Lastly, the most authentic books of the Indians, contradict, by intrinsic and very obvious characters, the antiquity attributed to them by the pundits. Their _vedas_, or sacred books, alleged by them to have been revealed by Brama himself from the beginning of the world, and arranged by _Viasa_ (a name which signifies nothing else than collector), at the commencement of the present age, if we judge of them by the calendar which is found annexed, and to which they refer, as well as by the position of the colures indicated by this calendar, may extend to 3200 years, or about the epoch of Moses.[135] Nay, perhaps those who give credit to the assertion of Megasthenes[136], that in his time the Indians were not acquainted with the art of writing, who reflect that none of the ancients has made mention of their superb temples, those immense pagodas, the remarkable monuments of the religion of the Brahmins, and who are aware that the epochs of their astronomical tables have been calculated backwards, and ill calculated, and that their treatises of astronomy are modern and antedated, will be inclined still farther to reduce the pretended antiquity of the Vedas. Yet even in the midst of all the Brahminical fictions, circumstances occur, whose agreement with the result of the historical monuments of more western countries cannot but astonish us. Thus, their mythology consecrates the successive devastations which the surface of the globe has already undergone, or is yet destined to undergo; and it is only to a period somewhat less than 5000 years, that they refer the last catastrophe.[137] One of these revolutions, which is in reality placed much farther from us, is described in terms nearly corresponding with those of Moses[138]. Mr Wilfort even assures us, that, in another event of the same mythology, a conspicuous place is held by a personage who resembles Deucalion, in his origin, name, and adventures, and even in the name and adventures of his father[139]. It is a circumstance equally worthy of remark, that, in the lists of their kings, imperfect and unauthentic as they are, they date the commencement of their first human sovereigns (those of the race of the sun and moon), at an epoch which is nearly the same as that from which Ctesias, in his singularly constructed list, commences the reign of his Assyrian kings[140].