CIIRONOLOGY. The greater periods em ployed in the computation of time by the IIindus, though founded on astronomical data, aro purely mythological. A complete revolution of the nodes and apsides, which they suppose to be per formed in 4,320,000,000 years, forms a Kalpa or day of Brahma. In this are included 14 Nian wantara, or periods, during each of which the world is under one Nlenu. Each Nfanwantara is composed of 71 Mahn Yuga, or great ages, each of four Yuga, or ages of unequal length. These last bear a resemblance to tho golden, silver, brazen, and iron ages of the Creeks. The Hindus are laboriously exact in astronomical observations and calculations, but have neglected history.
The only cycle in use among the Turanian races, in old India and Tibet, was that of GO years, and in the form 12 x 5. In the Chaldee chronology, a cycle of GO x 10 years waa employed (10 Sossi being equivalent to 1 Saros); and Josephus styled tho epoch of GOO years which grew out of it, the great patriarchal year. The earliest Chinese chronology rests upon a conventional basis peculiar to itself, that of limiting tho lunar year of a cycle of GOO years, which was common to tho whole of Northern Asia and the Chaldxans, and probably (as it is also met with in India) to the Bactrians also. This basis is historical. The communication took place before the Chaldecs invented tho cycle of GOO years. The Chinese observation is based upon the use of the Baby lonian (Bunsen). The Chinese, from the time of the emperor Yaou, B.C. 2000, had a lunar year and a solar year.
The Saka, Kaliyuga, and cyclic years of the Hindus commence together about Nfarch, and terminate almost simultanconaly.
The beginning and end of the day has varied. Among the Greelcs and Etruscans the day began at noon ; among the Romans, as with the British, at midnight ; among the Persians, at sunrise; but among the Jews and Egyptians, as now with Hindus, Nfahomedans, and Parsees, it began at sunset.
Three great epochs have been recognised, viz. : In the history of Babylonia, the fixed point from which time was reckoned, was the era of Nabonassar, a.c. 746.
Among the Greeks, the reckoning was by Olympiads, the point of departure being the.year n.c. 776, in which Corcebus was victor in the Olympic games.
Roman chronology started from the foundation of the city, B.C. 753 (various dates).
Of the writers who framed chronological lists, the earliest was Berosus, a priest of Belus, living. at Babylon in the 3d century B.C., and who added to his historical account of Babylonia, a chrono logical list of its king,s.
Nfanetho, a. priest of Lower Egypt, gave an account of thirty dynasties of its sovereigns.
Eratosthenes, in the latter half of the 2d cen tury B. C., was keeper of the Alexandrian library, and wrote an important work on geography, and a treatise on chronographia. This was the first attempt to establish an exact scheme of general eh ronology.
The great cuneiform inscription at Behistun, discovered in 1835 by Sir Ilenry Rawlinson, and subsequently copied and translated by hitn, threw a flood of light on some obscure passages of Per sian history. And, in the year 1862, Sir Henry Rawlinson published the Assyrian Canon.
The authorities quoted below will show that the chronology of the south and cast of Asia has received much attention in the later yeru-s of British supremacy ; but on the plan of this Cyclopredia, the dates of battles and wars, of events in British India, the advent of reformers and learned men with their literature, will be found alphabetically, and the notice hero is restricted to dynasties and PIM : 13/