The Vedic fathers of geology

CHAPTER II.

—seeeo—

The Great Antiquity of the Vedas from the Geological point of view.

In the present chapter, I intend conveying to the Reader some idea about the antiquity of the Vedas, and especially of the hoary past of the Rig-Veda, to enable him to see how the 2e0logical knowledge possessed by the Vedic Rishis, very favourably compares with that of the modern Geologists of the West, notwithstanding the yast distance of time and the almost insuperable difficulties that the Rishis had then to encounter in their geological researches.

Prom the foregoing pages, the Reader will haye at once perceived, that ancient Sanskrit Literature abounds in allusions to the various Geological formations, while the Vedas, every

now and then, refer to different rocks and vital gradations, in Geological succession and oradual sequence of Evolution.

Of the several Vedas, the Rig-Veda is preeminently the most ancient, and admittedly the oldest document in the world, of which, therefore, we shall speak presently, us it furnishes unquestionable evidence in respect of the geological knowledge of the. Vedic Rishis in pre-

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