"Naturally, such drastic innovations were bitterly opposed by other segments of the intelligentsia. For well over a millennium, much of Europe had accepted the Old Tes- tament as an infallible testament documenting the history of the human race. Thomas Maurice, for example, complained bitterly in 1812 about "the daring assumptions of certain skeptical French philosophers with respect to the Age of the World . . . argu- ments principally founded on the high assumptions of the Brahmins . . . [which] have a direct tendency to overturn the Mosaic system, and, with it, Christianity." Such schol- ars were greatly relieved by "the fortunate arrival o f . . . the various dissertations, on the subject, of Sir William Jones" (22-23)."