383 Shrge-Siddharta wa$ +h* elaboration of a period ind of a school, it not of a single mas ter, who had power enough to in|post his idiosyncracy upon the Bient: of a whole pation 'The question, tren, of the comparative antiquily of single treatisek is lost in be lighe" interest of the inquiry—when, where, and under what influence originated the system which they al agree in representin •What our opinions are upon the6e poinbs wi not be a matter of doubt wth any one who may have carefully locked through the preced. ing pages, although they have nowhere ben explicitly stated. We ged the Hindu Acing as an offshoot from the Greek, plantsd not fat from the cornmencement of the Christian era, and attaining its fully de . elopeel form in the course of the fifth and sixth conturies. The gounds of this opinion w। will proceet briefly to sout . In considering suchh a question, it is fu1r to talkc first into account blo general probabilities of the use. A1 here a de me question that, fromn what we krow in other respe•b« of blue clhnracte; and thendencies of the Hindu in we should bed at a Jook to fin the Hindus in poR session of an astronomical science containing st ru of t•utl They have been from the beginning distinguished by a remarkable fonfibundle 1tod disonclination to observe to collet ftets. t record, to Anake rllue %ive investigations. The old belief under the infoetre of which Baily emalतै for his strange theories--the belief in the inmenBo antiquity of the Indian people, and its imnemorial poession of y highly developed civilization--the belief that India was the eracle of language, rneth ology, arts, $ciercax, and religiors---tax loug since been proved an oor. It is now well known that Hindu culture callnot pretend o a rnoter origin \than 200 B.C. and that, though marked by striking and emi nenk traits of intellect and chara The Hindu hgye ever been 'eal in positive science notaphysics and branma--wth, perhaps, algebra and arithmetic, be blhom le mechanical part of mathematical science-- bsing the only branches of knowledge in which they have indepondently won honorable distinction Thatastronorny would corne to constitute an exception to the general rule in bhis respect, there is no antecedent ground for supposing. The infrequency ot references to the staxs in the early Sanskrit literature, bho late date of the earliest mention of the planota, prove th%t¢ {here was ' *p! tpulse leading the nation 1 devote itself to studying the movements of the hevenly bodies. All evidence goes to show that the Hindus, even after they had derived frorm albond (p. 285) 8 ystematic divsion of the eclipticlimited their attention to the two chief luminaries, the Hun and moon, and contented themselves with establishing a method of maintaining the concordance of the solar yes with the order of the lunar months. If, then, at a late" period, we find them in possession of a full astronomy of the solar sys tem, our first impulse is to inquire whence did they obtain it?
