It is the genuine, and probably the earliest, version of the Indian tradition of the Flood.

The author has made the following observations on this subject in the Quarterly Review, which he ventures here to transcribe.
Nothing has thrown so much discredit on oriental studies, particularly on the valuable Asiatic Researches, as the fixed determination to find the whole of the Mosaic history in the remoter regions of the East.

It was not to be expected that, when the new world of oriental literature was suddenly disclosed, the first attempts to explore would be always guided by cool and dispassionate criticism.

Even Sir W.Jones was led away, at times, by the ardour of his imagination; and the gorgeous palaces of the Mahabadian dynasty, which were built on the authority of the Desatir and the Dabistan, and thrown upward into an age anterior even to the earliest Indian civilisation, have melted away, and 'left not a wreck behind,' before the cooler and more profound investigations of Mr.Erskine[157].

Sir W.Jones was succeeded by Wilford, a man of most excursive imagination, bred in the school of Bryant, who, even if he had himself been more deeply versed in the ancient language, would have been an unsafe guide.