student is invited to verify and correct his dates by the flickering light of this chronological will-o-the-wisp.  Nay, nay.  Surely “An English F.T.S.” would never expect us in matters demanding the minutest exactness to trust to such Western beacons!  And he will, perhaps, permit us to hold to our own views, since we know that our dates are neither conjectural nor liable to modifications.  Where even such veteran archeologists as General Cunningham do not seem above suspicion, and are openly denounced by their colleagues, palaeography seems to hardly deserve the name of exact science.  This busy antiquarian has been repeatedly denounced by Prof.  Weber and others for his indiscriminate acceptance of that Samvat era.  Nor have the other Orientalists been more lenient; especially those who, perchance under the inspiration of early sympathies for biblical chronology, prefer in matters connected with Indian dates to give head to their own emotional but unscientific intuitions.  Some would have us believe that the Samvat era “is not demonstrable for times anteceding the Christian era at all.”  Kern makes efforts to prove that the Indian astronomers began to employ this era “only after the year of grace 1000.”  Prof.  Weber, referring sarcastically to General Cunningham, observes that “others, on the contrary, have no hesitation in at once referring, wherever possible, every Samvat or Samvatsare-dated inscription to the Samvat era.”  Thus, e.g., Cunningham (in his “Arch.  Survey of India,” iii. 31, 39) directly assigns an inscription dated Samvat 5 to the year “B.C. 52,” &c., and winds up the statement with the following plaint:  “For the present, therefore, unfortunately, where there is nothing else (but that unknown era) to guide us, it must generally remain an open question, which era we have to do with in a particular inscription, and what date consequently the inscription bears.” *

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* Op. cit., p. 203.
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The confession is significant.  It is pleasant to find such a ring of sincerity in a European Orientalist, though it does seem quite ominous for Indian archeology.  The initiated Brahmans know the positive dates of their eras and remain therefore unconcerned.  What the “Adepts” have once said, they maintain; and no new discoveries or modified conjectures of accepted authorities can exert any pressure upon their data.  Even if Western archeologists or numismatists took it into their heads to change the date of our Lord and Glorified Deliverer from the 7th century “B.C.” to the 7th century “A.D.,” we would but the more admire such a remarkable gift for knocking about dates and eras, as though they were so many lawn-tennis balls.