th him issued another form, huge and measureless, which
speedily matured into the present glorious universe."--_Shasters._

In Hindostan we may see on one hand the trident of Neptune, the eagle of
Jupiter, the satyrs of Bacchus, the bow of Cupid and the chariot of the
Sun; on the other, we hear the cymbals of Rhea, the songs of the Muses,
and the pastoral tales of Apollo Nomius. The Hindoos enumerate four grand
periods in the world's history called _yugs_. The first comprehends one
million seven hundred and twenty-eight thousand years. The second, one
million two hundred and ninety-six thousand; the third, eight hundred and
sixty-four thousand years, and the fourth four hundred and twenty-three
thousand years. Four thousand nine hundred and thirty-seven of the last
yug expired in eighteen hundred and forty-three. The incredibility of
their chronology will be seen at a glance, if you recollect that it is
claimed that one of their sovereigns lived through the whole of the first
yug. Veda is a generic name for their four oldest and most sacred books,
containing simply a revelation directly from Brahma.

Many unbelievers in this, and the old world, who have set themselves
against our Bible, have indorsed the Vedas as scientific, without so much
as having read or known one line in them. These Vedas profess to go back
through _maha yugs_ of 4,320,000 years of men. A thousand of these _maha_
yugs, or 4,320,000,000 of years make a _kalpa_, or one day of the life of
Brahma, and his night is of equal length; a hundred such days and nights
measure the time of his life.

These books give, as facts, seven great continents, separated by that many
rivers and seven mountain-chains four hundred thousand miles high. They
record a hundred sons to one king, ten thousand to another, and sixty
thousand to another. These kings were in no danger from violating the
command to "multiply and replenish the earth;" but there is one
difficulty, at least, about the records concerning the seventy thousand
and one hundred sons born to these three kings, and that is this, the
records say: They were all born in a pumpkin and nourished in pans of
milk, reduced to ashes by the curse of a sage, and restored to life by the
waters of the Ganges. Those same sacred books say: The moon is fifty
thousand leagues higher than the sun, and that it shines by its own light
and animates our body; they say, the sun goes behind the Someyra Mountains
and this makes the n