It may easily be conceived, from what I have had occasion to mention, that the Burman chronology is as wild as any of the other Indian chronologies.[103] According to them, in every period (the age which intervenes between one time, when the life of man amounts to an assenchiè, and the next) there appears a royal being, who lives to an incalculable age, and assumes the title of Sumada. There have been eleven of these. The whole number of kings who have reigned since the last of these Sumadas to the age of Gaudama, is estimated at 334,569! The earliest date in Burmese to which we can give any credence, is the beginning of the epoch in which the period of Gaudama, or Gautama, falls, corresponding with B.C. 661. The date of the birth of Gaudama is said to be B.C. 626. He was the son of Thoke-daw-da-reh, king of Ma-ge-deh, the present province of Behar, in Hindustan. His mother’s name was Máhà-Maï, or the Great Maia, a coincidence which has led to his identification with the Hermes of the Hellenes, and the Thoth of the Egyptians. The new-born child was nursed and baptized by two incarnate deities called Esrur-Téngri and Hurmusta-Téngri, and received the name of Artashidi (Artasidd’hi); his divine origin and perfections were made known by the bowing of the idol, before which he was presented, according to the custom of his father’s family.[104] He had lived in four hundred millions of worlds before his present appearance, and, like any other inhabitant of the world, had gradually worked his way up through the state of beasts, and had been in every condition of human life. He exclaimed, immediately upon his birth, “Now I am the noblest of men! This is the last time I shall ever be born!” When ten years of age he was placed under the care of a wise man, named Bahburemihbacshi, who instructed him in every kind of knowledge: however, he soon seems to have outstripped his teacher, for we learn that shortly afterwards he retaliated and taught the wise man fifty or sixty languages. At twenty he married, but either from the shrewishness of his wife, or some other cause, he expressed a desire to turn anchorite, assumed the name of Gaudama, and gave himself up to the contemplation of the Deity. But for some reason or other he had great difficulty in following up his wishes, and it was not until some strenuous attempts that he finally combated all the arguments of his antagonists. This is not the place to go into the numerous disputes concerning this person, and I shall content myself with presenting the reader with the remarks of a writer in the Encyclopædia Metropolitana.[105]