[41] The commencement of the Indian Kali-youg is placed 3101 or 3102 years before our era. Fréret has fixed it, in his chronological researches, at January 16, 3102, a half hour before the winter solstice, in the colure of which was then found the first star of Aries. The Brahmans say that this age of darkness and uncleanness must endure 432,000 years. _Kali_ signifies in Sanskrit, all that which is black, shadowy, material, bad. From there, the Latin word _caligo_; and the French word _galimatias_; the last part of this word comes from the Greek word μῦθος, a discourse, which is itself derived from the Phœnician מוט (_mot_ or _myt_), which expresses all that moves, stirs up; a motion, a word, etc. [42] _Asiat. Research._, t. ii., p. 140. The Brahmans say that their imperial dynasties, pontifical as well as laic, or solar and lunar, became extinguished a thousand years after the beginning of the _Kali-youg_, about 2000 B.C. It was at this epoch that India was divided into many independent sovereignties and that a powerful reformer of the cult appeared in Magadha, who took the surname of _Buddha_. [43] Herod., l. ii. This historian said that in the early times all Egypt was a morass, with the exception of the country of Thebes; that nothing was seen of the land, which one saw there at the epoch in which he was writing, beyond Lake Mœris; and that going up the river, during a seven days’ journey, all seemed a vast sea. This same writer said in the beginning of book i., and this is very remarkable, that the Phœnicians had entered from the Red Sea into the Mediterranean, to establish themselves upon its shores, which they would have been unable to do if the Isthmus of Suez had existed. See what Aristotle says on this subject, _Meteorolog._, l. i., c. 14. [44] _Asiat. Research._, t. iii., p. 321. The excerpts that Wilford has made from the _Pourana_, entitled _Scanda_, the God of War, prove that the _Palis_, called Philistines, on account of their same country, _Palis-sthan_, going out from India, established themselves upon the Persian Gulf and, under the name of Phœnicians, came afterwards along the coast of Yemen, on the borders of the Red Sea, whence they passed into the Mediterranean Sea, as Herodotus said, according to the Persian traditions. This coincidence is of great historical interest.