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There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924024065587 Cornell University Library DS 451.R22 1916 Ancient India :from the earliest times t 3 1924 024 065 587 ANCIENT INDIA CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS Sonbfln: FETTER LANE, E.G. C. F. CLAY, Manager aiinittrsh : loo PRINCES STREET gombai!, Ealcutta nni JKaltsB ; MACMILLAN AND CO., Ltu. ■aotonto : J. M. DENT & SONS, Ltd. UokEO : THE MARUZEN.KABUSHIKI-KAISHA All rights reserved PLATE I. ANCIENT INDIA FROM THE EARLIEST TIMES TO THE FIRST CENTURY A.D. BY E. J. RAPSON, M.A. PROFESSOR OF SANSKRIT IN THE UNIVERSITY OF CAUBRIDGB AMD FELLOW OP ST JOHn'S COLLEGE IVITH SIX ILLUSTRATIONS AND TIVO MAPS Cambridge : at the University Press 1916 y A A. -\r^\ First Edition 1914 Second Edition 1914 Third Edition 1 9 1 6 PREFACE In the following pages I have tried to write the story of Ancient India in a manner which shall be intelligible to all who take an interest in Modern India. My object has been to draw as clearly as possible the outlines of the history of the nations of India, so far as it has yet been recovered from the ancient literatures and monuments, and to sketch the salient features of the chief religious and social systems which flourished during the period between the date of the Rig-veda (about 1200 B.C.) and the first century a.d. For the benefit of those who wish to continue the study I have added at the end of the book some notes on the ancient geography and a short bibliography of standard works. In the transliteration of Sanskrit names I have followed a system which, while giving a strictly accurate representation of sounds, will, I trust, not puzzle readers who are not oriental scholars. If the vowels are pronounced as in Italian, with due vi PREFACE attention to long and short {e and o being in- variably long), the result will be sufficiently satisfactory for all practical purposes. Modern place-names are spelt as in the Imperial Gazetteer of India (new edition). I am indebted to my friend, Dr F. W. Thomas, the Librarian of the India Office, for his kindness in obtaining for me permission to reproduce the illustrations, which are taken from negatives in the possession of the India Office. To my wife, to Miss Mary Fyson, and to the Rev. C. Joppen, S.J., I owe my best thanks for much valuable assistance in reading proofs and in compiling the index. E. J. RAPSON St John's College Cambridge I'jth February 19 1 4 CONTENTS CHAP. ,AGE I. The Sources of the History of Ancient India i II. The Civilizations of India .... 24 III. The Period of the Vedas .... 36 IV. The Period of the Brahmanas and Upanishads 52 V. The Rise of Jainism and Buddhism . . 64 VI. The Indian Dominions of the Persian and Macedonian Empires . . . . 78 Vll. The Maurya Empire ..... VIII. India after the Decline of the Maurya Empire ....... 99 113 IX. The Successors of Alexander the Great . 122 X. Parthian and Scythian Invaders . . . 136 Notes on the Illustrations . . . 149 Notes on the Ancient Geography of India 159 Short Bibliography . . . . .176 Outlines of Chronology . . . . i8i Index . . . . , . ,187 v« ILLUSTRATIONS Plate I. The Girnar Rock in 1869 . . Frontispiece Plate II. Coins of Ancient India . Facing p. 18 Plate III. The Besnagar Column . . • « 134 Plate IV. The Mathura Lion-Capital . „ 142 Plate V. Inscriptions on the Girnar Rock and on the Mathura Lion-Capital . „ 150 Plate VI. Inscriptions on the Besnagar Column „ 157 MAPS N.W. India and the adjacent Countries in the time of Alexander the Great Between pp. 78 and']() The Principal Countries of Ancient India . At the end vijr ANCIENT INDIA CHAPTER I THE SOURCES OF THE HISTORY OF ANCIENT INDIA The 'discovery' of Sanskrit — The Indo-European family of languages — The languages and literatures of Ancient India — Alphabets — Inscriptions and Coin-legends — Chronology — The rise of Jainism and Buddhism. "The Sanscrit language, whatever be its antiquity, is of a wonderful structure ; more perfect than the Greek, more copious than the Latin, and more exquisitely refined than either : yet bearing to both of them a stronger affinity, both in the roots of verbs, and in the forms of grammar, than could possibly have been produced by accident; so strong indeed, that no philologer could examine them all without believing them to have sprung from some common source^ which perhaps no longer exists. There is a similar reason, though not quite so forcible, for supposing that both the Gothick and the Celtick, though blended with a very different idiom, had the same origin with the A ^ 2 ANCIENT INDIA Sanscrit; and the old Persian might be added to the same family." This pronouncement, made by Sir William Jones as President of the Asiatic Society of Bengal in the year 1786, may truly be called ' epoch-making,' for it marks the beginning of the historical and scientific study of languages. At the time when Sir William Jones spoke these words, the recent discovery — or rather the recent revelation to Western eyes — of the exist- ence in India of an ancient classical literature, written in a language showing the closest affinity to the classical languages of Ancient Greece and Rome, had raised a problem for which it was necessary to find some rational solution. How was the affinity of Sanskrit to Greek and Latin and other European languages to be explained? Scholars at the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth centuries were in- clined to see in Sanskrit the parent language from which all the others were derived. It was only after the lapse of a generation that the view propounded by Sir William Jones began to prevail. The correctness of his conception of an Indo- European ' family of languages,' the members of which are related to each other as descendants of a common ancestor, has since been abundantly proved by the researches of Franz Bopp, "the SOURCES OF HISTORY 3 founder of the science of Comparative Philology," whose first work was published in 1816, and by those of his numerous successors in the same field. The science of Comparative Philology, which thus received its first impulse from the study of Sanskrit, represents by no means the least among the intellectual triumphs of the nineteenth century. The historical treatment of individual languages and dialects, and a comparison of the sound- changes which have taken place in each, have shown that human speech, like everything else in nature, obeys the laws of nature. The evidence obtained by this method proves that the process of change, by which varieties of language are produced from a parent stock, is not arbitrary, but that it takes place in accordance with certain ascertainable laws, the regularity of whose action is only disturbed by the fact that man is a reason- ing and imitative being. The laws, which govern change in language, are, in fact, partly mechanical and partly psychological in character. More valuable perhaps, from the point of view of the student of early civilization, is the service which Comparative Philology has rendered in throwing some light on the history of the Indo- European peoples before the age of written records. These peoples are found, in ancient times, widely scattered over the face of Asia and Europe from 4 ANCIENT INDIA Chinese Turkestan in the East to Ireland in the West ; but, as we have seen, there must have been a period more or less remote when they were united. Now, since words preserve the record both of material objects and of ideas, it has been possible, from a careful examination and comparison of the vocabularies of the different languages, to gain some knowledge of the state of civilization, the social and political institutions, and the religious ideas of the Indo-European peoples, both at the period when they were still united and after the separation of the various branches. In the earlier stages of the science, this line of investigation was, no doubt, sometimes pursued with too much zeal and too little discretion ; and the evidence of language as a record of civilization was sometimes strained to prove more than was justifiable. But there can be no question that certain broad facts have thus been established beyond the possibility of dispute. The evidence of language proves conclusively, for instance, that a particularly intimate connexion must have existed between the Persian and Indian branches of the Indo-European family. The similarity in language and thought between their most ancient scriptures, the Persian Avesta and the Indian Rig-veda, can only be explained on the supposition that these two peoples, after leaving the rest of the family, SOURCES OF HISTORY 5 had lived in association for some considerable period, and that the separation between them had taken place at no very distant period before the date of the earlier of the two records, the Rig- veda. In the following pages we shall be chiefly concerned with this particular group of the Indo- European family, which is usually designated by the term 'Aryan,' the name which both peoples apply to themselves (Avestan ^/rya = Sanskrit Aryd). Such, then, were the first fruits of the study by Europeans of the classical language of Ancient India — a complete revolution in our conception of the nature of human speech, and the recovery from the past of some of the lost history of the peoples, who, in historical times, have played a predominant part in the civilization of both India and Europe. The 'discovery' of Sanskrit, with its patent resemblance to Greek and Latin, sug- gested the possibiHty of a connexion which was undreamt of before, and prepared the way for the application to languages of the historical and comparative method of investigation, which was destined to win its most signal triumph when it was applied subsequently by Charles Darwin and other great scientists to the material universe and to living organisms. Familiar as the notions of an Indo-European 6 ANCIENT INDIA family of languages and of the scientific study of language may be to us at the present day, they proved a hard stumbling-block to all but the most advanced thinkers of the late eighteenth and the early nineteenth centuries ; for they rudely dis- turbed the belief of njany centuries past that Hebrew was the primitive language of mankind, and that the diversity of tongues on earth was the result of the divine punishment inflicted on the builders of the Tower of Babel. But great and far-reaching as has been the influence of the ' discovery ' of the Sanskrit language on the intellectual life of the West, no less remarkable are the results which have followed from the application of Western methods of scholarship to the interpretation and elucidation of the ancient literatures and monuments of India. When, in 1784, the Asiatic Society of Bengal was founded by Sir William Jones for the promo- tion of Oriental learning, the history of India before the Muhammadan conquest in the eleventh century a.d. was a complete blank; that is to say, there was no event, no personality, no monument, no literary production, belonging to an earlier period, the date of which could be determined even approximately. A vast and varied ancient Sanskrit literature, both prose and verse, existed in the form of manuscripts; and European SOURCES OF HISTORY 7 scholars, with the aid of the ' pandits ' or learned men of India, were already beginning to publish texts and translations from the manuscripts. But as to the date of this literature nothing whatever was known. Sanskrit had ceased for many cen- turies past to be a language generally understood by the people. It had long since become, like Latin in the middle ages of European history, the exclusive possession of a class of learned men, who attributed to the sacred books a divine origin and regarded the secular literature as the work of sages in a dim and distant period of legend and mystery. The chronological conceptions of the pandits were those of the Puranas, which teach that the universe undergoes an endless series of creations and dissolutions corresponding to the days and nights of the god Brahma, each of which equals 1000 'great periods ' of 4,320,000 years. What we know as the historical period of the world was for them the ' Kali Age,' or the shortest and most degenerate of the four ages which together constitute a ' great period.' It was but as a drop in the ocean of time and might be neglected. It is due almost entirely to the labours of scholars during the last century and a quarter that the outlines of the lost history of Ancient India have, in a great measure, been recovered, 8 ANCIENT INDIA and that its literature, which reflects the course of religious and intellectual civilization in India from about 1200 B.C. onwards, has been classified chronologically. The materials for the reconstruction of the history are supplied principally from three sources:— (i) the literatures of the Brahmans, Jains, and Buddhists ; (2) inscriptions on stone or copper-plate, coins, and seals ; and (3) the accounts of foreign writers, chiefly Greek, Latin, and Chinese. At present, large gaps remain in the historical record and it is probable that some of them can never be filled, although very much may be expected from the progress of archsological investigation. Of the more primitive inhabitants of India we can know nothing beyond such general facts as may be gleaned from the study of pre- historic archseology or ethnology. History in the ordinary sense of the word, that is to say, a connected account of the course of events or of the progress of ideas, is dependent on the exist- ence of a literature or of written documents of some description ; and these are not to be found in India before the period when Aryan tribes invaded the country at its north-western frontier and brought with them an Indo - European civilization, resembling in its main features the SOURCES OF HISTORY 9 ancient civilizations of Greece, Italy, and Germany. Our knowledge of Ancient India follows the course of this civilization as it spread, first from the Punjab into the great central plain of India, the country of the Ganges and the Jumna rivers, and thence subsequently into the Deccan. This extension is everywhere marked by the spread of Sanskrit and its dialects. It received a check in Southern India, where the older Dravidian civilization and languages remain predominant even to the present day. In this region history can scarcely be said to begin before the Christian era. Thus, the language of all the earliest records of India, whether literary or inscriptional, is Indo- European in character. That is to say, it is related to Greek and Latin and to our own English tongue, and not to the earlier forms of speech which it supplanted in India. The Aryan tribes who continued, perhaps for generations or even for centuries, to swarm over the mountain passes into Southern Afghanistan and the Punjab, or through the plains of Baluchistan into Sind and the valley of the Indus, must, no doubt, have spoken a variety of kindred dialects. The history of languages everywhere shows that this is in- variably the case among primitive peoples. It shows, too, that, in the course of time, when a community becomes settled and civilization lo ANCIENT INDIA advances, the dialect of some particular district, which has won special importance as a centre of religion, politics, or commerce, gradually acquires an ascendancy over the others and is eventually accepted by general consent as the standard language of educated people and of literature ; and that, when its position is thus estabhshed, its use tends to supersede that of the other dialects. An illustration of this general rule may be taken from the history of our own language : it was "the East Midland" variety of the Mercian dialect of English " that finally prevailed over the rest, and was at last accepted as a standard, thus rising from the position of a dialect to be the language of the Empire " (Skeat, English Dialects, p. 66, in the series of Cambridge Manuals). In India, such a standard or literary language appears first in the Hymns of the Rig-veda, the most ancient of which must probably date from a period at least 1200 years before the Christian era. This ' Vedic ' Sanskrit is the language of priestly poets who lived in the region now known as Southern Afghanistan, the North-Western Frontier Province, and the Punjab ; and it differs from the later ' Classical ' Sanskrit rather more, perhaps, than the language of Chaucer differs from that of Shakespeare. After the Vedic period, Aryan civilization SOURCES OF HISTORY ii extended itself in a south-easterly direction over the fertile plains of the Jumna and Ganges, which became subsequently not only the chief political and religious centre of Brahmanism but also the birthplace of its rival religions, Jainism and Buddhism. It was in this region that the priestly treatises, known as 'Brahmanas,' and the great epic poems, the Mahabharata and the Ramayana, were composed. The language of each of these classes of litera- ture — the Brahmanas representing almost ex- clusively the priestly caste, the Brahmans, and the epic poems belonging chiefly to the warrior caste, the Kshatriyas — is, in a different sense, transitional between Vedic and Classical Sanskrit. In character, the two styles may broadly be dis- tinguished as learned and popular respectively. The Sanskrit of the Brahmanas merges in the course of time by almost insensible degrees into Classical Sanskrit ; the epic language, on the other hand, is already stereotyped and retains its archa- isms and its ' irregularities ' for all time. Thus, about the year 500 b.c, when the first work in strictly Classical Sanskrit appeared — Yaska's Nirukta or ' Explanation ' of Vedic diffi- culties — there were in existence three well-defined types of Sanskrit. The first, already invested with a sacred character from its great antiquity. 12 ANCIENT INDIA was the poetical language of the early Aryan settlers in the north-west. The second was the language of bards, who sang at royal courts of wars and the deeds of the heroes and sages of old time. The third, to which, strictly speaking, the term 'Sa.nsknt ^ (samskrita = 'cultivated,' 'literary') should be confined, is that form of the language of the Brahmans, which, as the result of a long course of literary treatment and grammatical re- finement, had gained general acceptance as the standard of correct speech. A literary language thus definitely fixed ceases to undergo any material change, so long as the civilization which it represents continues. Its spoken form must naturally, as a rule, be less careful and elaborate than its written form ; and both must vary according to the degree of cultivation possessed by each individual speaker or writer. There may thus be infinite varieties of style, but there is no substantial modification of the character of the language. Classical Sanskrit has remained essentially unaltered during the long period of nearly twenty-five centuries in which it has been employed, first as the language of the educated classes and of literature, and later, down to the present day, as the common means of communication between learned men in India. SOURCES OF HISTORY 13 In sharp contrast to the literary language of a country stand the local dialects. While the former is fixed, the latter still continue to have a life and growth of their own and to change in accordance with the laws of human speech. While the literary language, although no doubt originally the dialect of some particular district, gains currency throughout the whole country among the educated classes, the local dialects continue to be spoken by the common people, who, in Ancient as in Modern India, must have formed an overwhelmingly large proportion of the population. It is, therefore, chiefly by a perfectly natural process of development that most of the modern vernaculars of Northern India have been produced from the ancient local dialects or 'Prakrits,' as they are called (/ir«^r;/a = ' natural,' 'uncultivated '), in precisely the same way as the Romance languages have sprung, not from literary Latin, but from the dialects of Latin spoken by the common people. While, however, the literary language and its dialects continue to exist side by side, the former invariably tends to grow at the expense of the latter, so long as the civilization to which they belong does not decline or change its character. The inscriptions and coin-legends of Ancient India aiford a striking illustration of this fact. As 14 ANCIENT INDIA being, from their very character, intended to appeal to all men, learned and unlearned alike, they are, on their first appearance in the third century b.c., written in some Prakrit ; but, as time goes on, their language is gradually influenced and eventually assimilated by the literary language, until, after about the year 400 a.d., Prakrit ceases to be used for these purposes and Sanskrit takes its place. The history of Sanskrit is especially associated with Brahmanism, and the tradition has remained through the ages unbroken by time or place. Sanskrit is to Brahmanism what Latin is to the Roman Catholic church. Jainism and Buddhism were revolts against Brahman tradition ; and, like the reformed churches in Europe, both originally used the type of speech, whether Sanskrit or Prakrit, which happened to be current in the various districts to which their doctrines extended. Thus the Buddhist scriptures appear in a Sanskrit version in Nepal and in Prakrit versions elsewhere. Through their employment for religious purposes some of the Prakrits developed into literary languages, for which, in the course of time, hard and fast laws were laid down by grammarians, precisely as in the case of Sanskrit. The most notable of these is Pali, the literary form of some Indian Prakrit which was transplanted to Ceylon, SOURCES OF HISTORY 15 probably in the third century b.c, and became there the sacred language of the particular phase of Buddhism which found a permanent home in the island, and which has spread thence to Burma and Siam. In India itself, after about the fifth century a.d., there was a growing tendency on the part of both Jains and Buddhists to use Sanskrit, which thus eventually became the lingua franca of religion and learning throughout the whole continent. Such then are the languages in which all the early literature of India and Ceylon is preserved. This literature is enormous in extent and most varied in character. No species of composition, whether in prose or verse, is unrepresented ; and few phases of human intellectual activity remain without their record, except in the domain of those sciences, which have been, even in Europe, the creation of the last two hundred and fifty years. But, if we compare any ancient Indian literature. Brahman, Jain, or Buddhist, with the Greek and Latin classics, we shall find one strik- ing deficiency; in none of them has the art of historical composition been developed beyond its earliest stages. Its sources — heroic poems, legend- ary chronicles, ancient genealogies — are indeed to be found in abundance. From the literatures and from the monuments we learn the names, and 1 6 ANCIENT INDIA some of the achievements, of a great number of nations, who rose to power, flourished, and declined in the continent of India during the twenty-two centuries before the Muhammadan conquest ; but not one of these nations has found its historian. Ancient India has no Herodotus or Thucydides, no Livy or Tacitus. Its literatures supply materials by means of which it is possible to trace the daily life of the people, their social systems, their religions, their progress in the arts and sciences, with a completeness which is unparalleled in antiquity ; but events are rarely mentioned, and there is an almost total absence of chronology. Dynastic lists with, in some instances, the length of the different reigns, are certainly to be found ; but these in themselves supply no fixed point for the determination of Indian chronology. As they stand, they are discrepant, partly perhaps because of original errors, but chiefly on account of the textual corruptions which are the inevitable result of a long transmission in manuscript form ; and they are misleading, since they often represent as successive, dynasties which can be proved from other sources to have been contemporary. It has been shown that any system of Indian chronology, which could have been constructed on the data supplied by these documents alone, must have been hopelessly wrong by SOURCE^ OF HISTORY 17 hundreds, and in some cases even by thousands, of years. Fortunately, this defect in the literature is suppHed to some extent from the other sources of early Indian History. For certain countries in India, and for certain periods in the history of these countries, it has been possible to construct a sort of chronological framework by the aid of dated inscriptions and coin-legends. This most valuable kind of historical evidence has been made available entirely by modern scholarship during the last three generations. When the monuments of India first attracted the attention of archaeologists, not a single syllable of the ancient inscriptions or coin-legends could be read. All knowledge of the ancient alphabets had, long centuries ago, passed into oblivion. These alphabets, which can now be read with ease and certainty, are two in number, both of them of non-Indian (Semitic) origin. They are called by scholars at the present time Brahmi and Kharoshthi, the names which they seem to bear in an account of the youthful Buddha's education given in a Sanskrit work called the Lalita-vistara. Brahmi, which is usually, though not invariably {y. p. 151), written from left to right, has been shown to be the parent of all the modern alphabets of India, numerous and widely diifering as these 1 8 ANCIENT MDIA are now. It is probably derived from the type of Phoenician writing represented by the inscription on the Moabite stone (c. 890 b.c.) and it is supposed to have been brought into India through Mesopotamia by merchants. Ultimately, there- fore, Brahmi and all the modern Indian alphabets appear to have much the same origin as our own, since all the alphabets of Europe also are to be traced back to the Phoenician through the Greek. Kharoshthi, which is particularly the alphabet of North-Western India (Afghanistan and the Punjab) is a variety of the Aramaic script which prevailed generally throughout Western Asia in the fifth century B.C. Originally, no doubt, it came from the same source as Brahmi. Like most other Semitic alphabets, probably including Brahmi in its earliest form, it is written from right to left. It disappeared from India in the third century a.d. ; but it remained in use for some time longer in the western region of Chinese Turkestan, which had formed a part of the Indian Empire of Kanishka in the first century a.d. The clue to the decipherment of both these alphabets was obtained from bilingual coins struck by the Greek princes who ruled over portions of Afghanistan and the Punjab from c. 200 b.c. to c. 25 B.C. These coins regularly bear on the obverse a Greek inscription giving the name and PLATE II. COINS OF ANCIENT INDIA. [i'tr/a^'S 151. SOURCES OF HISTORY 19 titles of the king, and on the reverse a translation of this inscription in an Indian dialect and in Indian characters. As a first step in the process of de- cipherment, the names of the kings in their Indian guise were identified with the Greek. In this way a clue to the alphabet was obtained ; and this clue soon led to the explanation of the Indian titles on the coins with their Greek equivalents ; but it was only after many years of patient effort that the knowledge thus gained from the coin-legends was applied with complete success to the decipher- ment and translation of the long inscriptions, which are found in many parts of India, engraved on stone or copper plates. These inscriptions, like the seals, are some- times royal and sometimes private in character. The coin-legends are, naturally, royal. Both inscriptions and coins are often dated either in the year of some king's reign or in the year of some Indian era ; and, if not actually dated, they are usually capable of being assigned, on archaeo- logical evidence, to some definite period and locality. They afford, therefore, positive informa- tion as to the history of royal houses in different parts of India. By their aid we may sometimes restore dynastic lists and determine the reigns of monarchs whose very names have otherwise vanished from the page of history. 20 ANCIENT INDIA But it was neither from Indian literature nor from inscriptions that there came the first ray of light to pierce the darkness in which the history of Ancient India lay enveloped. That light came from Greece. For one short period only, and for one corner of India only, do we possess any connected narrative of events in the centuries before Christ. This is furnished by the Greek historians of the Indian campaigns of Alexander the Great in the years 327-5 B.C., and of his successor, Seleucus Nicator, in 305 B.C. These historians give some account of the rise to power of an Indian adventurer whom they call Sandrokottos. It was Sir William Jones who first recognised that Sandrokottos was to be identified with Chandragupta, who is known from Indian sources to have been the founder of the Maurya Empire, which at its height, in the reign of his grandson, Agoka, included, not only all the continent of India with the exception of the extreme South, but also the greater part of the countries now known as Afghanistan and Baluchistan. Within a few years of the de- parture of Alexander, the Greek dominions in North-Western India came under the sway of Chandragupta, and they were confirmed in his possession by the treaty of peace which he concluded with Seleucus in 305 B.C. It was SOURCES OF HISTORY 21 certain, then, that the accession of Chandragupta to power in the Punjab must have taken place at some date between 325 and 305 b.c. This identification of Sandrokottos with Chandragupta, which thus brought the Greek and Indian records into relation with each other, was long known as the ' sheet-anchor ' of Indian chronology. It secured a fixed point from which it was possible to measure chronological distances with some approximation to certainty. A number of other fixed points have since been gained, sometimes from one and sometimes from another of the three chief sources of Indian history — Indian literature, Indian inscriptions, and foreign authorities. Thus the period of the reign of Agoka, the third emperor of the Maurya dynasty, is deter- mined by the mention in one of his inscriptions of five contemporary Hellenic sovereigns, whose dates are known from Greek history : — ( 1 ) Antiochus II. of Syria (b.c. 261-246); (2) Ptolemy Philadelphus of Egypt (B.C. 285-247); (3) Magas of Cyrene (B.C. 285-258); (4) Antigonus Gonatas of Macedon (B.C. 277-239); and (5) Alexander of Epirus (ace. B.C. 272). The determination of the initial years of the various eras, in which the dates of inscriptions are commonly expressed, has further made it possible to arrange in systematic order the his- 2 2 ANCIENT INDIA torical data which they supply. The Vikrama era of 58 B.C. and the (Jaka era of 78 a.d. still continue to be used in diiFerent parts of India. The starting points of others have been deter- mined by investigation, e.g., the Traikutaka, Chedi, or Kalachuri era of 249 a.d. the Gupta era of 319 A.D., and the era of King Harshavardhana of 606 A.D. Each of these marks the establish- ment of a great power in some region of India, and originally denoted the regnal years of its founder. A most important epoch in the religious history of India is marked by the rise of Jainism and Buddhism, the dates of which have been ascer- tained approximately from the combined evidence of literary and inscriptional sources. These two religions, which have much in common, represent the most successful of a number of movements directed against the formality of Brahmanism and the supremacy of the priestly caste in the sixth century b.c. The leaders of both were Kshatriyas or members of the princely and military caste. Vardhamana Jnataputra, the founder of Jainism, probably lived from 599 to 527 B.C., and Siddhartha Gautama, the founder of Buddhism, from about ^6^ to 483 B.C. These two reformed religions, although springing directly from Brahmanism and inheriting many of its fundamental ideas, yet introduce new elements SOURCES OF HISTORY 23 into the intellectual life of India and are important factors in its subsequent civilization. For the period before their rise no positive dates are forth- coming. This earlier period is represented by a very large literature, which exhibits transforma- tions of so far-reaching a character in the domain of language, of religion, and of social institutions, that centuries would seem to be required for their accomplishment. It is possible, by tracing the course of such changes, to distinguish different strata, as it were, in the literature, and so to establish a sort of relative chronology for this early period ; but it is evident that all such dates as we may for the sake of convenience associate with this system of relative chronology must be conjectural. The ultimate limits within which this early period of Indian history must be confined are, on the one hand, suggested by the evidence of Comparative Philology and the spread of Indo- European civilization, and, on the other, fixed by the rise of Jainism and Buddhism. CHAPTER II THE CIVILIZATIONS OF INDIA The names of India — Its natural limits — Its chief invaders — Dravidians — Aryans — Natural divisions of the continent — The geographical course of Aryan civilization. The word India originally meant the country of the river Indus. It is, in fact, etymologically identical with ' Sind.' In this restricted sense it occurs in the Avesta and in the inscriptions of King Darius (522-486 b.c.) as denoting those territories to the west of the Indus which, in the earlier periods of history, were more frequently Persian than Indian. It was this province which Alexander the Great claimed as conqueror of the Persian Empire. The name India became familiar to the West chiefly through Herodotus and the historians of Alexander's campaigns ; and, in accordance with what would almost seem to be a law of geographical nomenclature, the name of the best known district was subsequently applied to the whole country. In Sanskrit literature it is only at a comparatively 24 THE CIVILIZATIONS OF INDIA 25 late period that we find any one word to denote the whole continent of India. This is intelligible, as all the early literature belongs to the Aryan civilization, the gradual extension of which from the north-west into the central region and eventu- ally to the south may be traced historically ; and the geographical outlook of this civilization would naturally be limited to the stage which it had reached at any particular time. A compre- hensive term — Bhdrata or Bharaia-varsha — seems to occur first in the epics. It means ' the realm of Bharata,' and refers to a legendary monarch who is supposed to have exercised universal sovereignty. The historical foundation for the name is found in the ancient Aryan tribe of the Bharatas, who are well known in the Rig-veda. The hmits of this continent of India or Bharata- varsha, which is equal in extent to the whole of Europe without Russia, are for the most part well defined by nature. On the north, it is almost completely cut oiF from the rest of Asia by im- passable mountain ranges ; and it is surrounded by the sea on the eastern and western sides of the triangular peninsula which forms its southern portion. But the northern barrier is not absolutely secure. At its eastern and western extremities, river-valleys or mountain-passes provide means of communication with the Chine'^e Empire on the 26 ANCIENT INDIA one hand and v/hh Persia on the other. At the present time, these means of access to the Indian Empire have been practically closed in the interests of political security; but until the year 1738, when the Persian king Nadir Shah invaded India and sacked Delhi, the very capital of its Mughal emperors, countless hordes of Asiatic tribes have swarmed down the valleys or over the passes which lead into India. Hence the extraordinary diversity of races and languages which, now united under one sway for the first time in history, together constitute the Indian Empire. A glance at the ethnographical and linguistic maps of India will show that the races and languages on the east are Mongolian, and those on the west Persian or Scythian in character ; while the Aryan civilization which predominates in the north is the result of invasions which can be traced historically, and the Dravidian civilization which still holds its own in the south is probably also due to invasions in pre- historic times. The chief motive of the migration of peoples, which forms one of the most important factors in the history of the human race, was scarcity of food; and the chief cause of this scarcity has in Central Asia been the gradual desiccation of the land. However this desiccation may have arisen, whether through physical causes which affect the THE CIVILIZATIONS OF INDIA 27 whole of our planet, or through the thrusting up, by shrinkage of the earth's crust, of lofty mountain-ranges which cut off the rain-bearing winds from certain regions, or again by man's improvidence in the destruction of forests and the neglect of natural means of irrigation, it is a phenomenon the progress of which may be traced to some extent historically. Explorations in Baluchistan and Seistan have brought to light the monuments of past civilizations which perished because of the drying up of the land ; and above all the researches of Sir Aurel Stein in Chinese Turkestan have supplied us with materials and observations from which it will be possible eventually to write the history of desiccation in this part of the world with some chronological precision. Arch geological evidence proves that this region which is now a rainless desert, in which no living being can exist because of the burning heat and blinding sand-storms in summer and the arctic cold in winter, was once the seat of a flourishing civilization ; and the study of the written documents and works of art, discovered at the various ancient sites which have been explored, shows that these sites were abandoned one by one at dates varying from about the first century B.C. to the ninth century a.d. The import ance of these observations, as bearing on the 28 ANCIENT INDIA history of India, lies in the consideration that its present isolation on the land-side was by no means so complete in former times, when the river-valleys and mountain-passes on the east and west of the Himalayas were open, and when the great high- roads leading from China to India on the east, and from India through Baluchistan or Afghanistan to Persia and so to Europe on the west, not only afforded a constant means of communication, but also permitted the migration of vast multitudes. The invaders from the east, greatly as they have modified the ethnology and the languages of India, have left no enduring record whether in the advancement of civilization or in hterature. Invaders from the west, on the other hand, have determined the character of the whole continent. In our sketch of the civilization of Ancient India, we shall have to deal especially with two of these invasions — the Dravidian and the Aryan. It has sometimes been supposed that the Dravidians were the aborigines of India ; but it seems more probable that these are rather to be sought among the numerous primitive tribes, which still inhabit mountainous districts and other regions difficult of access. Such, for example, are the Gonds, found in many different parts of India, who remain even to the present day in the stone age of culture, using flint implements, hunting THE CIVILIZATIONS OF INDIA 29 with bows and arrows, and holding the most rudimentary forms of religious belief. The view that the Dravidians were invaders, who came into India from the north-west in prehistoric times, receives support from the fact that the Brahui language, spoken in certain districts of Baluchistan, belongs to the same family as the Dravidian languages of Southern India; and it is possible that it may testify to an ancient settlement of the Dravidians before they invaded India. In any case, Dravidian civilization was predominant in India before the coming of the Aryans. Many of the Dravidian peoples now speak Aryan or other languages not originally their own ; but they still retain their own languages and their characteristic social customs in the South, and in certain hilly tracts of Central India ; and there can be no doubt that they have very greatly influenced Aryan civilization and Aryan religion in the North. Their literatures do not begin until some centuries after the Christian era, but the existence of the great Dravidian kingdoms in the South may be traced in Sanskrit literature and in inscriptions from a much earlier period. The term Aryan was formerly, chiefly through the influence of the writings of Max Miiller, used in a broad sense so as to include the whole family of Indo-European languages. It is now almost 30 ANCIENT INDIA universally restricted to the Persian and Indian groups of this family, as being the distinctive title used in their ancient scriptures. These two groups have in common so many characteristic features, in regard to which they differ from the other members of the family, that we can only conclude that there must have been a period in which the ancestors of the Persians of the Avesta and of the Indians of the Rig-veda lived together as one people and spoke a common language. When a separation took place, the Persian Aryans occupied Bactria, the region of Balkh, i.e., Afghanistan north of the Hindu Kush, and Persia, while the Indian Aryans crossed over the passes of the Hindu Kush into the valley of the Kabul River in southern Afghanistan, and thence into the country of the Indus, i.e. the North- Western Frontier Province and the northern Punjab. The date of this separation cannot be determined with much accuracy. The most ancient literatures of the two peoples — the Indian Rig-veda, possibly as early as 1200 B.C., and the Persian Avesta, dating from the time of Zoroaster, probably about 660-583 B.C. — afford no con- clusive evidence from which it is possible to estimate the distance of time which separates them from the period of unity ; but an examination of the two languages seems to indicate that the THE CIVILIZATIONS OF INDIA 31 common speech from which they are derived did not differ materially from that of the Rig-veda, since Avestan forms are, from the etymological point of view, manifestly later than Vedic forms, and may generally be deduced from them by the application of certain well ascertained laws of phonetic change. It may be inferred, then, that the Aryan migration into India took place during a period which is separated by no long interval from the date of the earliest Indian literature. The progress of Aryan civilization in India is determined naturally by the geographical con- formation of the continent, which is divided into three well-defined principal regions : — (i) North- Western India, the country of the Indus and its tributaries. This region, bounded by mountainous districts on the north and west, is separated from the country of the Ganges and Jumna on the east by the deserts of Rajputana. With it has often been associated in history the country of Gujarat (including Cutch and Kathia- war) to the south. (2) Hindustan, the country of the Ganges and the Jumna and their tributaries, the great plain which constitutes the main portion of Northern India. (3) The Deccan or ' Southern ' (Skt. dakshina) India, the large triangular table-land lying south 32 ANCIENT INDIA of the Vindhya Mountains, together with the narrow strips of plain-land which form its fringe on the eastern and western sides. The first of these regions is in character transi- tional between India and Central Asia. Into it have poured untold waves of invasion — Persian, Greek, Scythic, Hun, etc. — and many of these have spent their force within its limits. Hence its extraordinary diversity in race, language, and religion. The second has been the seat of great kingdoms, some of which, both in the Hindu and in the Muhammadan periods, have grown by conquest into mighty empires including the whole of Northern India and considerable portions, but never the whole, of the South. It has always included most of the chief centres of religious and intellectual life in India. The third region has a character of its own. The history of its kingdoms and their struggle for supremacy among themselves have usually been enacted within its own borders. It has, as a rule, successfully re- sisted the political, and has only by slow degrees admitted the intellectual, influence of the North ; but when it has accepted ideas or institutions it has held them with great tenacity, so that the South is now in many respects the most orthodox and the most conservative portion of the continent. The literary and inscriptional records of Ancient THE CIVILIZATIONS OF INDIA 23 India enable us to trace with a. remarkable degree of continuity the course of Aryan civilization through the periods during which it passed from the first of these regions into the second and then eventually into the third. But it must always be remembered that these records are partial, in the sense that they represent only one type of civilization and only those countries to which this civilization had extended at any particular epoch. Unless this fact be borne constantly in mind, the records are apt to produce the impression of a unity and a homogeneity in the political, religious, and social life which never existed. The best corrective for this false impression,, is to study Ancient India always in the light of our know- ledge of Modern India and in the light of general history. India is and, in historical times, always has been composed of a number of large countries and a multitude of smaller communities, each having its own complicated racial history and each pursuing its own particular lines of development independently of its neighbours. In India, as in Europe, one or other of the constituent countries has from time to time succeeded in creating a great empire at the expense of its neighbours. But the mightiest of these empires, that of the Maurya kings of Magadha in the third century b.c., and that of the Mughal kings of Delhi at its height in c 34 ANCIENT INDIA the last years of the seventeenth century a.d., have never been co-extensive with the continent ; they have never included the extreme south of India. They were won by conquest and main- tained by power ; and, when the power failed, the various countries which constituted these empires reasserted their independence. Such a phenomenon as the British dominion in India, which is founded less on conquest than on mutual advantage — which holds together some 773,000 square miles of British territory (excluding Baluchistan and Burma) and nearly the same amount (745,000 square miles) of independent territory administered by about 650 native princes and chiefs, principally because the great common interest of all alike is peace and security — finds no parallel in history. Neither has religion at any time formed a complete bond of union between these multitudinous and diverse nation- alities. The Brahmanical systems of thought and practice founded on the Vedas have never gained universal acceptance, as some of their text-books might lead us to suppose. Not only was their supremacy contested even in the region which was their stronghold — the country of the Ganges and the Jumna — by reformed religions such as Jainism and Buddhism ; but their appeal was everywhere almost exclusively to the higher castes THE CIVILIZATIONS OF INDIA 35 who can never have formed the majority of the popu- lation. Most of the people, no doubt, in Ancient as in Modern India, were either confessedly, or at heart and in practice, followers of more primitive forms of faith. As Mr W. Crooke says, in de- scribing present religious conditions (Imperial Gazetteer of India, i. p. 432), "The fundamental religion of the majority of the people — Hindu, Buddhist, or even Musalman — is mainly animistic. The peasant may nominally worship the greater gods ; but when trouble comes in the shape of disease, drought, or famine, it is from the older gods that he seeks relief" CHAPTER III THE PERIOD OF THE VEDAS The Rig-veda — Oral transmisaion — Geography — State of Civilization — Religion — Germs of the later ca8te-system — The Sama-veda — The Yajur-veda — Contrasted with the Rig-veda — The Atharva-veda — -The principal divisions of Northern India in Vedic times. The Sanskrit word veda comes from the root vid 'to know,' which occurs in the Latin vid-eo and in the Anglo-Saxon ivit-an, from which our English forms wit^ wisdom^ etc. are derived. It is especially used to denote the four collections of sacred ' wisdom,' which form the ultimate basis on which rest not only all the chief systems of Indian religion and philosophy, but also practically the whole of the Aryan intellectual civilization in India, whether sacred or secular. The most ancient of these collections is the Rig-veda, or 'the Veda of the Hymns.' It consists of 1028 hymns intended to accompany the sacrifices offered to the various deities of the ancient Indian pantheon. In respect of style and historical char- acter it may be compared most fittingly to the THE PERIOD OF THE VEDAS yj ' Psalms of David ' in the Hebrew scriptures. If compared by the number of verses, it is rather more than four times as long. Internal evidence, supplied by changes in lan- guage and progress in thought, shows that the composition of the hymns of the Rig-veda must have extended over a considerable period. They were handed down from generation to generation in the families of the 'rishis,' or sacred bards, who composed them ; and, at a later date, when their venerable antiquity had invested them with the character of inspired scriptures, they were collected together and arranged on a two-fold plan, firstly, according to their traditional authorship, and secondly, according to the divinities to whom the hymns in each group were addressed. Like all the other works of the Vedic period the Rig- veda has been transmitted orally from one genera- tion to another from a remote antiquity even down to the present day. If all the manuscripts and all the printed copies were destroyed, its text could even now be recovered from the mouths of living men, with absolute fidehty as to the form and accent of every single word. Such a tradition has only been possible through the wonderfully perfect organization of a system of schools of Vedic study, in which untold generations of students have spent their lives from boyhood to 38 ANCIENT INDIA old age in learning the sacred texts and in teaching them to their pupils. This is, beyond all question, the most marvellous instance of unbroken con- tinuity to be found in the history of mankind ; and the marvel increases when we consider that this extraordinary feat of the human memory has been concerned rather with the minutely accurate preservation of the forms of words than with the transmission of their meaning. The Brahmans, who, for long centuries past, have repeated Vedic texts in their daily prayers and in their religious services, have attached little or no importance to their sense ; but so faithfully has the verbal tradition been maintained by the Vedic schools that ' various readings ' can scarcely be said to exist in the text of the Rig-veda which has come down to us. It has probably suffered no material change since about the year 700 B.C., the approxi- mate date of xhe pada-pdtha or 'word-text,' an ingenious contrivance, by which each word in the sentence is registered separately and independently of its context, so as to supply a means of checking the readings of the samhitd-pdtha or ' continuous text,' and thus preventing textual corruption. But the sense of many Vedic words was either hope- lessly lost or extremely doubtful nearly two thousand five hundred years ago, when Yaska wrote his Nirukta. In fact, at that period the THE PERIOD OF THE VEDAS 39 Vedic language was already regarded as divine ; and its obscurities in no way tended to detract from its sacred character — for, as the commentator, Sayana (died 1387 a.d.), quoting a popular maxim of the time, says : " It is no fault of the post if the blind man cannot see it " — but rather to strengthen the belief in its super-human origin. Orthodox Hindus, then as now, believed that the Vedas were the revealed word of God, and so beyond the scope of human criticism. It remained, therefore, for Western scholars in the nineteenth century, who were able to approach the subject without prepossessions, not only to bring to light again the original meaning of many passages of the Rig-veda, but also to show the historical significance of the whole collection as one of the most interesting and valuable records of antiquity. The region in which the hymns of the Rig- veda were composed is clearly determined by their geographical references. About twenty-five rivers are mentioned ; and nearly all of these belong to the system of the Indus. They include not only its five great branches on the east, from which the Punjab, 'the land of the five rivers,' derives its name, but also tributaries on the north-west. We know, therefore, that the Aryans of the Rig- veda inhabited a territory which included portions 40 ANCIENT INDIA of S.E. Afghanistan, the N.-W. Frontier Proyince, and the Punjab. Like many later inyaders of India, they, no doubt, came into this region over the passes of the Hindu Kush range of mountains. Sanskrit literature subsequent to the date of the Rig-veda enables us to trace the progress of their Aryan civilization in a south-easterly direction until the time when it was firmly established in the plains of the Jumna and the Ganges. These two great rivers were known even in the times of the Rig- veda ; but at that period they merely formed the extreme limit of the geographical outlook. The type of civilization depicted in the Rig- veda is by no means primitive. It is that of a somewhat advanced military aristocracy ruling in the midst of a subject people of far inferior cul- ture. There is a wide gulf fixed between the fair-skinned Aryans and the dark Dasyus — the name itself is contemptuous, meaning usually ' demons ' — whom they are conquering and en- slaving. This distinction of colour marks the first step in the development of the caste-system, which afterwards attained to a degree of rigidity and complexity unparalleled elsewhere in the his- tory of the world. The conquerors themselves are called compre- hensively ' the five peoples ' ; and these peoples THE PERIOD OF THE VEDAS 41 are divided into a number of tribes, some of whom are to be traced in later Indian history. The Aryan tribes were not always united against the people of the land, but sometimes made war among themselves. Each tribe was governed by a king ; and the kingly office was usually hereditary, but sometimes, perhaps, elective. As among other Indo-European peoples, the constitution of the tribe was modelled on that of the family ; and the king, as head, ruled with the aid and advice of a council of elders who represented its various branches. Thus, the state of society was patriarchal : but it was no longer nomadic. The people lived in villages, and their chief occupations were pastoral and agricultural. In war, the chief weapons were bows and arrows, though swords, spears, and battle-axes were also used. The army consisted of foot-soldiers and charioteers. The former were probably mar- shalled village by village and tribe by tribe as in ancient Greece and Germany, and as in Afghanistan at the present day. The war-chariots, which may have been used only by the nobles, carried two men, a driver and a fighting man who stood on his left. In . the arts of peace considerable progress had been made. The skill of the weaver, the carpenter, and the smith furnish many a simile in the hymns. 42 ANCIENT INDIA The metals chiefly worked were gold and copper. It is doubtful if silver and iron were known in the age of the Rig-veda. Among the favourite amusements were hunt- ing, chariot-races, and games of dice — the last mentioned a sad snare both in Vedic times and in subsequent periods of Indian history. The religion of the Aryan invaders of India, like that, of other ancient peoples of the same Indo-European family — Greeks, Romans, Germans, ind Slavs-^was a form of nature worship, in which the powers of the heavens, the firmament, and the earth were deified. Thus Indra, the god of the storm, is a giant who with his thunderbolt shatters the stronghold of the demon and re- covers the stolen cows, even as the lightning-flash pierces the cloud and brings back the rains to earth ; while Agni (the Latin ignis), the god of fire, is manifested in heaven as the sun, in the firmament as the lightning, and on earth as the sacrificial fire produced mysteriously from the friction of the fire-sticks. The sacrifice is the link which connects man with the gods, who take delight in the oblations, and, in return, shower blessings — wealth in cows and horses, and strength in the form of stalwart sons — on the pious worshipper. There are also other aspects of this religion. The spirits of the departed dwell in ' the world of the THE PERIOD OF THE VEDAS 43 Fathers,' where they are dependent for their sus- tenance on the offerings of their descendants ; and ever lurking around man are the demons of famine and disease, whose insidious attacks can only be averted through the favour of the bene- ficent deities. A certain amount of this Vedic mythology is common to other Indo-European peoples, as is proved by such equations as the following : — Skt. Dyaus pitdr-, 'the Sky-father '=Gk. Zeus pater=Lzt. Ju-piter=Ang\o-S3.xon. Tiw (cf. T'twes dag=^ng. Tuesday'). Skt. Ushasa-^i 'the Dawn'=Gk. Eos for * Zwj(5J-=Lat. Aurora for * Ausosa = Anglo-Saxon eas-t (Eng. east). Points of similarity with the ancient Persian religion are more numerous ; and, in estimating their cogency as evidence that the Persian and Indian Aryans dwelt together for some period after their separation from the other branches of the Indo-European stock, we must bear in mind the fact that the Persian religion, as represented in the Avesta, is the outcome of the reforms of Zoroaster (660-583, b.c.) which, presumably, did away with much of its ancient mythology. It must suffice here to mention one striking feature which the two religions share in common. The Vedic offerings of soma, the intoxicating juice of 44 ANCIENT INDIA a plant, find their exact counterpart in the Avestan haoma, a word which is etymologically identical. The hymns of the Rig-veda were the work of priestly bards who took no small pride in their poetic skill ; and, although we may find much monotony in the collection, due to the great number of hymns which are sometimes devoted to the same topic, and numerous difficulties and obscurities, caused chiefly by our own defective knowledge of the language and of the period, yet the beauty and strength of many of the hymns are such as fully to justify this pride. The principles of scansion are determined by the number of syllables in each line, by a casura after the fourth or fifth syllable, and by quantity, as in Greek and Latin, except that the rigid scheme of short and long is generally confined to the endings of the lines. The commonest metres are of eight, eleven, or twelve syllables to the line, and three or four of these lines usually make a verse. But there are a number of other varieties, some of them more complicated in structure. The office of priest, therefore, required not only a knowledge of the ritual of the sacrifice, but also some skill in the making of hymns. No doubt, originally the king of the tribe was supreme in sacred as in secular matters ; and it is possible THE PERIOD OF THE VEDAS 45 that certain indications of this earlier state of affairs may still survive in the Rig-veda. But already, by a natural division of labour, the per- formance of the ordinary sacrifices on the king's behalf was in practice entrusted to a priest specially appointed, who was called purohita (=Latin, '■prafectus '). This office, too, had probably become hereditary, and it tended to grow in importance with the strengthening of the religious tradition. Thus, although in the early period of the Rig- veda, the caste-system was unknown — the four castes are only definitely mentioned in one of the latest hymns — yet the social conditions which led to its development were already present. As we have seen, the first great division between con- querors and conquered was founded on colour. In fact, the same Sanskrit word, -varna, means both 'colour' and 'caste.' This was the basis on which a broad distinction was subsequently drawn between the ' twice-born,' i.e. those who were regularly admitted into the religious com- munity by the investiture of the sacred cord, and the servile caste or ^udras. The three-fold divisions of the ' twice-born ' into the ruling class (Kshatriyas), the priests (Brahmanas), and the tillers of the soil (Vai^yas) finds its parallel in other Indo-European communities, and indeed it 46 ANCIENT INDIA seems to represent the natural distribution of functions which occurs generally in human societies at a similar stage of advancement. Of the more primitive inhabitants of the land the Rig-veda teaches us little, except that they were a pastoral people possessing large herds of cattle and having as defences numerous strong holds. Contemptuous references describe them as a dark-complexioned, flat-faced, ' noseless ' race, who spoke a language which was unintelligible, and followed religious practices which were ab- horrent to their conquerors. Of all the rest of India beyond the country of the Rig-veda we know nothing whatever at this period. Of the three other Vedas two are directly de- pendent on the Rig-veda. They are especially in- tended for the use of the two orders of priests who took part in the sacrifices in addition to the Hotar who recited the verses selected from the Rig-veda. The Sama-veda, which chiefly consists of verses from the Rig-veda ' pointed ' for the benefit of the Udgatar or singing priest, has little or no historical value. The Yajur-veda, which contains the sacrificial formulas to be spoken in an under- tone by the Adhvaryu, while he performed the manual portions of the ceremony, is on the other hand a most important document for the history of the period to which it belongs. It introduces THE PERIOD OF THE VEDAS 47 us not only to a new region, but also to a complete transformation of religious and social conditions. The Yajur-veda marks a further advance in the trend of Aryan civilization from the country of the North-West into the great central plain of India. Its geography is that of Kuru-kshetra, ' the field of the Kurus,' or the eastern portion of the plain which lies between the Sutlej and the Jumna, and Pafichala, the country to the south- east between the Jumna and the Ganges. This region, bounded on the west by the sacred region which lay between the rivers Sarasvati (Sarsuti) and Drishadvati (Chautang), was the land in which the complicated system of Brahmanical sacrifices was evolved, and it was in later times regarded with especial reverence as ' the country of the holy sages,' while the first home of the Aryan invaders of India seems to have been almost forgotten. Kuru-kshetra is also the scene of the great battle which forms the main subject of the national epic, the Mahabharata. One of its capitals was Indraprastha, the later Delhi, which became the capital of the whole of India under the Mughal emperors, and which has recently, in 1912, been restored to its former proud position. Religious and social conditions, as reflected in the Yajur-veda, differ very widely from those of the period of the Rig-veda. All the moral NOTES ON THE ILLUSTRATIONS THE GIRNAR ROCK IN 1869 (Plate I, Frontispiece, and Plate V a, facing p. 150) GiRNAR, the Sanskrit Girinagara, the ' Hill City,' was in ancient times the name of Junagadh in Kathiawar. It is now applied to the sacred mountain on the east of the city. At the foot of this mountain stands a rock which is without question one of the most interesting and valuable of all historical monuments. It is about twelve feet in height and seventy-five feet in circumference at the base ; and it has engraved on its surface records of three kings belonging to three different dynasties which have ruled over Western India: — (i) Afoka, the Maurya Emperor, c. 250 B.C. ; (2) Rudradaman, the Mahakshatrapa or ' Great Satrap ' of Surashtra and Malava (inscription dated in the year 72 of what was called at a later date the Caka era=i50 a.d.) ; and (3) Skandagupta, the Gupta Emperor (inscription bearing dates in the years 136, 137, and 138 of the Gupta era beginning in 319 a.d. = 455, 456, and 457 A.D.). The illustration is from a photograph taken by Dr James Burgess in 1869. Since that date the rock has been pro- tected from further injury by a roof. The fourteen edicts of Afoka are engraved on the north-east face of the rock and cover a space of about 100 square feet. The inscription of Rudradaman occupies the top, and the inscription of Skanda- gupta the west face. The edicts of Ajoka have already been described {v. pp. 105-8). The subjoined reproduction of an impression of the second edict will serve to illustrate the beautiful Brahrai writing of the period — the letters in the original are about two inches ja ANCIENT INDIA Atharva-veda is not sufficient to enable us to determine the precise locality in which it was compiled ; but the tribes mentioned in it indicate that the full extent of the two first regions occupied by the Aryan civilization during the earlier and later Vedic periods — the country or the Indus and the country of the Ganges and the Jumna — was known at the time when the collec- tion was made. For a long period, Aryan civilization was con- fined within these limits. The definitions of the whole region, and of its chief divisions, are thus given in The Laws of Manu, a work, in its present form, of a much later date, but undoubtedly representing the traditions from Vedic times : — Arydvarta, ' the country of the Aryans,' is the dis.rict lying between the Himalaya and the Vindhya Mountains, and extending from the eastern to the western sea. Madhya-defa, 'the Middle Country,' is that portion of Arydvarta^ which lies between the same two mountain ranges, and is bounded by Vinagana (the place where the river Sarasvati loses itself in the sand) on the west, and by Praydga (the modern Allahabad, where the Ganges and the Jumna meet) on the east. Brahmarshi-defa, 'the country of the holy sages,' includes the territories of the Kurus, Matsyas, THE PERIOD OF THE VEDAS 51 Pafichalas and ^urasenas {i.e. the eastern half of the State of Patiala and of the Delhi division of the Punjab, the Alwar State and adjacent territory in Rajputana, the region which lies between the Ganges and the Jumna, and the Muttra District in the United Provinces). Brahmavarta., 'the Holy Land,' lies between the sacred rivers Sarasvati (Sarsuti) and Drishadvati (Chautang), and may be identified generally with the modern Sirhind. Its precise situation is some- what uncertain, owing to the difficulty of tracing the courses of rivers in this region ; for many of them lose themselves in the sand and sometimes reappear at a distance of several miles. That Brahmavarta formed part of Kuru - kshetra is seen from the following verse from the Maha- bharata : — "Daisii^ena Sarasvatya Drishadvatyuttare)^a cha Ye •uasanti Kurulshetre, te vasanti Trivhhtape." "Those, who dwell in Kuru-kshetra to the south of the Sarasvati and the north of the Drishadvati, dwell in Heaven. " CHAPTER IV THE PERIOD OF THE BRAHMANAS AND UPANISHADS Growth of a prose literature — Contents of the Brahmanas — Language — Geography — The (Jatapatha Brahmana — Its relation to Buddhism and to the ancient Sanskrit epics — The religion of works and the religion of knowledge — The Upanishads — Pantheism — The intellectual movement not confined to the priestly caste. The most ancient works of Indian literature, with which we have been deahng hitherto, are almost entirely in verse. This fact is in accordance with the general rule that poetry precedes prose in the development of literature. The only prose to be found in the Vedas occurs in some versions of the Yajur-veda, where a sort of commentary is associated with the verse portions. From this point of departure, we may trace the growth of a large prose literature of a similar character. Each of the Vedas was handed down traditionally in a number of priestly schools devoted entirely to its study, and each of these schools produced in the course of time its own particular text-book, BRAHMANAS AND UPANISHADS 53 in the form of an elaborate prose treatise, intended to explain to the priest the mystical significance of that portion of the sacrificial ceremony which he was called upon to perform. These treatises are styled Brahmanas or 'religious manuals.' Their contents are of the most miscellaneous character ; but they may be classified broadly under three categories : — (r) directions (yidht), (2) explana- tions (arthavada), and (3) theosophical specula- tions (upanishad'). The last were, as we shall see, developed more fully in a special class of works bearing the same title. The Brahmanas pre- suppose an intimate acquaintance with the very complicated ritual of the sacrifice ; and they would have been unintelligible to us, if we had not fortunately also possessed the later 'Sutras,' in which each separate branch of Vedic lore is minutely explained. The Brahmanas are priestly documents in the narrowest and most exclusive sense of the term. At first sight, their contents would seem to be the most hopeless possible form of historical material. It is only incidentally and accidentally that they afford any insight whatever into the political and social conditions of the country and the period to which they belong. They give an utterly one- sided view even of the religion. But religion had other and nobler aspects even in this priest-ridden 54 ANCIENT INDIA age, and the memorial of these is preserved in the Upanishads. Nevertheless, there are found embedded in the Brahmanas a number of old-world legends which supply valuable evidence for the history of primitive human culture. For instance, a remini- scence of the far distant period, in which human sacrifices prevailed, is to be seen in a story told in the Aitareya Brahmana (VII. iii.) of the Rig- veda, about a Brahman lad named ^unali9epa, who was about to be sacrificed to the god Varuna, when the god himself appeared and released him. Another story in the same Brahmana (II. i.) illus- trates the stages of transition from human sacrifice, in which at first some animal, and subsequently a cake made of rice, was in ordinary practice sub- stituted for the human victim. Occasionally also some valuable information as to the social and political state of India may be gleaned from the Brahmanas. The coronation ceremonies referred to in the eighth book of the Aitareya Brahmana show how completely the priestly caste had, in theory at least, gained supremacy over the kingly caste. The same book, moreover, shows an extension of the geographical horizon, for it mentions by name a number of the peoples of Southern India. It also records the kingly titles used in different regions of India; BRAHMANAS AND UPANISHADS 55 and these titles seem to show that, at this early period, the most diverse forms of government ranging, from absolute monarchies to self-governing {svaraf) communities were to be found. This interpretation would certainly be in accordance with what we know from the inscriptions and other historical sources of a later date. The interesting fact, that the Brahmanical religion did not include all the tribes of Aryan descent, is gathered from the account given in the Tandya Brahmana of certain sacrifices (the vrdt'ja-stomas), which were performed on the admission of such Aryans into the Brahman community. The description of these non-Brahmanical Aryans — " they pursue neither agriculture nor commerce ; tTieir laws are in a constant state of confusion ; they speak the same language as those who have received Brahmanical consecration, but nevertheless call what is easily spoken hard to pronounce " (trans, in Weber, Ind. Lit.^ p. 67') — shows that they were freebooters speaking the Prakrits or dialects allied to Sanskrit. For the student of language the Brahmanas possess the highest interest. They are perfect mines of philological specimens. They show a great variety of forms which are transitional between the language of the Rig-veda and the later Classical Sanskrit ; and as being, together 56 ANCIENT INDIA with the prose portions of the Yajur-veda, the oldest examples of Indo-European prose, they afford materials for the study of the development from its very first beginnings of a prose style and of a more complicated syntax than is feasible in ordinary verse. Thus we find, existing side by side in India at the same period, an ancient poetry, no longer primitive in character but elaborated by many generations of bards, and a rudimentary prose, which often reminds us of the first attempts of a child or an uneducated person to express his thoughts in writing. The geography of the Brahmanas is generally the land of the Kurus and Panchalas, ' the country of the holy sages ' ; but at times it lies more to the west or more to the east of this region. The ^atapatha Brahmana is especially remarkable for its wide geographical outlook. Some of its books belong to the first home of the Aryan invaders in the north-west. In others the scene changes from the court of Janamejaya, king of the Kurus, to the court of Janaka, king of Videha (Tirhut or N. Bihar). The legend of Mathava, king of Videgha (the older form of Videha), in the first book, indicates the progress of Brahmanical culture from the ' Holy Land ' of the Sarasvati, first into Kosala (Oudh), and then over the river Sadanira (probably the Great Gandak, a tributary BRAHMANAS AND UPANISHADS 57 of the Ganges) which formed its boundary, into Videha. The ^atapatha Brahmana supplies an important link in the history of religion and literature in India; for it is closely connected with Buddhism on the one hand, and with the ancient Sanskrit epics on the other. Many of the terms which subsequently became characteristic of Buddhism, such as arhat ' saint ' and pramana ' ascetic,' first occur in the ^atapatha; and among the famous teachers mentioned in it are the Gautamas, the Brahman family whose patronymic was adopted by the Kshatriya family in which Buddha was born. It was to Janamejaya, king of the Kurus, that the story of one of the great epic poems — the Mahabharata — is said to have been related ; while Janaka, king of Videha, is probably to be identified with Janaka, the father of Sita, the heroine of the other great epic, the Ramayana. Such are some of the comparatively few features of general interest which relieve the dreary monotony of the endless ritualistic and liturgical disquisitions of the Brahmanas. As we have seen, the kind of religion depicted in the Brahmanas is absolutely mechanical and unintelligent. The hymns from the Rig-veda are no longer used with any regard to their sense, but verses are taken away from their context and strung together 58 ANCIENT INDIA fantastically, because they all contain some magical word, or because the scheme of their metres, when arranged according to the increasing or decreasing number of syllables, resembles a thunderbolt wherewith the sacrificer may slay his foes, or for some other equally valid reason. Such a system may have been useful enough to secure the supremacy of the Brahmans and to keep the common people in their proper place ; but it is not to be imagined that it can ever have satisfied the intellectual aspirations of the Brahmans themselves ; and, as a matter of fact, there has always been in India a broad distinction between a 'religion of works,' intended for the common people and for the earlier stages in the religious life, and a ' religion of knowledge ' which appealed only to an intellectual aristocracy. Certain hymns of reflection in the Rig-veda and the Atharva-veda show that the eternal problems of the existence and the nature of a higher power, and of its relation to the universe and to man, were already filling the thoughts of sages even at this early period ; and, as we have seen, theosophical speculation finds its place even in the Brahmanas. It is, however, specially developed in certain treatises, called Upanishads, which usually come at the end of the Brahmanas, separated from them by Aranyakas or 'forest-books,' which are transi- BRAHMANAS AND UPANISHADS 59 tional in character as in position. Thus the whole of Vedic literature, which is comprehensively styled pruti or ' revelation ' as distinguished from the later smriti or ' tradition,' falls into two great classes. The Vedas and Brahmanas belong to the 'religion of works,' and the Aranyakas and Upanishads to the 'religion of knowledge.' A similar principle of division applies also to the four dframas, or religious stages, into which the life of the Brahman is theoretically divided. In the first, he lives as a pupil in the family of his guru and learns from him the sacred texts and the sacrificial procedure ; in the second, he marries and brings up a family, religiously observing all the domestic rites ; in the third, after he has seen the face of his grandson, he goes forth into the forest, either accompanied by his wife or alone, to live the life of an anchorite ; and in the fourth, he abandons all earthly ties and devotes himself to meditation on the dtman or 'Supreme Soul.' In this way, his life is divided between the ' religion of works ' in the two first, and the ' rehgion of knowledge ' in the two last stages. The Upanishads, with which the philosophical hymns of the Rig-veda and the Atharva-veda are closely connected in spirit, lead us into the realm of what we should call philosophy rather than rehgion. But the two have never been separated 6o ANCIENT INDIA in India, where the latter has always been regarded as the necessary preparation for the former. Orthodoxy consists in the unquestioning accept- ance of the social system and the rehgious observances of Brahmanism. Beyond this, speculation is free to range without restriction, whether it lead to pantheism, to dualism, or even to atheism. The Upanishads are not systematic. They contain no orderly expositions of metaphysical doctrine. They give no reasons for the views which they put forth. They are the work of thinkers who were poets rather than philosophers. But nevertheless they contain all the main ideas which formed the germs of the later systems of philosophy, and are, therefore, of the utmost importance for the history of Indian thought. The object of the 'religion of knowledge' is neither earthly happiness nor the rewards of heaven. Such may be the fruits of the ' religion of works.' But, according to Indian ideas, the joys of earth and of heaven are alike transient. They may be pursued by the man of the world who mistakes appearances for realities ; but the sage turns away from them, for he knows that, as the result of works, the human soul is fast bound in a chain of mundane existences, and that it will go on from birth to birth, whether in this world or BRAHMAN AS AND UPANISHADS 6i in other worlds, its condition in each state of existence being determined by the good or evil deeds performed in previous existences. His sole aim, therefore, is to obtain mukti^ or 'release,' from this perpetual succession of birth and re- birth. This release can only be obtained by 'right knowledge,' that is to say, by the full realization of the fact that there is no existence, in the highest and only true sense of the term, except the dtman or the ' World-Soul.' In reality everything is the atman and the atman is every- thing. There is no second 'being.' All that seems to us to exist besides the atman is ' appearance ' or ' illusion.' It is some disguise of the atman, due merely to a change in name and form. Just as all the vessels which are made of clay, by whatever names they may be called and however many different forms they may assume, are in reality only clay, so everything, which appears to us to have an independent exist- ence, is really only a modification of the atman. There is, therefore, no essential difference between the soul of the individual and the 'World Soul.' The complete apprehension of this fact constitutes the ' right knowledge,' which brings with it ' release ' from the circle of mundane existences, which are now clearly seen to be apparent only and not real. 6i ANCIENT INDIA This pantheistic dactrine, which forms the main, but by no means the exclusive, subject of the Upanishads, was, at a later period, developed with marvellous fulness and subtilty in the Vedanta system of philosophy. Its influence has been more potent than any other in moulding the spiritual and intellectual life of India even down to the present day. The evidence of language shows that the earliest Upanishads, which are also the most important, belong to the period of the later Brahmanas. Regarded as sources for the history of religion and civilization in India, these two classes of words supplement and correct each other. The Brahmanas represent the ceremonial, and the Upanishads the intellectual, phase of religion ; and the social aspects of these two phases stand in striking contrast. While the performance of the sacrifice, with all its complicated ritual, remained entirely in the hands of the priestly caste, members of the royal caste and even learned ladies joined eagerly in the discus- sions, which were held at royal courts, concerning the nature of the atman, and acquitted themselves with distinction. Thus the far-famed Brahman, Gargya Balaki, came to Ajata9atru, the king of Ka9i (Benares), and, having heard his words of wisdom, humbly begged that he might be per- brahmanas and UPANISHADS 63 mitted to become his pupil ; while the ladies Gargi and Maitreyi discoursed concerning these deep matters, on perfectly equal terms, with Yajfiavalkya, the great rishi of the court of Janaka, king of Videha. The time of the Upanishads was, in fact, one of great spiritual unrest, and of revolt against the formalism and exclusiveness of the Brahmanical system. In this revolt the royal caste played no unimportant part ; and, as we shall see in the next chapter, the leaders of the two chief religious reforms, known as Jainism and Buddhism, were both scions of princely families. CHAPTER V THE RISE OF JAINISM AND BUDDHISM The founders of Jainism and Buddhism — Their doctrines con- trasted with Brahmanism — Their literatures — The Sanskrit epics — The Puranas — Genealogies — The Pali epics — The Sutras. With the rise of Jainism and Buddhism we enter the period of Indian history for which dates, at least approximately correct, are available. We are no longer dependent for our chronology on an estimate of the length of time required for the evolution of successive phases of thought or language. These two religions differ from the earlier Brahmanism in so far as they repudiate the 'religion of works ' as inculcated in the Vedas and the Brahmanas. That is to say, they deny the authority of the Vedas and of the whole system of sacrifice and ceremonial which was founded on the Vedas ; and in so doing they place themselves out- side the pale of Brahman orthodoxy. On the other hand, their fundamental ideas are substantially those of the ' religion of knowledge ' as represented 64 RISE OF JAINISM AND BUDDHISM 65 in the Upanishads. These ideas are, in fact, the postulates on which all Indian religions and all Indian philosophies rest. They hold, one and all, that the individual soul is fast bound by the power of its own karma or ' actions ' to a continuous series of birth and re-birth which need never end ; and the object of one and all is to find out the way by which the soul may be freed from the bonds of this unending mundane existence. They differ from one another, partly in regard to the means whereby this freedom may be obtained, and partly in their views as to the nature of the universe and of the individual soul, and as to the existence or non-existence of some being or some first cause corresponding to the Atman or ' World- Soul ' of the Upanishads. Vardhamana Jnataputra, the founder of Jainism, called by his followers Jina (hence the epithet ' Jain ') ' the Conqueror ' or Mahdvira ' the Great Hero,' probably lived from about 599 to 527 B.C. As his surname denotes, he was a scion of the Kshatriya or princely tribe of Jnatas, and he was related to the royal family of Vai^ali (Basarh) in Videha (Tirhut). His system of teaching, as it has come down to us, is full of meta- physical subtilties ; but, apart from these, its main purpose, summed up in a few words, is to free the soul from its mundane fetters by means of the 66 ANCIENT INDIA ' three jewels ' — a term also used in Buddh'sm, but in a different sense — viz. 'right faith,' 'right knowledge,' and "right action,' each of these headings being divided and subdivided into a number of dogmas or rules of life. The Jains still form a wealthy and important section of the community in many of the large towns, particularly in Western India, where their ancestors have left behind them an abiding record in the beautiful temples of Gujarat. They have also played a notable part in the civilization of Southern India, where the early literary development of the Kanarese and Tamil languages was due, in a great measure, to the labours of Jain monks. The founder of Buddhism — the Buddha or 'Enlightened' as he was called by his disciples — was Siddhartha, whose date was probably from about 563 to 483 B.C. He belonged to the Kshatriya tribe of (^akyas, and so is often styled ' ^akya- muni,' the sage of the (^akyas ; but, in accordance with a practice which prevailed among the Kshatriyas, he bore a Brahman surname, Gautama, borrowed from one of the ancient families of Vedic Rishis. The ^akyas ruled over a district in what is now known as the Western Tarai of Nepal ; and, at Buddha's period, they were feudatories of the king of Kosala (Oudh). In recent years some most interesting archajological discoveries have RISE OF JAINISM AND BUDDHISM 67 been made in this region, perhaps the most interest- ing of all being the inscribed pillar which was erected, c. 244 B.C., by the Buddhist emperor Agoka to mark the spot where the Buddha was born. Buddha shared the pessimism of his period, the literature of which constantly reminds us of the words of the Preacher — ' Vanity of vanities : all is vanity ' — and he sought a refuge from the world and a means of escape from existence, first in the doctrine of the Atman, as set forth in the Upanishads, and subsequently in a system of the severest penance and self-mortification. But neither of these could satisfy him ; and after a period of meditation he propounded his own system, which in its simplest form is comprised in the four head- ings of his first sermon at Benares : — " sorrow : the cause of sorrow : the removal of sorrow : the way leading to the removal of sorrow." That is to say, all existence is sorrow ; this sorrow is caused by the craving of the individual for existence, which leads from birth to re-birth ; this sorrow can be removed by the removal of its cause ; this removal may be effected by following the eight-fold path, viz. 'right understanding,' 'right resolve,' 'right speech,' 'right action,' ' right living,' 'right effort,' 'right mindfulness,' 'right meditation.' It will be seen, then, that the ' eight-fold path ' of Buddhism 68 ANCIENT INDIA is essentially identical with the ' three jewels ' of the Jains, and that both of them differ from the Upanishads chiefly in substituting a practical rule of life for an abstract 'right knowledge,' as the means whereby ' freedom ' may be secured. Jainism and Buddhism also differ materially from Brahmanism in their organization. Brahmanism is strictly confined to the caste-system, in which a man's social and religious duties are determined once and for all by his birth. Jainism and Buddhism made a wider claim to universality. In theory, all distinction of castes ceased within the religious community. In practice, the firmly established social system has proved too strong for both religions. It is observed by the Jains at the present day, while, in India itself, it has re- absorbed the Buddhists many centuries ago. Brahmanism is not congregational. Its observ- ances consist partly of caste-duties performed by the individual, and partly of sacrifices and cere- monies performed for his special benefit by priests. In ancient times there were, therefore, no Brahman temples. Jainism and Buddhism were, on the contrary, both congregational and monastic. One striking result of this difference is that the most ancient monuments of India teach us a great deal about the Jains and Buddhists and little or nothing about tne Brahmans. The one-sided impression, RISE OF JAINISM AND BUDDHISM 69 which the comparative lack of this important species of evidence for the earliest history of Brahmanism is apt to produce, must be corrected from a study of the hterature. The language of Brahmanism is always and everywhere Sanskrit. The language of the Jain and Buddhist scriptures is that of the particular district or the particular period to which the different books or versions belong. Buddhism disappeared entirely from India proper at the end of the twelfth century a.d., but it still flourishes at the northern and southern ex- tremities, in Nepal and Ceylon. From its original home it has extended far and wide into Eastern Asia ; and its ancient books are preserved in four great collections : — Pali (in Ceylon, Burma, and Siam), Sanskrit (in Nepal), Tibetan, and Chinese. Thus both Jainism and Buddhism arose and flourished originally in the same region of India, viz. the districts to the east of the 'Middle Country,' including the ancient kingdoms of Kosala, Videha, and Magadha, i.e. the modern Oudh together with the old provinces of Tirhut and S. Bihar in Western Bengal. They spread subsequently to other regions, and for many centuries divided the allegiance of India with Brahmanism. Both religions produced large and varied litera- tures, sacred and secular, which are especially 70 ANCIENT INDIA valuable from the historical point of view, as they represent traditions which are, presumably, in- dependent of one another and of Brahmanism. We may, therefore, reasonably believe in the accuracy of a statement if it is supported by all the three available literary sources, Brahman, Jain, and Buddhist, since it is almost certain that no borrowing has taken place between them. The chief difEculty which the historian finds in using these materials lies in the fact that the books in their present form are not original. They are the versions of a later age ; and it is not easy to determine to what extent their purport has been changed by subsequent additions or corrections, or by textual corruption. This remark is especially true of some of the Brahman sources. For instance, the ancient epic poems, the Mahabharata and the Ramayana, and the Puranas or 'old-world stories' are undoubtedly, in their present form, many centuries later than the date of some of the events which they profess to record, and their evidence, therefore, must be used with caution. But it can scarcely be ques- tioned that much of their substance is extremely ancient, although the form in which it is expressed may have undergone considerable change in the course of ages. The Mahabharata, or 'great poem of the de- RISE OF JAINISM AND BUDDHISM 71 scendants of Bharata,' consists of about 100,000 couplets usually of thirty-two syllables each. That is to say, if reckoned by the number of syllables, it is about thirty times as long as Milton's 'Paradise Lost.' Only about a fifth of this mass has anything whatever to do with the main story, viz. the war between the Kurus and the Pandus. All the rest is made up of episodes, or disconnected stories, or philosophical poems. There can be no doubt that the Mahabharata, as it stands now, is the creation of centuries ; and criticism has succeeded in distinguishing various stages in its growth and in assigning certain pro- bable limits of date to these stages. It must suffice here to say that the historical groundwork of the story would seem to be an actual war at a remote period between the well-known Kurus and the Pandus, whose history is obscure ; and that an epic poem, which forms the nucleus of the present Mahabharata, was put together at least as early as the fourth century B.C. from traditional war songs founded on events which took place at a much earlier date. While the Mahabharata belonged originally to the 'Middle Country,' the Ramayana belongs rather to the districts lying to the east of this region. As its title denotes, it cele- brates ' the story of Rama,' a prince of the 72 ANCIENT INDIA royal Ikshvaku family of Kosala (Oudh), and its heroine is his faithful wife Sua, daughter of Janaka, king of Videha (Tirhut). Unlike the Mahabharata, the Ramayana is, on the whole, probably the product not only of one age but also of one author, Valmiki. It is not entirely free from more recent additions ; but the main poem forms one consistent whole, and such indications of date as can be found seem to show that it was composed probably in the fourth or third century B.C. As we have seen, some of its characters appear to be far more ancient and to be men- tioned in the Upanishads. There can be no doubt that, originally at least, the ancient epics belonged rather to the Kshatriyas than to the Brahmans. Their scenes are courts and camps, and their chief topics the deeds of kings and warriors. Their religion is that of the kingly caste. Among their deities, Indra, who was especially the sovereign lord of the kings of the earth, stands most prominent, and the future reward which awaits their heroes for the faithful discharge of kingly duty is a life of material happiness in Indra's heaven. Their language is neither that of the Brahmanas and Upanishads, nor that which is known as Classical Sanskrit. It is less regular and more popular in character than either of these ; and like all poetical languages it RISE OF JAINISM AND BUDDHISM 73 preserves many archaisms. We can scarcely be wrong in supposing that this epic Sanskrit was formed by the minstrels who wandered from court to court singing of wars and heroes. At a later date, when the supremacy of the Brahman caste was firmly established, no doubt a more definitely religious tone was given to the epics. The history of the Mahabharata, in fact, seems to show such a transition from a purely epic to a didactic char- acter. Originally the story of a war, such as would appeal chiefly to the military caste, it has become through the accretions of ages — the work, no doubt, of Brahman editors — a vast encyclopasdia of Brahmanical lore. Closely connected in character with the Mahabharata are the Puranas. The word ■purdna means 'ancient'; and the title is justified by the nature of the contents of the eighteen long Sanskrit poems which are so called. These consist chiefly of legendary accounts of the origin of the world and stories about the deeds of gods, sages, and monarchs in olden times. Works of this description and bearing the same title are men- tioned in the Atharva-veda and in the Brahmanas. This species of literature must, therefore, be ex- tremely old, and there can be no doubt that much of the subject-matter of the early Puranas has been transmitted to the later versions. But, in 74 ANCIENT INDIA their present form, the Puranas are undoubtedly- late, since some of the dynasties which they mention are known to have ruled in the first six centuries of the Chri.^tian era. Together with these, however, they mention others which belong to the last six centuries B.C., and others again which they attribute to a far more remote antiquity. It is evident that the Puranas have been ' brought up to date ' and wilfully altered so frequently, that their ancient and modern elements are now often inextricably confused. In theory, these ' family genealogies ' {vanifd- nucharitd) constitute one of the five essential features of a Purana : they are supposed to form part of the prophetic description given by some divine or semi-divine personage, in a far remote past, of the ages of the world to come and of the kings who are to appear on earth. They are, therefore, invariably delivered in the future tense. Such lists are absent from many of the modern versions, but, where they do occur, there can be no doubt that they were originally historical. Occasionally they give not only the names of the kings, but also the number of years in each reign and in each dynasty. The informa- tion which they supply is supported, to some extent, by the hteratures of the Jains and RISE OF JAINISM AND BUDDHISM 75 Buddhists, and, to some extent, by the evidence of inscriptions and coins. But, in the course of time, these lists have become so corrupt, partly through textual errors, and partly through the ' corrections ' and additions of editors, that, as they stand at present, they are neither in agree- ment with one another nor consistent in them- selves. Nevertheless, the source of many of their errors is easily discovered ; and it is quite possible that, when these errors have been removed from the text by critical editing, many of the apparent discrepancies and contradictions of the Puranas may likewise disappear. A somewhat similar problem is presented also by the Pali epic poems of Ceylon. The Dipa- vamsa in its present form dates from the fourth century a.d. and the Mahavamsa from the sixth century a.d. ; but both are almost certainly founded on traditional chronicles which were far more ancient. The professed object of both is to record the history of Buddhism from the earliest times, and in particular its history in the island of Ceylon from the date of its introduction by Mahendra (Mahinda) c. 246 B.C. to the reign of Mahasena, at the beginning of the fourth century a.d. There can be little doubt that, when the miraculous elements and other later accretions are removed from these chronicles, ■^S ANCIENT INDIA there remains a substratum of what may fairly be regarded as history. The period to which the earliest Jain and Buddhist literature belongs is marked by the growth of a species of composition — the Sutra — which is peculiarly Indian. It is used by ail sects alike and applied to every conceivable subject, sacred or secular. The Sutras may, perhaps, most aptly be said to represent the codification of knowledge. The word means ' thread ' ; and a treatise bearing the title consists of a string of aphorisms forming a sort of analysis of some particular subject. In this way all the different branches of learning — sacrificial ritual, philosophy, law, the study of language, etc. — which were treated somewhat indiscriminately in earlier works such as Brahmanas and Upanishads were system- atized. The Sutra form was, no doubt, the result of a method of instruction which was purely oral. The teacher, as we know from the extant Buddhist Sutras, was wont to enun- ciate each step in the argument and then to enforce it by means of parallel illustrations and by frequent reiteration until he had fully im- pressed it on the pupil's mind. The pupil thus learned his subject as a series of propositions, and these he remembered by the aid of short sentences which became in the course of time more and more RISE OF JAINISM AND BUDDHISM 77 purely mnemonic. The Sfltras are therefore, as a rule, unintelligible by themselves and can only be understood with the help of a commentary. They preserve a wonderfully complete record both of the social and religious life and of intellectual activity in almost every conceivable direction, but they are unhistorical in character and rarely throw any light, even incidentally, on the political condi- tions of the times and countries to which they belong. All the literary sources, Brahman, Jain, and Buddhist, are in general agreement as to the chief political divisions of Northern India in the sixth and fifth centuries, b.c. The number of large kingdoms mentioned in the lists is usually sixteen ; but in addition to these there were many smaller principalities, and many independent or semi-dependent communities, some of which were oligarchical in their constitution. The chief feature in the subsequent history is the growth of one of the large kingdoms, Magadha (S. Bihar), which was already becoming predominant among the nations east of the Middle Country during Buddha's life- time. It eventually established an empire which included nearly the whole of the continent of India. CHAPTER VI THE INDIAN DOMINIONS OF THE PERSIAN AND MACEDONIAN EMPIRES Relations between India and the West — Kings of Mitanni — Cyrus — Inscriptions of Darius — Herodotus — Ctesias — Gandhara and 'India' — Expedition of Xerxes against Greece — Alexander the Great — Arrian — Q. Curtius Rufus — Alexander's Indian campaigns — Limits of his conquests — His Indian satrapies — India after his death. We have seen that the present poHtical isolation of India is a comparatively modern feature in its history, and that, in ancient times, many of the physical impediments also, which now prevent free communication both with the Farther East and with the West, did not exist. We have seen that the results of such communication in prehistoric times are attested by the certain evidence of ethnology and language. We now approach the period during which relations between India and the West (Western Asia and Europe) are to be traced in historical records. The region of Western Asia, which lies between India and the ^gean and Mediterranean Seas, 78 MAP OF N.VJV. INDIA AND ADJACENT COaNTRIBS IN THE TIME PERSIANS AND MACEDONIANS 79 that is to say the region which comprises the modern countries of Afghanistan, Baluchistan, Persia, and the northern provinces of Turkey in Asia (Armenia, Asia Minor, Mesopotamia, and Syria) is famous as the site of many of the most advanced civihzations of antiquity. In extent, it is larger than the continent of India, but less than India and Burma combined. Here, as in India, many peoples of different races and languages have played their part on the stage of history ; and here, too, now one and now another of these peoples has, from time to time, become predominant among its fellows and has succeeded in establishing a great empire. As in the case of India also, the history of these ancient civihzations has been recovered from the past by modern scholarship. Excavations of ancient sites in the valleys of the Tigris and Euphrates, and elsewhere in this region, have brought to light thousands of in- scriptions in cuneiform characters, not one syllable of which could have been read a hundred years ago. These inscriptions, now that many of them have been deciphered, tell of Assyrian and Babylonian civilizations which were flourishing at least as early as 2200 B.C., and of a still earlier Sumerian civilization, the monuments of which seem to go back to about 4000 B.C. Of especial interest from the point of view of 8o ANCIENT INDIA Indian history are the cuneiform inscriptions which relate to the kings of Mitanni, a branch of the Hittites established in the district of Malatia in Asia Minor ; for we learn from them that not only did the kings of Mitanni in the fifteenth and fourteenth centuries B.C. bear Aryan names, but also that they worshipped the deities of the Rig- veda — Indra, Varuna, Mitra, and the A9vins (the horsemen gods, the Castor and Pollux of Indian mythology), under their Vedic title 'Nasatya.' The precise manner in which the kings of Mitanni and the Aryans of the Rig-veda were connected must remain for the present uncertain ; but, as many ancient sites in this region are still un- explored and as only a portion of the inscriptions already discovered have yet been published, there seems to be no Hmit to the possibilities presented by this most fertile field of archasology, and it is not improbable that both this and many other obscure problems may still be solved. That there may have been constant means of communication both by land and sea between the Babylonian Empire and India seems extremely probable ; but, although there are traditions, there is no real evidence that the sway of any of the powers of Western Asia extended to the east as far as India, until the time of Cyrus (558-530 B.C.), the founder of the Persian Empire, to whom, PERSIANS AND MACEDONIANS 8i on the authority of certain Greek and Latin authors, is attributed the conquest of Gandhara. This geographical term usually denotes the region comprising the modern districts of Peshawar in the N.-W. Frontier Province and Rawalpindi in the Punjab, but in the Old Persian inscriptions it seems to include also the district of Kabul in Afghanistan, This province formed the eastern limit of a vast empire which, in the reign of Cyrus, included not only the whole of Western Asia as described above, but other countries to the north of India and Afghanistan, and in the reign of his successor Cambyses (530-522 B.C.) also Egypt. Gandhara thus forms a most important link connecting India with the West ; and it holds a unique position among all the countries of India from the fact that its history may be traced with remarkable continuity from the times of the Rig- veda even down to the present day. Its inhabit- ants, the Gandharis, are mentioned both in the Rig-veda and the Atharva-veda ; and Gandhara appears among the countries of India in Sanskrit literature from the period of the Upanishads onwards, in the earliest Buddhist literature, and in the most ancient Indian inscriptions. It remained a Persian province for about two centuries ; and, after the downfall of the empire in 331 B.C., it, together with the Persian province of ' India ' or §2 ANCIENT INDIA 'the country of the Indus,' which had been added to the empire by Darius not long after 516 B.C., came under the sway of Alexander the Great. Through Gandhara and the Indian province was exercised the Persian influence, which so greatly modified the civilization of North-Western India. The sources, from which our knowledge of the Indian dominions of the Persian Empire is derived, are of two kinds: — (1) the inscriptions of King Darius I (522-486 B.C.), and (2) Greek writers, notably Herodotus and Ctesias. The historical inscriptions of Darius are at three important centres in the ancient kingdom of Persia — Behistun, Persepolis, and Naksh-i-Rustam. They are engraved in cuneiform characters and in three languages — Old Persian, Susian, and Baby- lonian. The Behistun inscription, cut into the surface of a lofty cliff at a height of about 500 feet above the ground, is famous in the annals of scholarship ; for it was through the publication of its Old Persian version by Sir Henry Rawlinson in 1847, that the numerous difficulties in the de- cipherment of the cuneiform alphabet were finally overcome. The historical importance of these inscriptions lies in the fact that they contain lists of all the subject peoples, and therefore indicate the extent of the Persian Empire at the time when they were engraved. PERSIANS AND MACEDONIANS 83 The chief object of the 'Histories' of Hero- dotus is to give an account of the struggles between the Greeks and the Persians during the period from 501 to 478 b.c. His third book contains a list of the twenty ' nomes ' or fiscal units, into which Darius divided the empire, together with the names of the peoples included in each and the amount of tribute imposed. Herodotus both confirms and amplifies the in- formation supplied by the inscriptions. His work is by far the most valuable record of the Persian Empire which has come down to us, Ctesias resided at the Persian court for seventeen years (c. 415-398 b.c.) as physician during the reigns of Darius II (424-404 b.c), and Artaxer- xes Mnemon (404-358 b.c). He wrote accounts both of Persia and India of which there are extant fragments preserved by later writers, as well as abridgements made by Photius, patriarch of Constantinople, in the ninth century a.d. The writings of Ctesias relating to India are, in the form in which they have survived, descriptive of the races and the natural productions of the country rather than historical. Such information as may be gleaned from the available sources as to the political history of the Persian provinces of Gandhara and ' India ' may thus be summarized. 84 ANCIENT INDIA Gandhara is said to have been conquered during the reign of Cyrus. The writers to whom we owe this information certainly lived several centuries after the time of Cyrus, but it is not improbable that they may have possessed good authority for their statements. In the Behistun inscription of Darius, the date of which is about 516 B.C., the Gandharians appear among the subject peoples in the Old Persian version ; but their place is taken in the Sasian and Babylonian versions by the Paruparaesanna. These were the inhabitants of the Paropanisus, or Hindu Kush. As a rule, a distinction may be observed between the country of the Paropanisadae (the Kabul Valley, in Afghanistan) and Gandhara, but the two names seem to be used indiscriminately in these inscriptions, probably as denoting generally the region which included both. In the inscrip- tions at Behistun no mention is made of the ' Indians ' who are included with the Gandharians in the lists of subject peoples given by the in- scriptions on the palace of Darius at Persepolis and on his tomb at Naksh-i-Rustam. From this fact it may be inferred that the ' Indians ' were conquered at some date between 516 B.C. and the end of the reign of Darius in 486 B.C. The preliminaries to this conquest are described by Herodotus, who relates that Scylax was first sent PERSIANS AND MACEDONIANS 85 by Darius (probably about 510 B.C.) to conduct a fleet of ships from one of the great tributaries of the Indus in the Gandhara country to the sea, and to report on the tribes living on both banks of the river. Although it is not possible to determine the precise extent of the 'Indian' province thus added by Darius to the Persian Empire, yet the informa- tion supplied by Herodotus indicates with sufficient clearness that it must have included territories on both sides of the Indus from Gandhara to its mouth, and that it was separated from the rest of India on the east by vast deserts of sand, evi- dently the present Thar or Indian Desert. The ' Indian ' province, therefore, no doubt included the Western Punjab generally and the whole of Sind. According to Herodotus it constituted the twentieth and the most populous fiscal division of the empire and it paid the highest annual tribute of all. The Gandharians are placed together with three other peoples in the seventh division, which paid altogether less than half that amount. During the reigns of Darius and his successor Xerxes took place the Persian expeditions against Greece, the total defeat of which by a few small states forms one of the most stirring episodes in history. The immediate cause of the war between Persians and Greeks was the revolt, in 86 ANCIENT INDIA 501 B.C., of the Greek colonies in Ionia, the district along the western coast of Asia Minor, which had become tributary to Persia after the defeat of Croesus, king of Lydia, by Cyrus in 546 B.C. The lonians were aided by the Athenians, who thus incurred the hostility of the Persians ; and, after the revolt was subdued, the Persian arms were turned against Greece itself. Since the Persians thus became acquainted with the Greeks chiefly through the Ionian colonists, they not unnaturally came to use the term Taund 'lonians,' which occurs in the inscriptions of Darius, in a wider sense to denote Greeks or people of Greek origin generally. The corre- sponding Indian forms (Skt. Tavana and Prakrit Tona), which were borrowed from Persia, have the same meaning in the Indian literature and inscriptions of the last three centuries before and the first two centuries after the Christian era. At a later date, these terms were used in India to denote foreigners generally. Of the most powerful of the Persian expedi- tions against Greece, which was accompanied by King Xerxes in person in 480 B.C., Herodotus has preserved a full account. It was made up of contingents sent by no fewer than forty-nine subject nations of the Persian Empire, and it is said to have numbered more than two million six PERSIANS AND MACEDONIANS 87 hundred thousand fighting men. In this vast army both of the Persian provinces of India were represented, the Gandharians being described by Herodotus as bearing bows of reed and short spears, and the ' Indians ' as being clad in cotton garments and bearing similar bows with arrows tipped with iron. After the time of Herodotus, the history of Northern India, as told by Greek writers, almost ceases until the period when both Greece and Persia had submitted to the Macedonian conqueror, Alexander the Great. But it is important to remember that this lack of information is to a great extent accidental and due to the fact that the writings of Ctesias have only survived in frag- ments, and that other writings have been lost. There is no reason to doubt that the Indian provinces were included in the Persian Empire and continued to be governed by its satraps until the end. There is also no reason to doubt that during the whole of this period the Persian Empire formed a link which connected India with Greece. We know that the battles of the Persian king were fought, to a very great extent, with the aid of Greek mercenaries, and that Greek officials of all kinds readily found employ- ment both at the imperial court and at the courts of the satraps. At no period in early history, probably, 9S ANCIENT INDIA were the means of communication by land more open, or the conditions more favourable for the interchange of ideas between India and the West. But the event which, in the popular imagination, has, for more than twenty-two centuries past, connected India with Europe, is undoubtedly the Indian expedition of Alexander the Great. He came to the throne of Macedon in 336 B.C., at the age of twenty ; and, after subduing Greece, he crossed over the Hellespont and began the con- quest of Western Asia in 334 b.c. After the defeat of the Persian monarch, Darius III Codo- mannus, at the decisive battle of Gaugamela in 331 B.C., the Persian dominions in India together with all the rest of the empire came nominally under the sway of the conquerors. The military campaigns which followed had, as their ostensible object, the vindication of the right of conquest and the consolidation of the empire thus won. The route by which Alexander approached India passed through the Persian provinces of Aria (Herat in North- Western Afghanistan), Drangiana (Seistan, in Persia, bordering on South- Western Afghanistan), and Arachosia (Kandahar in South- Eastern Afghanistan), and thence into the country of the Paropanisadae (the Kabul Valley, the province of East Afghanistan which adjoins the present North-Western Frontier Province). Here, in the PERSIANS AND MACEDONIANS 89 spring of 329 B.C., he founded the city of Alex- andria-sub-Caucasum, ' Caucasus ' being the name which the Greeks gave to the Paropanisus (Hindu Kush), the great chain of mountains which in ancient times separated India from Bactria, and which now divides Southern from Northern Afghanistan. This city Alexander used as his base of operations ; and hence he made a series of campaigns with the object of subduing the Persian provinces which lay to the north — Bactria (Baikh) and Sogdiana (Bukhara). On his return to the city which he had founded, he began to make preparations for the invasion of India in the summer of 327 B.C. If we reckon from this time to the actual date of Alexander's departure from India in the autumn of 325 B.C., the total duration of the campaign in India, that is to say the Kabul Valley, the North-Western Frontier Province, the Punjab, and Sind, was about two years and three months. As has been observed, this period is unique in the history of Ancient India in so far as it is the only one of which detailed accounts have come down to us. The names are recorded of about twenty Greek writers, who are known to have composed histories of this campaign. Some of them actually accom- panied Alexander, while the others were his contemporaries. But all their works without ex- ception have perished. We, however 90 ANCIENT INDIA five different accounts of Alexander and his exploits by later authors to whom these original records were accessible. Of these the two most important are Arrian and Curtius. Arrian, who was born about 90 a.d. and died in the reign of the Roman Emperor, Marcus Aurelius (161-180 a.d.), wrote in Greek an account of Alexander's Asiatic expedition, called the ' Anabasis of Alexander,' which was modelled on the ' Anabasis ' of Xenophon, and also a book on India, which was founded on the work of Megasthenes and intended to supplement the account of Ctesias. Arrian is our most trust- worthy authority. Q. Curtius Rufus, whose date is somewhat doubtful, wrote a work on the exploits of Alexander which has, with some probability, been assigned to the reign of Claudius (41-54 a.d.). This historical biography has been more praised for its literary merits than for its accuracy. The difEculties, which the reader encounters in his endeavours to trace the progress of Alexander's campaign in India with the aid of these and other classical authorities, are very con- siderable. In the early stages of the campaign, the military operations of Alexander and his generals were carried out in the mountainous districts of Afghanistan and the North-Western PERSIANS AND MACEDONIANS 91 Frontier Province which lie between Kabul and the Indus. This region, then as now, was in- habited by numerous warlike tribes living in a perpetual state of feud with one another. Even to the present day much of its geography is scarcely known to the outer world. The fights with warlike tribes and the sieges of remote mountain strongholds, which the historians of Alexander describe in detail, find their parallels in the accounts of the military expeditions, which the Indian government is obliged to send from time to time to quell disturbances on the North- western Frontier. Even now it is scarcely possible to follow the course of such expeditions, as described in books or newspapers, without the aid of special military sketch-maps drawn to a large scale. The difficulty is greatly increased when our only guides are ancient records, in which the identification of place-names with their modern representatives is often uncertain. Thus, to cite perhaps the most striking instance of this uncertainty, no episode in Alexander's career has been more famous through the ages than his capture of the rock Aornos, a stronghold which was fabled to have defied all the efforts of Hercules himself, and no subject has attracted more attention on the part of students of Indian history than the identification of its present site ; 92 , ANCIENT INDIA but, in spite of all the learning and ingenuity which have been brought to bear on the point during the last seventy years, the geographical position of Aornos still remains to be decided. Early in the spring of 326 B.C., Alexander and his army passed over the Indus, probably by means of a bridge of boats at Ohind, about six- teen miles above Attock, into the territories of the king of Taxila, who had already tendered his sub- mission. Taxila (Sanskrit Takshafila), the capital of a province of Gandhara, was famous in the time of Buddha as the great university town of India, and is now represented by miles of ruins in the neighbourhood of Shahdheri in the Rawalpindi District. From this city Alexander sent a sum- mons to the neighbouring king, Porus, calling upon him to surrender. The name, or rather title, ' Porus,' probably represents the Sanskrit Paurava^ and means 'the prince of the Purus,' a tribe who appear in the Rig-veda. Porus, who ruled over a kingdom situated between the Hydaspes (Jhelum) and the Acesines (Chenab), returned a defiant answer to the summons, and prepared to oppose the invaders at the former river with all his forces. The ensuing battle, in which the Macedonian forces finally prevailed, is the most celebrated in the history of Alexander's Indian campaign. His conquests were subsequently extended, first to the PERSIANS AND MACEDONIANS 93 Hydraotes (RSvi), and then to the Hyphasis (Beas), which marks their limit in an easterly direction. His soldiers refused to go farther, in spite of the eagerness of their leader. Beyond the Beas dwelt the people whom the Greek historians call ' Prasioi.' This name is, no doubt, intended to represent the Sanskrit Prachyah^ ' the Easterns,' and is a collective term denoting the nations of the country of the Ganges and Jumna. The Greek and Latin writers speak of them as of one great nation ; but, as we have seen, this region included a number of large king doms and a multitude of smaller states. It is, however, quite possible that, at this period, all these kingdoms and states were united under the suzerainty of Magadha. Hitherto Alexander had not been brought face to face with any great confederation of the nations of India. He had conquered some states and accepted the allegiance of others ; but none of these could, in all pro- babihty, be compared in point of strength with any of the great nations of Hindustan. It is useless to speculate as to what might have been the result if Alexander had crossed the Beas and come into conflict with the combined forces of the Prasioi. After the refusal of the army to proceed, Alexander retraced his hne of march to the 94 ANCIENT INDIA Hydaspes (Jhelum), on either bank of which he had preyiously founded a city — Bucephala, in honour of his favourite charger, Bucephalus, pro- bably near the modern town of Jhelum, on the right bank, at the point where his army had crossed the river, and Nicaea, ' the city of victory,' on the left bank, on the site of the battle with Porus. At these cities Alexander collected the fleet which was to convey a large portion of his forces down the rivers of the Punjab to the mouth of the Indus, and thence through the Arabian Sea to the head of the Persian Gulf. But Alexander's career of conquest in India was not finished. He had hitherto not only reclaimed the Persian province of Gandhara, but had annexed the whole of the Northern Punjab which lay be- yond, as far as the River Beas. He now proceeded, on his return journey, to reclaim the Persian pro- vince of 'India,' viz. the Western Punjab and Sind. The command of the fleet was entrusted to Nearchus, who thus performed for Alexander a somewhat similar task to that which, nearly two centuries before, had been undertaken by Scylax at the command of Darius. Nearchus wrote an account of his adventures which is no longer extant, but which is quoted frequently by Arrian in his Anabasis of Alexander. The progress of PERSIANS AND MACEDONIANS 95 the fleet as, protected by armies marching on either bank, it passed down the Jhelum into the Chenab, and so into the Indus, is described by the Greek and Latin historians with their usual minute- ness. The ordinary difficulties, which the reader finds in tracing the course of their narrative on the map of India, are here increased by the fact that all the rivers of the Punjab are known to have changed their courses. Such changes have been very considerable during the few centuries for which accurate observations are available, and the rivers must, accordingly, in many cases, have flowed in very different channels at the time of Alexander, more than two thousand two hundred years ago. We are, therefore, now deprived, to a great extent, of the chief means by which it is, often possible to identify the modern position of ancient historical sites. But, although it may not always be easy to follow the details of the constant series of military operations which marked the journey to the sea, the final result of these opera- tions is certain. The conqueror of the Persian Empire had fully established his claim to be the suzerain of the peoples who were formerly included in its ' Indian ' province. Before leaving India in the autumn of 325 b.c., Alexander had made provision for the future con- trol of his new dominions by the appointment of 96 ANCIENT INDIA satraps to govern the different provinces. In so doing he was merely perpetuating the system which had become firmly rooted in Northern India as the result of two centuries of Persian rule. The satraps whom he selected as governors in the former provinces of the Persian empire were Greek or Persian ; while, in the case of the newly added territories, he seems, where possible, to have chosen the native prince as satrap. Alexander, in fact, carried into practice the traditional Indian policy recommended by Manu (vii. 202), and fol- lowed, wherever it has been possible or expedient, by conquering powers in India generally, both ancient and modern, that a kingdom which had submitted should be placed in the charge of some member of its ancient royal family. So both the king of Taxila, who accepted Alexander's summons to submit, and Porus, who valiantly re- sisted, were made satraps over their own dominions. Indeed, to the former dominions of Porus, who was probably a ruler of exceptional ability, were added those of some of his neighbours. Thus, in all periods of history, local govern- ments in India have gone on almost unchanged in spite of conquest after conquest. It was always regarded as a legitimate object of the ambition of every king to aim at the position cfi a chakravartin or 'supreme monarch.' If his neighbours agreed, PERSIANS AND MACEDONIANS 97 so much the better; but, if they resisted his pre- tentions, the question was decided by a pitched battle. In either case, the government of the states involved was usually not affected. The same prince continued to rule, and the nature of his rule did not depend on his position as suzerain or vassal king. Generally speaking, the condition of the ordinary people was not affected, or was only affected indirectly, by the victories or defeats of their rulers. The army was not recruited from the tillers of the soil. The soldier was born, not made. It was just as much the duty of certain castes to fight, as it was the duty of others not to fight. War was a special department of govern- ment in which the common people had no share. These considerations enable us to understand why the invasion of India by Alexander the Great has left no traces whatever in the literature or in the institutions of India. It affected no changes either in the methods of government or in the life of the people. It was little more than a military expedition, the main object of which was to gratify a conqueror's ambition by the assertion of his suzerainty. But this suzerainty was only effective so long as it could be enforced. In June 323 e.g., a little more than a year after his return from India, Alexander died at Babylon, and with his death Macedonian rule in India ceased. His sue- 98 ANCIENT INDIA ceesor, Seleucus Nicator, endeavoured in vain to re-conquer the lost possessions, c. 305 b.c. Be- fore this date all the states of North- Western India, including whatever remnants there may have been of the military colonies established by Alexander, had come under the sway of an Indian suzerain. CHAPTER VII THE MAURYA EMPIRE The Kingdom of Magadha — Chandragupta — Seleucus Nicator — Megasthenes — Bindusara — A foka — His edicts — Extent of the Maurya Empire — Intercourse with the West — The propagation of Buddhism — Later history of the Mauryas — Continuity of policy of Indian rulers. The descriptions of Alexander's campaign are especially valuable as enabling us to realize the political conditions of the land of the Indus at this period. We may gather from Indian literature that the political conditions of the land of the Ganges were not widely different. Here, too, the country was divided into a number of states varying greatly in size and power; and here, too, at some period between the Hfetime of Buddha and the invasion of Alexander the Great, a conquering power — but, in this case, a native power — had succeeded in establishing a suzerainty over its neighbours. The kingdom of Magadha (S. Bihar) was already o-rowing in power in Buddha's time ; and we are probably justified in inferring from the statements of Alexander's historians that its as- 99 loo ANCIENT INDIA cendancy over the Prasioi, or the nations of Hindu Stan, was complete at the time of his invasion. Soon after the return of Alexander, the throne of Magadha, a:;d with it the imperial posses- sions of the Nanda dynasty, passed by a coup detat into the hands of an adventurer whom the Greek and Latin writers call Sandrokottos. As we have seen, the identification of this personage with the Chandragupta, who is well known from Indian literature, and whose story, at a later date, formed the subject of a Sanskrit historical play called the Mudrd-rdkshasa, supplied the first fixed point in the chronology of Ancient India. Chandragupta, whose surname Maurya is supposed to be derived from the name of his mother, Mura, is the first historical founder of a great empire in India. As king of Magadha he succeeded to a predominant position in Hindu- stan ; and, within a few years of Alexander's departure from India, he had gained possession also of the North-Western region. The empire which he established included therefore the whole of Northern India lying between the Himalaya and Vindhya Mountains, together with that portion of Afghanistan which lies south of the Hindu Kush. We have no detailed information as to the process by which the North-Western region thus passed from one suzeraiiity to another, THE MAURY A EMPIRE loi We can only surmise that the victorious career of Chandragupta must have resembled that of Alexander — that some states willingly gave in their allegiance to the new conqueror, while others did not submit without a contest. Alexander's death in 323 b.c. was followed by a long struggle between his generals for the possession of the empire. The eastern portion which, in theory at least, included the Indian dominions, fell eventually to Seleucus Nicator, who took possession of Babylon and founded the dynasty commonly known as that of the Seleucid Kings of Syria in 312 b.c. About the year 305 b.c, Seleucus invaded India with the object of reclaiming the conquests of Alexander which had now passed into the power of Chandragupta. No detailed account of this expedition is extant. We only know from Greek and Latin sources that Seleucus crossed the Indus, and that he concluded with Chandragupta a treaty of peace, by the terms of which the Indian provinces formerly held by Darius and Alexander were definitely acknowledged to form part of the empire of Chandragupta. The most important consequence of this treaty was the establishment of political relations between the kingdom of Syria, which was now the pre- dominant power in Western Asia, and the Maurya I02 ANCIENT INDIA empire of Northern India. For a considerable period after this date there is evidence that these political relations were maintained. The Maurya empire was acknowledged in the "West as one of the great powers ; and ambassadors both from Syria and from Egypt resided at the Maurya capital, Pataliputra (Patna). The first ambassador sent by Seleucus to the court of Chandragupta was Megasthenes, who wrote an account of India which became the chief source of information for subsequent Greek and Latin authors. The work itself is lost, but numerous fragments of it have been preserved in the form of quotations by later writers. Among these quotations we find descriptions of very great historical value. The capital, Pataliputra, was, according to Megasthenes, built in the form of a large parallelogram 80 stadia long and 15 stadia wide. That is to say, the city was more than 9 miles in length and more than i| miles in width. It was surrounded by a wall which had 570 towers and 64 gates, and by a moat 600 feet wide and 30 cubits deep. At the present time excavations are being made by the Archseo- logical Survey of India on the ancient site of Pataliputra, as the result of which discoveries of the highest interest may be anticipated. To Megasthenes also we are indebted for a detailed THE MAURYA EMPIRE 103 account of the administration of public affairs in this imperial city ; and this account is supplemented and confirmed in a very remarkable manner by a Sanskrit treatise on the conduct of affairs of state, called the Artha-fdstra, the authorship of which is attributed to Chanakya, who appears as the Brahman prime minister of Chandragupta in the Mudra-rakshasa^ and who has won for himself the reputation of having been 'the Machiavelli of India.' It has been well said (V. A. Smith, Early History of India^ second edition, p. 119), that we are more fully informed concerning political and municipal institutions in the reign of Chandragupta, than in that of any subsequent Indian monarch until the time of the- Mughal Emperor Akbar, who was contemporary with our Queen Elizabeth. The reign of Chandragupta lasted from about 321 to 297 B.C. He was succeeded by a son who is called Bindusara in Indian literature and who was probably known to Greek writers by one of his titles as Amitrochates (Sanskrit Amitraghaia\ 'the slayer of his foes.' There is little information to be obtained about him either from Indian or from Greek sources. In his reign another Syrian ambas- sador named Daimachus, sent by Antiochus I Soter (280-261 B.C.), the successor of Seleucus, visited the court of Pataliputra. He also wrote an account of India, which has been lost. We there- 104 ANCIENT INDIA fore have no means of judging of the truth of Strabo's statement, when he says that of all the Greek writers on India Daimachus ranked first in mendacity. Of a third ambassador, who came to India from the West at some time during this period, we know merely the name — Dionysius — and that he was sent from the court of Ptolemy Philadelphus, king of Egypt (285-247 B.C.). The three ambassadors, whose names have been preserved, are no doubt typical of a class. It is in every way probable that constant relations were maintained between India and the West during the period of the Maurya empire. There is positive evidence of the continuation of such relations during the reign of the next emperor — the most renowned of the imperial line — Agoka, the son of Bindusara, who reigned c. 269-227 B.C. Agoka's fame rests chiefly on the position which he held as the great patron of Buddhism. As such he has often been compared to Constantine the Great, the royal patron of Roman Christianity. The literary sources for the history of Agoka's reign — Brahman, Jain, and Buddhist — are indeed abundant. But his very fame has, in many cases, caused these materials to assume a legendary or miraculous character. He has suffered both from the enthusiasm of friends and from the misrepre- THE MAURYA EMPIRE 105 sentations of foes. The Buddhist accounts of his hfe have come down to us in two great collections of religious books — those written in Pali and preserved in Ceylon, and those written in Sanskrit and preserved in Nepal. In the case of both of these, an undoubted substratum of fact is so much hidden by a dense overgrowth of legend, that the historian is sorely perplexed in his efforts to dis- tinguish the one from the other. Fortunately, there exists a source of informa- tion which is beyond dispute — inscriptions cut into hard rocks or pillars of stone by command of the king himself, and, in many in^ances, record- ing his own words. We have already had occasion to speak of these wonderful inscriptions. Their object was ethical and religious rather than historical or political. They inculcate good government among the rulers, and obedience and good conduct among the governed, and these virtues as the fruit of the observance of dhamma (Skt. dharmd) or 'duty,' a term which, in this case, since Agoka was a follower of Buddha, is probably identical with the eight-fold path of Buddhism. In striking contrast to the inscriptions of Darius, the edicts of A9oka were intended not to convey to posterity the record of conquests or of the extent of a mighty empire, but to further the temporal and spiritual welfare of his subjects. io6 ANCIENT INDIA They proclaim in so many words that " the chief conquest is the conquest of 'duty.'" One material conquest — that of the kingdom of Kaliriga — they do indeed record ; but this is expressly cited as an instance of the worthlessness of conquest by force when compared with the conquest which comes of the performance of ' duty,' and it is coupled with an expression of bitter regret for the destruction and the misery which the war entailed. Surely, imperial edicts of this description, engraved as they are in the most permanent form and promulgated throughout the length and breadth of a great empire, are unique in the history of the world. Of peculiar interest is the inscribed pillar which was erected by A9oka to mark the traditional birth-place of Buddha. This was discovered in 1896 at Rummindei in the Nepalese Tarai, with every letter still as perfect as when it was first engraved. The modern name of the place still continues to represent the ' Lumbini ' grove of the ancient story of Buddha's birth. But, although the edicts and the other inscrip- tions of A^oka are not historical in character, yet they supply, incidentally, evidence of the most valuable kind for the history of the time. In the first place, the extent of the Maurya empire during the reign of A^oka is indicated by THE MAURYA EMPIRE 107 their geographical distribution. They are found, usually at ancient places of pilgrimage, from the N.-W. Frontier Province in the extreme north of India to Mysore in the south, and from Kathiawar in the west to Orissa. That is to say, they show that the sway of A9oka extended over the whole length and breadth of the continent of India, with the exception of the extreme south of the peninsula. It is extremely probable also that versions of the edicts will be found in Southern Afghanistan, when it is possible to pursue archaeological investigations in that region. The geographical knowledge thus gleaned is supplemented by the mention in the inscriptions of the peoples living on the northern and southern fringes of the empire. In the north, A9oka regarded his empire as conterminous with that of the Greek (Yona) king Antiochus, that is to say, the Seleucid king, Antiochus II Theos (261- 246 B.C.). His neighbours in the extreme south were the rulers of the Tamil kingdoms, four of which are mentioned by name. Three of these kingdoms, which can be identified with certainty, played an important part in later Indian history. The inscriptions also mention Ceylon (Tamba- panni). We are thus, for the first time in the history of India, supplied with information which would enable us to give some description of the io8 ANCIENT INDIA geography of the whole continent from Afghani- stan to Ceylon. We also learn incidentally that this great empire was governed by viceroys who ruled over large provinces in the North- West, the South, the East, and the West. The central districts were probably under the direct rule of the emperor at Pataliputra. We find, further, evidence of the continuance of that intercourse between India and the West, which, as we know from Greek authorities, was maintained during the reigns of Chandragupta and Bindusara. A9oka was a zealous Buddhist. He was not satisfied with having the 'law of duty ' preached everywhere among his subjects and among the independent peoples of Southern India and Ceylon; but he states in one of his edicts that he had sent his missionaries even into the Hellenic kingdoms of Syria, Egypt, Cyrene, Macedonia, and Epirus. He mentions by name the reigning sovereigns of these kingdoms, and thereby supplies some most valuable chronological evidence for the history of his own reign, since the dates of most of these Hellenic kings are known with certainty. During the reign of Agoka, Buddhism was estabhshed in the island of Ceylon, where it still continues to flourish hundreds of years after it THE MAURYA EMPIRE 109 has disappeared from every part of the continent of India except Nepal. The ruler of the island at this period was Tissa (c. 247-207 b.c.) whose title Devdnampiya, ' dear to the gods,' is that which is used by Afoka himself in his inscriptions and may possibly have been borrowed from him. The conversion of the island to Buddhism is attributed by the Ceylonese chronicles to the son of A^oka, Mahinda, who had become a Buddhist monk. In his latter years the emperor A^oka himself became a monk, living in seclusion at Suvarnagiri, a sacred mountain, near the ancient city of Girivraja in Magadha (S. Bihar). Like many of the Indian monarchs of old whose story is told in the Sanskrit epics, he retired to devote the final stage of life to religious meditation, after having first transferred the cares of state to his heir apparent. This prince is mentioned in an edict which Agoka issued from Suvarnagiri, but only by his title. We have no means of identifying him farther, or of knowing if he succeeded to the throne on the death of Agoka. For the subsequent history of the Maurya empire, we have no such authorities, hterary or inscriptional, as those which enable us to under- stand so fully the social and political conditions of India during the reigns of Chandragupta and no ANCIENT INDIA Afoka. We are once more dependent almost entirely on the testimony of the Puraijas and the chronicles of the Jains and Buddhists — sources which are only partly in agreement with one another, and which at best afford little more than the names of the successors of A9oka and the length of their reigns. Five of the Puranas agree in the statement that the Maurya dynasty lasted for 137 years. If we accept this statement we may date the end of the dynasty in c. 1 84 B.C. They are not in complete agreement either as to the names or the number of Agoka's successors. Two of the Puranas agree in stating that his immediate successors w'-e a son and grandson who reigned each for a period of eight years. The latter of these is probably the Da9aratha whose name occurs in some cave-inscriptions in the Nagarjuni Hills in the Gaya district of Bengal. These inscriptions show that Da9aratha had continued the patronage which Acoka had bestowed on a sect of Jain ascetics called Ajivikas. It is possible that the Puranas may be right in recording that some six or seven successors of A9oka sat on the throne of Magadha ; but, if so, it is certain that most of these successors could only have ruled over an empire very greatly diminished in extent or, perhaps, even reduced to THE MAURYA EMPIRE iii the kingdom of Magadha out of which it had grown. It is interesting in reviewing the past history of India to trace a remarkable continuity of policy on the part of the rulers of whatever nationality who have succeeded in welding together this great congeries of widely differing races and tongues. The main principles of government have remained unchanged throughout the ages. Such as they were under the Maurya empire, so they were inherited by the Muhammadan rulers and by their successors the British. These principles are based on the recognition of a social system which depends ultimately on a self-organized village community. Local government thus forms the very basis of all political systems in India. The grouping of village communities into states, and the grouping of states into empires has left the social system unchanged. All governments have been obliged to recognize an infinite variety among the governed of social customs and of religious beliefs, too firmly grounded to admit of interference. Thus the idea of religious toleration which was of slow growth in Europe was accepted in India generally from the earliest times. All rehgious communities were alike under the protection of the sovereign ; and inscriptions plainly show that, when the government changed hands, the privileges granted 112 ANCIENT INDIA to religious communities were ratified by the new sovereign as a matter of course. In a special edict devoted to the subject of religious toleration Agoka definitely says that his own practice was to reverence all sects. In this edict he deprecates the habit of exalting one's own views at the expense of others, and admits that different people have different ideas as to what constitutes 'duty' (dharmd). Such has been the attitude of en- lightened rulers of India in all ages. Instances of religious persecution have, indeed, not been wanting in India ; but the tolerant policy of Agoka was that of the most capable and far-seeing of the Muhammadan rulers such as Akbar, and it has always been that of the British government, which, like Agoka, has only interfered with religion when it has entailed practices which conflict with the ordinary principles of humanity. CHAPTER VIII INDIA AFTER THE DECLINE OF THE MAURYA EMPIRE Dismemberment of the Empire — The ^ungas — The Kingdom of Kahriga — The Andhras — The Hellenic Kingdoms of Bactria and Parthia — The Indian invasion of Antiochus the Great. Another lesson which is entorced by the history of the Maurya empire is that the maintenance of peace, and of those conditions which are essential to progress, depends in India on the existence of a strong imperial power. On the downfall of the Maurya empire, as on the downfall of the Mughal empire nearly two thousand years later, the individual states which had been peacefully united under the imperial sway regained their independence, and the struggle between them for existence or for supremacy began anew. The Hterature and the monuments afford us some information as to the history of various regions of India during the period of strife and confusion which now ensued. According to the Puranas the Mauryas were H ' "3 ii4 ANCIENT INDIA succeeded on the throne of Magadha by the ^ufigas who are said to have ruled for it2 years {c. 184-72 B.C.). There is no reason to disbelieve this statement which is consonant with probability and with such other evidence as we possess ; but, after this period, it seems impossible to make the chronology of the Puranas agree with the more trustworthy evidence of inscriptions and coins. In this case it seems probable that the dynastic lists were originally authentic, but that later editors have reduced them to absurdity by re- presenting contemporary dynasties as successive. The founder of the (^unga dynasty was Pushyamitra who is said to have slain his master, Brihadratha, the last of the royal Mauryas. An historical play, the Mdlavikdgnimitra, by India's greatest dramatist, Kalidasa, who flourished c. 400 A.D., deals with this period. Although a com- position of this kind, written between five and six centuries after the date of the events to which it refers, cannot be accepted as historical evidence, yet it is altogether probable that its chief char- acters — Pushyamitra, his son Agnimitra, and his grandson Vasumitra — were historical personages, and that some of the events mentioned — a war with Vidarbha (Berar) and a conflict with the Yavanas, for instance — were actual occurrences. The picture of a diminished empire still possessed INDIA AFTER THE MAURYA EMPIRE 1 1 5 by Magadha is in accordance with the knowledge of the period which we derive from more trust- worthy sources. The king probably still reigned at the capital, Pataliputra, while his son, the heir-apparent, like Agoka before he came to the throne, governed the western provinces with his court at Vidi9a (Bhilsa) in Malwa (Central India). It was before the vice-regal court of the same province and at its capital, Ujjain, that the play was first performed during the reign of the later Gupta emperor, Chandragupta II Vikramaditya (^- 375-413 A.D.). The extent of the ^uhga dominions is indicated by an inscription 'in the sovereignty of the ^ufiga kings' which occurs on one of the sculp- tures from the Bharhut tope in the Nagod State (Central India), and possibly also by certain coins found in the United Provinces in Rohilkhand, the ancient kingdom of North Pafichala, and on the site of Ayodhya, the ancient capital of Kosala (Oudh) ; but the names found on these coins, with the single exception of 'Agnimitra,' only bear a general resemblance with those given in the dyn- astic lists and cannot be identified with certainty. The available evidence thus tends to show that Magadha under the ^uhgas still possessed an empire, but one greatly reduced in size since the time of Afoka. Some of the losses which the ii6 ANCIENT INDIA empire had sustained are clearly proved by the evidence of inscriptions and coins. The kingdom of Kaliriga, on the east coast between the rivers Mahanadi and Godavari, had, as we know from Agoka's edicts, been conquered by him in the ninth year after his coronation. It would seem to have regained its independence at no long interval after his death, according to evidence supplied by an inscription of Kharavela, king of Kalinga, in the Hathigumpha cave near Cuttack in Orissa. Unfortunately, the inscription, which gives an account of events in the first thirteen years of the king's reign, is much damaged, and its interpretation is full of difScul- ties. What appears to be beyond all doubt is the statement that Kharavela belonged to the third, generation of the royal family of Kalinga. The mention of an Andhra king, Catakarni, and such other chronological indications as can be obtained from the inscription, would seem to suggest that Kharavela was reigning c. 150 B.C. No more precise date is obtainable at present. The decline of the Maurya empire was marked also by the rapid growth of the Andhra kingdom in Southern India. Originally a Dravidian people living immediately to the south of the Kalirigas in that part of the Madras Presidency which lies between the rivers Godavari and Kistna, the INDIA AFTER THE MAURYA EMPIRE 1 17 Andhras had become, probably about 200 b.c, a great power whose territories included the whole of the Deccan and extended to the western coast. They are mentioned in the edicts in a manner which seems to indicate that they acknowledged the suzerainty of A9oka, but that they were never conquered and brought under the direct government of a viceroy of the empire like their neighbours the Kalingas. They would seem to have asserted their independence soon after the death of A9oka. Some outline of their history may be traced by the aid of in- scriptions, coins, and literary sources from prob- ably about 220 B.C. to 240 A.D. The names of a succession of thirty kings are preserved in the Puranas, together with the length of each reign, and the total duration of the dynasty which is given either as 456 or as 460 years. The Puranas are, usually, fairly in agreement with the evidence of inscriptions and coins, so far as the names of the kings and the length of their reigns are concerned ; but they assign to the dynasty a chronological position which is im- possible. There can be little doubt also that, contem- poraneously with the rise of the independent kingdoms of the Kalingas and the Andhras in the South, the North-Western region of India, ii8 ANCIENT INDIA too, ceased to belong to the Maurya empire. We have no glimpses of the history of this defection ; but we may reasonably assume that the numerous petty states which had been held together for a time by the imperial power reasserted their autonomy when that power ceased. During the reign of Agoka two revolts occurred in the empire of Syria which were fruitful in consequences for the future history of India. Almost at the same time, about 250 b.c. or a few years later, Diodotus, satrap of Bactria, and a Parthian adventurer named Arsaces threw off their allegiance to the Seleucid monarch, Antiochus II Theos (261-246 B.C.), and founded the independent kingdoms of Bactria and Parthia. Bactria — the name is preserved in the modern form Balkh — was the region of N. Afghanistan, bounded on the north by the river Oxus. It was divided from the Maurya empire by the Hindu Rush — a range of mountains which, lofty as are many of its peaks, possesses also numerous passes, and forms no very formidable barrier to communication between Northern and Southern Afghanistan. The Hellenic kingdom of Bactria founded by Diodotus lasted till about 135 b.c, when its civilization was entirely swept away by the irresistible flood of Scythian ((^aka) invasion from the North. Its brief history of a little INDIA AFTER THE MAURYA EMPIRE 119 more than a century is most intimately asso- ciated with that of the North- Western region of India. Parthia, originally a province lying to the south-east of the Caspian Sea, grew into a great empire at the expense of the empire of Syria, which, once the predominant power in Western Asia, was at last reduced to the province of Syria from which it takes its name. The Parthian power lasted till 226 a.d. In the reign of Mithradates I (171-138 B.C.) it ex- tended as far eastwards as the river Indus which thus became once more the dividing line between Western Asia and India. The Parthian and Scythian invasions of India, which, at a some- what later period, constitute the chief feature in the history of the North- Western region are dealt with in our final chapter. But the Syrian empire did not acquiesce with- out a protest in the independence of its revolted provinces. About the year 209 B.C., Antiochus III the Great, made an attempt to reduce both Parthia and Bactria to obedience. Parthia was now under the rule of the king who has usually, but perhaps incorrectly, been called Artabanus I (210-191 B.C.), while Bactria was under Euthydemus {c. 230-195 B.C.). The ex- pedition of Antiochus ended in an acknowledge- I20 ANCIENT INDIA ment of the independence of both kingdoms. So far as Bactria is concerned, Antiochus is said to have listened to the argument of Euthydemus that it would at the present juncture be impolitic, in the cause of Hellenic civilization generally, to weaken the power of Bactria which formed a barrier against the constant menace of Scythian irruptions from the North. Bactria was, indeed, a stronghold of Hellenic civilization. It was held by a military aristocracy, thoroughly Greek in sentiment and religion, ruling over a subject people so Httle advanced in culture that its ideas are in no way reflected in the monu- ments of Bactrian art. The coins of Bactria are purely Greek in character, the divinities repre- sented on them are Greek, and the portraits of the kings themselves are among the finest ex- amples extant of Greek art as applied to portraiture. But the kingdom was short-lived and its history was troublous. The house of the founder, Diodotus, was deposed by Euthydemus, perhaps about 230 B.C., and the later history of Bactria is occupied with the internecine struggle between the descendants of Euthydemus and the rival family of Eucratides. After thus making a treaty of peace with Euthydemus, Antiochus, like his predecessors, Alexander in 327 b.c, and Seleucus c. 305 b.c. INDIA AFTER THE MATJRYA EMPIRE i«i passed over the Hindu Kush into the Kabul Valley. No exact details of this invasion or of its extent have been preserved ; but it seems clear that this region, which formed part of the Maurya empire when Seleucus invaded it, had, at some time subsequent to the death of Agoka, reverted to the rule of its local princes, one of whom, Sophagasenus (probably the Sanskrit Subhagasena), is said to have purchased peace by offering tribute to Antiochus. CHAPTER IX THE SUCCESSORS OF ALEXANDER THE GREAT The records literary and numismatic — Bactrian conquests in India — Invasion of Bactria by Mithradates — Bactria occupied by the ^akas and the Yueh-chi — Greek kings in India — The house of Euthydemus and the house of Eucratides — Menander — -Allusions to Greeks in Sanskrit literature — Greek influence in India. The political condition of India on the downfall of the Maurya empire was such as to invite foreign invasion ; and the establishment on its northern and north-western borders of the kingdoms of Bactria and Parthia supplied the sources from which invasions came. The hterary authorities for the history of this period are indeed few ; but they afford some most valuable information. The most important are: — (i) Justin, a Latin writer who, in the fourth or fifth century a.d., made an abridgement of a history of the Macedonian empire compiled by Trogus in the reign of Augustus (27 b C.-14 a.d.) ; and (2) the Greek geographer Strabo, who was probably contemporary with Trogus. THE SUCCESSORS OF ALEXANDER 123 The chief records, however, of the rulers of this period are their coins, which are found in extraordinary variety and abundance. From them we learn of the existence of thirty-five kings and two queens, all bearing purely Greek names, who reigned in Bactria and India during the period from about 250 B.C. to 25 B.C. The great majority of these rulers are otherwise unknown. The coins which they struck have survived, while every other memorial of their lives has perished. A curious fact connected with this series of coins is that certain specimens struck in Bactria before 200 b.c. are of nickel, a metal which is commonly supposed to have been discovered in Europe about the middle of the eighteenth century a.d. Not long after the expedition ot Antiochus the Great, the Bactrian king Euthydemus seems to have formed the design of extending his kingdom by the conquest of the territories lying to the south of the Hindu Kush. It is probable that the fulfilment of this design was entrusted to his son Demetrius, who has been supposed to be the original of ' The grete Emetreus, the king of Inde ' of Chaucer's Knight es Tale. As a result of the conquests of Demetrius, the ancient provinces of the Persian empire, i.e. the 124 ANCIENT INDIA Kabul Valley and the country of the Indus (the Western Punjab and Sind), which had been once reclaimed and held for a brief period by Alexander the Great, were now again recovered for the Greek kings of Bactria who proudly boasted to be his successors. But though Demetrius had thus gained a new kingdom in India, he was soon to lose his own kingdom of Bactria after a desperate struggle with his rival Eucratides, who now laid claim to the throne. The account of an episode in this contest has been preserved by Justin, who describes how Eucratides with 300 men was besieged by Demetrius with 60,000, and how he wore out the enemy by continual sorties and escaped in the fifth month of the siege. Finally, not only Bactria but also some part of the newly acquired Indian dominions of Demetrius passed into the power of the conqueror, Eucratides ; and from this time onwards we may trace the existence of two lines of Greek princes in India, the one derived from Euthydemus, ending c. 100 B.C., and the other derived from Eucratides, ending c. 25 B.C. The period of the reign of Eucratides is determined by the statement of Justin that he came to the throne at about the same time as Mithradates I of Parthia, i.e. about 171 b.c. It is doubtful if Demetrius or any other member of THE SUCCESSORS OF ALEXANDER 125 the family of Euthydemus ruled in any part of Bactria after this date. It is more probable that henceforth their power was confined to India. The family of Eucratides, on the other hand, continued to rule both in Bactria and in India until Greek civilization in Bactria was swept away by the flood of ^aka invasions from the North c. 135 b.c; but they retained their possessions in the territories to the south of the Hindu Kush, and held the Kabul Valley until the Kushana conquest, C. 25 B.C. The transference of Greek rule from Bactria to India is indicated, in the most unmistakable manner, by a change in the style of the coins. In Bactria the coins remain purely Greek in character, and they are struck in accordance with a purely Greek standard of weight. The subject popula- tion was evidently not sufficiently advanced in civilization to influence the art of the conquerors in any degree. In India, on the other hand, where the Greeks came into contact with an ancient civilization, which was, in many respects, as advanced as their own, it was necessary to effect a compromise. It was essential that the coinage should be suited to the requirements of the conquered as well as of the conquerors. The coins, accordingly, become bilingual. They are struck with Greek legends on the obverse^ and 126 ANCIENT INDIA with an Indian translation in Indian characters on the reverse ; and they follow the Persian standard of weight which had been firmly established in N.-W. India as a result of the long Persian dominion. We have already seen how valuable the study of these bilingual coins has proved in affording the necessary clue to the interpretation of the forgotten alphabets of Ancient India. During the reign of Eucratides, Bactria was invaded by the Parthian king, Mithradates I (171-138 B.C.), who seems to have remained master of the country for some considerable time. It is probable that certain coins which bear his name, and which are palpably imitated, some from the Bactrian coins of Demetrius and some from those of Eucratides, may have been struck by him in Bactria during this period. There is reason for supposing that Mithradates, on this occasion, penetrated even into India. In the printed text of the works of Orosius, a Roman historian who flourished c. 400 a.d., there is indeed to be found a definite statement to the effect that Mithradates subdued the nations between the Hydaspes (Jhelum) and the Indus ; but it seems possible that the reading ' Hydaspes ' may be incorrect and due to some corruption in the manuscripts of the name of a river not in India, but in Persia to the weit of the Indus. The successors of Alexander 127 Thus weakened, on the one hand, by internal feuds and by Parthian attacks, and, on the other, by the drain on its resources caused by the Indian conquests, the Greek kingdom of Bactria proved incapable of resisting the hordes of Scythians who burst through its northern frontiers c. 135 B.C. These represented one of the groups of nomadic tribes known as ^akas, who still occupied, as in the time of Darius (522-486 B.C.), the country of the river Jaxartes (Syr Darya) to the north of Sogdiana (Bukhara). They had always been regarded as a standing menace to the Greek civilization of Bactria, and now, being driven from their pastures by the pressure of other nomadic hordes whom the Chinese historians call Yueh-chi, they were forced partly in a southerly direction into Bactria, and partly in a south-westerly direc- tion into the Parthian empire where they joined with an earlier settlement of Cakas in the province ofDrangiana (Seistan). Traces of the existence of this earlier (^aka settlement in Drangiana seem to be found both in the inscriptions of Darius and in the accounts of Alexander's campaigns. The vital importance for the history of N.-W. India of this augmentation of the ^aka power already established in a province of the Parthian Empire will be seen subsequently (p. 137). The Yueh-chi, thus driving the (^akas before 128 ANCIENT INDIA them, seem to have occupied first Sogdiana and then Bactria, where, under the leadership of their chief tribe, the Kushanas, they developed into the strong power which created the next great Indian empire. It is only possible to give a very general outline of the history of the Greek kingdoms south of the Hindu Kush. Nearly all the evidence which we possess has been gleaned from the study of their coinages ; and the interpretation of this evidence is by no means always clear. As has been observed, these Greek princes seem to belong chiefly to the two rival royal lines — the house of Euthydemus, and the house of Eucratides — which having begun their struggle in Bactria continued it in India. It is, however, not always easy to attribute princes whose coins we possess to either of these groups ; and it is quite possible that, in addition to these two chief Greek kingdoms in Northern India, there may have been other principalities which Greek soldiers of fortune had carved out for themselves. The Indian conquests of Demetrius, the son of Euthydemus, were greatly extended by later rulers of the same house, notably by Apollodotus and Menander. That these two princes were intimately connected there can be no doubt. They use the same coin-types, especially the THE SUCCESSORS OF ALEXANDER 119 figure of the Greek goddess, Athene, hurling the thunderbolt, which is characteristic of other members of the family of Euthydemus, e.g. the Stratos ; and they are twice mentioned together in literature. Strabo attributes conquests in India to them jointly, while the unknown author of the Periplus maris Erythrai — a most interesting hand- book intended for the use of Greek merchants and seamen as a guide to the coasting voyage from the Persian Gulf to the west coast of India — states that small silver coins, inscribed with Greek characters and bearing the names of these two princes, were still current in his time (probably c. 80 A.D.) at the port of Barugaza (Broach). The extent of Menander's dominions especially is indicated both by the great variety of his coin- types which prove that he ruled over a great number of different provinces, and by a statement quoted by Strabo to the effect that he passed beyond the Hyphasis (Beas) which formed the extreme limit of Alexander's conquests. We have, in all probability, further information concerning Menander from a source which, at first sight, might seem not very promising from the point of view of the historian. Menander is almost certainly to be identified with the King Milinda, who is known from a Buddhist philosophi- cal treatise called the ' Questions of Milinda ' I ijo ANCIENT INDIA (Milinda-Pahha). This monarch resided at ^akala, an ancient city which has been identified with the modern Sialkot in the N.E. Punjab. Now, we have direct evidence that other members of the house of Euthydemus (the Stratos) reigned to the S.E. of the Punjab, since their coins are imitated by their Qaka conquerors who occupied the district of Mathura (Muttra). We may conclude, then, that the family of Euthydemus ruled over the E. Punjab, with one of its capitals at Sialkot and possibly another capital in the Muttra Dist. of the United Provinces. But the evidence both of coins and of literature shows that, at one period, they possessed a far wider dominion. The fact that the coins of Apollodotus and Menander were current at Broach, surely indicates that their conquests must have extended to Western India (Gujarat and Kathia- wSr) ; while the statement in Strabo, that Menander passed beyond the Beas into the Middle Country, is supported by certain references in Sanskrit literature to the warlike activity of the Yavanas (Greeks) about the middle of the second century b.c. The best known of these allusions are the following : — (i) Kalidasa's historical play, the Mdlavikdgni- mitra, represents the forces of the first (^uhga king, Pushyamitra, under the command of his grandson, Vasumitra, as coming into conflict with THE SUCCESSORS OF ALEXANDER 131 the Yavanas somewhere in Central India. This may well be the reminiscence of some episode in Menander's invasion of the ^uiiga dominions. (2) The grammarian Patafijali, in his Mahd- bhdshya or ' Great Commentary ' on Panini's Sanskrit Grammar, mentions King Pushyamitra as if he were his contemporary, and refers to the sieges by the Yavanas of Saketa in South Oudh and of Madhyamika (Nagari) near Chitor in Rajputana as if they had taken place within his own memory. (3) Perhaps the fullest of all the accounts of the Greeks in India at this period occurs in an astronomical, or rather astrological, treatise called the Gdrgi Samhitd, or 'the compendium of Garga.' One of its chapters is in the style of a Purana ; that is to say, it gives in a prophetic form an account of kings who have already ruled on the earth. Unfortunately this work has not yet been fully edited and the manuscript of it which has been described is both fragmentary and corrupt. Put into historic form the information which the certain portions of this chapter yield may be ex- pressed as follows : — The Greeks after reducing Saketa, the Pafichala country and Muttra (all in the United Provinces) reached the capital Pataliputra (Patna). But they did not stay in the Middle Country because of the Strife between themselves which took place in 132 ANCIENT INDIA their own kingdom (North-Western India). They were eventually conquered by a Qakz king ; and in time the Qakas yielded to another conquering power, the name of which is obscured by textual corruption in the manuscript. This account no doubt refers successively to the internecine struggle between the house of Euthy- demus and the house of Eucratides, to the conquest of Greek kingdoms by the (^akas, and to the subsequent conquest of the Qakas by the Kushanas. The GargI Samhita holds an almost unique position in the literature of Ancient India, and it is much to be regretted that no edition of this interesting work is at present possible. It is almost the only surviving representative of the old Hindu astrology or astronomy, which was super- seded, probably in the fourth century a.d., by the Greek system of astronomy borrowed, presumably, from Alexandria. The later Indian astronomers frequently refer to Vriddha Garga, 'the old Garga,' and there is no reason to doubt that the compendium which bears his name belongs to a period not much later than that of the foreign invaders whom it mentions. The information conveyed by the chapter to which we have referred is in accordance with the knowledge of this period which we may glean independently from other sources. THE SUCCESSORS OF ALEXANDER 133 The territories on the extreme north-western frontier of India, i.e. the Kabul Valley and Gandhara (including Taxila) which were origin- ally conquered by Euthydemus or by Demetrius, were wrested from this family of Greek princes by Eucratides. Evidence of the transfer of this region from one rule to the other is afforded by certain coins which have been restruck. Origin- ally they were issued by Apollodotus, a prince of the house of Euthydemus ; but they have been restruck by Eucratides; and, as they bear the image and superscription of the tutelary deity of Kapiga, the capital city of Gandhara, they testify to the change of government which had taken place in this province. Inscriptions and coins show further that the family of Eucratides was supplanted by Qaka satraps in both Kapiga and Taxila ; but these princes continued to hold the Kabul Valley until the last vestiges of their rule, which had survived the attacks of the Qakas, were swept away by the Kushanas. The last Greek king to reign in the Kabul Valley, and indeed in any region of India, was Hermseus who was succeeded, c. 25 A.D., by the Kushana chief, Kujula Kadphises. It is a curious fact that, while the coinages of the Grseco-Indian princes are remarkably abundant, all other memorials of their rule should 134 ANCIENT INDIA be so rare. Only one stone inscription, for instance, has yet been found in which any of these princes is mentioned. This inscription is at Besnagar in Gwalior, and the prince mentioned is Antialcidas who, to judge from the evidence of coins, was one of the earlier members of the line of Eucratides, and who ruled both in Bactria and in the Kabul Valley. The inscription records the erection of a standard in honour of the god Vishnu ; and it is especially interesting as showing that the donor, a Greek named Heliodorus, the son of Dion, who had come to Besnagar as an ambassador from Antialcidas, had adopted an Indian faith. The inscription is dated in the 14th year of the reign of a king Bhagabhadra who presumably ruled over the province in which Besnagar was situated. As this region no doubt formed part of the empire of the Qungas, it is not improbable that this King Bhagabhadra may be identical with the Bhadra or Bhadraka who is mentioned in some of the Puranas among the successors of Pushyamitra. It is to the period of nearly two centuries {c. 200-25 B.C.) during which Greek princes ruled in the Kabul Valley, the North-Western Frontier Province, and the Punjab, and not to the expedition of Alexander the Great (327-5 B.C.), the political results of which lasted only for a few PLATE III. THE BESNAGAR COLUMN. \See page 156. THE SUCCESSORS OF ALEXANDER 135 years, that we must trace the chief source of Greek influence in Northern India. For some centuries after the extinction of all their political power, we find Greeks mentioned in Indian literature and Indian inscriptions. But they have been absorbed into the Indian social system. They bear Indian or Persian names, and they profess Indian faiths. The existence of a strong Greek element in the population is attested by the Buddhist art of Gandhara, in which the influence of Greek traditions is manifest ; and a system of writing developed from the Greek alphabet is to be traced in this region until at least the fourth century a.d., and possibly much later. CHAPTER X PARTHIAN AND SCYTHIAN INVADERS Cakas and Pahlavas — Their Parthian Origin — Progress of ^aka conquests in India — Caka satrapies — Defeat of the Cakas by a king of Malwa and the establishment of the Vikrama era — Gondopharnes — Progress of Kushana power Establishment of the Kushjna empire — The era of Kanishka. So far, we have traced the history of the Yavanas (Yonas), or foreign invaders of Greek descent, in North-Western India. The history of this region is now complicated by the appearance on the scene of invaders belonging to two other nation- alities, who are constantly associated with the Yavanas in Indian literature and inscriptions. These are the (^akas and Pahlavas. Herodotus expressly states that the term ' Qakas ' was used by the Persians to denote Scythians generally ; and this statement is certainly in accordance with the use of the word in the inscriptions of Darius. In one of these, it occurs together with descriptions which show that it denotes certain Scythians in Europe as well PARTHIAN & SCYTHIAN INVADERS 137 as two branches of Scythians in Asia. These, we have reason to believe, are specimens merely of the innumerable swarms of nomads which had been finding their way during untold centuries from that great hive of humanity, China, to Western Asia and to Europe. The settlements of Qakas which affected the history of India at this period are two in number. One of these occupied the country of the Jaxartes to the north of Bactria and Sogdiana, and had for ages past been regarded as a great danger to Persian and Hellenic civilization in Central Asia; while the other inhabited the province of Drangiana, which lay between Persia and India, and which subsequently bore the name of Qakasthana, ' the abode of the ^akas' (the later Sijistan and the modern Seistan). It is probable that both of these bodies of Qakas were stirred into activity in the middle of the second century B.C. by the same cause — the impact of further swarms of nomads who are known as the Yueh-chi. The result of this impact was two-fold. On the one hand, the Hellenic kingdom of Bactria was submerged in a flood of barbarian invasion, and, on the other, the Parthian kings were occupied during two reigns (Phraates II, 138-128 B.C., and Artabanus II (I), 128-123 B.C.) in endeavours to stem the tide which had extended to Seistan, and were only 138 ANCIENT INDIA completely successful in the following reign (Mithradates II the Great, 123-88 B.C.). The effect of the Qaka invasion of the Parthian kingdom was thus to increase the power of a Qaka settlement which was already established in the Parthian province of Seistan, and the result of the struggles between Qakas and Parthians in this region was the creation of a kingdom, probably more or less dependent on the kingdom of Parthia, in which the two peoples were associated. The third class of foreign invaders, who are, in Indian literature and inscriptions, called Pahlavas, were Parthians, the two names being etymologically identical. It is clear, however, that the Pahlavas who invaded India did not belong to the main stock which was represented by the rulers of the Parthian empire, but rather to the subordinate branch which was established in its eastern pro- vinces, Drangiana (Seistan), Arachosia (Kanda- har) and Gedrosia (Northern Baluchistan). The history of this subordinate kingdom is obscure. Almost our only evidence for its existence is supplied by coins ; but these give us names of rulers which are undoubtedly Parthian in character, and the area over which the coins are found affords some indication of the extent of territory which these princes governed. They may have been originally satraps of the Parthian monarchs; but PARTHIAN & SCYTHIAN INVADERS 139 the title ' King of Kings ' which, in imitation of their former over-lords, they bear on their coins, shows that they had asserted their independence. The first of these Pahlavas to appear on the coins has the familiar Parthian name Vonones ; and we may, therefore, conveniently call the line to which he belongs ' the family of Vonones.' With this line of Pahlava princes the (Jaka invaders of India are intimately connected. Like them, and unlike the Grseco-Indian princes, they bear the title 'King of Kings.' The history of this title is interesting. It denoted originally the supreme lord who claimed the allegiance of a number of subordinate kings. It was the ancient title of the Persian monarchs, and as such it appears in the inscriptions of Darius in the form Kshdyathiydndm Kshdyathiya. In the Parthian monarchy it seems to occur first on coins of Mithradates II (123-88 B.C.), though some numismatists prefer to attribute the coins in question to Mithradates I (171-138 B.C.). It was introduced into India by the (Jaka and Pahlava invaders, and continued in use by their successors, the Kushanas; and in the form Shdhan-shdh it remains the title of the Shahs of Persia even to the present day. There can be no doubt, then, that the distinctive title 'King of Kings' connects the HO ANCIENT INDIA Indian Qakas with the Pahlavas and both with Parthia ; and this connexion is most naturally explained on the theory that these ^akas came into India from Seistan through Kandahar, over the Bolan Pass, through Baluchistan into Sind and so up the valley of the Indus. This would explain the fact that the coins of Maues, the earliest known of these (^aka princes, are found in the Punjab only and not in the Kabul Valley, which still continued to be held by the Greek princes of the family of Eucratides. Access into the Kabul Valley from Bactria over the passes of the Hindu Kush was thus, at this period, barred. The progress which the (Jaka conquests made at the expense of both the chief lines of Greek rulers is illustrated by the coins. Maues strikes coins which are directly imitated from those of Demetrius ; the Qaka satrap Liaka Kusulaka at Taxila imitates the coins of Eucratides, and another satrap, Ranjubula, at Muttra the coins struck by Strato I and II reigning conjointly. Everywhere, indeed, the ^aka invaders seem to have retained the form of coinage used by the Greek princes whom they dispossessed — a coinage distinguished by a Greek legend on the obverse and a Prakrit translation in Kharoshthi characters on the reverse — and it is probable that they only issued coins in those districts where they found PARTHIAN & SCYTHIAN INVADERS 141 a currency already in existence. So far as is known, none of their coinages is original. All without exception are imitated from Greek or Hindu models. The ^akas continued in North-Western India the system of government by satraps which was firmly established there during the long period of Persian rule. This system was, as we have seen, followed by Alexander the Great, and there is no reason to suppose that it had been interrupted either under the Maurya empire or under the rule of the later Greek princes. Of the history of these ^aka satrapies inscrip- tions and coins give us a few details. An inscription affords the bare mention of a satrap of Kapi9a, the capital of Gandhara, a district which, as we know from coins, had passed from the family of Euthydemus (Apollodotus) into the power of Eucratides. There is a copper-plate inscription of a satrap of Taxila named Patika which records the deposit of relics of the Buddha and a donation made in the 78th year of some era not specified and during the reign of the Great King Moga, who is without doubt to be identified with Maues, since Moga is merely a dialectical variant of Moa, the Indian equivalent of the name Maues found on the coins. The era in which the inscription is dated cannot at 142 ANCIENT INDIA present be determined. The most plausible con- jecture is that it may be of Parthian origin ; and if it could be supposed to start from the beginning of the reign of Mithradates I (171 B.C.), the monarch who raised Parthia from a comparatively- small state to a great empire, which extended from the Euphrates to Bactria and the borders of India, the result as applied to this inscription (171-78=93 B.C.), would give a date which is fairly probable on other considerations. But it must be admitted that there is no evidence of the existence of such an era. The satrap Patika was the son of Liaka Kusulaka, who struck coins imitated from those of Eucratides. It would seem, then, that Taxila, like Kapiga (Gandhara), was taken by the (^akas from the family of Eucratides, while the Kabul Valley remained in its possession. Of the Qak^L satraps of Mathura (Muttra) we possess a most valuable monument, which was discovered and first published by a distinguished Indian scholar, Pandit Bhagvanlal Indraji, who bequeathed it together with his valuable collection of ancient Indian coins to the British Museum. It is in the form of a large lion carved in red sandstone and intended to be the capital of a pillar. The workmanship shows undoubted Persian influence. The surface is completely PLATE IV. PARTHIAN & SCYTHIAN INVADERS 143 covered with inscriptions in Kharoshthi char- acters, which give the genealogy of the satrapal family ruling at Muttra and also mention members of other satrapal houses in other provinces of North-Western India. These inscriptions show that the satraps of Muttra, like those of Kapi^a and Taxila, were Buddhists. The reigning satrap, or rather 'great satrap,' Rajula (whose name appears also as Raj uvula or Ranjubula) also struck coins, some of which are imitated from the currency of certain Greek princes of the house of Euthydemus — the Stratos — while others are copied from the coins of a line of Hindu princes who ruled at Muttra. We know, therefore, that in this district Qaka rule superseded that of both Greek and Hindu princes. Evidence of the existence of a ^aka power in Central India and of its defeat by a Hindu king is supplied by a Jain work called the Kdlikdchdrya- kathd or 'story of Kalikacharya.' From it we learn that the (Jakas, who in Malwa were patrons of the Jain religion, were subdued by a king named Vikramaditya who reigned at Ujjain, and who established the era, beginning in 58 B.C., which still bears his name. The name of the king may, no doubt, be legendary; or possibly, while the name itself has been lost, one of the king's titles, ' the sun of valour,' has survived ; but that this 144 ANCIENT INDIA era was really first used in Malwa ig probable on other grounds. At a later date (405 a.d.) it is certainly described as ' the traditional reckoning of the Malava tribe.' The story goes on to say that this era continued in use for 135 years, when it was superseded by one which was founded by another Qaka conqueror. This second era is undoubtedly that which begins in 78 a.d., and it is still called the ^aka era. It is probable further that, soon after the date of its founda- tion, the Kushana empire extended to Malwa, and that its conquest was effected by the Pahlava and Qaka. satraps of the Kushana emperor, Kanishka (see p. 147). It has been already observed that there is evidence of an intimate connexion between Pah- lavas and ^akas, i.e. between 'the family of Vouones ' and ' the family of Maues.' This con- nexion appears to be proclaimed by certain coins on which Spalirises, ' the brother of the king ' (i.e. presumably of Vonones) is definitely associ- ated with Azes, who was almost certainly the successor of Maues. Such evidence as there is would seem to indicate that these two lines con- tinued to rule over adjacent provinces — the family of Vonones in Seistan, Kandahar, and North Balu- chistan, and the family of Maues in the West Punjab and Sind — until, probably towards the end PARTHIAN & SCYTHIAN INVADERS 145 of the first quarter of the first century a.d., the two kingdoms were united under the sway of the Pahlava Gondopharnes, as to the Parthian character of whose name there can be no possible doubt. The evidence is almost entirely numismatic, and its bearings may be summarized as follows. The numerous varieties of the coinage of this monarch, copied as they are from so many pre- vious issues, show that he ruled over a very exten- sive dominion ; and the fact that these varieties are imitated from the currencies both of the family of Vonones and the family of Maues, leads us to the conclusion that he ruled over both the earlier kingdoms of the Pahlavas and of the ^akas. The fame of King Gondopharnes (or Gondo- pherres, as the name appears in the Greek coin- legends) spread even to the West, and he is known in the legends of the early Christian Church as the king to whose country St Thomas was sent as the apostle of the 'Parthians,' or, according to other authorities, of the ' Indians,' i.e. the people of the Indus country. The story of the mission of St Thomas and of the king's conversion to the Chris- tian faith is told in the apocryphal Acts of St Thomas., of which there are extant versions in Syriac, Greek, and Latin, the earliest of these, the Syriac, belonging probably to the third century A.D. Doubtless there must be a great deal in t46 ANCIENT INDIA this story which can only be regarded as pure legend, but it is reasonable to suppose that it may have some basis in fact. The names of several successors of Gondo- pharnes are known from their coins ; but these coins show that they ruled over a greatly diminished realm. Already at this period — -the early part of the first century a.d. — the Kushana power, which had grown up in Bactria, had begun to absorb the various states of North-Western India, and to weld together Greeks, (^akas, Pahlavas, and Hindus into one great empire. The first step in the creation of this Indian empire was the conquest of the last remaining stronghold of Greek rule in the Kabul Valley. The coins show clearly the process by which this region, probably in the last quarter of the first century B.C., passed from Hermans, the last ruling member of the line of Eucratides, to his conqueror, the Kushana Kujula Kadphises. The conquest of 'India,' the country of the Indus, was the work of his successor, who is known from his coins as Wima Kadphises, and after him the Kushana empire reached its culminating point in the reign of Kanishka. The question of the date of Kanishka is still the subject of keen controversy; but it will pro- bably be settled within a short time by the exca- PARTHIAN & SCYTHIAN INVADERS 147 vations which are now being made by the Archaso- logical Survey of India on the ancient site of Taxila, one of his capitals. In the meantime, until absolute certainty can be attained, a probable view appears to be that he was the founder of the ^aka era, the initial year of which is 78 a.d., and that the era obtained its name from the fact that it became most widely known in India as that which was used for more than three centuries by the Qaka kings of Surashtra (Gujarat and Kathiawar) who were originally satraps and feudatories of the Kushanas. With the establishment of the Kushana Empire we must bring our survey of ' Ancient India ' to a close. The history of the remaining ten centuries which elapsed before the Muhammadan period may, perhaps, be more fittingly included under the heading 'Medieval India.' In Medieval, as in Ancient, India we may see the rise and fall of empires, partly of foreign and partly of native origin, some of them the result of invasions through the ' Gates of India ' on the north or north-west, others the outcome of the struggle for supremacy between the nationalities of the continent itself. NOTES ON THE ILLUSTRATIONS THE GIRNAR ROCK IN 1869 (Plate I, Frontispiece, and Plate V a, facing p. 1 50) GiRNAR, the Sanskrit G'irinagara, the ■ Hill City,' was in ancient times the name of Junagadh in Kathiawar. It is now applied to the sacred mountain on the east of the city. At the foot of this mountain stands a rock which is without question one of the most interesting and valuable of all historical monuments. It is about twelve feet in height and seventy-five feet in circumference at the base ; and it has engraved on its surface records of three kings belonging to three different dynasties which have ruled over Western India : — ( i ) Afoka, the Maurya Emperor, c. 250 B.C. ; (2) Rudradaman, the Mahakshatrapa or ' Great Satrap ' of Surashtra and Malava (inscription dated in the year 72 of what was called at a later date the Caka era=i50 a.d.) ; and (3) Skandagupta, the Gupta Emperor (inscription bearing dates in the years 136, 137, and 138 of the Gupta era beginning in 319 a.d. = 455, 456, and 457 A.D.). The illustration is from a photograph taken by Dr James Burgess in 1869. Since that date the rock has been pro- tected from further injury by a roof. The fourteen edicts of Afoka are engraved on the north-east face of the rock and cover a space of about 100 square feet. The inscription of Rudradaman occupies the top, and the inscription of Skanda- gupta the west face. The edicts of Afoka have already been described (i>. pp. 105-8). The subjoined reproduction of an impression of the second edict will serve to illustrate the beautiful Brahmi writing of the period — the letters in the original are about two inches 14» I50 ANCIENT INDIA in height — and the translation which is appended will show the historical importance of these inscriptions. Tran sliter ation ( 1 ) Savrata vijitamhi devanarn priyasa priyadasino rano (2) evam api pracharntesu yatha Choda Pada Satiyaputo Keralaputo a Tamba- (3) painni Arntiyako Yonaraja ye vapi tasa Aintiyakasa samipam (4) rajano savrata devanarn priyasa priyadasino rano dve chikichha kata (5) manusa-chikichha cha pasu-chikichha cha osudhani cha yani manusopagani cha (6) pasofpajgani cha yata yata nasti savrata harapitani cha ropapitani cha (7) mulani cha phalani cha yata yata naati savrata harapitani cha ropapitani cha (8) parnthesu kupa cha khanapita vrachha cha ropapita paribhogaya pasumanusaaam. Translation ' Everywhere in the realm of his Gracious Majesty, the King, the Beloved of the Gods, and likewise also in the border lands, such as (the countries of) the Cholas, the Pandyas, Satiyaputra, Keralaputra, as far as Ceylon, Antiochus the Greek king, or the kings in the neighbourhood of the said Antiochus, every- where has his Gracious Majesty, the King, the Beloved of the Gods, provided remedies of two kinds, remedies for men and remedies for animals ; and herbs, both such as are serviceable to men and serviceable to animals, wheresoever there were none, has he everywhere caused to be procured and planted, roots also and fruits, wheresoever there were none, has he everywhere caused to be procured and planted, and on the highways has he caused wells to be dug and trees to be planted for the enjoyment of animals and men.' I'LATI'; V. :'f^:^-i':/il- BRAIIMI INSCRIPTION ON THE GIRNAR ROCK. [■?'■<; /"i'i- 13^- KHAROSHI'HI INSCRII'TION ON THE liASE OF THE MA'PHURA I, ION-CAPITAL. Ste /'ai:c 153. NOTES ON THE ILLUSTRATIONS 151 COINS OF ANCIENT INDIA (Plate 11, facing p. i8) 1. Punch-marked Coin Ob-u. A number of symbols. Rev. Traces of symbols. Silver. This represents the primitive form of Indian coinage, which is little more than a currency of square or oblong pieces cut out of a flat plate of silver. The symbols punched on to the coin on the obverse are supposed to be the private marks of the money- changers, while those on the reverse, which are almost invariably fewer in number and of a somewhat different character, may possibly denote the locality in which the coins were issued. 2. Ancient Cast Coin Obv. Rand Dhamapalasa = ' {Cova) of King Dharmapala,' in very ancient Brahmi characters written from right to left. Rev. Blank. Bronze. Coins of this class are found at the village of Eran in the Saugor District of the Central Provinces. This coin has been quoted in support of the view that the Brahmi alphabet was originally written from right to left like Kharoshthi {y. p. 18). 3. Guild Token Obv. Steel-yard; above, Dujaka or Dojaia, in Kharoshthi characters. Rev. in incuse. Negama = ' Merchants ' in Brahmi characters. Bronze. The use of these tokens is uncertain, as also is the meaning of the legend on the Obverse, 1 52 ANCIENT INDIA 4. Pastalbon Oiv. in incuse. Maneless lion to right ; Greek legend, Basileos Pantaleontas = ' [Coin) of King Pantaleon.' Rev. An Indian dancing girl ; Brshmi legend. Raji[ne'\ Pamtalevasa?- Bronte. Pantaleon was one of the earliest Greek, kings of fiactria to reign also in India. The square shape of this coin shows the influence of the old Indian currency of the district in which it was struck. 5. Ancient Struck Coin : Single Die Obv. A Chaitya, or Buddhist shrine ; to left, Vatas-vaka in Brahmi characters ; to right, a standing figure worshipping ; beneath him, the symbol called nandi-pada, ' the footprint of Nandi' (fiva's bull). Rev. Blank. Bronze. It has been suggested that the legend Vatasvaka may denote the ' Fig-tree ' (ynta') branch of the Afvakas, a people of North-Western India who may perhaps be the Assakenoi ot Alexander's historians. The three early forms of Indian coinage — punch-marked, cast, and struck on one side only — are illustrated by Nos. i, 2, and 5 respectively. 6. SoPHYTES Olv. Helmeted head of king to right. Rev. Cock to right ; above, on left, a caduceus (the emblem of the Greek god Hermes) ; Greek legend, Sdphutou = ^ (Com) of Sophytes.' Silver. The coin is purely Greek in style. At the time of Alexander's invasion, Sophytes, whose name in its Greek form ^ In the case of all the bilingual coins represented in this plate, the Indian legend is an exact translation of the Greek. NOTES ON THE ILLUSTRATIONS 153 18 supposed to represent the Sanskrit SaubhStl, was ruling over a kingdom in the Punjab. He entertained Alexander with the spectacle of a fight in which four of his dogs were matched against a lion. As his sporting propensities were so strong, it is possible that the cock on his coins may be a fighting cock. That sport was certainly popular in Ancient India. 7. Antialcidas Obv. Bust of king to right ; Greek legend, Bas'ueos nikiphorou | Antialkidou = ' [Coin) of King Antialcidas, the Victorious.' Rev. Zeus seated on a throne and holding in his right hand a figure of Nike (the goddess of victory) ; on the left, the forepart of an elephant with trunk upraised ; KharoshthI legend, Maharajaia jayadharasa | Amtialikitasa. Silver. The type of Zeus enthroned is frequently found on the coins of the Greek princes of the house of Eucratides to which Antialcidas belonged. For the Indian inscription in which he is mentioned, v. p. 134. 8. Menander Obv. Bust of king thrusting a spear to left ; Greek legend, Basihos soteros | Menandrou — ' (Coin) of King Menander, the Saviour.' Rev. Athene hurling a thunder-bolt to right ; Kharoshthi legend, Maharajasa tratarasa | Menamdrasa. Silver. For Menander, v. p. 129. He belonged to the family of Euthydemus, of which the figure of Athene is the most characteristic coin-type. 9. Demetrius Obv. Head of elephant to right. Rev. Caduceus; Greek legend, Basileos Dhnetrieu, '(Coin) of King Demetrius.' Bronze. 154 ANCIENT INDIA lO. Maues Ol-v. Head of elephant to right. Re-u. Caduceus; Greek legend, Basileos Mauou, '(Coin) of King Maues.' Bron-z,e. These coins, the second of which is an exact imitation of the first, show that the rule of the district in which they circulated passed from the Greeks of the house of Euthydemus to the Cakas {v. p. 140). II. EUCRATIDES Ob-v. Helmeted bust of king to right. Rev. The caps of the Dioscuri (Castor and Pollux) sur- mounted by stars ; two palms ; below, a monogram ; Greek legend, Basileos EukraUdou=' (Coin) of King Eucratides.' Sil-ver. 12. LlAKA KuSULAKA Obv. Helmeted bust to right. Rev. The caps of the Dioscuri ; two palms ; below, a mono- gram ; Legend in Greek characters, [_Li']ako \_^K~\ozouIo. Silver. Similarly these coins show the transition of the district to which they belong from the rule of the house of Eucratides to the Cakas. Liaka Kusulaka was a satrap and the father of Patika whose inscription at Takshafila was engraved in the reign of the Great King Moga (the Maues or Moa of the coins) and is dated in the seventy-eighth year of an era which has not yet been determined, (f. p- 141). 13. Dharaghosha, King of Audumeara Ob-v. Standing figure (probably of Vifvamitra, the rishi of the third book of the Rig-veda) ; Kharoshthi legends : ( i ) Around, NOTES ON THE ILLUSTRATIONS 155 Mahade-vasa rana Dharaghoshaia | 0(/«^iflr«Vfl = ' (Coin) of the Great Lord, King Dharaghosha | Prince of Audumbara ' ; (2) across, t^i^vamitra. Rev. Trident battle-axe ; Tree within railing ; Brahml legend (identical with the Kharoshthi legend (i) on the Obverse). Silver. Audambara, or the country of the Udumbaras, was situated in that region of the Punjab in which the two alphabets of Ancient India, Brahml and Kharoshthi, were used concurrently. The coins are found in the neighbourhood of Pathankot in the Gurdaspur District. They show the influence of the Greek type of coinage. In fabric and style they somewhat resemble the coins of ApoUodotut, a prince of the :house of Euthydemus, and they are sometimes found in association with them. Their date would seem to be about 1 00 b.c. 156 ANCIENT INDIA THE BESNAGAR COLUMN (Plate III, facing p. 134, and Plate VI, facing p. 157) This monument is best described in the words of Dr J. H. Marshall, CLE., the Director General of Archaeology in India. He says (^Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, 1909, p. 1053):— "When examining the ancient site of Besnagar, near Bhilsa, in the extreme south of the Gwalior State, my attention was drawn to a stone column standing near a large mound, a little to the north-east of the main site, and separated from it by a branch of the Betwa river. This column had been noticed by Sir A. Cunningham as far back as 1877, and a description of it (though not a wholly accurate one) appeared in his Report for that year. The shaft of the column is a monolith, octagonal at the base, sixteen-sided in the middle, and thirty-two-sided above, with a garland dividing the upper and middle portions ; the capital is of the Persepolitan bell-shaped type, with a massive abacus surmounting it and the whole is crowned with a palm-leaf ornament of strangely unfamiliar design, which I strongly suspect did not originally belong to it. In 1877 this column was thickly encrusted from top to bottom, as it still is, with vermilion paint smeared on it by pilgrims, who generation after generation have come to worship at the spot." The subsequent removal of the paint revealed the inscription, the historical importance of which has been already described (p. 134). A specimen of the coinage of the Grasco-Indian king, Antialcidas, is shown in Plate II, No. 7 (facing p. 18). The inscription shows that the figure on the top of the column, if original, should represent Garuda, who has the form of a bird and is supposed to carry the god Vishnu. There is also a smaller inscription of two lines, apparently in verse. The text and translation of the two inscriptions here given are based on PLATE VI. BRAHMi IN'SCRIPTIONS ON THE llEii.X Ar, \ R COII'MX. NOTES ON THE ILLUSTRATIONS 157 the readings and interpretations proposed by Dr Bloch, Dr Fleet, Prof. Barnett, and Prof. Venis, in various articles which will be found in the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society for the years 1909 and 1910. Transliteration (i) Devadevasa Va^iude3Tasa Garudadhvaje ayarp (2) karite i [aj Heliodorena bhaga- (3) vatena Diyasa putrena Takhasilakena (4) Yona-dutena agatena maharajasa (5) Amtalikitasa upa[m]ta sakasam rano (6) Kasrput[r3asa Bhagabhadrasa tratarasa (7) vasena Qchatu]dasemna rajena vadhamanasa (i) Trini amuta-padani — [su] anuthitani (2) myamti svaga dama caga apramada. Translation «r II. 3b. Rapson, E. J., Indian Coins, 1897. Grundriss der iranischen Philologie. Strassburg. II. Band. Litteratur, Geschichte und Kultur, 1896-1904. Pp. 54-74. Weissbach, F. H., Die altpersischen Inschrijien. Pp. 371-394. Geiger, W., Geographie von Iran. Pp. 395-550. Justi, F., Geschichte Irons von den altesten Zeiten bis zum Ausgang der Sdsaniden. THE LITERATURES OF ANCIENT INDIA Hopkins, E. W., The Great Epic of India. New York, 190 1. Kaegi, A., The Rigveda, (English trans, by Arrowsmith.) Boston, 1886. Macdonell, A.. A.., A History of Sanskrit Literature. London, 1900. von Schroeder, L,, Indiens Literatur und Cultur. Leipzig, 1887. Winternitz, M., Geschichte der indiachen Litteratur. Leipzig. I. Band. Einleitung — Der Veda — Die volkstiimlichen Epen und die PurSnas. (Zweite Ausgabe.) 1909. II. Band, Erste H'alfte. Die Buddhistische Litteratur. 1913- HISTORY, GEOGRAPHY, AND ANTIQUITIES (Bactria) Gardner, P., The Coins of the Greek and Scythic Kings of Baciria and India. (British Museum Catalogue.) London, 1886. Rawlinson, H. G., Bactria. London, 1912. M 178 ANCIENT INDIA (Persia, Syria, and Parthia) Babelon, E., Les Perses Achememdes, Paris, 1 893. , Les Rois de Syrie. Paris, 1890. Bevan, E. R., I he House of Sileucus. London, ig02. von Gutschmid, A., Geschkhte Irans. Tubingen, 1888. King, L. W., & Thompson, R. C, The Sculptures and Inscrip- tions of Darius the Great on the Rock of Beh'tstun in Persia. London, 1907. Rawlinson, G., The Jive great Monarchies of the ancient Eastern World. Fourth Edition, Vol. III. London, 1879. , The sixth great Oriental Monarchy. London, 1873. Wroth, W. W., Catalogue of the Coins of Parthia. (British Museum Catalogue.) London, 1903. (India) Barnett, L. D., Antiquities of India. London, 1 91 3. Biihler, J. G., & Burgess, J., The Indian Sect of the Jainas. London, 1903. Cunningham, A., Coins of Ancient India. London, 1891. , Coins of Alexander' s Successors in the East. (Reprinted from the Numismatic Chronicle, 1868-1873.) London, 1873- , Coins of the Indo- Scythians. (Reprinted from the Numismatic Chronicle, i 888-1892.) London, 1892. , Coins of the Later Indo-Scythians. ( Reprinted from the Numismatic Chronicle, 1893-4.) London, 1894. -, The Ancient Geography of India. L ondon, 1 8 7 1 . Davids, T. W. Rhys, Ancient Coins and Measures of Ceylon London, 1877. , Buddhist India. London, 1903. *' Duff, Miss C. M. (Rickmers, Mrs W. R.), The Chronology oj India from the '.arliest times to the beginning of the sixteenth century. Westminster, 1899. SHORT BIBLIOGRAPHY 179 Elliot, W., Coins of Southern India. London, 1886. Foucher, A., Notes sur la Geographic ancienne du Gandhara. ( Reprinted from the Bulletin de I'Ecole Franpaise d' Extreme Orient.) Hanoi, 1892. •'Geiger, W., The Mahdvamsa, or the Great Chronicle of Ceylon. Oxford, igi2. If Joppen, C, Historical Atlas of India. Third edition. London, 1914. Liiders, H., A List of Brahmi Inscriptions from the earliest times to about A.D. 400. (Appendix to Vol. x. of the Epigraphia Indica.) Calcutta, 1910. Macdonell, A. A., and Keith, A. B., f^edic Index of Names and Subjects. London, 1912. Pargiter, F. E., The Markandeya Purana. (Translated into English with geographical notes.) Calcutta, 1904. Rapson, E. J., Catalogue of the Coins of the Andhra Dynasty, etc. (British Museum Catalogue.) London, 1908. Senart, E., Les Inscriptions de Piyadasi. Paris, 1 88 1-6. Smith, V. A., The Early History of India. Third edition. Oxford, 1 91 4. , Asoka. Second edition. Oxford, 1909. Zimmer, H., Aliindisches Leben, Berlin, 1879. (India as described by Greek and Latin Writers) Holdich, T., The Gates of India. London, 19 10. M'Crindle, J. W., Ancient India as described by Megasthenes and Arrian. (Reprinted from the Indian Antiquary.) Calcutta, 1877. , The Commerce and Navigation of the Eryihrtan Sea. (Reprinted from the Indian Antiquary.) Calcutta, 1879. , Ancient India as described by Ktesias the Knidian. (Reprinted from the Indian Antiquary, 1881.) Calcutta, 18S2. i8o ANCIENT INDIA M'Crindle, J. W., Ancient India as dcscrihea by Ptolemy. (Reprinted from the Indian Antiquary, 1884.) Calcutta, 1885. , The Invasion of India by Alexander the Great. Second edition. Westminster, 1 896. , Ancient India as described in Classical Literature. Westminster, 1901. Schoff, W. H., The Periplus of the Erythritan Sea. (Trans- lated and Annotated.) London, 191 2. OUTLINES OF CHRONOLOGY It must be understood that many of the dates given are only approximately correct. B.C. I200-IO00. Earliest Vedic hymns. 1000-800. Period of the Vedic collections — Rig-veda, Sama-veda, Yajur-veda, and Atharva- veda. 800-600. Period of the Brahmanas. 600. The earliest Upanishads. 660-583. Zoroaster, the founder of the religion of the Avesta. 600-200. Period of the Sutras. 599-527. Vardhamana Jnataputra, the founder of Jainism. 563-483. Siddhartha Gautama, the founder of Buddhism; 558-530. Cyrus, king of Persia. The conquest of Gandhara took place in his reign. 543-491. Bimbisara, king of Magadha, contemporary with Buddha. 522-486. Darius I, king of Persia. The expedition of Scylax and the conquest of ' India,' = the country of the Indus, took place in his reign, c. 510 b.c. 491-459. Ajata9atru, king of Magadha, contemporary with Buddha. Period of the Mahabharata. Period of the Ramayana. 400-300. 400-200. VXi 182 ANCIENT INDIA B.C. 343-321. The Nanda dynasty of Magadha. 336-323. Alexander the Great, king of Macedon. 331. The battle of Gaugamela. The Persian empire and, in theory, its Indian provinces come under the sway of Alexander the Great. 327-325. Indian expedition of Alexander the Great. 321-184. The Maurya dynasty of Magadha. 321-297. Chandragupta, king of Magadha, founder of the Maurya empire. 312-280. Seleucus Nicator, king of Syria. The Seleucid era dates from the beginning of his reign. 305. Invasion of the Punjab by Seleucus Nicator. 297-269. Bindusara, king of Magadha and Maurya emperor. 285-258. Magas, king of Cyrene, contemporary with Ajoka. 285-247. Ptolemy Philadelphus, king of Egypt, contemporary with Afoka. 277-239. Antigonus Gonatas, king of Macedon, contemporary with A9oka. 272. Accession of Alexander, king of Epirus, contem- porary with Afoka. 269-227. Afoka, king of Magadha and Maurya emperor. The dates in Afoka's inscription are reckoned from his coronation in 264 B.C. 261-246. Antiochus II Theos, king of Syria, contemporary with Afoka. 256. Conquest of Kaliiiga by Afoka in the ninth year after his coronation. 250. Establishment of the kingdom of Bactria by Diodotus, and of the kingdom of Parthia by Areaces. 247-207. Tissa, king of Ceylon, contemporary with Ajoka. OUTLINES OF CHRONOLOGY 183 B.C. 246. Introduction of Buddhism into Ceylon by Mahendra (Mahinda). 230. Euthydemus, king of Bactria, supplants the house of Diodotus. 220. Establishment of the Andhra power (Catavahana dynasty). 209. Invasion of Bactria and the Kabul Valley by Antiochus III the Great, king of Syria (223-187 B.C.). 200-100. Grceco-Indian kings of the house of Euthydemus ruling in N.W, India. The Indian conquests of the Grasco-Bactrian kings began in the reign of Euthydemus (c. 200 b.c. ) . They were extended over the Kabul Valley, Gan- dhara, and ' India ' = the country of the Indus, by Demetrius (c. 195 B.C.). This house was deprived of its possessions in Bactria, in the Kabul Valley, and in Gandhara by Eucratides [c, 175 b.c.) Subsequently, the chief centre of its power lay in the E. Punjab. The chief princes of this house after Demetrius were ApoUodotus, Menander, and the Stratos. 184-72. The Cunga dynasty of Magadha and Malava. The first king, Pushyamitra, ruled over Magadha, with his son, Agnimitra, as viceroy of Malava. It is possible that the king Bhagabhadra, who had political relations with Antialcidas, a Grseco-Indian king of the house of Eucratides, may have been the Cunga viceroy of Malava (p. 134). 175-25. Graeco-Indian kings of the house of Eucratides ruling in N.W. India. Eucratides wrested the Kabul Valley and Gan- dhara from the house of Euthydemus ; and kings of 1 84 ANCIENT INDIA B.C. his house held these prorinces together with posses- sions in Bactria until the Caka invasion of Bactria (c. 135 B.C.), after which their rule was confined to territories south of the Hindu Kush. They were deprived of Gandhjra by the Cakas c. 100 B.C., and of the Kabul Valley by the Kushanat f . 2 5 B.C. The immediate successors of Eucratides were Heliocles and Antialcidas. The last king of this house was Hermaeus. 1 71-138. Mithradates I., king of Parthia. He invaded Bactria in the reign of Eucratides. 1 50. Kharavela, king of Kalinga. 135. The Caka invasion of Bactria. 100. The Qaka invasion of N.W. India. The Cakas conquered the Punjab from the Grasco-Indian kings of the house of Euthydemus and Gandhara from the Graeco-Indian kings of the house of Eucratides. 58. Initial year of the Vikrama era. The establishment of this era marks the defeat of the Cakas in Malava by a king who is known as Vikramaditya. 50. A Pahlava dynasty (the family of Vonones) ruling in N.W. India. The precise relations of the Pahlavas (the family of Vonones) to the Cakas (the family of Maues) are uncertain ; but there was undoubtedly some connexion between them. It is probable that the two peoples had been associated for centuries in the eastern provinces (Drangiana — Seistan and Arachosia = Kandahar) of the Persian and Parthian empires. The appearance of the family of Vonones in India seems to denote the extension to India of OUTLINES OF CHRONOLOGY 185 B.C. a Parthian power already established in these eaitern provinces, 25. Conqueat of the Kabul Valley by the KushSna chief Kujula Kadphises. The evidence of coins seems to indicate that Kujula Kadphises was contemporary with the Roman emperor Augustus (27 B.C.-14 a.d. ). His conquest of the last remaining Graeco-Indian kingdom in the Kabul Valley marks the beginning of the extension of the Kushana power from Bactria to India. During the period of his rule in the Kabul Valley, Gandhara, the Punjab, and Sind were still held by the Pahlavas and the Cakas. A.D. 21-50. Gondopharnes, Pahlava king of N.W. India. The Pahlava power culminated and probably began to decline under this king. His Takht-i- Bhai inscription shows that he ruled in Gandhara, and, if its dates are correctly interpreted, that he began to reign in 21 a.d. and was still reigning in 47 A.D. 30. Wima Kadphises, Kushana king. The extension of the Kushana power from the Kabul Valley to ' India ' = the country of the Indus, began in his reign. 78. Kanishka, Kushana king. The (^aka era, so called at a later date because it was used for more than three centuries by the Caka kings of Surashtra, originally satraps of the Kushanas, probably marks the establishment of the Kushana empire under Kanishka. See " Notes on the Ancient Geography of India " pages 159-175. 'f„9^'' " THE. PRINCIPAL COUNTRIES OF ANCIENT INDIA LIST OF CITIES INDICATED BY NUMERALS. {Seepages 172-175. 1. AmaravaH. 2. Ayodhya. 3. Bhrigu-kaccha. 4. (^akala. S- Qravasti. 6. iDdraprastha. 7. Kaiichi. 8. Kanyakubja. 9. Mathura. 10. Mithila. 11. Pataliputra. 12. Pratishthana. 13. Prayaga. 14. Taksha5ila. 15- Ujjayini. 16. VaijayantI, INDEX Important references are separated from the rest by a semicolon Abhira, i6o Acesines = Chandrabh3g3 = Chenab=A6ikni, y.t>. Achiravati=Rapti, i6i Agoka, Maurya emperor, 104- 109; 118 contemporary Hellenic sove- reigns mentioned in his edicts, 21 sent missionaries to Hellenic kingdoms, loS erected a pillar to mark Buddha's birthplace, 67, 106 conquest of Kalinga, 116 extent of his dominions, 20, 107 religious toleration in his reign, 112 his heir-apparent mentioned in his edicts, 109 his grandson Da^aratha, no Girnar inscription, 149 V. also inscriptions as sources of history aframay 59 Act: of St Thomas, 145 Agvaka, 152 Agvins, 80 Adhvaryu, 46 Agni = Lat. ignis, 42 Agnimitra, ^unga king, Viceroy of Mslava, 114, 170 Ahicchatra, capital of N. PaSchala, 167 ^>rya = Aryan, 5 Aitareya Brahmana, 54, 159 Ajata^atru (1) king of Kagi, 62 (2) king of Magadha, ,. . '7° AjITikas, Jain ascetics, no Akbar, Mughal emperor, 103 Alexander the Great, king of Macedon : invasion of the Punjab, 88-96 ; 24, 120 historians, 89, 90; 20, 127 continued the Persian system of government by satraps, 95-6; 141 . . no traces of his invasion left in Indian literature or in- stitutions, 97, 134 division of the Macedonian empire after his death, loi Alexander, king of Epirus, 21 Alexandria-«ub-Caucasum, 89 alphabets, ancient, their decipher- ment, 18, 19, 82, 126 «. also Cuneiform, BrahmT, Kharoshthi, Greek Amaravati, 172 Amitrochates = Skt. Amitraghata, a title of Bindusara, 103 Anabasis of Alexander, 90, 94 Anathapindika, 173 Andhra, people and kingdom, I16-7, 159-60 Andhra-bhritya family of Andhra kings, 160 Aiiga, 160 Antialcidas, Grzco-Indian king of the house of Eucratides, 134, 157 coin of, 153 187 i88 ANCIENT INDIA Antigonus Gonatas, king of Macedon, li Antiochus I Soter, king of Syria, 103 Antiochus II Theos, king of Syria, 21, 107, 118, 150 Antiochus III the Great, king of Syria : his invasion of the Kabul Valley, 1 19-21 Aornos, 91-2 Aparanta, 161 ApoUodotus, Gra:co-Indian king of thehouseof Euthydemus, 128, 130, 133, 141, 155 Arachosia = Kandahar, 88, 138, _ 140, 144 Aranyakas, 58-9 arhat^ 57 Aria, 88 Arrian, 90, 94 Arsaces, first king of Parthia, 118 Artabanus I, king of Parthia, 119 Artabanus II, king of Parthia, 137 Artaxerxes II Mnemon, king of Persia, 83 Artha-fastraj 1 03 arthavada^ 5 3 -^^rya=: Aryan, 5 Aryan group of Indo-European family : Persians and Indians, 29-3 1 , 43 migration into India, 31, 40; 26 progress of civilization, 31-33 civilization depicted in — ■ Rig-veda, 40-46 Yajur-veda, 46-49 Atharva-veda, 49, 50 languages, 29-31 kings of Mitanni with Aryan names, 80 non-Brahmanical Aryans, 55 Aryjvarta, 50 Asiknl = Chandrabhaga = Acesines = Chenab, 161 ; 92 Assakenoi, 152 Assam = Kamarapa, 164 Assyria, 79 astronomy, Hindu and Greek, 132 Atharva-veda, 49, 50; 81 Athene, figure of, v. coin-types atmartj 59, 61 Audambara, coin of, 154-5 Augustus, Roman emperor, 122 Aurora^ 43 Avanti=W. Malava, 166, 175 Avesta, 30 ; 4, 24 Ayasi-KomQsa, 158 Ayodhya, 17Z ; 115 Azes, ^aka king, 144 Babylon, Babylonia, 79, 80, loi Babylonian language, 82, 84, 168 Bactria = Balkh, occupied by Per- sian Aryans, 30 conquered by Alexander the Great, 89 Hellenic kingdom, 118-120, 124; 122-3, 134 its coins, 120, 125 transference of Greek rule to India, 125 Parthian invasion, 126 ^aka invasion, 127 ; 125,137 Yueh-chi occupation, 127, 128 Baluchistan, -y. Gedrosia Barnett, Prof. L. D., 157 Barugaza = Broach = Bhrigu- kaccha, y.-u. Beas = Hyphasis = Vipa9or Vipaip , q.'V. Behistun, inscriptions 01 Darius at, 82, 84, 168 Benares = Ka5I, 164 Bengal = Vanga, 170 Bengal, Asiatic Society of, 6 Besnagar: column, 156 inscription, 134, 157 Bhadra or Bhadraka, ^unga king, •34 Bhagabhadra, Kagputra, king reigning at Besnagar, 134, 157 Bhagvanlal IndraJT, Pandit, 142, 158 INDEX 189 Bharata, 25 Bharata or Bharata-varsha, 15 Bhirhut stufia, 115, 173 Bhima, king of Vidarbha, 170 Bhrigu-kaccha or Bharu-kaccha = Barugaza = Broach, 129, 130, 17*. '75 bilingual coins, 18-9, 125-6, 152-5 Bindusara, Maurya emperor, 103 Bloch, Dr, 157 Bolsn Pass, 140 Bopp, Franz, 2 Brahman (Brahmana) caste, 45, ". ,. Its literature, 8, 1 1 Brshmarias, 53-9 ; 76 language, 11, 55-6 geography, 56 religion, 57-8 Brahmanism, 34, 55, 68 sacred language of, 14, 69 Brahmarshi-dega, 50-1 Brahmavarta, 51 Brahmi alphabet, 17-8, 149-50 coin-legends, 151-2, 155 inscriptions, 150, 157 Brahai language, 29 Brihadaranyaka Upanishad, 172 Brihadratha, Maurya king, 114 British dominion in India, 26, 34 Broach = Bhrigu-kaccha, y.i>. Bucephalus, Bucephala, 94 Buddha =:Siddhartha Gautama = ^akyamuni, 22, 66, 67, 161, '73 his birthplace, 67, 106, 161 relics of, 141, 158 Buddhism, 66-9; 22, 34, 105 compared with Brahmanism, 64, 65, 68 patronised by Agoka, 104 professed by (^alca satraps, 143 second council of Vai^alr, 169 languages and literature of, 8, I4> 69. 75-6. 81, 105 its disappearance from the main continent of India, 68, 109 its retention in Ceylon and Nepal, 108, 109 Burgess, Dr James, 149 Qakas (Scythians), 132, 136-44, H7 invasion of Bactria, 127 ; 118, 120 (Jaka era, 22, 144, 147 ^aka princes and satraps : Kapija and Taksha5ila (Gan- dhara), 133, 141-2 Mathura, 130, 142-3, 174 Malara, 143-4 Surashtra, 147 (Jakala = Sialkot, 130, 172 (pakasth3na = Seist3n, 137-8; 27, 140, 144 (Jakya, 66, 161 ^akyamuni, v. Buddlia Cambyses, king of Persia, 81 caste-system, 40, 45, 48, 68 ^atakarrii, 160, 175 (^atapatha Bralimaija, 56-7 ^atarahana, 160 Caucasus = Hindu Kush = Paro- panisus, ^.v. Central Asia, 26, 32 Ceylon = Lanka or Tamraparnl: early language and literature, 14-5 epic poems, 75 Buddhism, 108-9 ehakravartin^ 96 Chanakya, 103 Chandrabtiaga = Chenab = Acesines = AsiknI, y.-y, Chandragupta, Maurya emperor, 20-1, 100-3 Chandragupta II Vikramaditya, Gupta emperor, 115 CharmanvatI = Chambal, 162 Chautang=Dri»hadTatl, 47, 51 Chedi, 162 era, 22 Chenab = Chandrabhag; = Acesines — Asiknl, y.v, Chera = Kerala, 164 190 ANCIENT INDIA China, connexion with India, 15, i8 Chinese Buddhist scriptures, 69 Buddhist pilgrims, 169, 174 historians, 8, 127 Chinese Turlcestan, 18, 27 Chola, 150, 162 C^o/<2-OTa«^/fl = CoromandeI, 162 chronology of Ancient India, 16, 21-3, 181-5 V. also Puranas Chutu family of Andhra kings, 160, 175 (^Itala, 158 civilizations, primitive Indian, 28-9, 46 early Indo-European, 3-5 Aryan, 8-1 1, 26, 28-33, 36, 40.6, 47-9 Dravidian, 9, 26, 28-9 in Western Asia, 78-80 in Chinese Turkestan, 27 Claudius, Roman emperor, 90, 162 coin-legends, language of, 13-4 bilingual, 18-9, 125-6, 152-5 Brahmi, 15 1-2, 155 Kharoshthi, 140, 153-5 Greek, 18-9, 125-6, 140, 152-5 coin-types: Athene, characteristic of the house of Euthydemus, 128-9, 'S3 Zeus enthroned, characteristic of the house of Eucratides, •53 caduceus, 153-4 chaiiya^ 152 dancing girl, Indian, 152 Dioscuri, caps of, 154 elephant, head of, 153-4 Kapiga, tutelary deity of, 133 lion, maneless, 152 steel-yard, 151 symbols, punch-marked, 151 tree within railing, 155 trident battle-axe, 155 Vi^vamitra, 154 coins as sources of history, 8,17, •9 ancientlndian, 13-4,151-2,173 Grasco-Bactrian, 125 Grxco-Indian, 18-9, 123, 125- 6, 128-30, 140, 143, 153.5 Qaka, 140-4, 154 Pahlava, 138-9, 144-6 Parthian, 126 Roman in S. India, 162 communities, oligarchical or sell- governing, 55, 77 comparative philology of Indo- European languages, 2-6 conquests, nature of Indian, 96-7 coronation ceremonies in Aitareya Brahmana, 54 (ramartaj 57 '33' 141-2 Buddhist art, 135 11. also Kapi^a; Takshagila Gandhari, 81 Gandharians described by Herodo- tus, 87 Ganga = Ganges, 163 Ganges and Jumna, the country of=Hindustan, 31-2, 93, 100 Garga, 131-2 Gargl, 63 Gargi Samhita, 131-2 Gargya Balaki, 62 Garuda, 156-7 Gaugamela, 88 Gautama, 57 w, also Buddha Gedrosia = N. Baluchistan, 27, 138, 140, 144 genealogies, 1/. Puranas ; Cey. Ion, epic poems geography, Rig-veda, 39, 40 Yajur-veda, 47 ^atapatha Brahmana, 56 Brahman, Jain, and Buddhist literatures, 77 GirivrajazzRajagriha, 109, 166 Girnar = Girinagara, i nscribed rock at, 149 Godavarl, 163 Gomati = Guinal, 163 192 ANCIENT INDIA Gondopharnes, Pahlava king, 145-6 Gonds, 28 government, different forms of, 55 Grsco-Indian kings, v. Eucratides, house of; Euthydemus, house of; Yavanas Greece, Persian expeditions against, 85-7 Greek alphabet in India, 18-9, 125-6, 135, 140 Greeks in India, j. Yavanas Greek writers on Persia, 82-5, 87 Greek and Latin writers on India, 8, 20.1, 24, 89, 90, 93, 95, loo-i, 122 Greek influence on India, 134-5; 132 guild tokens, 151 Gupta era, 22 guru, 59 haomoj 44 Harshavardhana, king of Kanauj, '74 era, 22 Hastinspura, 165, 173 Hathigumpha inscription of Kharavela, 116, 160 Heliodorus, Greek ambassador, 134. 157 Hellenic kingdoms, v. Bactria ; Cyrene ; Egypt ; Epirus ; Macedonia ; Parthia ; Syria Hermans, Grasco-Indian king of the house of Eucratides, 1 33, 146 Herodotus, 83; 24, 82, 84-6, 136 Hesychius of Alexandria, i6i Himalaya = HimaTant, 163 Hindu Kush = Paropanisus, 54 Licchavi, 169 literary languages, 9-12 literatures, Indian, as sources of history, 6-17 early chronology of, 23 Vedic, 36-9, 44, 46-7, 49 Brahmanas, 52-9 Upanishads, 59-63 Jain, 69, 70, 76-7 Buddhist, 69, 70, 75-7 Sfltras, 76-7 Brahman epics, 70-3 PurSnas, 73-5 Buddhist epics, 75-6 Classical Sanskrit, 10-2, 14-5, 130-2 local government in India, 96, ill Lumbini-vana, 106, 161 Macedonia, 108 Madhya-dega, ' the JWiddle Country,' 50 Madhyamika = Nagari, 131 Magadha = S. Bihsr, 165-6; 33, 77, 93, 100, iio-i, 114, 170 Magas, king of Cyrene, 21 Mahabharata, 70-3 ; 11,47,51,57 JVLahabhashya^ 131 Mahanadi, 164, 166 Maharashtra, 166 Mahasena, king of Ceylon, 75 Mahavaipsa, 75 NLahatjJra — Vardhamana Jiiata- putra, 65 Mahendra = Mahinda, 75, 109 Maitreyr, 63 Malava(i) = Malwa, 166; 144, 170 (2) = Malaya or Malaya = Main, 166 Malaviha^nimitra^ 114, I30, I70 Manu, Laws of, 50, 96 Marcus Aurelius, Roman emperor 90 Marshall, Dr J, H., 156 INDEX 195 Maru, i66 MJthava, 56 Mathura = Muttra, 174 Hindu princes, 143, 174 under Greek kings, 131 ^aka satraps, 142-3 under Kushanas, 174 the Lion-Capital, 142, 158 Matsya, 50-1, 166-7 Maues = Moa = Moga, Qaka king, 141 family of, 144-5 coins, 140, 154 inscription, 141 Maurya empire, 99.-112; 20, 33, 121 its relations with Hellenic kingdoms, 101-2, 104, 108 its extent, 106-8, 118 governed by viceroys, 108 its decline, no, 113-4, 116-8, 122 IVIax Miiller, Prof. F., 29 Megasthenes, 102-3 ; 90 Menander = Milinda, Gr^co- Indian king of the house of Euthydemus, 128-31 coin, 153 Mercian dialect of English, 10 Middle Country = Madhya-de^a, migration of peoples, 26 Mihirakula, Huna king, 173 Milinda = Menander, q,v. MUinda-Patiha, 129-30 Mitanni, kings of, 80 Mithila, 171, 174 Mithradates I, king of Parthia, 119, 124, 126, 139, 142 Mithradates II the Great, king of Parthia, 138-9 Mitra, 80 Moabite stone, 18 Moga = Moa=:Maues, q.v. Mongolian races and languages, 26 J^udra-rakshasa^ 100, 103 Mughal empire, 26, 33, 173 ^ura, lOQ Muttra=Mathura, q.t>. Naoir Shah of Persia, 26 Naksh-i-Rustam, inscriptions of Darius at, 82, 84 Nala, 167 Nanda dynasty, 100 Nandasi-Akasa, 158 nandi-pada^ 152 Narmada = Narbada, 167 Nearchus, 94 Negamiy 151 Nicaea, 94 Niruita, II, 38 Nishadha, 167 nomes or fiscal units of the Persian empire, 83, 85 North-western region of India, 31- 32, 117-8 Old Persian language, 82, 84 Orosius, 126 pada-pathof 38 Pahlava (Parthian) invaders of India, 136, 138-40, 144-6 Pali language, 14-5 Buddhist literature, 69, 75, 105 Pallava, 167 Panch5la=:Krivi, 47, 51, 131, 167 PaSchala, N., 167 coins, 115 Panchala, S., 167 Pandu, 71, 173 Pandya, 150, 167-8 Panini, 131 Pantaleon, Bactrian and Gr^co- Indian king of the house of Euthydemus, coin of, 152 Paropanisadae = Paruparaesanna, 84, 88, 168 Paropanisus or Paropamisus = Hindu Kush, 84, 89, 140, 168 Parthia, Hellenic kingdom, 118-9, 142 Qaka invasion, 127, 137 Pahlavas and (Jakas hold the eastern proyinpps, 138-9 196 ANCIENT INDIA ParushnI = IravatI = Hydraotes = Ravi, 168; 93 P3taliputra = Patna, 102-3, 174; iij, 131, 170 Patafijali, 131 Pstika, (jlaka satrap of Taksha^ila, 141-2 Paurava = Porus, Indian king, 92, Periplus maris ErUhrm, 129 Peraepolis, inscriptions of Darius at, 82, 84 Persia, connexion with India, 25-6, 28, 81, 88, 140 Persian (Achsmenid) empire, 80 subject peoples in inscriptions of Darius, 82 nomes or fiscal units, 83, 85 dominions in India, 81-8, 123-4 expeditions against Greece, 85-7 Persian influence on India, 26, 82, 142, 156 Persian religion, ancient, 43-4 philology, comparative, of Indo- European languages, 2-6 Photius, 83 Phraates II, king of Parthia, 137 pippali=.pep€ri-=.pcppery 162 Pliny, 159 portraits on Bactrian coins, 120 Porus = Paurava, Indian king, 92, PrairA^-3^ = Prasioi, q.1), prafectus^ 45 Prakrit, 13-4 coin-legends, 18-9, 125-6, 140 Prasioi = i'i-ai:%fl^, the 'Easterns' = the peoples of the country of the Ganges and Jumna (Hin- dustan), 93, 100 Pratishthana = Paithan, 174-5 Prayaga, 175 primitive inhabitants of India, 8, 28, 46, 49 religious beliefs and social in- •titutions, 35, 49 prose literature, development of, 52-3 early, 56 Ptolemy Philadelphus, king of Egypt, 21, 104 Punjab, -i;. 'India' = the country of the Indus Puranas, 73-5 ; 70 Maurya dynasty, no ^unga dynasty, 113-4 Andhra kings ((Jatavahana dynasty), 1 17,^ 160 chronology and dynastic lists, 7, 16-7, 74-5, 114 purohita, 45 Poru, 92 V. also Paurava Pushyamitra, 114, 130, 170 RAjAGKiHA = Girivraja, 109, i66 RajQla or Rajuvula=:Ranj hula, 9aka 'Great Satrap ': coins, 140, 143 inscr. on Mathura Lion- Capital, 143, 158 Rama, hero of the Ramayana, 71-2 Ramayana, 71-2 ; 11,57 Ranjubula = RaJQla, q.11. Ravi = IravatI = Hydraotes = ParushnI, q.-a. Rawlinson, Sir Henry, 82 religion of knowledge, 58-61, 64-5 religion of works, 58-60, 64 religions ; V. primitive inhabitants of India ; Persian religion, ancient; Rig-veda ; Yajur-veda ; Ath- arva-veda ; Brahmanas ; Upanishads ; Brahmanism ; Jainism ; Buddhism religious toleration in India, ni-2 Rig-veda, 36-9 ; 4, 30 geography, 39, 40, 81 language, 10, 38 religion, 42-4 INDEX '97 deities worshipped by kings of Mitanni, 80 hymns and metres, 44 social and political condi- tions, 40-2, 44-6 rivers, Indian, change of courses, 95; S«. 163 mentioned in Rig-Teda, 39 RohinI, 161 Rome, trade with S. India, 162 coins found in S. India, 162 Rudradaman, Great Satrap of Surashtra and Milava, 149 SACRIFICE, traces of human, 54 in Rig-veda, 42-3, 44-5 in Yajur-veda, 47-8 Sadanira, 56, 171 Saketa, 131, 172 Samatata, 168 Sama-veda, 46 samhita-patha^ 38 Sandrokottos = Chandragupta, Maurya«mperor, q.v. 5izn(/ro/>Aa5-ox = Chandrabhaga, 161 Sanskrit, the ' discovery ' of, i, 5.6 varieties of the language, 1 1-2 the sacred language of Brah- manism, 14, 69 used also by Jains and Bud- dhists, 15 Vedic, 10, 38 Brahmana, 11, 55-6 epic, 1 1-2, 72-3 classical, 10-2, 14-J, 130-2 Buddhist in Nepal, 105 Sara8vati = Sars0ti, 47, 51 Satiyaputra, 150 satraps, government by, 141 appointed by Alexander, 95-6 Saubhuti = Sophytes, coin of, 15 1-2 Sayana, 39 Scylax, 84, 94 Scythian races and languages, 26 Scythians, v. (Jakas seals, as sources of history, 8, 19 Seist5n = (Jaka8thana, 137-8; 27, 140, 144 Seleucus Nicator, king of Syria, invasion of the Punjab, loi ; 20, 98, 120-1 Skahan-shah, 139 Shakespeare, 170 Sialkot = ^skala, 130, 172 Siddhartha Gautama = Buddha,y.'!<. Sijis an = Seistan, q.v^ Sind = ' India,' the country of the Indus, q.v. Sindhu = Indus, 24, 119, 126, 146, 168 Sita, heroine of the Ramayaria, 72, 171. '74 Skandagupta, Gupta emperor, 149 Skeat, Prof., 10 Smith, Mr V. A., 103 smritij 59 Sogdiana = Bukhara, conquered by Alexander, 89 invaded by Yueh-chi, 127-8 soma, 43 Sophytes = Saubhflti, coin of, 151-2 Southern India, 31-2 history of, 9 Tamil kingdoms mentioned in Agoka's inscriptions, 107, 150 Dravidian languages, 9, 29, 66 Spalirises, Pahlava king, X44 Stein, Sir Aurel, 27 Strabo, 104, 122, 129-30 Strato I Soter, reigning con- jointly with his grandson, Strato II Philopator, Gr^co- Indian kings of the house of Euthydemus, coins of, 129- 130, 140, 143 !tufa = tope, 115, 158, 172-3 Suiiagaiti:a = Sophagasenas, 121 Sudas, 168 Sumerian civilization, 79 Surashtra, 168-9 (^aka kings of, 147 Susian language, 82, 84 198 ANCIENT INDIA Satras, 76-7 ; 53 Suvarnagiri, 109 Suvastu = Swat, 169 s-varaj, 55 Syria, Seleucid kingdom of, 101, 119 revolts of Bactria and Parthia, 1 1 8-9 relations with the Maurya empire, loi-z, 108 TAKSHAC^iLA = Taxiia, 92, 175 Alexander the Great, 92, 96 Grxco-Indian kings, 133, 157 ^aka satraps, 133, 140-3, 154 copperplate inscription of Patika, 141 Tamil kingdoms in Anoka's in- scriptions, 107, 150 language, literary development of, 66 TamraparnI (') = Tambapanni = Ceylon, 107, 169 (2)= Tambraparni, 169 Tandya Brahmana, 55 Tapi = Tapti, 169 Taxila=Taksha9ila, q.v, Thomas, Dr F. W., 158 Thomas, St, 145 Tibetan Buddhist scriptures, 69 Tissa, king of Ceylon, 109 Ty-w: Tiives-dag^^Tueidayy 43 tofe=ttupa, 115, 158, 172-3 Toramana, Hana king, 173 Traikotaka era, 22 Trogus, 122 Udgatar, 46 Udumbara, 154-5 Ujjayini = Ujjain, 143, 175 vpanishad, 53 Upanishads, 58-63; 71, 76, 81 Ushisa, 43 Vai^ali, 169 Vai^ya caste, 45 Vaijayantl=Bapavasi, 175 Vslmiki, 72 vantfanutkarita^ 74 Vanga = Bengal, 170 Vardhamana Jfiataputra = Jina = Mahavira, 65; 22, 169 ■varna, 45 Varuna, 54, 80 Vasumitra, 114, 130 Vatasvaka^ 152 Vatsa, 170 vedoy 36 Vedas, i>. Rig-veda ; Sama-veda ; Yajur-veda ; Atharva-veda Vedanta, 62 Venis, Prof., 157 Vi^vamitra, figure of, v, coin- types Vidarbha, 114, 170 Videha = Videgha, 56, 69, 170-1 video, 36 vidhi, 53 Vidi9a = Bhllsa, 115, 166 Vikrama era, 22 Vikramaditya (i) = a king ot Ujjain, 143 (2) = Chandragupta II, Gupta emperor, 115 village communities, iii Vindhya, 171 ; 50 Vipa? or Vipa^a = Hyphasis = Beas, 93. '3°. <7i Virgil, 171 Vishnu, 134, 156-7 Vitasta = Hydaspes = Jhelum, 171; 92, 126 Vonones, Pahlava king, family of, 139. 144-S vrati/a-siomaj 55 Vriji, 169 Weber, Prof. A., 55 Western Asia, early civilizations of, 78-80 connexion with India, 80-1 Wima Kadphises, Kushana king, 146 tvit-an (cf. £ng. wiV, loiidtm, etc.), 36 INDEX 199 Xerxes I, king of Persia, expedition against Greece, 85-6 YajRavalkta, 63 Yajur-veda, 46, 52 geography, 47 religious and social conditions, 47-9 Yaniuna = Jumna, 171 Yaska, 11, 38 Yauna * lonians '^I'aiJflwa, Tona^ 86 Yavanas, Yonas = Bactrian and Indian Greeks : mentioned in inscriptions of Darius, 86 in Indian literature and in- scriptions, 86 two chief royal houses in Bactria and India, 124 transference of rule from Bactria to India, 12 j conflict with (^uiiga. dynasty, 130-1; 114 conquered by ^akas and Kushanas, 132-3, 146 influence in India, 134-5 absorbed in the Indian social system, 134-5. '57 Yueh-chi, 127-8, 137 Zaoadrus, Zaradrus = (Jutudrl = Sutlej, 163 Zeus fater^ 43 Zoroaster, 30, 43 Printed In Great Britain hy Turnhull &- Spears, Edinburgh