the first place, the fourth age, of which, at present, (that is, when Lalande wrote,) only 4887 years have passed: the residue of this duration could not be considered by Bailly as any thing more than a reverie: and as for the three first ages, he takes the years for days; in order to shew, that, in reality, they reckoned by days, before they computed by solar years. By these means, Bailly has reduced the pretensions of the people of India to 12,000 years; and he identifies this calculation for the Indians with that of the Persians, who give, likewise, 12,000 years for the duration of the world. The accordance thus produced in the two chronologies, seemed to Bailly to strengthen the authenticity of the recital; and makes it appear, that these notions prevailed alike among the Egyptians and the Chinese.
Such are the data, such the calculations, and such the reasoning of Mr. Bailly, on this subject.
But, although Mr. Lalande has noticed the retrograde series of the progressive numbers (1,) 2, 3, 4, in the Asiatic account of the age of the world, a kind of mysterious constitution of the amount of the years, in the several ages which make up the entire sum of its duration, seems to have escaped the observation of that acute philosopher; and probably the same circumstance passed also unnoticed by Mr. Bailly: it may be considered as a species of chronological abracadabra, engendered in the prolific brain of some eastern philosopher: the following is the circumstance here meant. It will be perceived, in the first place, that the arrangement of the numerical figures, in making up the years allotted to the fourth age of the world, is apparently artificial, and therefore, probably, altogether arbitrary. It will then be seen, that the number of years in the third age is double the amount of those in the fourth; that those in the second is made up by adding together the years in the fourth and third ages; and, that those in the first age are constituted by an addition of the number of years in the fourth and second ages. This being the fact, it does not seem to bear out Mr. Bailly, in his hypothesis, and the calculations founded on it. W. B.
[A2a]. Mr. Bailly was the author of a History of Ancient and modern Astronomy. His Essay on the Theory of Jupiter’s Satellites, which is said to be a valuable treatise, was published in the year 1766. Both works are in the French language, and were printed in France.