For these a measure was sought. Hence we meet with extravagant, but perpetually recurring chronological statements. The Mahabadian ages are neither better nor worse, as to accuracy, than the Indian yugs, the Chaldean,[88] or other periods. In order to reduce them to their true value, we must consider them as nothing else than expressions of the ideas which the ancients entertained of the antiquity of the world and human society, in which they cannot be easily refuted, and at least are not absurd. Such ideas originated, when man, curious after his past, had long ceased to be a listless barbarian; but the earliest civilisation is a late product of slow-working time, the memory of which could have been preserved only by monuments. The most ancient of these however are but recent in our historical knowledge, the limits of which are far from being those of antiquity. The duration of ante-historical empires, in printless but extensive spaces of times, escapes research and computation. As men, however, bear with impatience vague and loose ideas, the Persians, as well as other nations, determined the past by numbers formed from the multiplication of some astronomical periods known in early times, as has been observed:[89] this appears to me at once the whole truth and falsehood of those statements. In the utter impossibility to reconcile the discordant data of different nations, we must content ourselves to take up the general ideas and facts in which they all agree, whilst in the particulars they all differ. Thus, in laying down maps of countries little known, we are satisfied with tracing the general direction of some rivers and mountains, and abstain from topographical details. [73] Προμηθευς δεσμωτης, ―― ―― ―― ―― ἄτης γνώμης τὸ πᾶν Ἔπρασσον, ἔς τε δή σφιν ἀντολὰς ἐγὼ Αστρων ἔδειξα, τάς τε δυσκρίτους δύσεις. (v. 457-459). [74] Transl. by Dr. Potter. [75] Hyde, who did not know the Dabistán, says (p. 188): that a year, or calendar, of Median invention was introduced in Persia, before Jamshid, that is, according to Ferdusi’s not irrational chronology, earlier than 3429 before our era. [76] Milton’s Paradise Lost, b. VII. v. 358. [77] The book of Shet Shai Kiliv, v. 59. p. 56. [78] Bombay edit. Engl. transl., pp. 19. 20. [79] Vol. I. p. 14. The Bombay Desátir does not mention the revolution of Saturn, and states differently the value of fard, mard, etc., etc. [80] It is known that in India, and perhaps all over Asia, the number of ciphers not followed by a significative number, is indifferent, and indicates nothing else but magnitude. Thus the Hindus, to determine positively hundreds, thousands, etc., affix the required figure at the end: for instance, to determine 100 rupees to be given, they write 101.