Note 139 — The very remote Antiquity attributed to certain Nations is not supported by History.

Cala-Javana, or, in common language, Cal-Yun, to whom his partisans might have given the epithet, deva, deo, (dieu, god), having attacked Chrishna (the Indian Apollo), at the head of the northern nations (the Scythians, of whom was Deucalion, according to Lucian), was repulsed by fire and water. His father Garga had for one of his surnames Pramathesa (Prometheus); and, according to another legend, he was devoured by the eagle Garuda. These particulars have been extracted by Mr Wilfort (in his Memoir upon Mount Caucasus, Calcutta Memoirs, vol. vi. p. 507, 8vo edition), from the Sanscrit drama, entitled Hari-Vansa. Mr Charles Ritter, in his Vestibule of the History of Europe before Herodotus, concludes that the whole fable of Deucalion was of foreign origin, and had been brought into Greece along with the other legends of that part of the Grecian worship which had come from the north, and which had preceded the Egyptian and Phenician colonies. But if it be true that the constellations of the Indian sphere have also names of persons celebrated in Greece, that Andromeda and Cepheus are represented under the names of Antarmadia and Capiia, &c. we should perhaps be induced to draw, with Mr Wilfort, a conclusion quite the reverse. Unfortunately the authenticity of the documents referred to by this writer has been doubted among the learned.