is the child of whom Virgil makes mention. I suspect this learned Bishop had at least a slight knowledge of the esoteric doctrine. On this I shall say more when I treat of the Sibyls; I shall then shew that the bishop is perfectly right.
The period of the great Neros, I think, may be perceived in China.[1] La Loubère has observed, that the Chinese date one of their epochas from 2435 years before Christ, when they say there was a great conjunction of the planets; but this seems to be a mistake: for Cassini has shewn that there was no conjunction of the planets, but one of the Sun and Moon, at that time. This mistake arises from the destruction of their books, which was effected by one of their kings, about 200 years before Christ. Their period of 2435 years before Christ has probably been 608×4=2432. They calculated by a cycle of 60 years; this is evidently the same as the 600, Usher’s mistake allowed for.
6. I think it is probable that, by Europeans, several allegories of the Hindoos have been confounded together, and it is exceedingly difficult to separate them. They are known to have had various periods called Yogas or Calpas, and it is not unlikely that their allegories alluded to the renewals of different periods: some to the renewal of all visible nature, the fixed stars included; some to our planetary system, and some only to the renewal of our globe; and to this last, the sæcula or ages of 600 and of 6000 years applied. It has been before observed, that it was anciently thought that the equinoxes preceded only after the rate of 2000, not 2160 years in a sign. This would give 24,000, or 4 times 6000 years, for the length of the great year. Hence might arise their immensely-lengthened cycles, because it would be the same with this great year as with the common year, if intercalations did not take place. It would be more erroneous every common year, till it travelled quite round an immensely-lengthened circle, when it would come to the old point again. Thus there were believed to be regenerations of the starry host, of the planetary host or our solar system, and of this globe. If the angle which the plane of the ecliptic makes with the plane of the equator had decreased gradually and regularly, as it was till very lately believed to do, the two planes would have coincided in about 10 ages, 6000 years; in 10 ages, 6000 years more, the sun would have been situated relatively to the Southern hemisphere, as he is now to the Northern; in 10 ages, 6000 years more, the two planes would coincide again; and, in 10 ages, 6000 more, he would be situated as he is now, after the lapse of about 24,000 or 25,000 years in all. When the Sun arrived at the equator, the 10 ages or 6000 years would end, and the world would be destroyed by fire; when he arrived at the Southern point it would be destroyed by water; and thus alternately, by fire and water, it would be destroyed at the end of every 6000 years or ten Neroses. At first I was surprised that the Indians did not make their Great Year 12 Neroses instead of 10; but a reason, in addition to that which I have formerly given, is here apparent: 12×600=7200×4=28,800 instead of 24,000, the first-supposed length of the precessional year. This 6000 years was the age of the world according to the early Christians.
M. La Place professes to have proved, that the sum of the variation of the angle made by the plane of the equator with the plane of the ecliptic is only very small, and that the libration, which he admits, is subject to a very short period. Certainly the ruinous state of the strata of the earth might induce a belief that it was not small, but, as the Hindoos believed, very great.
An account is given by Suidas, to which reference has already been made, of the formation of the world as held by the Tuscans, or Etrurians. They supposed that God, the author of the universe, employed twelve thousand years in all his creations, and distributed them into twelve houses: that in the first chiliad, or thousand years, he made the heaven and the earth; in the next the firmament which appears to us, calling it heaven; in the third the sea and all the
- ↑ Hist. Siam. p. 258.
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