Art. VIII.—Letter from the Right Hon. Sir Alex. Johnston to the Secretary to the Royal Asiatic Society

Extract

In reference to the statement, published in the last Number of the Society's Journal, of the allusion which I, as Chairman of the Committee of Correspondence, had made in my Report, at the last Anniversary Meeting, to the account given by Dr. Robertson in the Appendix to his Historical Disquisition on Ancient India, of the opinions of Mr. Baily and Mr. Playfair, as to the extreme age of the Hindú astronomical tables, I have to request, with a view of affording the readers of the Journal the most recent information upon the subject, and thereby preventing them from drawing any erroneous inference from the supposed antiquity of those tables, that you will be so good as to publish in the Journal the following statement of the very scientific and very able opinion of the celebrated M. La Place, as to the real age of the same tables. It is copied from Harte's Translation of La Place's Système du Monde, pp. 220, 221, 222. (Dublin, 1830.)