And if any one is anxious to know the exact place at which we have arrived in this chronological maze, the same _Purana_ informs us that we are five thousand years advanced in the _Kali yuga_ of "_Varaha karpa_," or the first day in the second half of Brahma's life. And thus we are supposed to live not far (say a few billion years!) from the middle of the Hindu chronological system. One may better realize the length of the system if he remembers that we have yet to spend of the present _Kali yuga_ alone more than seventy times the whole of the old Christian chronology from Adam to the present time! And yet, as compared with the whole system described above, _Kali yuga_ is less than one day in a thousand years. And that largely measures the difference between the imagination of the West and the same developed faculty in the East! It is quite unnecessary to say that the prehistoric Manus of previous _yugas_ are absolutely imaginary creatures, since history can tell us practically nothing about the head of our race, even in the present Hindu dispensation. There is not a line of history or of reliable tradition that will enable us to reach farther back than five or six thousand years in this quest for the origin of our race. There was, of course, a beginning of human life on earth; and we may, just as we please, call the progenitor "Manu" or "Adam." But, according to the Hindu chronological system, six thousand years only carries us just back into the last _yuga_, and is as but yesterday in the march of the divine aeons of the past. Certainly, writers whose productions are unreliable as a guide to the events of the past century or two are only indenting upon their imagination when they descant upon the chronological data of the _Puranas_. One of the principal evils connected with this measureless time system is found in the fact that it helps to destroy the confidence of all intelligent men in the historicity of characters and events which would otherwise be worthy of our credence. For example, the question is asked whether such a man as Rama Chandra ever existed. We at once reply in the affirmative; for does not the Ramayana dwell upon his exploits, and are there not other reasons for believing that such a hero lived in ancient times in this land? And yet when the _Puranas_ tell us that this same Rama received his apotheosis and appeared as an incarnation of Vishnu in the _Tretha yuga_, say one or two millions of years ago, we are astounded at the credulity of those who could write such a statement as well as those who can accept it; and we are led to question whether, after all, Rama ever existed or is simply a poetic conception carried far away into an imaginary time. Thus the chronology of the land tends to cast a cloud of doubt and suspicion over all that is historical, traditional, or legendary in the literature of the people.