Here we find three different statements concerning Yudhister ... to explain these seeming differences we must have recourse to their books of science, where we find the heavens and the earth divided into _five parts_ of unequal dimensions, by circles parallel to the equator. Attention to these divisions will be found to be of the utmost importance ... as it will be found that from them arose the division of their Maha‐Yuga into its four component parts. Every astronomer knows that there is a point in the heavens called the pole, round which the whole seems to turn in twenty‐four hours; and that at ninety degrees from it they imagine a _circle_ called the _equator_, which divides the heavens and the earth into two equal parts, the north and the south. Between this circle and the pole there is another imaginary circle called the circle of _perpetual apparition_: between which and the equator there is a point in the heavens called the zenith, through which let another imaginary circle pass, parallel to the other two; and then there wants but the circle of perpetual occultation to complete the round.... No astronomer of Europe besides myself has ever applied them to the development of the Hindu mysterious numbers. We are told in the _Asiatic Researches_ that Yudhister brought Vicramâditya to reign in Cassimer, which is in the latitude of 36 degrees. And in that latitude the circle of perpetual apparition would extend up to 72 degrees altitude, and from that to the zenith there are but 18 degrees, but from the zenith to the equator in that latitude there are 36 degrees, and from the equator to the circle of perpetual occultation there are 54 degrees. Here we find the semi‐circle of 180 degrees divided into four parts, in the proportion of 1, 2, 3, 4, _i.e._, 18, 36, 54, 72. Whether the Hindu astronomers were acquainted with the motion of the earth or not is of no consequence, since the appearances are the same; and if it will give those gentlemen of _tender consciences_ any pleasure I am willing to admit that they imagined the heavens rolled round the earth, but they had observed the stars in the path of the sun to move _forward_ through the equinoctial points, at the rate of fifty‐four seconds of a degree in a year, which carried the whole zodiac round in 24,000 years; in which time they also observed that the angle of obliquity varied, so as to _extend_ or _contract_ the width of the tropics 4 degrees on each side, which rate of motion would carry the tropics from the equator to the poles in 540,000 years: in which time the Zodiac would have made twenty‐two and a half revolutions, which are expressed by the parallel circles from the equator to the poles ... or what amounts to the same thing, the north pole of the