Protected by the highest mountains of the world and traversed by lovely fertile hills, India is bounded on one side by the Pacific Ocean and on the other by the Himalayas, watered by a thousand streams, and great rivers, upon the banks of which the sun ripens all kinds of delicious fruits which grow of themselves.

A large population flourishes on the perpetually green, immense plains sloping down to the sea; the canals are frequented with navigators who from oldest times have received in exchange for money the wonderful natural products of the country.

Five harvests are reaped here annually, and the palms, pine-apples, cinnamon trees, peppers, etc., ripen three times a year. But by the side of such beauty, steep rocks rise to the sky, many equalling the Chimborazo in height, and there are great tracts of arid unwatered sands. The storms are more violent here than anywhere else, and mountain streams descend in foaming torrents bearing devastation and ruin as they traverse the interminable plains on their way to the sea. CESARE CANTU.

1

CHRONOLOGY AND ANCIENT HISTORY OF THE HINDUS

RUDE nations seem to derive a peculiar gratification from pretensions to a remote antiquity. As a boastful and turgid vanity distinguishes remarkably the oriental nations, they have in most instances carried their claims extravagantly high. We are informed, in a fragment of Chaldaic history, that there were written accounts, preserved at Babylon, with the greatest care, comprehending a term of fifteen myriads of years. The pretended duration of the Chinese monarchy is still more extraordinary. A single king of Egypt was believed to have reigned three myriads of years.

The present age of the world, according to the system of the Hindus, is distinguished into four grand periods, denominated yugas. The first is the Satya yuga comprehending 1,728,000 years; the second the Treta yuga comprehending 1,296,000 years; the third the Dwapar yuga, including 864,000 years; and the fourth the Kali yuga, which will extend to 432,000 years. Of these periods, the first three are expired; and, in the year 1817 of the Christian era, 4911 years of the last. From the commencement, therefore, of the Satya yuga, to the year 1817, is comprehended a space of 3,892,911 years, the antiquity to which this people lay claim.

The contempt with which judicious historians now treat the historical fables of early society, must be indulged with caution when we explore the ancient condition of Hindustan; because the legendary tales of the Hindus have hitherto, among European inquirers, been regarded with particular respect; and because, without a knowledge of them, much of what has been written in Europe concerning the people of India, cannot be understood. It is necessary, therefore, to relate, that at the commencement of the Satya yuga,

or 3,892,911 years ago, lived Satyavrata, otherwise denominated Vaivaswata, and also the seventh Manu. He had escaped with his family from an universal deluge, which had destroyed the rest of the human species. Of his descendants, were two royal branches: the one denominated the children of the sun; the other, the children of the moon. The first reigned at Ajodhya or Oudh; the second at Pratisht'hana or Vitora. These families, or dynasties, subsisted till the thousandth year of the present or Kali yuga, at which time they both became extinct; and a list of the names of the successive princes is presented in the Sanskrit books.

Satyavrata, the primitive sire, prolonged his existence and his reign through the whole period of the Satya yuga or 1,728,000 years. From this patriarchal monarch are enumerated, in the solar line of his descendants, fifty-five princes, who inherited the sovereignty till the time of Rama. Now it is agreed among all the Brahmans that Rama filled the throne of Ajodhya at the end of the Treta yuga. The reigns, therefore, of these fifty-five princes, extending from the beginning to the end of that epoch, filled 1,296,000 years, which, at a medium, is more than 23,000 years to each reign. During the next, or Dwapar yuga of 864,000 years, twenty-nine princes are enumerated, who must, at an average, have reigned each 29,793 years. From the beginning of the present, or Kali yuga to the time when the race of solar princes became extinct, are reckoned 1000 years, and thirty princes. There is a wonderful change, therefore, in the last age, in which only thirtythree years, at a medium, are assigned to a reign.

Beside the two lines of solar and lunar kings, a different race, who reigned in Magadha, or Behar, commence with the fourth age. Of these, twenty in regular descent from their ancestor Jarasandha extended to the conclusion of the first thousand years of the present yuga, and were cotemporary with the last thirty princes of the solar and lunar race. At the memorable epoch of the extinction of those branches, the house of Jarasandha also failed; for the reigning prince was slain by his prime minister, who placed his son Pradyota on the throne. Fifteen of the descendants of this usurper enjoyed the sovereignty, and reigned from the date of his accession 498 years, to the time of Nanda, the last prince of the house of Pradyota. He, after a reign of 100 years, was murdered by a Brahman, who raised to the throne a man of the Maurya race, named Chandra Gupta. This prince is reckoned, by our oriental antiquarians, the same with Sandracottus or Sandracuptos, the cotemporary of Alexander the Great. Only nine princes of his line succeeded him, and held the sceptre for 137 years. On the death of the last, his commander in chief ascended the throne, and, together with nine descendants, to whom he transmitted the sovereignty, reigned 112 years. After that period the reigning prince was killed, and succeeded by his minister Vasudeva. Of his family only four princes are enumerated; but they are said to have reigned 345 years. The throne was next usurped by a race of Sudras, the first of whom slew his master, and seized the government. Twenty-one of this race, of whom Chandrabija was the last, reigned during a space of 456 years. The conclusion of the reign of this prince corresponds therefore with the year 2648 of the Kali yuga, and with the year 446 before the birth of Christ. And with him, according to Sir William Jones, closes the authentic system of Hindu chronology.

It is a most suspicious circumstance in the pretended records of a nation, when we find positive statements for a regular and immense series of years in the remote abyss of time, but are entirely deserted by them when we descend to the ages more nearly approaching our own. Where annals

are real, they become circumstantial in proportion as they are recent; where fable stands in the place of fact, the times over which the memory has any influence are rejected, and the imagination riots in those in which it is unrestrained. While we receive accounts, the most precise and confident, regarding the times of remote antiquity not a name of a prince in after ages is presented in Hindu records. A great prince named Vikramaditya, is said to have extended widely his conquests and dominion, and to have reigned at Magadha 396 years after Chandrabija. From that time even fiction is silent. We hear no more of the Hindus and their transactions, till the era of Mohammedan conquest; when the Persians alone become our instructors.

After the contempt with which the extravagant claims to antiquity of the Chaldeans and Egyptians had always been treated in Europe, the love of the marvellous is curiously illustrated by the respect which has been paid to the chronology of the Hindus. We received indeed the accounts of the Hindu chronology, not from the incredulous historians of Greece and Rome, but from men who had seen the people; whose imagination had been powerfully affected by the spectacle of a new system of manners, arts, institutions, and ideas; who naturally expected to augment the opinion of their own consequence, by the greatness of the wonders which they had been favoured to behold; and whose astonishment, admiration, and enthusiasm, for a time, successfully propagated themselves. The Hindu statements, if they have not perhaps in any instance gained a literal belief, have almost universally been regarded as very different from the fictions of an unimproved and credulous people, and entitled to a very serious and profound investigation. Yet they are not only carried to the wildest pitch of extravagance, but are utterly inconsistent both with themselves and with other established opinions of the Brahmans.

Of this a single specimen will suffice. The character which the Brahmans assign to the several yugas is a remarkable part of their system. The Satya yuga is distinguished by the epithet of golden; the Treta yuga by that of silver; the Dwapar yuga by that of copper; and the Kali yuga is denominated earthen. In these several ages the virtue, the life, and the stature of man exhibited a remarkable diversity. In the Satya yuga, the whole race were virtuous and pure; the life of man was 100,000 years, and his stature 21 cubits. In the Treta yuga one-third of mankind were corrupt; and human life was reduced to 10,000 years. One-half of the human race were depraved in the Dwapar yuga, and 1000 years bounded the period of life. In the Kali yuga, all men are corrupt, and human life is restricted to 100 years. But though in the Satya yuga men lived only 100,000 years, Satyavrata, according to chronological fiction, reigned 1,728,000 years; in the Treta yuga human life extended only to 10,000 years, yet fifty-five princes reigned, each at a medium, more than 23,000 years; in the Dwapar yuga, though the life of man was reduced to 1000 years, the duration of the reigns was even extended, for twenty-nine princes held each the sceptre in this period for 29,793 years.b

If we turn from such traditions as these and seek more secure records, our quest is futile. Ancient India has no history proper. Its books furnish no document on its past chronology, and its monuments cannot supply the place of books, since the oldest are scarcely three centuries anterior to our era. But for a small number of religious books, in which the historical facts are embedded under masses of legends, the past of India would be as unknown as that of that lost Atlantis, which was destroyed by a geological cataclysm and whose story is related in the ancient traditions preserved by Plato.

THE AUTHORITY OF THE VEDAS

The only ancient documents which we can consult for the purpose of recovering some trace of this vanished past, are supplied by the Vedas, religious poems written at various epochs, and the oldest of which seem to date from fifteen centuries before our era. After them, but much later, come the epic poems, known under the names of Mahabharata and Ramayana, and the religious and social code of Manu.

Viewed from a purely historical standpoint, the Hindu literature of our own era is not richer than that which preceded it. In fact the Puranas constitute the only sources which can be consulted, and these consist of collections drawn up at different periods, the most ancient of them going no further back than the eighth century after Christ. They are, moreover, too much interspersed with marvellous legends, and too devoid of chronological sequence to permit of modern science deriving much benefit from them. Practically it is only after the Mohammedan invasions of the eleventh century, that, thanks to the Mohammedan writers, the historical period of India begins.

To the very insufficient sources of written information just enumerated, we have to add the accounts of travellers who visited India during ancient times. These accounts are very few in number, since for the period preceding Jesus Christ we possess only some extracts from the narrative of the Greek ambassador, Megasthenes, who stayed at the court of Magadha about the year 300 before our era. For the period of more than thirteen centuries, which separates this remote epoch from the Mohammedan invasions, we possess, besides the scanty references of classical authors, only the narratives of the two Chinese pilgrims, Fa-Hian and Hwen Tsang, who visited India, the first in the fifth, the second in the seventh century. Their works, especially that of the second, undoubtedly constitute the most valuable documents which we possess concerning India before the Mohammedan invasions.

MONUMENTAL RECORDS

The extreme inadequacy of the historical books on India gives a very great importance to the plastic works, monuments, medals, and statues, which the peninsula possesses. The most ancient are the columns on which Asoka had his edicts engraved, 250 years before Christ. After them come the bas-reliefs of the great monuments at Bharhut, Sanchi, etc., constructed at the commencement of our era, or in the two or three centuries which preceded it. They give interesting details respecting the manners, customs, beliefs, and arts of the peoples who constructed them, and show us the degree of civilisation to which these people had attained.

Besides these monuments, of which the oldest date from scarcely three centuries before our era, there are subterranean temples, statues, coins, which combine to throw some light on the history of each of the regions where they came into existence. It is only the remains of buildings and statues that have revealed to us the profound influence of the Greeks in certain countries several centuries after first Alexander, and then all the Greeks, had been expelled from India. Similarly it is the bas-reliefs of the temples which can alone tell us of the history of the origin and transformations of the beliefs which succeeded one another in ancient India.d

The Indians had learnt the art of writing, and if the Brahmans still handed down the traditions of their schools by word of mouth, they nevertheless did not hesitate to record donations and transfers in legible characters on stone as was done by others. Within the last few years search and investigation directed to these records have brought a great deal to light, cleared up much obscurity, securely established what was doubtful, and passed judgment on what was false; legends from older and versions of later times, have in various instances had their authenticity and truth put to the test. But these investigations are really only beginning.

It has now been decided on the authority of coins and inscriptions that Kanishka or Kanerki was succeeded by one Huvishka or Hoverki (Doerki),

and the latter had as a contemporary or co-ruler (Bazodeo or Vasudeva). The dates of the inscriptions of Mathura confirm this last relation. But Vasudeva, "having the Vasu as gods," points by this name, so renowned in legend, to a Brahmanical belief in the gods. His Okro coins, similar to some which were already in existence in Kanerki's day, and bearing the image of the triple, three-headed or six-armed Okra deity, strongly remind us of the images of that Trinity, the world-creating, world-preserving, and worlddestroying god,- Brahma, Vishnu, Siva, the so-called Trimurti in the rock temples of Ellora and Elephanta. The Turushka king who, rightly or wrongly, appears according to this to have followed Bazodeo, already exhibits in the images on his coins the type of the Sassanid rule.

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At the close of a century the Scythian power in India was broken and gradually thrust back to the territory whence it came, beyond the northern mountain-peaks and, in India itself, to the west and south of the Punjab as far as Guzerat. But the after effects of that power and of the centurylong invasion still continued. A Scythian population, united with the aboriginal hill peoples who had been thrust back at an earlier period, remained, and in great part still remains, in those regions. The Jats and the wandering tribes of Sikhs which belong to them are believed to be of nonAryan origin, and in religion, language, and customs differ from the Brahmans and are opposed to them. The Rajput families of the "king's sons,' who afterwards founded independent kingdoms in the south, are also considered to be foreign importations into the caste system and as the successors to the Scythian power. The route of these migrations and conquests from the north to the southwest is marked by ruins, and it was on the sites of

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