As 002587

m j ■ '' %
u ■/
« • ■■
, * . ***
* %> •
■7
ANCIENT INDIA
\.
• i<
•«
" tf •
®
' ‘ ^ o ^
^ •
•«
CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS

gottbon : F E T T E R LA N E , E,C.
C. F. CLAY, M anager
GbinbutQh: 100 PRINCES STR EET

jlevlin: A. ASH ER AND CO.
gftyzig: F. A. BROCKHAUS
iflfto JJorh: G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS
ôtnfcnp anb Calratta: MACMILLAN AND CO., L td.
'Sotonto: J. M. D EN T & SONS, L td.
'Sokpo: TH E MARUZEN-KABUSHIKI-KAISHA
*
• *
A ll rights reserved
K W\
*4f
‘ . %
III . .. _§H
?fi % ^. <£?:' ,m^[ ' ’W_- jfx *•£ C*''l£y-*'
rVî( It ^ *~r *_**'^-••Jfe^SfiBBnP^^"

- V S-' - rsf^' ^ > ■*-’"V>Xr-SjES^ '*■-^fev-',^5^ iJ^ffiyFjj
T H E G IR N A E UOCK IN 18 6 9 . [See An-m ’ ••■

. R A R E ' '. ( 3 .
W FOR CONSULTATION ONLW

A N C IE N T IN D IA
* k
FRO M TH E E A R L IE S T T IM E S
T O T H E F I R S T C E N T U R Y A .D .
f' • * t * #-
1 w «
• *■ •
‘ by
E. }. R A PSO N , M .A.
»• °
P R O F E S S O R O F S A N S K R IT IN T H E U N I V E R S I T V O F C A M B R ID G E
AN D F E L L O W O F ST J O H N ’S C O LLE G E
m
- l\ r ' . r
W ITH S IX ILLU STR A TIO N S
A N D TIVO M A P S
Cambridge : "
| *
at the University Press
1914
4 '
I # % *^4 *■
A*
' «0 P
flB
'* •*&'“■ IM
flfg jl] ■ (cT
\
• *• ... o •
*
3 £& ' 0 \ \
$ 4 N p
28286
e ^ * 0 ,A
I H ^ P -' *
i* •r^ rrr: — , <.(*h l <b « 4 * » }

Jîvision, *
j A oe. K o
7Mo of A
'vail No.
■
• * *
I "^ ^
ft
W ) . <sk
»
it • \,'*
* —. i ...
»' " .
. CONTENTS
CHAP.
I. T he S ources of the H istor.y of A ncient I ndia i
I I . T he C ivilizations of I ndia . • • • 24
III T he P eriod of the V edas . • w * 3^
IV. T he P eriod of the B rahmanas ani > UJ?anishads 52
V. T he R ise of J ainism and B uddhism . . 64
VI. T he I ndian D ominions of the P ersian and

M acedonian E mpires . . . . 78
VII T he M aurya E mpire . . • • • 99

VIII I ndia after the D ecline of the M aurya
E mpire . . . • • • • 113
IX. T he S uccessors of A lexander the G reat . 122
' X . P arthian and S cythian I nv ad er s . . . 136
N otes on the I llustrations . . . 1 4 9
N otes on the A ncient G eography of I ndia t 59
S hort B ibliography . . . • . 1 7 6
O utlines of C hronology . . . . 181
I ndex . . . • • . . . 187
► *
\ *
vii
| l| <SL
*
«• • *
ILLUSTRATIONS
.
P late I. i he G irnar R ock in 186 9 . . Frontispiece

P late II. C oinS of A ncient I ndia . Facing p. 18
P late I I I . T he B esnagar C olumn . . . 134
P late IV . T he M athura L ion- C apital . „ 142
P late V . I nscriptions on the G irnar R ock and

on the M athura L ion- C apital . ,, 15 0
P late V I . I nscriptions on the B esnagar C olumn „ 157
MAPS
N . W . I ndia and thf adjacent C ountries in the
t i m e oi A lexander the G reat Betweenpp. 78 and 79
T he P rincipal C ountries of A ncient I ndia . A t the end
vtii
• %
* m
111 <s&
I I
I
PREFACE
I n 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. M y object has been to draw as clearly as
possible the outlines of the history of the nations
c f India, so far as it has yet been recovered from
i.ie 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, 1 trust, not
puzzle readers who are not oriental scholais. If
the vowels are pronounced as in Italian, with due
111
vj
'P R E F A C E <SL
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. R A PSO N
S t J ohn’ s C ollege
C ambridge
ij t h February 1914
*
(CmPi %
* ■ ! * »
ANCIENT INDIA
CH APTER I
THE SOURCES OF THE HISTORY OF ANCIENT

IN D IA
The ‘ discovery ’ of Sanskrit— T he Indo-European family of

languages— The languages and literatures of Ancient India
— Alphabets— Inscriptions and Coin-legends—-Chronology
— T he rise o f Jainism and Buddhism.
“ T he 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 o f 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 *
f(I» ■ <SL
^ ^ 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 kfamily 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
' e°lfcx
? (S j '
SO U R C E S O F H IST O R Y , 3
founder o f the science of Comparative Philology,’

whose first work was published in 18 16 , and by
those of his numerous successors in the same fielu.
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
oi change, by which varieties o f language are
produced from a parent stock, is not arbitrary, but
that it takes place in accordance with certain
ascertainable law's, the regularity o f 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 o f 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 o f Asia and Europe from
1 1 1 ■ § L
4 A N C IE N T IN D IA
• ... . ©
Chinese Turkestan in the East to Ireland in the

v W est; 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, i 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,
111
' ° % x
<SL
SO U R C ES O F H IST O R Y 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 ‘ A ryan,’ the name which both people
apply to themselves (Avestan Airya = Sanskrit
A ry a).
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 o f 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 ’ o f Sanskrit, with
its patent resemblance to Greek and Latin, sug
gested the possibility of a connexion which was
undreamt o f before, and prepared the way for
the application to languages of the historical and
comparative method o f investigation, which was
destined to win its most signal triumph when it
wras 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
f( f)i) ... ■■ (c t
V% g^'.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 many centuries past that
Hebrew wafe 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
Ik X il SOURCES OF HISTORY 7 'SL
scholars, with the aid of the 4pandits ’ or learned
men of India, were already beginning to publish
texts and translations from the manuscripts. But
as to the date o f 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 o f which
equals 1000 ‘ great periods ’ of 4,320,000 years.
W hat we know as the historical period of the
world was for them the ‘ Kali A g e,’ 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 o f the lost history of Ancient
India have, in a great measure, been recovered,
C '
A N C IE N T IN D IA * 'b
and that its literature, which reflects the course

of religious and intellectual civilization in India
from about 12 0 0 b . c . o onwards,' has been classified
chronologically.
The materials for the reconstruction of the
history are supplied principally from three
sources:— (1) 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.
A t 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 archceological
investigation. O f the more primitive inhabitants
of India we can know nothing beyond such general
facts as may be gleaned from the study of pre
historic archaeology 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
■ eo^ T \
f(I )i ' . ■' vsl

SO U R C E S O F H IST O R Y 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 o f 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
'G
°i^X
( |) | (fiT
io A N C IE N T IN D IA J
advances, the dialect of some particular district,

which has wron 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 established, 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
u 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. i. his 1Vedic ’ 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 4Classical ’ Sanskrit rather more,
perhaps, than the language of Chaucer differs from
that of Shakespeare.
After the Vedic period, Aryan civilization
/S S & ■ e° fe x
ly t ij SO U R C E S O F H IST O R Y 11 '8 L
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 aiso the
birthplace of its rival religious, Jainism and
Buddhism. It was in this region that the priestly
treatises, known as 4Brahmanas,’ and the great
epic poems, the Mahabharata and the Ramayana,
were composed.
The language of each o f these classes ot 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 o f the Brahmanas merges in the
course o f 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 1irregularities ’ for all time.
Thus, about the year 500 b .c ., when the first
work in strictly Classical Sanskrit appeared—
Yaska’s Nirukta or 1 Explanation ’ of Vedic diffi
culties— there were in existence three well-defined
types o f Sanskrit. The first, already invested
with a sacred character from its great antiquity,
|S | <§L
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 ‘Sanskrit ’ (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.
S it SOURCES OF HISTORY 13
<
5 L
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 (prakrita —' 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
afford a striking illustration of this fact. As
<SL
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 P rak rit; 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,
f/y,^ nV\ *
SO U R C E S O F H IST O R Y ic ^ L
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 o f 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
; <sl
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
|I | <SL
SOURCES OF HISTORY 17
hundreds, and in some cases even by thousands,
of years.
Fortunately, this defect in the literature is
supplied to some extent from the other sources of
early Indian History. For certain countries in
India, and for certain periods in the history ot
these countries, it has been possible to construct a
sort of chronological framework by the aid o f
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 o f 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 o f
them of non-Indian (Semitic) origin. They are
called by scholars at the present time Brahml and
KharoshthI, the names which they seem to bear
in an account o f the youthful Buddha’s education
given in a Sanskrit work called the Lalita-vistara.
Brahml, which is usually, though not invariably
(‘u. p. 1 5 1 ) , written from left to- right, has been
shown to be the parent of all the modern alphabets
of India, numerous and widely diilering as these
B
are now. It is probably derived from the type of

Phoenician writing represented by the inscription
on the Moabite stone (y. 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
o f 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 o f 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
K r B )?; plate V flT h
\S$V^2>V/
x, %^ . ^ V _____________________
k7Aji
H K l w j| Ti'j,*.. ■•«% J i i ‘S j ' k Ê

L » „ . -,/>•*'' .... -' f» ™
^MnUlHi T tK a * B u ^ w S^W*. ** H
fiW ,4* ^ .. 4, *JfA\ xft
! Sv,. ■ - rw- • • ''-ji .v ' ^ j f - ''~ w '- '■ '■■ ^ B H

■ A .- *£ -• -v ' r T C
f 1v v f /,/ ■ * *4 , M
^/K2y ■■
m
■ B - A.>
r v - 'jv w
I ?^ '*<nf ▼ T ■~'^M
-• i | =\ - sL ^ *■jk w
■ ■ L , JN k'- - JL- -^ » A v^k .- Jpj|J
i^m L! jfcfrv^. jflPu.
*pivV ,*y.—
^ ’ vXjv 'JF
1 to?\Ol # #*■ *>■ * * > ‘* *$ .
rV>v * •* ^k»v_-^ ; /'. #V <Tr\ ‘ \ 3 lr.
L*BWr ^ r * . t J V O % | | r a 9 B ^ - ^ \4w CSl
I ./;?wf ' -w . V t f / W S flf * -
jjfetw v - la v 4* S , ST s -;
^ M m 'i i t r f / S t ^ - - r- H i
IgSp. .* j y r ^ . g v - ^ jS j^l
COINS OK A N C I E N T I N D I A . 151.
■ e° lfe x
m ■
^*5^ SO U R C E S O F H IST O R Y 19
titles of the king, and on the reverse a translation

of this inscription in an Indian dialect and in Indian
characters. A s 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 e ra ; 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 o f royal houses in different
parts of India. B y 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.
111
%t
20 ANCIENT INDIA
<SL
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 [ones
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, Acoka, included, not only
all the continent of India with the exception of
the extr ; t South, but also the greater part of
the count, ?s 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
SO U R C ES OF H IST O R Y 21
<SL
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 4sheet-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 o f the three chief sources of Indian history
— Indian literature, Indian inscriptions, and foreign
authorities. Thus the period o f the reign of A ^ k a ,
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 . 26 1-24 6 ); (2) Ptolemy Pliiladelphus
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 (acc.
b . c . 272).
The determination o f the initial years o f the
various eras, in which the dates of inscriptions
are commonly expressed, has further made it
possible to arrange in systematic order the his-
■ e° fe x —
t(I)|
^ 22 A N C IE N T IN DIA
3
torical data which they supply. The Vikrama
eia of 58 b.c. and the Caka era of 78 a . d. still
continue to be used in different 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
3 19 a -D-5 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
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.
\ ardhamana Jnataputra, the founder of jainism,
probably lived from 599 to 527 b .c ., and Siddhartna
Gautama, the founder of Buddhism, from about 563
to 483 b . c .
• These two reformed religions, although springing
directly from Brahmanism, and inheriting many of
its fundamental ideas, yet introduce new elements
|(S)| SO U R C E S O F H IST O R Y 23
<SL
into the intellectual life of India and are important
factors in its subsequent civilization. For the
peiiod 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, g
• —
' Go‘$©
N\*
/fy-— txV\
fpfn?)
\
\<%X—
— yy *
& 'v MNM« -W y X /
.(st
C H A PTER 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.
T he word India originally meant the country o f

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, wmre 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
lav. 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
34
(;!(S)?j THE CIVILIZATIONS OF INDIA 5
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 Bhdrata-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 wêll known in the Rig-veda.
The limits 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 off from the rest o f Asia by im
passable mountain ranges; and it is surrounded by
the sea on the eastern and western sides o f the
triangular peninsula which forms its southern
portion. But the northern barrier is not absolutely
secure. A t its eastern and western extremities,
river-valleys or mountain-passes provide means of
communication with the Chinese Emjjipj on the
26286 , '
! " iv V V
-
• GO tJX.
f(l)| <SL
one hand and with 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
or 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 dessication of the
land. However this dessication may have arisen,
whether through physical causes which affect the
THE CIVILIZATIONS OF INDIA 27
<SL
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 dessication in
this part of the world with some chronological
precision. Archaeological 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
t(I)|
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 literature.
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
legions 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
’ e°^N\
t(f)| <SL
T H E C IV IL IZ A T IO N S O F IN D IA 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 o f Baluchistan,
belongs to the same family as the Dravidian
languages o f Southern India; and it is possible
that it may testify to an ancient settlement o f 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
anguages not originally their ow n; but they still
retain their own languages and their characteristic
socia customs in the South, and in certain hilly
tracts of Central India; and there can be no
aoubt that they have very greatly influenced
t}an civilization and Aryan religion in the
North. Their literatures do not begin until some
centuries after the Christian era, but the existence
of tlie great Dravidian kingdoms in the South may
be traced in Sanskrit literature and in inscriptions
bom a much earlier period.
I he term Aryan was formerly, chiefly through
bie influence of the writings of Max Muller, used
in a broad sense so as to include the whole family
of Indo-European languages. It is now almost
|(1)|
^ § ^ •3 0 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
(C T
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:—
( 0 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 o f Rajputana.
W ith 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 o f Northern
India.
(3) The Deccan or 1 Southern ’ (Skt. daks bind)
India, the large triangular table-land lying south
'(1)1
V^ W 32
~.
ANCIENT INDIA
(fiT
of the Vindhya Mountains, together with the
narrow strips of plain-land which form its h inge
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 lace, 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 N orth;
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
|¥)| <SL
T H E C IV IL IZ A T IO N S O F IN D IA 33
India enable 11s to trace with a remarkable degree

o f continuity the course o f 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 o f 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 o f large countries
and a multitude of smaller communities, each
having its own complicated racial history and each
pursuing its own particular lines o f 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 e.\pense o f its neighbours. But the
mightiest of those 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
Id)? ■ . - <SL
^ * 5 ^ 34 ANCIENT INDIA
the last years ol 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 o f 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
III
^ THE CIVILIZATIONS OF INDIA
■ <5L 35
who can never have formed the majority o f 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 o f more primitive
forms of faith. A s Mr W . Crooke says, in de
scribing present religious conditions {Imperial
Gazetteer of India, i. p. 432), “ The lundamental
religion of the majority o f 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.”
If. <SL
-. **1
C H A P T E R III
THE PERIOD OF THE VEDAS
The Rig-veda— Oral transmission — Geography— State of

Civilization-^—Religion— Germs of the later caste-system—
The Sama-veda— The Yajur-veda— Contrasted with the
Rig-veda— The Atharva-veda— The principal divisions of
Northern India in Vedic times.
T he Sanskrit word veda comes from the root

vid ‘ to know,’ which occurs in the Latin vid-eo
and in the Anglo-Saxon wit-an, from which our
English forms to/V, 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
86
<SL
THE PERIOD OF THE VEDAS 37
‘ Psalms of D avid ’ 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 o f the l rishis,’ or sacred bards,
who composed them ; and, at a later date, when
their venerable antiquity had invested them with
the character o f 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 tiie other works of the Vedic period the Rig-
êda has been transmitted orally from one genera
tion to another from a remote antiquity even
down to the present day. I f all the manuscripts
and all the printed copies were destroyed, its text
could even now be recovered front the mouths of
living men, with absolute fidelity 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 o f schools of
^ edic study, in which untold generations of
students have spent their lives from boyhood to
- ' G0|^ X
f(f))
^^^38 A N C IE N T IN D IA
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 4various 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 the pada-patha or 4word-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 samhita-pdtha or 4continuous
text,’ and thus preventing textual corruption. But
the sense of many Vedic words wras either hope- .
lessly lost or extremely doubtful nearly two
thousand live hundred years ago, when Yaska
wrote his Nirukta. In fact, at that period the
v illi/ THE PERIOD OF THE VEDAS 390L
Vedic language was already regarded as divine ;
and its obscurities in no way tended to detract
from its sacred character— lor, as the commentator,
Sayana (died 138 7 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 o f
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.
W e know, therefore, that the Aryans of the Rig-
veda inhabited a territory which included portions
xjS ■e°Sjx
t(t)| -
of S.E. Afghanistan, the N.-W. Frontier Province,

and the Punjab.
Like many later invaders 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
■ G°^ \
l i f t <SL
T H E P E R IO D O F T H E V E D A S 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
k in g ; and the kingly office was usually hereditary,
but sometimes, perhaps, elective. A s among
other Indo-European peoples, the constitution of
the tribe was modelled on that o f the fam ily;
and the king, as head, ruled with the aid and
advice of a council of elders who represented its
various branches. Thus, the state o f 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
keen mad^j . The skill o f the weaver, the carpenter,
and the smith furnish many a simile in the hymns.
f(S)| <SL
42 ANCIENT INDIA
Ehe 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-
ingj 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,
and 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 j while Agni (the Latin ignis), the god of
fire, is manifested in heaven as the sun, in the
firmament as the lighting, and on earth as the
sacrificial fire produced mysteriously from the
friction of the fire-sticks. The sacrifice is the link
which connects man withhhe 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
fiJll!}'' THE PERIOD OF THE VEDAS 43'SL
Fathers,’ where they are dependent ior their sus
tenance on the offerings o f their descendants;
and ever lurking around man are the demons of
famine and disease, wrhose 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. Dy an s pit dr-, ‘ the Sky-father’ = G k . Zeus
pat§r==L?a. Jti-piter=Anglo-Saxon T lw (cf. Tiwes
£feg-=Eng. Tuesday').
Skt. Ushdsa-, ‘ the D aw n ’ —Gk. Eos for
* Iw w s= L at. Aurora for * Ausosa = Anglo-Saxon
cas-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 dwrelt 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
|( g n | (g jjl
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 ccesura 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
«
/s s & ' G° g \
( 1)1 T H E P E R IO D O F T H E V E D A S 45
< S L
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. A s we
have seen, the first great division between con
querors and conquered was founded on colour.
In fact, the same Sanskrit word, va n ia , means
both 'co lo u r’ 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 (ûdras. The three-fold
divisions of the ‘ twice-born ’ into the ruling
class (Kshatriyas), the priests (Brahmanas) and
the tillers of the soil (V aly as) finds its parallel in
other Indo-European communities, and indeed it
46
-
<SL
seems to represent the natural distribution of
functions which occurs generally in human societies
at a similar stage of advancement.
O f the more primitive inhabitants of the land
the Rig-veda teaches us little, except that they
W'ere a pastoral people possessing large herds of
cattle and having as defences numerous strong
holds. Contemptuous references describe them
as a dark-complexioned, flat-laced, 1 noseless ’ race,
who spoke a language which was unintelligible,
and followed religious practices which were ab
horrent to their conquerors. O f all the rest of
India beyond the country of the Rig-veda we know
nothing whatever at this period.
O f 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-vecj^ 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
\($% T H E P E R IO D OF T H E V E D A S 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
4the 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 Drishadvatl (Chautang), was the land in which
the complicated system of Brahmanical sacrifices
wa evolved, and it was in later times regarded
with especial reverence as 4the 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 19 12 , 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
Kmn vfiy
48 A N C IE N T IN D IA °
elements in religion seem to have disappeared,

extinguished by an elaborate and complicated
system of ceremonial which is regarded no longer
as a means of worship but as an end in itself. Sin
m the Rig-veda means the transgression of the
divine Jaws which govern the universe: in the
Yajur-veda it means the omission— whether in
tentional or accidental— of some detail in the
endless succession of religious observances which
filled man’s life from birth to death. The sacrifice
had developed into a system of magic by means of
which supernatural powers might be attained ; and
the powers thus gained might be used for any
purpose, good or bad, spiritual or temporal, and
even to coerce the gods themselves. In the
Yajur-veda also, the earlier stages of the caste-
system, in essentially the form which it bears to
the present day, are distinctly seen. Not only are
the four great social divisions hardening into castes,
but a number of mixed castes also are mentioned.
Thus were fixed the outlines of the system which
subsequently, by further differentiation according
t#trades, etc., became extraordinarily complicated.
T-ie tremendous spiritual power, which the sacrifice
placed in the hands of the priestly caste, was no
doubt" tfie cause which directly led to the pre
dominance of this caste in the social system.
The religion and the social system of the Yajur-
«
v flliy th e p e r io d of th e ved as 49
veda represent, to a great extent, the development

of tendencies which are clearly to be recognized
in the Rig-veda; but they also, no doubt, show
the influence of the religious beliefs and the social
institutions of the earlier non-Aryan inhabitants of
India; and it seems possible sometimes to trace this
influence. To cite one instance only. Snake-
worship is common among primitive peoples in
India. No trace of it is to be found in the Rig-
veda, but it appears in the Yajur-veda. The
presumption, therefore, is that it was borrowed
from the earlier non-Aryan peoples.
The Atharva-veda differs from the other three
in not being connected primarily with the sacrifices.
K is generally more popular in character than the
tg-veda. It represents the old-world beliefs of
tne common people about evil spirits and the
e cac)r spells and incantations rather than the
more advanced views of the priests. Although
the collection is manifestly later in date than the
Rig-i eda, yet, for the history of early civilization,
lt: is even more valuable, since much of its subject-
niatter belongs to a more primitive phase of religion.
I is especially important for the history of science
In India, as its charms to avert or cure diseases
through the magical efficacy o f plants contain the
germs of the later systems of medicine.
The geographical information supplied by the
D
\{t% . ■
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 of
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
district 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 Aryavarta, which lies between the same
two mountain ranges, and is bounded by Vinafana
(the place where the river Sarasvatl loses itself in
the sand) on the west, and by Prayaga (the modern
Allahabad, where the Ganges and the Jumna meet)
on the east.
Brahmarsbi-defa, ‘ the county of the holy sages,’
includes the territories of the Kurus, Matsyas,
the PERIOD OF THE VEDAS 5 1S L
Panchalas and Curasenas
5 (i.e.
' the eastern half of
the State of Patiala and of the Delhi division or
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 Drishadvatl
(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 o f several miles. That
Brahmarshi-dega formed part of Kuru-kshetra is
seen from the following verse from the Maha-
bharata:—
“Dakshinena Sarasvalya D rishadvatyuttarena cha
lie vasanii Kurukshetre, te. vasanti Triv'tshtdpe.
“ d hose, who dwell in Kuru-kshetra to the south ol the
Sarasvati and the north of the Drisadvatl, dwell in Heaven,’ ’
| l| - <SL
C H A P T E R IV
\ THE pe r io d of t h e b r a h m a n a s a n d
UPANISHADS
Growth of a prose literature— Contents of the Brahmanas__

Language— Geography— The Qatapatha 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.
T most ancient works of Indian literature, with

he
which we have been dealing 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
52
f(f)| <SL
BRAHMANAS AND UPANISHADS 53
in the form of an elaborate prose treatise, intended
to explain to the priest the mystical significance of
that portion o f 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:— ( i) directions (v'ldhi), (2) explana
tions (arthavdda), 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 1 Sutras,’ in
which each separate branch o f Vedic lore is
minutely explained.
T he Brahmanas are priestly documents in the
narrowest and most exclusive sense o f the term.
A t first sight, their contents would seem to be the
most hopeless possible form of historical material.
It is only incidentally and accidentally that they
aftord 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 o f the religion. But religion had
other and nobler aspects even in this priest-ridden
' G\ \
t(f)| - <SL
age, and the memorial of these is preserved in the

Upanishads.
I--: evei Lheless, there are found embedded in the
Brahmaiias 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-
\ eda, about a Brahman lad named (mnahcepa, 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 o f Southern India. It also records the
kingly titles used in different regions of India;
p
( flliy BRAHMANAS AND UPANISHADS 550L

and these titles seem to show that, at this early
period, the most diverse forms of government
ranging from absolute monarchies to self-governing
(svaraj') communities were to be found. This
interpretation would certainly be in accordance
with what we know from the inscriptions and
other historical sources o f a later date. The
interesting fact, that the Brahmanical religion did
not include all the tribes o f Aryan descent, is
gathered from the account given in the Tandya
Brahmana o f certain sacrifices (the vrdtya-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;
their laws are in a constant state o f confusion ;
they speak the same language as those who have
received Brahmanical consecration, but nevertheless
call what is easily spoken hard to pronounce ”
(trails, in W eber, 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
|f)| 56 A N C IE N T IN D IA
§L
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.
1 he geography of the Brahmanas is generally
the land of the Kurus and Panehalas, ‘ the country
of the holy sages’ ; but at times it lies more to
the west or more to the east of this region. The
fatapatha 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 Sarasvatl, first
into Kosala (Oudh), and thep over the river
Sadunira (probably the Great Gandak, a tributary
/ff—■<V\
'(S )l WIT
% S ^ B R A H M A N A S A N D U P A N IS H A D S 57
of the Ganges) which formed its boundary, into

Videha.
The Catapatha Brahmana supplies an important
link in the history of religion and literature in
Inaia; 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 1saint ’ and pramajia 4ascetic,’ first
occur in the Catapatha; 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
Jan aka, 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
general interest which relieve the dreary
monotony of the endless ritualistic and liturgical
isquisitions of the Brahmanas. A s we have seen,
the kind o f religion depicted in the Brahmanas is
absolutely mechanical and unintelligent. The
t>mns from the Rig-veda are no longer used with
an} regard to their sense, but verses are taken
away from their context and strung together
i
' e° i ^ X
K m - ) ’/ (at
^ # -5 8 A N C IE N T IN D IA ' °
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 o f 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
o f 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 o f 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-
111 BRAHMANAS AND UPANISHADS < i§ L
tional in character as in position. Thus the whole
of Vedic literature, which is comprehensively
styled fru ti or ‘ revelation’ as distinguished from
the later smriti or * tradition,’ falls into two great
classes. The Vedas and Brahmanas belong to the
1religion of works,’ and the Aranyakas and
Upanishads to the ‘ religion o f 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 dtnian or ‘ Supreme Soul.’ In
this way, his life is divided between the ‘ religion
° f works ’ in the two first, and the ‘ religion of
knowledge ’ in the two last stages.
I h e Upanishads, with which the philosophical
hymns of the Rig-veda and the Atharva-veda are
closely connected in spirit, lead us into the realm
what we should call philosophy rather than
1{‘ligion. But the two have never been separated
/s fffc ' g°^T\
f^ u^ ll6 c A N C IE N T IN D IA
<SL
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 religious
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 4religion
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
((*)! B R A H M A N A S A N D U P A N IS H A D S 61 (flT
\ % \ ‘WMi-Wy X / ® *
\%>---.yy
in other worlds, its condition in each state of
eexistence being determined by the good or evil
deeds performed in previous existences. His sole
aim, therefore, is to obtain mukti, or 4release,
from this perpetual succession of birth and re
birth. This release can only be obtainedby
‘ 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 atman or the 4World-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
4appearance ’ 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 11s 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
4release ’ from the circle of mundane existences,
which are now clearly seen to be apparent only
and not real.
' (si
This pantheistic doctrine, 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
\ edanta 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 Ajatagatru, the king of
KagI (Benares), and, having heard his words of
wisdom, humbly begged that he might be per-
#
B R A H M A N A S A N D U P A N IS H A D S 63
raitted to become his pupil; while the ladies

Gargi and Maitreyl discoursed concerning these
deep matters, on perfectly equal terms, with
Yajnavalkya, the great rishi o f the court of
Janaka, king of Videha. The time of the
Upanishads was, in fact, one of great spiritual
unrest, and o f revolt against the formalism and
exclusiveness of the Brahmanical system. In this
revolt the royal caste played no unimportant p art;
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.
III ; 5
—nV \ '
.vx^y'
<L
CH APTER 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.
W the rise of Jainism and Buddhism we enter

it h
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 foi>the
evolution of successive phases of thought or
language.
These two religions differ from the earlier
Brahmanism in so far as they repudiate the
4religion 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 1religion of knowledge ’ as represented
64
§ **
G°hh\
III <SL
'
R IS E O F JA IN IS M A N D B U D D H IS M 65
in the Upanishads. These ideas are, in fact, the

postulates on which all Indian religions and all
Indian philosophies rest. T hey hold, one and all,
that the individual soul is fast bound by the power
of its own karma or 1actions7 to a continuous series
of birth and re-birth which need never end;
and the object of one and all is to find out tne
way by which the soul may be freed from the
bonds of this unending mundane existence. T hey
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 tne
universe and o f the individual soul, and as to the
existence or non-existence o f some being or some
first cause corresponding to the Atman or c World-
Soul of the Upanishads.
Vardhamana Jnataputra, the founder of Jainism,
called by his followers Jin a (hence the epithet
‘ Ja in ’) 1the Conqueror' or M ahdvira "the
Great Hero,’ probably lived from about 599 to
5 27 b . c . A s his surname denotes, he was a scion
° f the Kshatriya or princely tribe o f Jfiatas, and
fie was related to the royal family of Vaiâli
(Basarh) in Videha (Tirhut). His system of
teaching, as it has come down to us, is full o f 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
E
t(f)| <SL
66 ANCIENT INDIA
‘ three jewels ’— a term also used in Buddhism, 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 Cakyas, 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
js now known as the Western Tarai of N epal;
and, at Buddha’s period, they were feudatories of
the king of Kosala (Oudh). In recent years some
most interesting archaeological discoveries have
OF JAINISM AND BUDDHISM 67 v L i
been made in this region, perhaps the most interest
ing of all being the inscribed pillar which was
erected, c. 244 b . c ., b y 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
ot these could satisfy him ; and after a period of
meditation he propounded his own system, which
in its simplest iorm 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
t ie craving of the individual for existence, which
ends from birth to re-birth ; this sorrow can be
ie moved by the removal of its cause; this removal
} be effected by following the eight-fold path,
. light 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
4
v fil
68 A N C IE N T IN D IA k’ L j
is essentially identical with the ‘ three jew els’ 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 Buddism 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 the Brahmans. The one-sided impression,
■ e° ^ \
% $ %
R ISE O F JA IN IS M A N D B U D D H ISM 69
<SL
which the comparative lack o f this important
species of evidence for the earliest history of
Brahmanism is apt to produce, must be corrected
from a study of the literature.
The language of Brahmanism is always and
everywhere Sanskrit. The language of the Jain
and Buddhist scriptures is that of the particular
distiict 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-
tiemities, in Nepal and Ceylon. From its original
ioim it has extended far and wide into Eastern
sia , and its ancient books are preserved in four
great collections:— Pali (in Ceylon, Burma, and
biam), Sanskrit (in Nepal), Tibetan, and Chinese.
hits both Jainism and Buddhism arose and
flourished originally in the same region o f 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
w h the ° ld Provinces of Tirhut and S. Bihar in
extern Bengal. They spread subsequently to
°t ter legions, and tor many centuries divided the
a v^hince of India with Brahmanism.
Both religions produced large and varied litera
tures* sacred and secular, which are especially
|(f)| ■ - <SL
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.
W e 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 difficulty 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 ot a later a g e ; 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-
*(§)?) (CT
^ g ^ R I S E OF JAINISM AND BUDDHISM 71
scendant? of Bharata,’ consists of about 100,000
couplets usually o f thirty-two syllables each.
That is to say, if reckoned by the number of
syllables, it is about thirty times as long as
M iltons ‘ 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 P and us. A ll the rest is made up o f episodes,
or disconnected stories, or philosophical poems.
1 êre 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 o f 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 o f the present
Mahabharata, was put together at least as early
as *be 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 Ramliyana belongs
rather to the districts lying to the east o f
this region. A s its title denotes, it cele
brates 4 the story of Rama,’ a prince o f the
i(t% 72 -
ANCIENT INDIA
•fir
royal Ikshvaku family of Kosala (Oudh), and its
heroine is his faithful wife Sita, 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 Kshutriyas
than to the Brahmans. Their scenes ar- courts
and camps, and their chief topics the deeds of
kings and warriors. Their religion is that o f 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
( f \ W 'W L (fiT
v% 2 ^4 is e o f ja in is m A N D BU D D H ISM 73 °
preserves many archaisms. W e 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 encyclopedia
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 mbnarchs in olden times. Works of this
description and bearing the same title are men
tioned in the Atharva-veda and in the Brahmanus.
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 Purarias has
been transmitted to the later versions. Bur, in
111 - ~ <SL
^ 7 4 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 Christian 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 Lbrought up to date ’ and wilfully
altered so frequently, that their ancient and
modern elements are now often inextricably
confused.
In theory, these 4family genealogies’ iyamgd-
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 literatures of the Jains and
OF JA IN IS M A N D B U D D H ISM 75
Buddhists, and, to some extent, by the evidence

o f inscriptions and coins. But, in. the course ot
time, these lists have become so corrupt, partly
through textual errors, and partly through the
4corrections ’ 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 o f 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
o f the apparent discrepancies and contradictions of
the Puranas may likewise disappear.
A somewhat similar problem is presented also
by the Pali epic poems o f 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 o f Ceylon from the date o f its introduction
by Mahendra (Mahinda) c. 246 b . c . to the
reign of Mahasena, at the beginning ot the
fourth century a . d . There can be little doubt
that, when the miraculous elements and other
later accretions are removed from these chronicles,
f(f)| - Vsl
76 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 all 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 1 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
(C T
RISE OF JA IN ISM A N D BU D D H ISM 77
purely mnemonic. The Sutras 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 unhistdrical in character and rarely throw
any light, even incidentally, on the political condi
tions of the times and countries to which they
belong. / y
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 ot one ot
the large kingdoms, Magadha (S, Bihar), which w'as
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.
(f f l Cl
C H A P T E R 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.
►
%
W ehave seen that the present political 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 iEgean and Mediterranean Seas,
78
» ( 1) 1 (fiT
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
civilizations of antiquity. In extent, it is larger
than the continent of India, but less than India
and Burma combined. Plere, 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 civilizations 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 2 2 0 0 b . c ., and of a still earlier
Sumerian civilization, the monuments of which
seem to go back to about 4 000 b . c .
O f especial interest from the point of view of
1
((($)?) (CT
80 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 limit to the possibilities presented
by this most fertile field of archaeology, 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.
(f( 1 )) PERSIANS AND MACEDONIANS
1
81
(fil
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 W e st; 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 3 3 1 b . c ., it,
together with the Persian province of ‘ India * or
F
I
2 A N C IE N T IN D IA vflj
^ I
‘ the country of the Indus,’ which had been added
to the empire by Darius not long after 5 16 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 o f 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 >L
The chief obj ect 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 4nomes ’ 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 (r. 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 o f Gandhara and ‘ India’ may
thus be summarized.
1
((f )? ' (CT
84 ANCIENT INDIA ‘ J
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
5 16 b . c ., the Gandharians appear among the
subject peoples in the Old Persian version; but
their place is taken in the Susian 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
cIndians 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
f a c t it m a y be i n f e r r e d t h a t t h e ‘ I n d i a n s ’ w e r e
conquered at some date between 5 16 B.c. and the
end of the reign o f Darius in 486 b . c . The
preliminaries to this conquest are described by
Herodotus, who relates that Scylax was first sent
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 oi
the river.
Although it is not possible to determine the
precise extent of the 4Indian ’ 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
4Indian ’ 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
1
' e° ^ x
\ iA i7 .8 6 A N C IE N T IN D IA o L
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 Crossus, king of Lydia, by Cyrus in
546 b . c . The Ionians 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 Kaunti
‘ Ionians,’ which occurs in the inscriptions of
Darius, in a wider sense to denote Greeks or
people o f 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.
A t a later date, these terms were used in India to
denote foreigners generally.
O f 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 o f the Persian Empire, and it is
said to have numbered more than two million six
/>X \ V\
PERSIANS AND MACEDONIANS 87 vLi
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
1
|¥ ) |' <SL
W . 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, ior 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
3 3 1 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.
1 he route by which Alexander approached India
passed through the Persian provinces of Aria
(Herat in North-Western Afghanistan), Drangiana
(Seistan, m 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
^ Afghanistan which adjoins the present
North-Western Frontier Province). Here, in the
PERSIANS AND MACEDONIANS 89 'o L /
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 (Balkh) 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 (fate
of Alexander’s departure from India in the
autumn of 325 b . c ., the total duration o f 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, possess
1
/A*—<V\ ■ •
1 ( 1 )i) " ( fil
five different accounts of Alexander and his

exploits by later authors to whom these original
records were accessible. O f 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 ( 1 6 1 - 1 8c a . d.), wrote in Greek an
account of Alexander’s Asiatic expedition, called
the 4xlnabasis.of Alexander,5 which was modelled
on the cAnabasis ’ 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 difficulties, 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 ‘ o f the campaign,
the military operations of Alexander and his
generals were carried out in the mountainous
districts of Afghanistan and the North-Western
(CT
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 oi 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 cl
Hercules himself, and no subject has attracted
more attention on the part of students of Indian
history than the identification of its present site;
1
•( f ) l (fiT
!^ 2#/92 ANCIENT INDIA J
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 Taxi la, 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 1the 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 iSL
Hydraotes (Ravi), 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,
1 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 Alexandei 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
bability, 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 loices
of the Prasioi.
After the refusal of the army to proceed,
Alexander retraced his line oi march to the
1
' ‘ e0|^ X
^ p i/ 0 4 A N C IE N T IN D IA ' o Xj
Hydaspes (jhelum), on either bank, of which he

had previously 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. A t these cities Alexander collected the
fleet which was to convey a large portion or 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
(CT
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 ot
Alexander, more than two thousand two hundred
years ago. W e 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 oi 325 B.c.,
Alexander had made provision for the future con
trol of his new dominions by the appointment of
1
n E P ) vfiT
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 o f 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 o f Porus, who
was probably a ruler o f 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 o f the ambition of
every king to aim at the position o f a chakravartin
or ‘ supreme monarch.’ I f his neighbours agreed,
' G° i ^ X
\ ($ % <SL
~ ^ f/ PER SIA N S AN D M ACED O N IAN S 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
ol 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
ilas k ft 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
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 ông as it could be enforced. In June 323 b . c .,
a little more than a year after his return from
ndia, Alexander died at Babylon, and with his
eath Macedonian rule in India ceased. His sue-
9
1
S7>t
<SL
cessor, 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.
m
1
1
1 <SL
C H A P T E R VII
th e m a u rya em pir e
T he Kingdom of Magadha— Chandraguptar—Seleucus Nicator

Megasthenes Bindusara— Aôka— H is edicts— Extent
ot the Maurya Empire— Intercourse with the W est— The
propagation o f Buddhism— Later history o f the Mauryas
Continuity o f policy of Indian rulers.
T he descriptions o f Alexander’s campaign are

especially valuable as enabling us to realize the
o f the Indus at this
period. W e may gather from Indian literature that
the political conditions o f the land o f the Ganges
were not widely different. Here, too, the country
was divided into a number o f states varying greatly
n size and power; and here, too, at some period
between the lifetime of Buddha and the invasion
0 Alexander the Great, a conquering power__
. Ut, ,n this case, a native power— had succeeded
^ establishing a suzerainty over its .neighbours.
le kingdom o f Magadha (S. Bihar) was already
o r°w m g in power in Buddha’s tim e; and
e are probably justified in inferring from the
dem ents o f Alexander’s historians that its as-
< i
% M } L o ANCIENT INDIA 'SL
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, and with it the imperial posses
sions of the Nanda dynasty, passed by a coup
d ’etat into the hands of an adventurer whom the
Greek and Latin writers call Sandrokottos.
we have seen, the identification of this personage
with the Chandragupta, who ^ ^11 known^rom
Indian literature, and whose story, a a >
formed the subject of a Sanskrit '^tonca p a
called the udra-ksh,M
supplied the first fixe
point in the chronology of Ancient India.
Chandragupta, whose surname Manrya
supposed to be derived from the name of
mother, Mura, is the first historical founder of a
great empire in India. As king of Magadha h
Succeeded to a predominant position « «m d
st,m . aI1d, within a few years of Alexanders,
departure from India, he had E - e d possesion
aiso 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 Ifghanistan which lies south of the
P °nL Kush W e have no detailed information
region thusâssed from one suzerainty to anothei.

T H E M A U R Y A E M P IR E io S L
.vSf&s'
^ - I»
W e 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 o f the Seleucid
Kings o f Syria in 3 1 2 b . c .
About the year 305 b . c ., Seleucus invaded
India with the object of reclaiming the conquests
o f Alexander which had now passed into the
power of Chandragupta. N o detailed account of
this expedition is extant. W e only know from
Creek and Latin sources that Seleucus crossed the
Indus, and that he concluded with Chandragupta
a treaty of peace, by the terms o f which the
Indian provinces formerly held by Darius and
Alexander were definitely acknowledged to form
part o f the empire o f Chandragupta.
The most important consequence o f this treaty
was the establishment o f political relations between
the kingdom o f Syria, which was now the pre
dominant power in W estern Asia, and the Maurya
02 ANCIENT INDIA
<SL
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. A t the present
time excavations are being made by the Archaeo
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 alsowe are indebted for a detailed
(flT
T H E M A U R Y A E M P IR E 103
account o f the administration o f 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 A riha-fastra, the authorship o f which
is attributed to Chanakya, who appears as the
brahman prime minister of Chandragupta in the
M udra-rakshasa, and who has won for himself the
reputation of having beeu ‘ the Machiavelli of India.’
ft nas 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 ol the Mughal Emperor Akbar, who was
contemporary with our Queen Elizabeth.
th e reign of Chandragupta lasted from about
3 21 to 297 n.c. He was succeeded by a son who
is called Bindusara in Indian literature and who was
probably known to G reek writers by one o f his
t}tles as Amitrochates (Sanskrit Amitraghata), ‘ the
slayer o f his foes.’ There is little information to
be obtained about him either from Indian or from
C ieek sources. In his reign another Syrian ambas
sador named Daimachus, sent by Antiochus I Soter
(18 0 -2 6 1 B.c.), the successor o f Seleucus, visited
t e c°urt of Pataliputra. He also wrote an
account of India, which has been lost. W e there
04 ANCIENT INDIA
<SL
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.
O f 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— A$oka, the son of
Bindusara, who reigned c. 269-227 b .c .
Agoka’s fame rests chiefly on the position which
he held as the great patron of Buddhism. As such
he has often been compared to Constantine the
Great, the royal patron of Roman Christianity-
The literary sources for the history of A?oka’s
reign— Brahman, Jain, and Buddhist— are indeed
abundant. But his very fame has, in many cases,
caused these materials to assume a legendary or
miraculous character. He has suilered both from
the enthusiasm of friends and from the misrepre-
»(1 )1 - (CT
THE MAURY A EMPIRE 105 u '
sentations of foes. The Buddhist accounts of bis
life have come down to us in two great collections
o f religious books— those written in Pali and
preserved in Ceylon, and those written in Sanskrit
and preserved in Nepal. In the case o f both of
these, an undoubted substratum of fact is so much
hidden by a dense overgrowth o f legend, that the
historian is sorely perplexed in his efforts to dis
tinguish the one from the other.
Fortunately, there exists a source o f informa
tion which is beyond dispute— inscriptions cut
into hard rocks or pillars of stone by command of
the king himself, and, in many instances, record
ing his own words. W e have already had
occasion to speak of these wronderful inscriptions.
Their object was ethical and religious rather than
historical or political. T h ey inculcate good
government among the rulers, and obedience and
good conduct among the governed, and these
virtues as the fruit of the observance o f dhamrna
(Skt. dharmd) or 1duty,’ a term which, in this
case, since Acoka was a follower of Buddha, is
probably identical with the eight-fold path of
Buddhism. In striking contrast to the inscriptions
of Darius, the edicts o f A$oka were intended not
to convey to posterity the record o f conquests or
o f the extent o f a mighty empire, but to further
the temporal and spiritual welfare of his subjects.
1 1 1 <L
5
^ € 10 6 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 01
4duty/ and it is coupled with an expression of
bitter regret, for the destruction and the misery
which the war entailed. Surely, imperial edicts or
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.
O f 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 v is first engraved. The modern name of the
placv. still continues to represent the 4Lumbini ’
grove of the ancient story of Buddha’s birth.
But, although the edicts and the other inscrip
tions o f 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 o f the Maurya
empire during the reign o f Aôka is indicated by
/A,—^\V\ 1
f( I ) | <SL
T H E M A U R Y A E M P IR E 10 7
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 Agoka extended over the whole
length and breadth of the continent o f India, with
the exception o f the extreme south of the peninsula.
It is extremely probable also that versions ol 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, A$oka
regarded his empire as conterminous with that of
the Greek (Yona) king Antiochus, that is to say,
the Seleucid king, Antiochus II Theos (26 1-
246 b .c .). His neighbours in the extreme south
were the ruiers o f the Tamil kingdoms, four ol
which are mentioned by name. Three of these
kingdoms, which can be identified with certainty,
played an important part in later Indian history,
ih e inscriptions also mention Ceylon (Tamba-
panni). W e are thus, for the first time in the
history o f India, supplied with information which
would enable us to give some description of the
v fil
108 ANCIENT INDIA
geography of the whole continent from Afghani
stan to Ceylon.
W e 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.
W e findj 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. Agoka 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 o f most of these Hellenic kings are
known with certainty.
During the reign of Agoka, Buddhism was
established in the island of Ceylon, where it still
continues to flourish hundreds of years after it
T H E M A U R Y A E M P IR E 10 9 IC T
s 1%
ky Mi
• - - t
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 Devanampiya, 4dear to the gods,’ is that
which is used by Acoka 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 Asoka, 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. W e have no means of identifying him
farther, or of knowing if he succeeded to the
throne on the death of AQoka.
For the subsequent history o f the Maurya
empire, we have no such authorities, literary 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
1
/ % y ^ S § \
no ANCIENT INDIA
Acoka. W e are once more dependent almost
entirely on the testimony of the Puranas 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 A$oka 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. 184 b . c . They are not in
complete agreement either as to the names or the
.number of Acoka’s successors. Two of the
Puranas agree in stating that his immediate
successors were a son and grandson w'ho 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 A9oka 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 o f these successors could
only have ruled over an empire very greatly
diminished in extent or, perhaps, even reduced to
{ ( t i t ^ <SL
THE M AURYA EMPIRE 11 1
the kingdom o f 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 o f all
political systems in India. The grouping of
village communities into states, and the grouping
o f states into empires has left the social system
unchanged. All governments have been obliged
to recognize an infinite variety among the governed
o f 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. A ll religious communities
were alike under the protection of. the sovereign ;
and inscriptions plainly show that, when the
government changed hands, the privileges granted
■e°^x
tCS)l 112 -
ANCIENT INDIA
%L
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
A cokci 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 ‘ du ty’
(dharma). Such has been the attitude of en
lightened rulers of India in all ages. Instances of
religious persecution have, indeed, not been wanting
ill India; but the tolerant policy of Aôka 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 Aipoka, has only interfered with religion when
it has entailed practices which conflict with the
ordinary principles of humanity.
V i
/ / > — < V \ s~ > i
---------------— * 1
C H A P T E R VIII
INDIA AFTER THE DECLINE OF THE MAURYA

EMPIRE
Dismemberment of the Empire— The (ûngas— ih e Kingdom

of Kalinga— The Andhras— The Hellenic Kingdoms of
Bactria and Parthia— The Indian invasion of Antiochus the
Great.
A n o t h e r lesson which is enforced by the history

of the Maury a empire is that the maintenance of
peace, and of those conditions which are essential
to progress, depends in India on the existence or
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
literature 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 ‘ 113
|(!J <SL
ANCIENT INDIA
succeeded on the throne of Magadha by the
£ungas who are said to have ruled for 1 1 2 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.
I11 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 o f the £uriga dynasty was
Pushyamitra who is said to have slain his master,
Brihadratha, the last of the royal Mauryas. An
historical play, the Mdlavikdgnimitray 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
centun . 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 o f the events mentioned— a war
with Vidarbha (Berar) and a conflict with th*
Yavanas, for instance— were actual occurrences.
The picture of a diminished empire still possessed
| ( | J )|JD IA A F T E R T H E M A U R Y A E M P IR E n jg L
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 A9oka before he came to the
throne, governed the western provinces with his
court at Vidiâ (Bhilsa) in M alwa (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 .).
1 he extent of the £unga dominions is indicated"^
by an inscription 1in the sovereignty of the
fu h ga 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 j
found in the -G^ te d Provinces hr Ruhilkhand,- the I
ancient kingdom of North PafichaJa, and on the I
site o f Ayodhya, the ancient capital o f Kosala
(Oudh) ; but the names found on these coins, with
the single exception of ‘ Agnimitra,’ only bear a
geneial resemblance with those given in the dyn
astic lists and cannot be identified with certainty.
I h e available evidence thus tends to show that
Magadha under the Cungas still possessed an
empire, but one greatly reduced in size since the „ 1
time of A9oka. Some of the losses which the
1
IP it 6
■
ANCIENT INDIA
<SL
empire had sustained are clearly proved by the
evidence of inscriptions and coins.
The kingdom of Kalinga, on the east coast
between the rivers Mahanadi and Godavari, had,
as we know from Anoka’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
r 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 difficul
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, fatakarni, 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 Kalingas
in that part of the Madras Presidency which lies
between the rivers Godavari and Kistna, the
G
ot%\
C M ^ N D I A AFTER THE MAURY A EMPIRE i f p L

Andhras had become, probably about 200 n.c.,
a great power whose territories included the whole
o f 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 A$oka, 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 Aôka. 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 o f each reign,
and the total duration o f 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 o f the independent
kingdoms of the Kalingas and the Andhras in
the South, the North-Western region of India,
- 1
ID! 18
■
ANCIENT INDIA
<sl
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 A9oka 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
Kush— a range of mountains which, lofty as
are many o f 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 13 5 B-c -i
when its civilization was entirely swept away by
the irresistible flood of Scythian (£aka) invasion
from the North. Its brief history of a little
AFTER THE MAURYA EMPIRE 1 1 9 ^
more than a century is most intimately asso
ciated with that o f 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 tb the province of
Syria from which it takes its name. The
Parthian power lasted till 226 a . d . In the
reign of Mithradates I ( 17 1- 1 3 8 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 'k in g who has
usually, but perhaps incorrectly, been called
Artabanus I ( 2 10 - 19 1 b . c .) , while Bactria was
under Euthydemus (c. 2 30 -19 5 B.c.). The ex
pedition o f Antiochus ended in an acknowledge-
w
120
' '
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 little 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.
A fter thus making a treaty of peace with
Euthydemus, Antiochus, like his predecessors,
Alexander in 327 b.c., and Seleucus c. 305 b.c.5
'G
°i&X
f(f)j) • (fiT
V^ ^ N D I A A F T E R T H E M A U R Y A E M P IR E 121k
passed over the Hindu Kush into the Kabul \ alley.

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 A$oka, 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.
1
111 - ' %l
C H A P T E R 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.
T he 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 literary authorities for the history of this
period are indeed fe w ; 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.
122
' e° l f e x
v iM jH E SUCCESSORS OF ALEXANDER 123 'SL

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 o f 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 o f 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 o f Antiochus
the Great, the Bactrian king Euthydemus seems
to have formed the design of extending his
kingdom by the conquest o f the territories lying
to the south of the Hindu Kush. It is probable
that the fulfilment o f this design was entrusted to
his son Demetrius, who has been supposed to be
the original o f
‘ T h e grete Emetreus, the king of In d e’
of Chaucer’s Knightes Tale.

A s a result o f the conquests o f Demetrius, the
ancient provinces of the Persian empire, i.e. the
111 124 ANCIENT INDIA
<L
5
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 o f 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 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 17 1 b.c. It
is doubtful if Demetrius or any other member of
SUCCESSORS OF ALEXANDER 1 2 5 ^
the family o f Euthydemus ruled in any part of
Bactria after this date. It is more probable that
henceforth their power was confined to India. The
family o f 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. 13 5 b.c. ; but
they retained their possessions in the territories
to the south o f the Hindu Kush, and held the
Kabul Valley until the Kushana conquest,
C. 25 B.C.
The transference o f 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 o f weight. The subject popula
tion was evidently not sufficiently advanced in
civilization to influence the art o f 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 G reek legends on the obverse, and
tCllf ■
j 26
"
ANCIENT INDIA
'SL
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. W e 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
( 17 1- 13 8 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 west of the Indus.
/y^TNV\
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 Cakas, who still occupied, as in
the time of Darius (522-486 b.c .), the country ot
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 X ueh-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 £akas in the province
of Drangiana (Seistan). Traces of the existence of
this earlier (Jaka settlement in Drangiana seem to
be found both in the inscriptions of Darius and in
the accounts of Alexander’s campaigns. The
'vhal importance for the history of N .-W . India of
this augmentation of the £aka power already
established in a province o f the Parthian Empire
'will be seen subsequently (p. 137).
T-be Yueh-chi, thus driving the (Jakas before
. 1
/ v w
111 128
'
ANCIENT INDIA
<SL
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. A s 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 o f 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
* 1
/ / / A W
SUCCESSORS OF ALEXANDER 129 o L

figure o f 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
Periplns marts 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 G ulf to the west coast of India—
states that small silver coins, inscribed with Greek
characters and bearing the names o f 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 Hypliasis (Beas) which formed the
extreme limit of Alexander’s conquests.
W e have, in all probability, further information
concerning Menander from a source which, at
first sight, might seem not very promising from
the point o f 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
i
t(f)| <SL
V^ 130 ANCIENT INDIA
(Millnda-Pafiha). This monarch resided at Qakala,
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). W e 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
war) ; 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 follow ing :—
(1) Kalidasa's historical play, the Mdlavlkdgni-
mitra, represents the forces of the first Quhga
king, Pushyamitra, under the command of his
grandson, Vasumitra, as coming into conflict with
/sS0- ' g°^T\
SUCCESSORS OF ALEXANDER i -ji
the Yavanas somewhere in Central India. This

may well be the reminiscence of some episode in
Menander’s invasion o f the £unga dominions.
(2) The grammarian Patanjali, 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 (Nagarl) 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 Samhita, or ‘ the compendium of Garga,’
One of its chapters is in the style o f a Puran a;
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 o f 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 Panchala
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
(¥ )'
their own kingdom (North-Western India). They

were eventually conquered by a Qaka k in g; ana
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 hod# of Eucratides, to the
conquest of Greek kingdoms by the Qakas, and
to the subsequent conquest of the Cakas 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 " e have
referred is in accordance with the knowledge of
this period which we may glean independently
from other sources,
■G
°feX
1( 2)1HE 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 ?nd 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 o f Eucratides was supplanted by Qaka
satraps in both Kapi$a and T a x ila ; but these
princes continued to hold the Kabul Valley until
the last vestiges of their rule, which had survived
the attacks o f the (Jakas, were swept away by
the Kushanas. The last Greek king to reign in
the Kabul Valley, and indeed in any region of
India, was Hermmus who was succeeded, c. 25
a . d ., by the Kushana chief, Kujula Kadphises.
It is a curious fact that, wlnle the coinages
of the Graeco-Indian princes are remarkably
abundant, all other memorials of their rule should
t(S)| ■ <SL
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 Euciatides, 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 IJungas,
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
r
/a^ ^ S \ ■o f t
:( 1 ):/ plate m. /
^J ' • Jr^ •’«'/ X*?- .¥*••" ’"S
u'jHbfe. ’i* jiO 5'tT •>/- iv • n *•&.' H H w '

M g v i l y . -jP-
^ AV1yTîrj» \v >
■t ' -^/ jp^^Bjj -
T H E Hi:sN-\G\R 0 ) 1 UMN. [Seepage 156,

<SL
T H E S U C C E SSO R S O F A L E X A N D E R 135
years, that we must trace the chief source o f

Greek influence in Northern India. For some
centuries after the extinction of al! their political
power, we find Greeks mentioned in Indian
literature and Indian inscriptions. But they have
been absorbed into the Indian social system.
T hey 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.
H I <SL
• * ^
CH APTER X
I
P A R T H IA N A N D S C Y T H IA N IN V A D E R S
Cakas and Pahlavas— T h eir Parthian O rig in -P ro g re ss of

’ Caka conquests in India— ^ ak a satrapies— Defeat o f the
Cakas by a king o f M alwS and the establishment of the
Vikram a era— Gondopharnes— Progress of Kushana power
Establishment o f the Kushana empire — T h e era of
Kanishka.
So far, we have traced the history of the Xavanas

(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 Qakas 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
136
■G
°^X
’%ÂRTHIAN & SCYTHIAN INVADERS 137 oLj
as two branches of Scythians in Asia, xhese, we

have reason to believe, are specimens merely of
the innumerable swrarms of nomads which had
been finding their way luring untold centuries
from that great hive of humanity, ohina, to
Western Asia and to Europe.
The settlements of Cakas 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 A sia; 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 Qakas’ (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. I h e result of
this impact w’as two-fold. On the one hand, the
Hellenic kingdom of Bactria was submerged in a
flood of barbarian invasion, and, on the othei, the
Parthian kings were occupied during twTo reigns
(Phraates II, 138 -12 8 b .c ., and Artabanus II (1),
12 8 - x 23 b . c .) in endeavours to stem the tide
which had extended to Seistan, and were only
t(I)|
^ ^ i 3S ANCIENT INDIA
completely successful in the following reign
(Mithradates II the Great, 123-88 b . c.). The
effect of the Caka invasion of the Parthian
kingdom was thus to mcrease 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
■e°^\
(T O ) V (C T
V^#RTH IAN & SCYTHIAN INVADERS 139
the title ‘ King of K in g s’ which, in h n im ti°n °f
their former over-lords, they bear on their corns,
shows that they had asserted their f
The first of these Pahlavrs to appear on the corns
has the familiar Parthian name Vonones; ^ we .
may, therefore, conveniently call the lm .
he belongs ‘ the family of Vonones.
W ith this line of Pahlava princes the (,aU
invaders of India are intimate y connected Lake
them and unlike the Grteco-Indian princes, th y
b e a r’the tWe ‘King of K ings’ The history of
this title is interesting. It denoted originally the
supreme lord who claimed the alleg.an
number of subordinate kings. It was the anaen
title of the Persian monarchs, and as such
“ pears 1. f t . » « i p d » s o f Darios » ,h« * • -
Kshdyatbiydndm Kshayathiya. n
monarchy it seems to occur ^ t on com of
Mithradates II
(123-88 b.c.,,
numismatists prefer to attribute the coins
question to Mithradates I 0 7 1' * 3 B' • '
introduced into India by the Qaka and P a h ™
invaders, and continued in use by their successor ,
the Kushanas ; and in the form Shatan-shab t
remains the title of the Shahs of Persia even to
X T ' ™ 'b. .» doubt, then, to .he

distinctive title 'King ° f kings' connect, the
■ Go^ \ • I
t(f)f <SL
■ ^ ^ 14 0 A N C IE N T IN D IA
i ... • •
Indian Cakas with the Pahlavas and both with
Parthia; and this connexion is most naturally
explained on the theory that these Cakas 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 Qaka 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 Qaka 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
***** tmnrnmmm*
another satrap, Raftjubula, at Muttra the coins

struck by Strato I and II reigning conjointly.
Everywhere, indeed, the Qaka 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
At, ' G<V\
°feX
^
«(f f , (C T
"P A R T H IA N & S C Y T H IA N IN V A D E R S 14 1 °
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 Qakas 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.
O f the history of these (Jaka satrapies inscrip
tions and coins give us a few details.
An inscription affords the bare mention of a
satrap of Kapiâ, 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 M ocl, the Indian
equivalent of the name Maues found on the coins.
The era in which the inscription is dated cannot at
J(f)f .
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 Mithwadates I ( 1 7 1 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
( 1 7 1 - 7 8 = 9 3 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 Kapica (Gandhara),
was taken by the Qakas from the family of
Eucratides, while the Kabul Valley remained in its
possession.
O f the gaka 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
o f 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
V<^.w ^>-' ^ . _. |
'SL|
^j
1UE MATHURA LION-CAPITAL. [Seepage 158. i- j ^

a . 1 —>■
Ijj
f(S)f <SL
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 Kapiga
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 o f which are imitated from the
currency o f certain Greek princes of the house ol
Euthydemus— the Stratos—while others are copied
from the coins o f a line of Hindu princes who
ruled at Muttra. W e know, therefore, that in
this district Qaka rule superseded that of both
Greek and Hindu princes.
Evidence of the existence of a Qaka power in
Central India and of its defeat by a Hindu king
is supplied by a Jain work called the Kalikachdrya-
kcitha or ‘ story of Kalikacharya.’ From it we
learn that the Qakas, 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
I® !'144 ANCIENT INDIA
<SL
era was really first used in Malwa is probable on
other grounds. A t 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 bv
another Qaka conqueror. This second era is
undoubtedly that which begins in 78 a . d ., and
it is still called the Qaka 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 Caka 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 Qakas, i.e. between 4the family of
Vonones ’ and 4the family of Maues.’ This con
nexion appears to be proclaimed by certain coins
on which Spalirises, ‘ the brother of the ki ng’
(i.e. presumably of Vonones) is definitely associ
ated with Azes, wrho 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
1 ( 1 )1 ' • <SL
^ f ^ R T H I A N & 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
o f 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 Qakas.
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 ol the early Christian Churcn as the
king to whose country St Thomas was sent as the
apostle of the ‘ Parthians,’ or, according to other
authorities, of the 4Indians,’ 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 Je ts 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
K
<V\
IP 146 A N C IE N T IN D IA
<SL
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, Qakas, 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 Hermasus, the last ruling
member of the line of Eucratides, to his conqueror,
the Kushana Kujula Kadphises. The conquest of
4India,’ the country of the Indus, was the work
of his successor, who is known from his coins
as Wirna 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-
| ( S ') '! ' ■
P A R T H IA N & S C Y T H IA N IN V A D E R S 147
vations which are now being made by the Archaeo

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 Qaka 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 (Jaka 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 o f native
origin, some o f them the result of invasions through
the 4Gates of India ’ on the north or north-west,
others the outcome of the struggle for supremacy
between the nationalities o f the continent itself.
Ilf - <SL
♦
N O T E S ON T H E IL L U ST R A T IO N S
T H E G I R N A R R O C K IN 1869
(Plate I, Frontispiece, and Plate V a , facing p. 150)
G the Sanskrit Girinagara, the ‘ H ill City,’ was in

ir n a r ,
ancient times the name of Junagadh in Kathiawar. It is now

applied to the sacred mountain on the east of the city. A t 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:— ( 1 ) Afoka,
the Maurya Emperor, c. 250 b . c . ; (2) Rudradaman, the
Mahakshatrapa or * Great Satrap ’ of Surashtva and Malava
(inscription dated in the year 72 of what was called at a later
date the £aka e r a = i 5 0 a .d. ) ; and (3) Skandagupta, the
Gupta Emperor (inscription bearing dates in the years 136,
1 37, and 138 of the Gupta era beginning in 3 19 a . d . = 455,
456, and 457 a .d. ) .
The illustration is from a photograph taken by D r James
Burgess in 1869. Since that date the rock ha3 been pro
tected from further injury by a roof. The fourteen edicts
of A fo k a 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 (v. pp.
10 5-8 ). The subjoined reproduction of an impression of the
second edict will serve to illustrate the beautiful Brahml writing
o f the period— the letters in the original are about two inches
140
(((f);); (flT
W ^/50 A N C IE N T IN D IA
in height— and the translation which is appended will show the
historical importance of these inscriptions.
T r a n s l it e r a t i o n
( i ) Savrata vijitamhi devanarn priyasa priyadasino rano

(2) evam api prachamtesu yatha Choda Pada Satiyaputo
Keralaputo a Tamba-
(3) pamni Amtiyako Yonaraja ye vapi tasa Amtiyakasa
samipam
( 4 ) rajano savrata devanam priyasa priyadasino rano dve
chiklchha kata
(5) 'manusa-chiklchha cha pasu-chiklchha cha osudhani cha
yani manusopagani cha
(6) pasoQ>a]gani cha yata yata nasti savrata harapitani cha
rohapitani cha
(7) mulani cha phalani cha yata yata nasti savrata harapitani
cha rohapitani cha
(8) pamthesu kupa cha khanapita vrachha cha rohapita
paribhogaya pasumanusanam.
T ra n slatio n
‘ 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 a6 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
alio 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 f f - tbv. ^
------ ___ ____________°
HR Nil Ml INSCRIPTION ON THE GIRNAR ROCK.

[&.•« page 150.
*
r»
\ ... "**&*'*■'* ir'4 4 '4 4 ^7 j JH l*

1/ ij • vf*,
Li$bO jL
rri^s }^ r jw. t \ / *' 1 */%
( Jyf ',\ lt
mv
£*v *
jt V* *’ Jmi- *
r v 7^ /
' ^ . ■ ■ . _ * _A*.
KHAROSHTHl 1NSCRIHION ON THE BASE OK THE

MATHURA I.ION-CA RITAl.. See fane :<>&•
o
N O T E S ON T H E IL L U S T R A T IO N S 15 1
* 'C O I N S O F A N C I E N T I N D I A
(Plate I I , facing p. 18 )
1. P unch- marked C oin

0
Obv. A number of symbols.
R ev. Traces of symbols. Silver.
T his represents the primitive form of Indian coinage, which
is little more than a currency of square or oblong pieces cut out
of a Hat 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. A ncient C ast C oin
Obv. Ratio Dhamapalasa—i (Coin) o f King Dharmapala,’

in very ancient BrShmi characters written from right to left.
R ev. 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 BrahmT alphabet was
originally written from right to left like Kharoshthl (v .
p. 18 ).
3. G uild T oken
Obv. Steel-yard; above, Dujaka or Dojaka, in Kharoshthl

characters.
R ev . 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 )1 (CT |
ANCIENT INDIA
4. P antaleon
** •
01>V. in incuse. Maneless lion to right; Greek legend,

Basdeos Pantahontos = 1 (Coin) o f King Pantaleon.’
Rev. A n Indian dancing g irl; Brahml legend. Rdji[ne~\
Pamtalevasa.l Bronze.
Pantaleon was one of the earliest Greek kings of Bactria 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. A ncient S truck C oin : S ingle D ie
Obv. A Cbaitya, or Buddhist shrine; to left, Vatasvaka in

Brahmi characters; to right, a standing figure worshipping;
beneath him, the symbol called nandi-pada, ‘ the footprint of
Nandi’ ( f iva’ s bull).
Rev. Blank. Bronze.
It has been suggested that the legend Vatasvaka may denote
the ‘ Fig-tree ’ ( vata ) branch of the A^vakas, a people of
North-Western India who may perhaps be the Assakenoi of
Alexander’s historians. The three early forms of Indian
coinage— punch-marked, cast, and struck on one side only—
are illustrated by Nos. 1, 2, and 5 respectively.
6. S ophytes
Obv. 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 = «(Coin)
of Sophytes.’ ~ Silver.
The coin is purely Greek in style. A t the time of
Alexander’s invasion, Sophytes, whose name in its Greek form
1 In the case of all the bilingual coins represented in this plate, the
Indian legend is an exact translation of the Greek.
'G
°i&X
/s.z'—"\V\
•( f ) ? ' (fiT
N O T E S O N T H E ILLU ST R A TIO N S 153°
id supposed to represent the Sanskrit Saubhuti, was ruling over

a kingdom in the Punjab. H e entertained Alexander with the
s p e c t a c l e of a light in which four of his dogs were matched
against a lion. A s his sporting propensities were so strong, it

is possible that the cock on his coins may be a lighting cock.
That sport was certainly popular in Ancient India.
7. A nT ialcidas
OId. Bust o f king to righ t; Greek legend, Basileos
nihephorou | Anttalkidou —* (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 ; Kharoshtln legend,
Maharajasa jayadbarasa | Amtiallhitasa. Stiver.
The type of Zeus enthroned is frequently found on the coins
o f the Greek princes o f the house o f Eucratides to which
Antialcidas belonged. For the Indian inscription in which he
is mentioned, v. p. 134.
8. M enander
Obv. Bust o f king thrusting a spear to le ft; Greek legend,
Basileos sdteros j Menandrou —* (Coin) of King Menander, the
Saviour.5
R ev . Athene hurling a thunder-bolt to righ t; Kharoshthi
legend, M aharajasa tratarasa | Menamdrasa. Silver.
Fo r Menander, v . p. 12 9 . H e belonged to the family of
Euthydemus, o f which the figure of Athene is the most
characteristic coin-type.
9. D emetrius
Obv. Head of elephant to right.
R ev. Caduceus; Greek legend, Basileos Demefriou, * (Coin)
of King Demetrius.5 Bronze.
*54 A N C IE N T IN D IA ^
io . M aues
Obv. Head of elephant to right.
R ev. Caduceus; Greek legend, Basilecs Mauou, ‘ (Coin) of
King Maues.’ Bronze.
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
£aka6 (v. p. 140).
11. E ucratides
O lv. Helmeted bust of king to right.
R ev. The.caps of the Dioscuri (Castor and Pollux) sur
mounted by stars; two palms; below, a monogram; Greek
legend, Basilebs Eukratidou = i (Coin) of King Eucratides.’
Silver.
1 2 . L iaka K usulaka
Obv. Helmeted bust to right.

R ev. The caps of the Dioscuri; two palms; below, a mono
gram ; Legend in Greek characters, [Ltâko [ K~\ozoulo.
Silver.
Similarly these coins show the transition of the district to

which they belong from the rule of the house of Eucratides to
the £akas. Liaka Kusulaka was a satrap and the father of Patika
whose inscription at Takshajila 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, (v. p. 14 1 ) .
1 3 . D haraghosha, K ing of A udumbara
Obv. Standing figure (probably of Vijvamitra, the rishi of the

third book of the Rig-veda) ; Kharoshthi legends: ( 1 ) Around,
(ClJNOTES ON THE ILLUSTRATIONS 155
'SL
Mahadevasa rana Dharaghoshasa | Odumbarisa = c { Coin) of the
Great Lord, King Dharaghosha | Prince of Audumbara ; (2 )
across, Vicvamitra.
R ev. Trident battle-axe ; Tree within railing; BrilhmT legend
(identical with the KharoshthT legend ( 1 ) on the Obverse).
Silver.
Audambara, or the country of the Udambaras, was situated

in that region of the Punjab in which the two alphabets of
Ancient India, BrilhmT and KharoshthT, were used concurrently.
T he coins are found in the neighbourhood of Pathitnkot in the
GurdjJspur District. They show the influence of the Greek
type of coinage. In fabric and style they somewhat resemble
the coins of Apollodotus, a prince of the house of Euthydemus,
and they are sometimes found in association with them, i heir
date would seem to be about 100 b . c .
f ( f ) | (g L !
i 56 ANCIENT INDIA
T H E B E S N A G A R CO LU M N
(Plate I I I , facing p. 134 , and Plate V I, facing p. 157)
This monument is best described in the words of D r J . H .

Marshall, C .I .E ., the Director General of Archaeology in
India. H e says ( Journal o f the Royal Astatic Society, 1909,
p. 10 53) :—
“ 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 18 77, and a description of it
(though not a wholly accurate one) appeared in his Report tor
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. 13 4 ). A specimen of the coinage of the Graeco-Indian
king, Antialcidas, is shown in Plate I I , 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
//££&■ ' G° i ^ X t p»
PLATE i C T
\vv®// ...
A
- 'J it. P ' ! J ^v^jpy/.'.r / —V <*££ •'*4." -^1 f ^ 1*v J l r,'iil> ^ ^Wh
» *• ' :'•<* £ ‘.<B*TlKTli- *
t i n w IE * & jjt\ *i^ ' jn f u j • '• 'f v 7* | M -y • i > »v i* * i
• N -ft? ' * ,^ ‘.t j '-•■•X .'; v&'^r **• ’ i Vj Fj l •' £*s va I^Kj
, J * y / *■»,,«■'v <V* Ijir ‘. _ » ' ’ i •v1 " “ ' • / ♦.. _'. '• * ! •' f f l ' ‘ iw
URAHMI INSCRIPTIONS ON THE RESNAC.AR COLUMN.
[See page 157.

/A,—<V\
f (f )l ' (CT
^ sS w O T E S ON THE ILLUSTRATIONS 157 iJ
the readings and interpretations proposed by D r Bloch, Dr Fleet,
Prof. Barnett, and Prof. Venis, in various articles which will be
found in the Journal o f the Royal Asiatic Society tor the years
1909 and 19 10 .
T r a n sliter a tio n
(1) Devadevasa Va[sude]vasa Garudadhvaje ayam

(2) karite i[ a ] Heliodorena bhaga-
(3 ) vatena Diyasa putrena Takhasilakena
(4) Yona-dutena agatena maharajasa
(5) Amtalikitasa upa[nY]ta sakasam rano
(6) KasiputjYJasa BhSgabhadrasa trStarasa
(7) vasena [chatu^dasemna rSjena vadhamSnasa
( 1 ) Trini amuta-padsni— [su ] anuthitani

(2) nayamti svaga dama c 5 ga apramada.
T ran slatio n
“ This Garuda-column of Vasudeva (Vishnu) the god ot

gods, was erected here by Heliodorus, a worshipper of V ishnu,
the son of Dion, and an inhabitant o f Taxila, who came as
Greek ambassador from the Great King Antialcidas to King
Kafiputra Bhagabhadra, the Saviour, then reigning prosperously
10 the fourteenth year of his kingship.”
“ Three immortal precepts (footsteps) . . . when practised

lead to heaven— self-restraint, charity, conscientiousness.”
‘ e°ifcX
111 158 ANCIENT INDIA

<SL
«
T H E M A T H U R A L IO N -C A P IT A L
(Plate IV , facing p. 14 2, and Plate V b, facing p. 150)
This capital of hard red sandstone must originally have sur

mounted a pillar. It was discovered by the late Pandit
Bhagvanlsl IndrajT at Muttra, where it was built into the steps
of an altar devoted to the worship of Qltala, or the goddess
of small-pox. The Pandit was also the first to decipher the
KharoshthI inscriptions with which the capital is completely
covered and to recognize their great historical value (■ u. p. 14 2 ).
H e bequeathed the capital to the British Museum, where it may
now be seen in the Gallery of Religions. The following illus
tration represents the base of the capital where it was joined to
the pillar. It contains the beginning of the chief inscription.
The transliteration and translation are, with a few slight changes
in the former, borrowed from the edition of D r F . W . Thomas
in the Epigraphia lndica, vol. ix. p. 1 3 5 '
T ransliteration
(1) Mahachhatravasa Rajulasa

(2) agramahish(r)i-Ayasia-
(3) Komusaa dhitra
(4) Kharaostasa yuvarana
(5) matra Nadasi-Akasa. . .
T ranslation
««By the Chief Queen of the Great Satrap Rajula, daughter

of Ayasi-Komusa, mother o f the Heir Apparent Kharaosta,
Nandasi-Akas5 (by name) ” [associated with the other
members of her family a relic of the Holy Sage, Buddha,
was deposited in the stupa].
1 " k ■"
NOTES ON THE ANCIENT GEOGRAPHY

OF INDIA
(See the map at the iZnel)
T he names o f Peoples and Countries are printed in capitals.

In Ancient India they were identical, as they were in Ancient
Britain in the time of Julius Csesar. The names ot Mountains
and Rivers are printed in ordinary type.
AchirAvatT, v. (^ a k y a .
A kara , v. M alava .
Amaravati, v. List of Cities, No. i (p. i 7 2 )*
A ndhra , the name of a tribe of Southern India inhabiting
the Telugu country between the rivers Krishna (Kistna) and
Godavari which is often called Andhra-deja, the ‘ Country cf
the Andhras.’ They are mentioned in one ot the later books
of the Aitareya Brahmana (possibly c. 500 b . c . )• 1 hey are
described by Pliny (Historia Naturalise vi. 2 I - 2 3 J> wll°
probably quotes from Megasthenes (r. 300 B.c.), as being, next
to the Prasii, the most powerful of the nations ot India. I heir
relations to the Maurya Empire are uncertain ; but the manner
in which they are mentioned in the inscriptions of Aôka (c.
250 n.c.) seems to indicate that they acknowledged its suzerainty
while retaining a certain degree of independence. On the
decline of the Maurya Empire their power greatly increased;
and early in the second century b . c . their dominions had ex
tended westwards across the Deccan to the District of Nasik
in the Bombay Presidency. It is probable also that at this
1&0
rti vct
160 ANCIENT INDIA
period they came into collision with the kingdom of Magadha,
now under the £ungas. The dynasty under which the Andhras
won this great empire bears the general name of Cataviihana and
many of its kings are called £atakarni. The dynastic list is
given in the Puranas. Its total duration is usually stated to be
4 5 6 or 4 6 0 years and the number of reign3 thirty. I f we
suppose, therefore, that the dynasty began about 2 2 0 b . c ., it
would have ended about 2 4 0 a . d . ; and this is probably a fairly
correct statement. A t various intervals during this period we
are enabled from inscriptions, coins, and literature to trace the
history of the Andhras with some precision. In literature they
are frequently associated with their northern neighbours, the
Kalingas, as also in the Hathigumphil inscription of Kharavela,
the king of Kalinga, c. 1 5 0 b . c . But their most important
historical monuments belong to the first half of the second
century a . d. ( c. 1 2 0 - 1 5 0 a . d . ) , the period during which they
came into conflict in Western India with the Pahlava and (âka
satraps of the Kushana Empire.
The decline of the Andhra Empire began about the end of
the second century a . d ., when the western and south-western
provinces passed into the hands of another dynasty of (âtakarnis,
the Chutu family, to whom the designation Andhra-bhrityas, or
‘ servants of the Andhras,’ is specially applied. About the
middle o f the third century a . d ., the Chutu family was sup
planted by the Abhiras in the west and by the Kadambas in the
south-west, while the £atav 5 hana family, which had continued to
hold Andhra-defa in the east, was succeeded by a Rajput dynasty.
For the chief centres of Andhra rule, v . List of Cities— No. 1,
AmarSvatF; No. 12, Pratishthana; and No. 16, VaijayantF,
(pp. 172, 174, 17 5 ).
A nga, the Districts of Monghyr and BhSgalpur in N . Bengal.

Its capital was Champa, near the modern town of Bhagalpur on
the Gaoges.
( K 1& O T E S O N G E O G R A P H Y O F IN D IA i6i(fi
A pa ran ta th e ‘ W e s te r n B o r d e r ,’ th e an cien t nam e o f the

N o r th e r n K o n k a n , th e n o rth e rn p o rtio n o f th e strip or c o u n try
ly in g b etw een th e W e s te r n G h a t s an d th e se a. I t s cap ital w a s
(^ u rp arak a, th e m o d ern S o p S r a in th e T h a n a D is t r ic t o f B o m b a y .
A r y a v a r t a , th e ‘ L a n d o f th~ A r y a n s / v. p. 5 ° -
A sik n T , th e ‘ B la c-t ; R i v e r / th e V e d i c nam e o f th e riv e r w h ic h

w a s a fte rw a rd s calleta in S a n s k r it th e C h a n d r a b h a g 5 . I t is th e
A c e s in e s o f th e h isto rian s o f A l e x a n d e r an d th e m od ern C h e n a b .
H e s y c h iu s o f A l e x a n d r i a , th e au th o r o f a c e le b ra te d G reek
le x ic o n (p ro b a b ly in th e fifth c e n tu ry a . d .) sa y s th at th e nam e
C h a n d ra b h a g a w a s c h a n g e d b y A le x a n d e r . I n its G r e e k fo rm ,
Sandrophagos, it m ig h t be in te rp re te d to m ean th e ‘ D e v o u r e r o f
A l e x a n d e r .’ H e th e r e fo r e p re fe r re d th e o ld e r n am e A sik n T ,
the G r e e k fo rm o f w h ic h , A c e s in e s , m ig h t be su p p osed to m ean
th e ‘ H e a le r .’
A v a n t i , <u. M a lava .
A yodhya, v. L i s t o f C it ie s , N o . 2 (p . 1 7 2 ) .
B h n g u - k a c c h a , ?>. L i s t o f C itie s , N o . 3 ( p . I 7 2 )*
B rah m arsh i - de ^ a , th e ‘ C o u n tr y o f th e H o ly Sages/ v.

p. 5 0 .
B r a h m a v a r t a , th e ‘ H o l y L a n d / v p 5 1.
(^ ak ala, v. L i s t o f C it ie s , N o . 4 (p . 1 7 2 ) .
( / a k y a , one o f th e n u m erou s K s h a t r iy a c la n s liv in g in th e lo w
lan d s a t th e fo o t o f th e H im a la y a s in w h a t i6 n o w k n o w n as th e
N e p a le se T a r a i. I t is c e le b r a te d as th e c la n to w h ic h B u d d h a
b e lo n g e d . It s t e r r ito r y w a s b o rd e re d on th e n o rth by th e
m ou n tain s, on th e east b y th e r iv e r R o h in T , an d on th e w e st an d
so u th b y th e r iv e r A c h i r J v a t i ( R a p t i ) . I t s c a p ita l w a s K a p ila -
va stu , in th e n e ig h b o u rh o o d o f w h ic h w a s L u m b in i- v a n a , o r th e
* G ro ve o f L u m b in i/ w h e re Buddha w a s b o rn (v . p. 67).
L
(at
162 ANCIENT INDIA
The Cakjas were an aristrocratic oligarchy owing some allegi
ance probably to the kingdom of Kosala.
Champa, v . A nga .
Chandrabhaga, v . Asikni.
CharmanvatT, the river Chambal, the largest tributary of the
Jumna.
C hedi, the name of a people mentioned iD the Rig-veda. In
later times they occupied the northern portion of the Central
Provinces.
C hera , v. K erala .
C hola, a Tamil people of Southern India from whom the

Coromandel Coast receives its name. (Coromandel = Sanskrit
Choja-mandala, the ‘ Province o f the Cholas’ ). They are
mentioned in the inscriptions of Aipoka (c. 250 b . c .) among the
independent peoples living beyond the limits of the , Maurya
Empire. They occur also in the Mahsbbarata. Other ancient
literature (Tamil, Greek, and Latin) testifies to the sea-borne
traffic which was carried on between the Coromandel Coast and
Alexandria and thence to Europe. Evidence of the trade with
Rome is afforded by the numerous Roman coins which have
been discovered in various districts of Southern India. Among
them has been found the gold piece which was struck by the
Emperor Claudius (4 1-5 4 a . d . ) to commemorate the conquest
of Britain. Further evidence of the trade between Southern
India and the West is supplied by words. Our pepper comes to
us from the Tamil pippalt through the Greek peperi.
Crjivastl, v . List o f Cities, No. 5 (p. 17 3 ) '
C urasena , the region of Muttra in the United Provinces.
£iirparaka, v . A paranta .
Cutudrl, the Vedic name for the Sutlej, called by the Greeks
*( $ ) | (fif
Vss^ fO T E S ON G E O G R A P H Y OF IN D IA 163
Zadadrus or Zaradrus. Like all the great rivers of the Punjab,
the Sutlej has changed its course in historical times, and some
ot its deserted channels are still to be traced. A t present it is
a tributary of the Indus ; but in the time of Alexander the
Great it wa6 probably an independent river flowing into the
Rann of Cutch.
D a k s h i n a p a t h a , the Deccan, the ‘ Southern Region’
(Sanskrit dahshina, Prakrit dakhhtna = ‘ south ’ ) as opposed to
Uttarapatha, the ‘ Northern Region.’
Dhunyakataka, v. List of Cities, No. i. AmaravatF (p. 172).
DrishadvatT, the ‘ Stony River,’ v . p. 5 1.
G andhara , v. p. 81.
Gangs, the Ganges, the most celebrated of the sacred rivers
of India. It is only mentioned once directly in the Rig-veda,
and that in a late passage. This fact indicates that the Aryan
settlers had not yet occupied the plain of the Ganges when the
hymns of the Rig-veda were composed.
Girinagara, v. p. 14 9 .
Girivraja, v . M agadha.
Godavari, the river of Southern India which still bears the

same name.
^ Gomati, the name in the Rig-veda of the present river
Gumal, a tributary of the Indus.
H astin ap u r, <u. List of Cities, No. 6. Indraprastha (p. 17 3 ).
Himalaya, the ‘ Abode of Snow,’ called in the Rig-veda
imavant, the ‘ Snowy Mountain,’ and by the Greeks Imaus,
miaus, or Hemodus, all more or less successful attempts to
reproduce in the Greek alphabet the Prakrit equivalents of the
Vedic name.
Iravatl, v. Parushni.
t
(CT
K accha, the ‘ Shore,’ the country which still b'ars the same
name, though it is now usually spelt Cutch. The word seems
to be a Prakrit form of the Sanskrit kaksba, ‘ a girdle.’
K a j i the modern Benares, a small kingdom the possession

o which was sometimes in dispute between its more power
ful neighbours Kosala (Oudh) and Videha (Tirhut) at the
period when Buddha lived. It is usually associated with
lvosala.
, KalIMGA’ the country lying along the east coast of India

between the Mahanadl and the Godavari. Kalinga was
conquered by Apoka (v. p. 106) ; but on the decline of the
Maurya Empire it again became independent (v . p. u 6 ) .
K amarupa , the ancient name o f Assam.
Kampilya, v. P anchala .
Kapilavastu, v. C akya .
KaupambI, v. V atsa .
Kaven, the Cauvery River of Southern India, the * Ganges

of the South.’ 6
K erala , also written Chera, an ancient kingdom o f Southern

India comprising the modern Malabar, Cochin, and Travancore.
o fA p o k T ° f ,t8 ^ aPPCarS 3S Kera,aputra in the Ascriptions
K ongu- deâ , the Districts of Salem and Coimbatore in the

Madras Presidency.
K osala, a kingdom lying to the east of Panchala and to the

west of Videha. It is the modern Province of Oudh in the
mted Provinces. Its chief cities were Ayodhya or Saketa
and Cravasti.
Krishna, the ‘ Black River,’ the modern Kistna,

1(1 )| <8L
NOTES ON GEOGRAPHY OF INDIA 765
K ri VI, <1;. P a S c h Xl A.
Krumu, the name in the Rig-veda lor the modern

Kurram, a western tributary of the Indus.
Kubha, the name in the Rig-veda for the Kabul Rivet.
K u ru , the name of the most important people of India ^ t
time of the Brahmanas. Kuru-kshetra, or the ‘ Fie 0 ie
K urus’ (n. p. 47) may be described as the Eastern ha t 0
State of Patiala and the Delhi division of the Punjab. 1 he
holy land of Brahmiivarta lay within its boidei on the no
west, and its eastern limit was formed by the R hei umna.
But the territories occupied by the Kurus extended to the east
far beyond the limits of Kurukshetra. I hen ancient capita
Hastinapura was situated on the Ganges in the Meeiut istuct
of the United Provinces. They must, therefore, have occupied
the northern portion of the doab, or the region between t e
Jumna and the Ganges, having as their neighbours on the e..st
the North Pahchalas, and on the south the South I anchsln6, w o
held the rest of the doab as far as the land of the Vatsas, the
corner where the two rivers meet at PraySga (Allahaba )•
T he Kurus and Pahchalas are constantly associated in early
Sanskrit literature and the name Kuru-Panchr.la is often used to
denote their united countries.
For the later and more celebrated capital ox the Kurus, 1 .
Fist of Cities, No. 6 , Indraprastha (p. 173)*
L.anka sometimes denotes Ceylon, and sometimes the city in
the island which was the capital of the demon Rsvana, whose
abduction of Situ and subsequent destruction by Rnma form part
of the story of the Ratnayana.
L icchavi , v . Vai5all.
M adhya- de^ a , the * Middle Country,' v. p. 50.
M agadha, So u th ern B ih a r , the Districts of G a y a , and Patna

| I -i| 66 ANCIENT INDIA
<SL
ft
n Bengal, a kingdom of the greatest political importance in the
history of Ancient and Medieval India. The rise of the
Maurya Empire of Magadha is described in Chapter V II.
(p. 9 9 )* Once again in later history did Magadha become the
centre of a great empire, under the Gupta Dynasty, the establish
ment of which is marked by its era which begins in the year
3 19 a .d . The ancient capital of Magadha was Girivraja or
Rajagriha, the site of which is marked by ruins at the village of
Rajgirin the Patna District. The later capital was Pataliputra,
for which v. List of Cities No. n (p. 174 ).
Mahanadi, the * Great River/ which still retains its name.

It flows through the Orissa Division of Bengal and was the
northern limit of the ancient kingdom of Kalihga.
M aharashtra , the Maratha Country, the Districts of Nasik,

Poona, Satara, and the Kolhapur State in the Bombay
Presidency. The inhabitants of this region are called Rathikas
(Sanskrit Rashtrika) in the inscriptions of A<poka and are
associated with the Pitenikas or people of Paithan.
M alava . ( i ) Malwn in Central India. It was sometimes

divided into two kingdoms: Avanti or W. Malava with its
capital Ujjayini (Ujjain), and Akara or E . Malava with its
capital Vidi^'a (Bhllsa).
(2) (Also spelt Malaya, or Malaya) a people living in the
Punjab and known from Sanskrit literature. They are the Malli
of the historians of Alexander the Great.
The name was probably that of a tribe which had settlements
in different parts of India.
M aru , the Thar or Great Indian Desert of Rajputana.
Mathura, v. List of Cities, No. 9 (p. 17 4 ).

M atsya , the name of a people mentioned in the Rig-veda.
In the period of the MahabhSrata they lived to the south of the
11)1
Kurus and t<9 the west of the (îirasenas. i neii country is
the modern State of Alwar in Rajputana and some adjacent
districts.
Mithila, v. List of Cities, No. io (p. *74)*
Narmada, the modern river Narbada.
N an ancient kingdom on the south of the Vindhya
ish a d h a ,
Mountains. It lay to the south of Malava and to the north

west ofVidarbha. It is best known as the realm of King Nula,
in the ‘ Story of Nala,’ an episode of the Llahabharata.
a people of Southern India having as their capital

P allava,
Kanchl (Conjeeveram).
P anchala, a people who appear to be identical with the
Krivis mentioned in the Rig-veda. The name wouid suggest
that they were a confederation of five tribes (Sanskrit paticha,
‘ five’ ). In history they are sometimes divided into two
kingdoms— South Panchala, the country between the Jumna
and Ganges to the east and south-east of the Kurus and
(ûrasenas, and North Panchala, districts of the United
Provinces lying east of the Ganges and north-west of the
Province of Oudh. The capital of South Panchala was
Kampilya, now represented by ruins at the village of Kampil in
the Farrukhabad District. It appears in the MahabhSrata as
the capital ot King Drupada, the father of Krishna or DraupadT,
who became the wife of the five sons of Pantlu. be capital
of North Panchala was Ahicchatra, also mentioned in the
Mahabharata and now a ruined site still bearing the same name
near the village of Ratnnagar in the Bareilly District.
I he Panchalas are often associated with the K u ru s; v.
K uru.
1 an^ya ,
an ancient people occupying the modem Districts of
Madura and i. innevelly in the extreme south of India. I hey
■ GcW \
HI
Vs^ 168 ANCIENT INDIA
&
are mentioned by Greek and Latin authors and also by the
Emperor A foka in his edicts.
Paropanisus, sometimes written Paropamisus, the Greek
name tor the Hindu Kush which was also sometimes called the
Indian Caucasus. It is the Greek form of Paruparesanna, the
name which the people o f this region bear in the Babylonian '
and Susian versions of the inscription of Darius at Behistun
(v . p. 84).
Parushru, the name in the Rig-veda of the river which is
called in later Sanskrit Iravatl, the modern Ravi. It is the
Hydraotes of the Greeks. It is celebrated in the Rig-veda in
connexion with the victory of Sudas over the ten kings.
Pafcaliptura, <u. List of Cities, No. n (p. 17 4 ).
Pratishthana, v . List of Cities, No. 12 (p. 174 ).
PraySga, v. List of Cities, No. 13 (p. t75) .
Rsjagyiha, v. M agadha.
Rohini, v. £ akya .
Sac'amra, v. V jdeha.
S amatata , the ‘ Even Shore,’ the ancient name of the

Ganges delta.
Sarasvati, the * River of Lakes,’ v. p. 5 1.
Sindhu, the ancient name of the Indus, the river from which
India derives its name (v . p. 24).
S indhu- S auvIra , the lower valley of the Indus, approxi
mately the modern Province of Sind. The two parts of the
compound are often used separately as names having much the
same meaning.
Sipra, v. List of Cities, No. 15 . Ujjayini (p. 17 5 ) .
S urashtra , the < Good Kingdom,’ Kathiawar and a part of
' G° l A \
ON GEOGRAPHY OF INDIA l69

.vS&y'
Gujarst in Western India. T h e name survives in the modern
name Surat.
Suvilatu, the « River of Good Dwellings, the name
Rig-veda for the Swat, a tributary of the lva u
Takshafila, v . L ist of Cities, No. 14 (p* 1 7 5 )'

T amraparni. ( i ) the Sanskrit name o f a town in >
sometimes used in a wider sense to denote the w o e
In this latter sense it occurs in its Pali form am .g
Buddhist literature and in the inscription^ of 9° a* T-jm-
known to G reek and Latin writers as Taprobane. ( 2 )
braparni, a river in the Tinnevelly Dist. of Madras.
T ap!, the Sanskrit name o f the modern river T sp ti
Western India.
"UjjayinT, u. L ist of Cities, No. 15 (p> 17 5 ) *
Vai95li, the modern Bas3rh in the Hajlpur subdivision whic
occupies the south-western corner of the Muzaffarpui is^r
of Bengal. T h e ancient site is marked by a large moun
ruins and by a magnificent uninscribed pillar of A90ka w ic
is surmounted by the figure o f a lion. It is describe >
Chinese Buddhist pilgrim, Hiuen Tsiang, who visited t u sj
early in the seventh century a . d . In the sixth cenur) B
V aifSl! was the seat o f a small but powerful aristocratic 0 igarc iy
o f nobles belonging to the Licchavi clan which seems to
been a branch o f the V riji tribe. T h e V rijis formed a c ° n
federacy, and the country o f the V riji* seems to have me u e
not only Vaiâl! but also the larger adjoining reaim ° f 1 e a‘
It was at Kundapura, the modern Basukund, a suburb of a■ * '*l>
that Vardhamana Jnstaputra, the founder of Jainism, was .on.
Vaiâl! was famous also in the annals or Buddhism , an it was
here that the Second Buddhist Council was held a hunure
years after Buddha’ s death for the purpose o f correcting ceitain
H I <SL
170 ANCIENT INDIA
abuses which had grown up in the doctrine and practices of the
religious community. Vai9alF, situated near the opposite bank of
the Ganges, was a standing menace to Pataliputra and stood in
the way of the expansion of the kingdom of Magadha. It was
accordingly reduced to submission by Ajatajatru, the king of
Magadha, shortly after Buddha’ s death. The removal of this
obstacle cleared the way for the extension of the political
influence of Magadha not only over Videha (Tirhut) but also
over Kosala fOudh), and is therefore an important fact in the
growth of the empire of Magadha.
Vaijayantl, v. List of Cities, No. 16 (p. 17 5 ).
V anga , the oid form of the modern name Bengal. It
denoted the western and central districts of the present province,
viz. Murshidabad, Birbhum, Burdwan, and Nadia.
V atsa , the region of PraySga (v. List of Cities, No. 13 ) , or
Allahabad in the United Provinces. Its capital was Kau95mbF
which has been identified, though not with absolute certainty,
with Kosam, the name borne by two adjacent villages ( Kosam
Inam and Kosam Khiraj) in the Allahabad District.
V idarbha, the modern Berar, now attached to the Central

Provinces. It was the kingdom of BhFma, the father of
DamayantF, the heroine of the * Story of Nala.’ The tradition
of a war between Magadha and Vidarbha is preserved in
Kalidasa s historical drama M alavikagnim itra (c. 400 a . d ).
Kalidasa, like Shakespeare, was probably careless about details
o f ancient history or geography ; and some of the information
which we derive from the M alavikagnim itra is no doubt inexact.
If we may correct and supplement this information from other
sources, we may suppose that early in the second century b . c .,
when the Cuhga king Pushyamitra was reigning over
Magadha with his 6on Agnimitra as viceroy of the Province
of Malava, there was a war between Malava and Vidarbha,
111
<sl
which was at that period probably a province ot the Andhra
Empire.
V ideha, Tirhut or Northern Bihar. It probably comprised
the districts of Champaran, Muzaffarpur, and Darbhanga in the
Province of Bengal. In its south-west corner (the Hajipur
subdivision of the Muzaffarpur District) lay the little state of
Vaiyall. Videha was separated from Magadha (S . Bihar) by the
Ganges, and from Kosala (Oudh) by the river Sadanira,
probably the Great Gandak. It was the realm of King
Janaka, the father of Sita, the heroine of the Ramayana. Its
capital was Mithila.
Vidifit, v . M alava .
Vipa? or Vipa?5, the Hyphasis of the Greeks and the
modern Beas.
^ indhya, the range of mountains still bearing the same nanu.
B is usually regarded in Sanskrit literature as the natural
boundary between Northern and Southern India.
Vitasta, the name in the Rig-veda for the Hydaspes of
Alexander’ s historians and the modern river Jhelum. Latin
classical writers use * Hydaspes,’ like * Britain, to denote
some far remote region on the confines of the habitable w oild;
e'g* Horace ( Odes I. x x ii) :
qua; loca fabulosus
Lambit Hydaspes.
1 hese geographical references are not always strictly correct,
as, for example, V irgil’ s * Medus Hydaspes ( Georgies, iv. 2 1 1 )
which would place the river in Persia.
v *'Jb v . Vaifall.
^ amuna, the ‘ Tw in R iver,’ the Jumna, the sister of the
Ganges. It is mentioned three times in the Rig-veda. A t
that period it probably marked the extreme limit to which the
Aryan settlements had yet extended.
<SL
ANCIENT INDIA
«V
L I S T O F C IT IE S IN D IC A T E D B Y N U M E R A L S
I N T H E M A P ( at the E nd)
i. Amaravati, ‘ the Abode of the Immortals,’ a village in

the Guntur District of Madras on the Krishna (Kistna)
River. ^ Near it stood Dhanyakataka (Dharanikotta) one of
the capitals o f Andhra-deja, ‘ the Country o f the Andhras.’
Amaravati i8 famous for its Buddhist stupa, once probably the
most magnificent of all the monuments of India, but now ruined
by the vandalism of modern times. Some of its sculptures in
” _hite marble are preserved on the great staircase of the British
Museum and others in the Madras Museum.
2. Ayodhya, the modern Ajodhya, a sacred town on the

Gogra River in the Fyzabad District of the United Provinces.
It was the capital of the kingdom of Kosala (Oudh), and the
residence of King D af aratha, the father of Rama the hero of
the Ramayana. Oudh (Awadh) is simply the modern form of
the name.
In Buddhist literature Saketa appears as the capital of
Kosala, and as one of the largest cities of India. It has been
supposed that either Saketa and Ayodhya were identical or that
they were adjacent cities like London and Westminster.
3. Bhrigu-kaccha, ‘ the Shore o f Bhrigu ’ a legendary king,
latei spelt Bharu-kaccha, the Greek Barugaza and the modern
Broach, a town in the Bombay Presidency near the mouth of the
Narmada (Narbada). In ancient times it was a famous sea-port.
4- Cakala, the modern Sialkot in the Lahore Division of the
I unjab, was the capital of the Madras who are known in the
later Vedic period (Bribadaranyaka Upanishad). £akala-dvipa,
or the 6inland ’ of £akala, was the name for the doab, or land
lying between the two rivers Chandrabhaga (Chenab) and
IravatF (R avi). £akala was the capital, or one of the capitals,
■ G° i & X
m)}
^ # O T E S ON G E O G R A P H Y OF IN D IA 173
<sl
o f the G reek kings o f the House o f Euthydemus, and the icsidence
of Menander (M ilinda) ( v . p. 1 3 0 ) . A fter the invasion o f the
Hunas (H uns) in the last quarter o f the fifth century a . d., it
became the capital o f Toram ana and his son Mihirakula.
5. ^ravastl, the modern Set Mahet in the Gonda D istrict c f
Oudh, a city o f the kingdom o f Kosala intimately associated
with the teaching o f Buddha. M any o f his discourses are said
to have been delivered while he was residing there in the
monastery o f the Jetavana, a large park which had been par-
chased for him from Prince Jeta by the wealthy merchant
Anathapindika. T h e price was represented by the number of
the square coins o f the period (*u. Plate I I . i)> which when
placed edge to edge sufficed to cover the ground. 'Phis
purchase is the subject o f a bas-relief on the great Buddhist
stupa at Bharhut, in the Nagod State of Central India.
6. Indraprastha, the modern Indarpat near D elhi, was the

second capital o f the Kurus. According to the story told
in the Mahabharata, the blind king, DhritarSshtra, with his
hundred sons, continued to rule at the old capital Hastinapuia
on the Ganges, while he assigned to his nephews, the five
Pandus, a district on the Jumna where they founded Indra
prastha. T h e * F ield of the K urus,’ or the region o f D elhi,
was the scene o f the subsequent war between the Kurus and the
Psndus when, according to the epic in its present form, all the
nations o f India were ranged on one side or the o th er; and it
has been the great battlefield o f India ever since, as it forms a
narrow strip o f habitable country lying between the Himalayas
And the Indian Desert through which every invading Army
from the Punjab must force its way. Because o f this strategical
importance D elhi became the capital o f India .under the Mughal
emperors, who came into India by land from the north-west.
T h e British, on the other hand, who came by sea made their
earliest capitals near the coast,
III 174 ANCIENT INDIA
<SL
7. Kanchi, the modern Conjeeveram [Kanch't-puram} in the
Chingleput District of Madras. It was the capital of the
Pallavas.
8. Kanyakubja, the modern Kanauj in the Farrukhabad
District of the United Provinces, an ancient city famous in
Indian history. T. he fanciful derivation of its name from the
two Sanskrit words, kanya ‘ a maiden’ and hubja ‘ hunchback/
gave rise to the legend, told in the first book of the
Rsmayana, of the hundred daughters of King Kiânabha who
were condemned to this deformity by the curse of the rishi
Vayu as a punishment for declining his offer of marriage. The
story is also told, with variations, by the Chinese Buddhist
pilgrim, Hiuen Tsiang, who visited the court of King
Harshavardhana at Kanauj early in the seventh century a . d.
9. Mathura, which still retains its ancient name now usually
written Muttra, is a city in the Agra Division of the United
Provinces. It was the capital of the Qurasenas, and, as being
the birthplace of the god Krishna, it was held sacred by the
Hindus. It was governed by native princes, whose names are
known from their coins, in the second century b . c., and it
passed from them into the possession of one of the families of
Caka satraps, c. 100 b . c. ( v . the Lion Capital of Mathura on
Plate IV , and the note on p. 158 ). Under the Kushana
Empire it was an important religious centre of the Jains.
Mithifa, the capital of the kingdom of Videha (Tirhut or
jo .
N. Bihar) and the residence of King Janaka, the father of Sita
the heroine of the Ramiiyana.
1 1 . Pataliputra, the modern Patna, the capital of Magadha
under the Maurya Empire. It is described by Megasthenes,
the Greek ambassador of Seleucus, king of Syria, who visited
the court of Chandragupt3, c. 300 b. c . (v. p 10 2 ).
12. Pratishthana, the modern Paithan on the Godavari" in
\ ^ g p V E S ON GEOGRAPHY OF INDIA 175
the Aurangabad District of the Nizam’ s Dominions, [t was
the capital of the western provinces of the Andhra Empire.
13. Prayaga, the modern Allahabad in the United Provinces.
It is the sacred region where Ganges and Jumna meet.
14. Takshapla, the T a x ila °o f the Greeks. Its site is
marked by miles of ruins near Shahdheri or Dher i Shahan, the
‘ Mound of the Kings/ in the Rawalpindi District of the Punjab.
It was the most celebrated University town of Ancient India
where students learnt ‘ the three Vedas (R ig, Yajur, and Saman)
and the eighteen arts.' The district of Tkashaplii sometimes
formed an independent kingdom, as in the days of Alexander
the G reat; but it is often regarded as a province of the kingdom
of Gandhara.
15. Ujjayini, is on the Sipra, a tributary of the Charmanvati
(Chambal), the modern Ujjain in Gwalior, Central India. It
was the capital of Avanti or W . Malava, and the residence of
the viceroy of the western provinces both under the Maurya and
the Gupta Empires. Owing to its position it became a great
commercial centre. Here met the three routes, from the
Western Coast with its sea-ports (/urpltraka (Sop 3 ra) and
Bhrigukaccha (Broach), from the Deccan, and from (/ravastl in
Kosala (Oudh). It was also a great centre of science and
literature. The Hindu astronomers reckoned their first
meridian of longitude from Ujjayini, and the dramas of Kalidasa
were performed on the occasion of the Spring Festival before its
viceregal court, c. 400 a . d.
16. Vai jayanti, the modern BanavSsi in the N. Kanara

District of the Bombay Presidency. It was the capital of the
south-western provinces of the Andhra Empire. It was after
wards held by the Chutu family of Catakarnis and from them it
passed to the Kadambas.
ill . ii.
SHORT BIBLIOGRAPHY #
G E N E R A L SU RV EYS
The Imperial Gazetteer of India (new edition) : The Indian

Empire, Vol. I I. Historical. Oxford, 1908.
Pp. 1 -88. Fleet, J. F ., Epigraphy.
Pp. IOI-13 4 . Smith, V. A ., Archeology o f the
Historical Period.
Pp. 13 5 -15 4 . Smith, V . A ., Numismatics.
Pp. 155-20 5. Burgess, J ., Architecture.
Pp. 206-269. Macdonell, A. A ., Sanskrit
Literature.
Pp. 270-302. Smith, V . A ., Early History o f
Northern India.
Gazetteer of the Bombay Presidency.
I. i. Bombay, 1896.
Pp. 1- 14 7 . Bhagvanlal Indraji, Early History o f
Gujarat.
I. ii. Bombay, 1896.
Pp. 13 2 -2 7 5 . Bhandarkar, R . G ., History o f the
Dekkan.
(Second edition. Bombay, 1895.)
P P. 277-584. Fleet, J . F ., Dynasties o f the Kanarese
Districts.
Grundriss der indo-arischen Philologie und Altertumskunde.
Strassburg.
I. 1 1 . Biihler, G ., Indische Palaographie, 1896.
176
l A
SHORT BIBLIOGRAPHY 177
<SL
II. la. Bioomfield, M., The Atharvaveda and the
Gopatha-Brahmana, 1 899.
II. 3b. Rapson, E. J., Indian Coins, 1897.
Grundriss der iranischen Philologie. Strassburg. I I . Band.
Litteratur, Geschichte uqd Kultur, 1896-1904.
Pp. 5 4" 7 4* Wcissbach, F . H ., Die altpersischen
Inschnften.
I ’p* 37 1-39 4 . Geiger, W ., Geographic von Iran.
Pp- 3 9 5 " 5 5 °- Justi, F ., Geschichte Irans von den
d/testen Zeiten bis zum Ausgang der Sasaniden.
T H E L I T E R A T U R E S O F A N C IE N T I N D IA
Hopkins, E. W ., The Great Epic o f India. New York, 19 0 1.

Kaegi, A ., The Rigveaa. (English trans. by Arrowsmith.)
Boston, 1886.
Macdonell, A . A ., A History o f Sanskrit Literature. London,
1900.
von Schroeder, L ., Indiens Literatur und Cultur. Leipzig,
1887.
^'internitz, M ., Geschichte der indischen Litteratur. Leipzig.
I. Band. Einleitung— D er Veda— Die volkstiivdichen Epen
und die Pur anas. (Zweite Ausgabe.) 1909.
II. Band, Erste Halfte. Die Buddhistische Litteratur.
I9I3*
H IS T O R Y , G E O G R A P H Y , A N D A N T IQ U IT IE S
( B actria )
Gardner, P ., The Coins o f the Greek and Scythii Kings o f Bactria
and India. (British Museum Catalogue.) London,
1886.
R a w lin so n , H . G ., Bactria. London, 19 12 .
M
|I| <SL
^ ^ j 78 ANCIENT INDIA
( P ersia , S yr ia , and P arthia )
Babelon, E ., Les Perses Achemenides. Paris, 1893.
-------- , Les Rois de Syrie. Paris, 1890.
Bevan, E . R ., The House of Seleucus. London, 1902.
von Gutschmid, A ., Geschichte Irons. Tubingen, 1888.
King, L . W ., & Thompson, R . C ., The Sculptures and Inscrip
tions of Darius the Great on the Rock of Behistun in Persia.
London, 1907.
Rawiinson, G ., The five great Monarchies of the ancient Eastern
World. Fourth Edition, Vol. I I I . London, 1879.
-------- , The sixth great Oriental Monarchy. London, 1873*
Worth, W . W ., Catalogue of the Coins of Parthia. (British
Museum Catalogue.) London, 1903.
( I ndia )
Barnett, L . D ., Antiquities of India. London, 19 13 .
Biihler, J . G ., & Burgess, J ., The Indian Sect of the Jainas.
London, 1903.
Cunningham, A ., Coins of Ancient India. London, 18 9 1.
-------- , 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, 188 8-189 2.) London, 1892.
______ , Coins of the Later Indo-Scythians. ( Reprinted from
the Numismatic Chronicle, 1893-4.) London, 1894.
------ —, The Ancient Geography of India. London, 1 871 .
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 earliest times to the beginning of the sixteenth
century. Westminster, 1899.
f(S )|
SHORT BIBLIOGRAPHY 179
Elliot, W ., Coins o f Southern India. London, iSb6.
Foucher, A ., iVo/w jar la Geographic ancienne du Gandhara.
(Reprinted from the £«//<?//» PEcole Fran(aise d* Extreme
Orient.) Hanoi, 1892.
Geiger, W ., Mahavamsa, dr the Great Chronicle o f Ceylon.
Oxford, 191 2.
Joppen, C ., Historical Atlas o f India. I hird edition. London,
l 9 H- . , .
Liiders, H ., A List o f Brahmi Inscriptions from the earliest times
to about a . d. 400. (Appendix to Vol. x. of the Epigraphia
Itidica.) Calcutta, 19 10 .
Macdonell, A . A ., and Keith, A . B., Vedic Index o f Names
and Subjects. London, 19 12 .
Pargiter, F . E ., The Markandeya Purana. ( I ranslated into
English with geographical notes.) Calcutta, 1904.
Rapson, E . J ., Catalogue o f the Coins o f the Andhra Dynasty, etc.
(British Museum Catalogue.) London, 1908.
Senart, E ., Les Inscriptions de Piyadasi. Paris, 188 1-6.
Smith, V . A ., The Early History o f India. Second edition.
Oxford, 1908.
----------, Asoka. Second edition. Oxford, 1909.
Zimmer, H ., Altindisches Leben, Berlin, it ' 7 9 ‘
( I ndia as described by G reek and L atin W riters )
Holdieh, T ., The Gates of India. London, 19 10 .

M ‘ Crindle, J. W ., Ancient India as described by Mcgasthencs
and Arrian. (Reprinted from the Indian Antiquary.)
Calcutta, 1877.
______ t The Commerce and Navigation o f the Erythraean Sea.
(Reprinted from the Indian Antiquary-.) Calcutta, 1879.
______ j Ancient India as described by Ktesias the Knidian,
(Reprinted from the Indian Antiquary, 1 881 . ) Calcutta,
1882.
•(M)y ■■'
v% g ^ /i8o A N C IE N T IN DIA ‘
•»
M ‘CrindIe, J . W ., Ancient India as described by Ptolemy.

(Reprinted from the Indian Antiquary, 1884.) Calcutta,
1885.
-------- , The Invasion o f India by Alexander the Great. Second
edition. Westminster, 1896.
--------- , Ancient India as described in Classical Literature.
Westminster, 19 0 1.
1
__
U
• \\ *^
|
O UTLIN ES OF CHRONOLOGY
I t must be understood that many o f the dates given are only

approximately correct.
B.C.
1200-1000. 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.
5 5 8 -5 3 °. Cyrus, king of Persia.
The conquest of GandhSra took place in his
reign.
54 3-4 9 1. BimbisSra, 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. 5 1 0 b . c .
49 1-459 . Ajatayatru, king of Magadha, contemporary with
Buddha.
400—300. Period of the Mahabharata.
400-200. Period of the RamSyana.
m
»
w §L
B.C.
3 4 3 -3 2 1. The Nanda dynasty of Magadha.
336 -32 3. Alexander the Great, king of Macedon.
3 3 1. The battle of Gaugamela.
The Persian empire and, in theory, its Indian
provinces come under the sway of Alexander the
Great.
3 2 7 -3 2 5 . Indian expedition of Alexander the Great.
3 2 1- 18 4 . The Maurya dynasty of Magadha.
3 2 1-2 9 7 . Chandragupta, king of Magadha, founder of the
Maurya empire.
3 12 -2 8 0 . 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 Afoka.
285-247. Ptolemy Philadelphus, king of Egypt, contemporary
with Afoka.
277-239 . Antigonus Gonatas, king of Macedon, contemporary
with Afoka.
272. Accession of Alexander, king of Epirus, contem
porary with Afoka.
269—227. A foka, king of Magadha and Maurya emperor.
The dates in A fo ka’ 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 Kalihga by A foka in the ninth year
after his coronation.
250. Establishment of the kingdom of Bactria by
Diodotus, and of the kingdom of Parthia by
Arsaces.
247-207. Tissa, king of Ceylon, contemporary with Afoka,
• m ?-**
f(I)|
\%> ys-y *SL
k*% >I
• • * * • ft
IN D E X
Im p eria l! reference, are ecporaledfrcm l i e r e " by a eemialem.
A bhIra, x6o I Aj5ta9atru ( t ) king of K a g «*

Acesines = ChandrabhagS = 0 ) k in E of M agadha,
Chenab = A siknl, q .v . I . , . lT°m
A chiravatl = R ip tl, 16. ! A jIvikas, Jain a s c e t i c s ^
A coka, M aurya em peror, 104- I A kbar, M ughal em peror, 103
VI 0 9 : l l 8 ; Alexander the G reat, king ot
contem porary H ellenic sove- M aced o n : . , ,.
reigns m entioned in his invasion of the 1 unjab, 88-96 ,
edicts, 21 | 24>,120 0 . „ T,_
sent m issionaries to H ellenic | historians, 09, 9° 5 .*• »
kingdom s, 108 continued the Persian sys em
erected a pillar to m ark of governm ent by satraps,
Buddha’s birthplace, 67. hU left
conquest of R atin g s, . .6 ■». » “ “ “ re o r in '

extent of his dom inions, to , d, “ " “ 0£ ’ t9h7’ M acedonian
religious toleration in his em p,« 101

y A lexander, king of E pirus, .1
his fe" : ap parent m entioned Alexandria-sub-Caucasum . 89
in 'his edicts, s o , I alp h ab et, ancient th e ,, d e c p h e r-
his grandson U a p ra th a , n o men ■ Cuneiform , B rjhm t,
T Z inscriptions I f sources K haroshihr, Greek
o f historv A m aravatl, 172
A m itrochates = Skt. Amitraghata,
% Z / S ? T i « m a . , r 4S a title ol Bindusr.ra, ro 3
Acvaka. , S2 A „obo,i, JO,94
Acvins 80 A nS thapindika, 173
A dhvaryu, 46 A ndhra, people and kingdom ,
A g n im hra,' king, Viceroy A n dhrl-bhH tya fam ily of A ndhra

of M alava, 114, 170 I kings, 160 -
Ahicchatra, cap ital of N. PaBchala, 1 A nga, 100 , . t
iS A ntialcidas, Graeco-Indian k in g of
A i r y a = A ryan, 5 the house of Eucratides, 134,1S7
A itareya Brahm ana, 54, 159 l com o l> x53 lg?
<sL
188 A N C IE N T INDIA
Antigonus Gonatas, king of I Assyria, 79
Macedon, 21 astronomy, Hindu and Greek,
Antiochus I Soter, king of Syria, 132
I03 Atharva-veda, 49, 50; 81
Antiochus II Theos, king of Syria, Athene, figure of, v. coin-types
2 1, 107, Il8, 150 atman, 59, 6 1
Antiochus III the Great, king of Audambara, coin of, 154-3
Syria: Augustus, Roman emperor, 122
his invasion of the Kabul Aurora, 43
Valley, 119-21 Avanti = W. Malava, 166, 175
Aornos, 91-2 Avesta, 30; 4, 24
Aparnnta, 161 Ayasi-KomQsa, 158
Apollodotus, Grseco-Indian king Ayodhya, 172 ; 1 15
of the house of Euthydemus, 128, Azes, (âka king, 144
130, >33) I4 I>I 55
Arachosia = Kandahar, 8 8 , 138, B a b y l o n , Babylonia, 79, 80, 101
140, 144 Babylonian language, 82, 84, 168
Aranyakas, 58-9 Bactria = Balkh, occupied by Per
arhat, 57 sian Aryans, 30
Aria, 88 conquered by Alexander the
Arrian, 90, 94 Great, 89
Arsaces. first king of Parthia, 118 Hellenic kingdom, 118-120,
Artabanus I, king of Parthia, 119 124; 12 2 -3,13 4
Artabanus II, king of Parthia, 137 its coins, 120, 125
Artaxerxes II Mnemon, king of transference of Greek rule to
Persia, 83 India, 125
Artka-fastra, 103 Parthian invasion, 126
arthavada, 53 Qaka invasion, 1 2 7 ; 125, 137
A rya ^ . Aryan, 5 Yueh-chi occupation, 127, 128
Aryan group of Indo-European Baluchistan, v. Gedrosia
family: Barnett, Prof. L. D., 157
Persians and Ind.ans, 29-31,43 Barugaza = Broach = Bhrigu-
migration into India, 3 1 , 4 0 ; kaccha, g .v.
26 B e a s = Hyphasi8 = Vipa<;orVipaga,
progress of civilization, 31-33 g .v.

civilization depicted in— Behistun, inscriptions ot Darius
Rig-veda, 40-46 at, 82, 84, 168
Yajur-veda, 46-49 Benares = K 3<;!, 164
Atharva-veda, 49, 50 Bengal = Vanga, 170
languages, 29.31 Bengal, Asiatic Society of,6
kings of Mitanni with Aryan Besnagar: column, 156
names, 80 inscription, 134, 157
non-Brahmanical Aryans, 55 Bhadra or Bhadraka, (JIunga king,
Aryavarta, 50 134
Asiknl = Chandrabhsga = Acesines Bhagabhadra, Kaijlputra, king
= Chensb, 1 6 1 ; 92 reigning at Besnagar, 134, 157
Assakenoi, 152 Bhagvanlal Indrajr, Pandit, 142,
Assam = K 5marflpa, 164 158
x - j f
(i (!§).?) ' ’ V»iT .
i INDEX 189
Bh*«ita 25 its retention in Ceylon and
-jimrata'or Blnrata-varsha, 25 Nepal, 108,109
Bharhut siuf>a, 115, 173 Burgess, Dr James, 149
Bhrma, king of Vidarbha, 170
Blirigu-kaccha or Bhnru-kaccha = Qakas (Scythians), 132, 136-44.
Barugaza = Broach, 129, 130, 147
i ? 2? *75 invasion of Bactria, 127 ; 118,
bilingual coins, 18-9, .125-6, 152-5 ! 120
Bindusnra, Maurya emperor, 103 j (Jaka era, 22, 144, 147
Bloch, Dr, 157 Qaka princes and satraps:
Bolnn Pass, 140 I Kilpija and Takshaqila (Gan-
Bopp, Franz, 2 dhura), 133, 141-2
Brahman (BrJhmana) castf/, 45, Mathura, 130, 142-3, 174
59 Malava, 143-4
its literature, 8, 11 Surashtra, 147
Brahmanas, 53-9; 76 9 akala=Sialkot, 130, 172
language, 11, 55-6 9 akasth5na = Seistrm, 137-8; 27,
geography, 56 140, *44
religion, 57-8 (Jakya, 66, 161
Brahmanism, 34, 55, 68 Cakyamuni, v. Buddha
sacred language of, 14, 69 Cambyses, king of Persia, 81
Brahmarshi-de<;a, 50-1 caste-system, 40, 45, 48, 68
Brahmavarta, 51 Qatakarni, 160, 175
Brahmi alphabet, 17-8, 149-50 9 ataPath;l Brnhmana, 56-7
coin-legends, 151-2, 155 (patavthana, 160
inscriptions, 150, 157 Caucasus = Hindu Kush = Paro-
BrahQl language, 29 panisus, q.v.
BrihadJranyaka Upanishad, 172 Central Asia, 26, 32
Brihadratha, Maurya king, 114 Ceylon = Lank ;or Tamraparnl:
British dominion in India, 26, 34 early language and literature,
Broach = Bhrigu-kaccha, q v. 14-5
Bucephalus, Bucephala, 94 epic poems, 75
Buddiia = Siddhnrthu Gautama= Buddhi m, 108-9
(âkyamuni, 22, 66, 67, 161, ekakravartinl 96
173 Chanakya, 103
his birthplace. 67, 106, 161 Chandrabhagn = Chenab = Aceiines
relics of, 141, 158 =AsiknI, q.v.
Buddhism, 66-9; 2 2 ,3 4 , 105 Chandragupta, Maurya emperor,
compared with Brahmanism, 20-1, 100-3
64, 65, 68 Chandragupta II Vikramfiditya,
patronised by Aôka, 104 Gupta emperor, 115
professed by Qakasatraps, 143 Charmanvatl = Chambal, 162
second council of Vai^nlr, 169 Chautang —Drishadvatr, 47, 51
languages and literature of, Chedi, 162
8, 14, 69, 75-6, 81, 105 era, 22 *
its disappearance from the Chen3b = Chandra aga = Acesines
main continent of India, =AsiknT, q.v.
68, 109 Chera = Kerala, 164
H I - ' <SL
> ^ 19 0 A N C IE N T IN D IA
China, connexion with India, 25, ancientlndis.il, 13 - 4 ,1 5 1" 1 ; 1 /•
2g Grasco-Bactrian, 125
Chinese Buddhist scriptures, 69 Graeco-Indian, 18-9, X23, 125-
Buddhist pilgrims, 169, 174 6, 128-30, 140, 143, 1 53"5
historians, 8, 127 Qaka, 140-4, 154
Chinese Turkestan, 18, 27 Pahlava, 138-9, 144-6
Chola, 150, 162 Parthian, 126
Chola.ma»(fala'=C oromandel, 162 Roman in S. India, 162
chronology of Ancient India, 16, communities, oligarchical or selt-
2X-3, 181-5 governing, 55, 77
v . also Pursnas comparative philology oi Indo-
Chutu family of Andhra kings, European languages, 2-6
,6o, 175 conquests, nature of Indian, 96-7
grtala, 158 coronation ceremonies in Aitareya
civilizations, primitive Indian, 28-9, Brahmana, 54
46 • framaiia, 57
early Indo-European, 3-5 (pravastl, 173, 175
Aryan, 8-11, 26, 28-33, 36, Croesus, king of Lydia, 86
40-6,47.9 Crooke, Mr W ., 35
Dravidian, 9, 26, 28-9 fruit, 59
in Western Asia, 78-80 Ctesias, 83; 82, 87, 90
in Chinese Turkestan, 27 £fldra caste, 45
Claudius, Roman emperor, 90, 162 £unah<jepa, 54
coin-legends, language of, 13-4 cuneiform alphabet, decipherment
bilingual, 18-9, 125-6, 152-5 of, 82
Brahrni, 151-2, 155 Quhga dynasty, 113-6
Kharoshthl, 140, 153-5 Cunningham, Sir A ., 156
Greek, 18-9, 125-6, 140, 152-5 (Jarasena, 162, 17 4 ; 51
coin-types: Athene, characteristic (Jurp3raka = Sopara, 161, 175
of the house of Euthydemus, Curtius (Q. Curtius Rufus), 90
128-9, 153 Cutch, v . Kaccha
Zeus enthroned, characteristic (ûtudrl = Zadadrus or Zaradrus =
of the house of Eucratides, Sutlej, 162-3
155 Cyrene, 108
caduceus, 153-4 Cyrus, king of Persia, 80-1, 84
chditya, 1 5 2
dancing girl, Indian, 152 D acjaratua (i ) Maurya king, 1x0
Dioscuri, caps of, 154 (2) father of Rama, 172

elephant, head of, 153-4 Daimachus, 103-4
Kapiâ,- tutelary deity of, 133 DakshinS-patha = Deccan (dakkhina
lion, maneless, 152 = d a ith in a = ‘ southern’ ), 3 * ’ **
steel-yard, 1 51 163
symbols, punch-marked, 1 5 1 v, also Southern India
tree within railing, 155 Damayantl, 170
trident battle-axe, 155 Darius I, king of Persia, 85-6, 127
Vi^vamitra, 154 inscriptions, 82; 24, 105, 136,
coins as sources of history, 8, 17, 139
19 Darius II, king of Persia, 83
(!#)) INDEX 191
<SL
Darii’ c 7,1 Codomannus, ting of eras, Indian, 21-2
Y'crsia, 88 v.' also Câka era; Vikrama
Dasyn, 40 era; Takshaijila; inscrip-
Deccan. — r-n*-in mA *?nr» nf
South
Delhi,*
, Demetri
the ht s ' J
128,
co
dessication _ ..nt ^-_o.
Drvanampiya, 109, ju ‘' k i r n ueJtfe of, 124-5, * 1 3->
Dhnnyakataka = Dharamkotta,1 * ’ 133
172
Dharaghosha, king of Audumbara, F leet , Dr J. F., 157
coin of, 154-5
dharma —VAxdhamira , 105, 112 G andhara, 81-85, 9 s j 94 * *33*
Dharmapala, king ruling at Eran, 141-2
coin of, 151 j Buddhist art, 135
Dhritarashtra, 173 v. also Ivapiâ; Takshacjila
dialects, 13-4 Gandhari, 81
Diodotus, Greek king of Bactria, Gandharians described by Herodo-
118, 120 tus, 87
Dionysius, 104 Ganga = Ganges, 163
Dlpavamsa, 75 Ganges and Jumna, the country
Drangiana = Seist3n (Sijistan), 127, of= Hindustan, 31-2, 93, 100
13 7 -8 5 8 8 Garga, 131-2
Draupadr, 167 Gargi, 63
Dravidian civilization, 9, 26, 28-9 Gargi Samhita, 131-2
languages, 9, 29, 66 Gargya Balaki, 62
Drishadvati = Chautang, 47, 51 Garuda, 156-7
Drupada, 167 Gaugamela, 88
Dujaka or Dojaka, 151 Gautama, 57
Dyaus-pitar\\^ also Buddha
dynastic lists, -v. Puranas ; Ceylon, Gedrosia = N. Baluchistan, 27,
epic poems 138, 140, 144
genealogies, v . Purarias; Cey-
eas-t (Eng. east), 43 Ion, epic poems
Egypt, 81, 108 geography, Rig-veda, 39, 40
English language, Mercian dialect Yajur-veda, 47
_of, 10 âtapatha Brahmapa, 56
Eds, 43 Brahman, Jain, and Buddhist
epic poems, Sanskrit, v. Maha- iiteratures, 77
bharata ; Rlmayapa Girivraja = Rajagriha, 109, 166
their language, 11-2, 72-3 Girn5r = Girinagara, inscribed rock
Pali, 75 at, 149
Epirus, 108 Godavari, 163
Eran, coin of, 151 Gomatl = Gumal, 163
jcJwl■
r <sl
“
, g4 A N C IE N T IN D IA
' ■' G ondopharnes, Pahlava k in g , |

I 45-^ s e ’ls.
governm ent, different form s of, 55 H ittite;‘ jo
G rsecc-Indlan k i n g .,o . E n crat.d es, H ,« . » !, 7*
house o f ; E u th y d em u s, house H orace, 171
* Y3VHD3S * ^**"
G reece, Persian expeditions against, “ ^ " “ V e ^ m r ^ V ita s tS ,
G refk7 alphabet in M ia , ,8 -9 , = R " ‘ = Pi“

O reeSks6in iS d b % . V avana. H yPh a i i I = B « s = V i p « ? o r V i m
G reek w rite rs on P ersia, 82-5, 87 ?• J-
G reek and L a tin w rite rs on India,
8, a o -l, 14, 8 9 ,9 0 , 9 3 ,9 5 ,1 0 0 -1 , j H im am , o r H em odus =
Greek influence on India, . 3 4 5 ! , 3 country of th e
g u ild tokens, 1,1 '" p ro v in c e 3 of* th e P ersian em-

G“ P 'a e r a ' 2= pire, Sl-S
gu ru , 59 reconquered by A lexander
, th e G reat, 94-5
fuzoma, 44 K-nnani conquered by Y av an as(G raco -
H a rsh av a rd h a n a, k .n g of K anauj, c0" ^ tH an ^ togl)> l t V j.j
‘ 74 ^ invaded by gak as, 136-8, M°>
e ra , 22 ^
S S & ‘
h S & O roek60 am bassador, - M i a , th e c o n tin e n t,
* 34,.*57 j Ttnrtria • eeoffraphical conformation,

Hellenic kingdoms, v . Lactna . b 6 t
Macedonia; £ & i•£ * " ’ p £ w « «• *
H^ h ”^ o i ^ S , ™ jr ° f ‘a“ s and laDgoages>

H erodotus, 8 3 ; 24 , 1 t h e D ravidians probably in-
H esychius of A lexandria, 161 * j . . . ,9 .
H im alaya = H im av an t, 163 ■ A m n invade?s, 8-9, 40
Hindu K ush = P aropan.sus, 7 *. w ith the F a rth e r
H in d u sta n = th e c o u n try ol th e E ast and w ith th e W e st in
Ganges and Jum na, j . . > , 93, | S f y S U ’S ,* ,* , So
h isto ry , source, of an cient Indian, a n c ie n t languages and h .e ra -
^ v 'a l s o C hinese h isto ria n s; p o litical dW.ion. r f N . India

C hinese B uddhist pilgrim s ; in th e 6th and 5th centur.es
c o in s ; Greek and L atin b. c., 77
fo r
'SL
INDEX 193
tbu Maurfa empire, 99-1 n .patiuaixed by (âka kii gs in
the Kushana empire, 147 , *43
- the Gupta empire, 166 flounim - at Mathur 1, ,4
theMughalempire, 26, 3 3 ,1 7 3 Janaka, 50-7, 63. 171, 174
the British dominion, 34 Janamejaya, 56-7
n a t i v e principalities, 34 Jaxartes = Syr Darya, 127
common principles of govern- Jetavana, 173
''V . ment- m - i Jhelum = Hydaspes = \ itasta, g.v.
V also alphabets ; languages; J in a = Vardhamana Jfittaputra, 65
Southern India; and the J o n e s , Sir William, 2, 6, 20
various headings collected Jumna = Yamuna, 1 7 I

under ‘ history, sources of v , also Ganges and Jumna, the
ancient Indian ’ | country of
«Indians ’ described by Herodotus, Ju-piter , 43
I Justin, 122
Indo-European peoples, 3, 4 ,, -
religion and mythology, 42-3 K abul River = Kubha, 165
social divisions, 45 Kabul Valley, * 33 ’ 4 > 1 4 °> 4 >
family of languages, 2-6 *4 j
v also languages Kaccha_Lutch, 164
Indra, 4 1 , 7*, 80 Kaqt = Benares, 164
Indraprastha, 1 7 3 ; 26, 47 Kadamba, 160, 175
Indus = Sindhu, 24, 1x9, 126, 146, Kalachuri era, 22
,68 Kali Age, 7
inscriptions as sources of history, Kalidasa, 114. 130, 170, 175
8 1 - IQ, 21 Kaliiacharijakatha, 143
Persian; Darius, 82; 24, 81, Kalinga, 164
, , 6 xtQ conquered by A$oka, 106, 110
Indian, language of, 13-4 rise of thAe ,ater k>nSdom- 116
Acoka’s inscr. at Girniir, 149- KamarQpa- Assam, 164
ito Kampilya, 167
Daca ratha’s inscrr. in the K a n a r e s e language, its literary de.
Nagariuni Hills, 110 ! velopment, 66

Hsthigumpha inscr. ofKhilra- Kanchl== Conjeeveram, 174
vela, tx6, 160 Kandahar = Arachos.a, g .v
Besnagar inscr., .34, 156-7 Kanishka, Kushana emperor, 18,
Mathura Lion-Capital, 142-3, ! i 4 4 .< H 6-7
| Kanyak.ubja = Kanauj, 174
TakshacllS inscr. of P a tik a , Kapi$a, coins struck at, 133
I also Câka princes and
Ionia, Greek colonies in, 86 satraps
Iravatl = Parushni, q .v . Kapilavastu, 161
larma, 65
Ja , 22, 65-6, 69
in is m K au ^ m b ^ iyo
contrasted with Brahmanism, Kaverl-Cauvery,
164
64-c 68 Kerala = Chera, 164
languages and literature of, Keralaputra, 150, 164
8, -% ;* 6 , 69-70, 76-7 Kharaosta, 158
N
iff)' - IflT
A N C IE N T IN D IA rn J
" ■•
Kharavela, king of Kalinga, 1 1 6, i legends, .ncient,-54, 73, 75
160 » Liaka Kusalaka, £aka satrap of
Kharoshthi alphabet, 17-8 j Takshîla, coins of, 140, 141,
coin-legends, 140, 151-5 ' 154
inscriptions, 143, 158 Licchavi, 169
‘ Xing of Kings,’ title used by literary languages, 9-12
Persian, Parthian, (âka, and literatures, Indian, as sources of
Pahlava kings, 139 history, 6-17
kingdoms of N. India, 77 early chronology of, 23
kingly titles in India, 55 Vedic, 36-9, 44. 46-7, 49
Kongu-de<ja, 164 Brahmanas, 52-9
Kosala = Oudh, 69, 164, 170: 72 Upanishads, 59-63
coins of, 115 Jain, 69, 70, 76-7
Krishna, 174 Buddhist, 69, 70, 75-7
Krishna ( i ) = Kistna, 159, 164 Sutras, 76-7
(2) = Draupadl, 167 Brahman epics, 70-3 .
Krivi sp Pauchiila, 167 Puranas, 73-5
Krumu = Kurram, 165 Buddhist epics, 75-6
Kshatriya caste, 45 Classical Sanskrit, 10-2, 14-5,
its literature, i t 130-2
its religion, 72 local government in India, 96, i n
Kshayathiijanam Kshayathiya — Lumbini-vana, 106, 161
Shahanshah , 139
Kubha = Kabul River, 165 M a c e d o n i a , 108
Kuganabha, 174 Madhya-de$a, ‘ the Middle
Kujala Kadphises, 133, 146 Country,’ 50
Kundapura= Basukund, 169 Madhyamiks = Nagari, 131
Kuru, 50, 165 Magadlia = S. Bihar, 165-6; 33,
Kuru-kshetra 47, 51, 173 j 77, 93, 100, i i o - i , 114, 170
Kushana conquest of Kabul Valley, Magas, king of Cyrene, 21
I2 5 > r 3 3 > l 4 6 Mahabhnrata, 70-3; 1 1 , 4 7 , 5 l » 57
conquest of (pakas, 132, 144 i Mahabhathya , 131
empire under Kanishka,146-7 Mahanadr, 164, 166
Maharashtra, 166
L a lita -v tara, 17 Mahnsena, king of Ceylon, 75 ^
language, scientific study of, 2 6 Mahivamsa, 75
preserves the record of early M ah avlra — Vardhamana Jnata-
civilization, 4, 5 putra, 65
natural (prairita), 13-4 Mahendra = Mahinda, 75, 109
artificial or literary (\iatmkrita), Maitreyl, 63
9"12 ~ Malava(i) = M alw 5 , 166; 144, 170
languages, Indo-European family, (2) = Malaya or Malaya =
Malli, 166
Aryan group, 4, 5, 29-31 Malavikagnimitra , 114, 130, 170
Dravidian,9, 29, 66 Manu, Laws of, 50, 96
Lanka = Ceylon, 165 Marcus Aurelius, Roman emperor
Latin writers, v . Greek and Latin 90
writers on India , Marshall, Dr J. H., 156
1
f(f— //)| • rfi1.
(SL
IN D E X 195
Jâru, 166 Muttra^ Mathura, q .v . ••
MathurS-L^Muttra, 174 N ad ir S hah o f Persia, 26

Hindu princes, 143, iM Naksh-i-Rustam inscriptions
under Greek kings, 131 Darius at, 52, 84
Caka satraps, 142-3 Nala, 167
under Kushanas, 174 Nanda dynasty, ico
the Lion-Capital, 142. 158 Nandasi-AkasH, 158
Matsya, 50-1, 166-7 nandt-pada, 152
Maues = M o a = Moga, gaka king, Narmada = Narbad3 , 16,
j^ Nearchus, 94
family of, 144-5 Negami, 151
coins, 140, 154 Nicaea, 94
inscription, 141 Nirukta, 11, j8
Maurya empire, 9 9 -> > n a°. 3 3 ’ unit, of the Persia..
its relations with Hellenic empire, 83, 85 .
kingdoms, 101-2, 104, 108 North-western region of India, 31-
its extent, 106-8, 118 3 2>
governed by viceroys, 108 . , 0 0 ,
its decline, n o , n 3 -4 . “ 6-8, Old Persian language, 82, 84
1ZZ Orosius, 126
Max Muller, Prof. F., 29
Megasthenes, 102-3; 90 pada-tatha , 38 . .
Menander = Milinda, Gneco- Pahlaya (Parthian) invaders of
Indian king of the house of India, 136, 138-40, 144-6
Euthydemus, 128-31 ^?nS“ a6 e» I 4-5 ,
coin. 153 Buddhist literature, 69, 7 5 , 105
Mercian dialect of English, 10 Pallava, 167
Middle Country = Madhya-deâ, Pafichala = Knvi, 47, 51, 1 3 1 , 167
Paiichala, N., 167
migration of peoples, 26 coins, 1:15
Mihirakula, Hona king, 173 Paiich.ua, S ., 167
Milinda = Menander, q .v. PBndu, 71, 173
M ilinda-PaM a, 129-30 Pandya, 150, 167-8
Mitanni, king6 of, 80 Panini, »3 X .
Mithila, 17 1, 174 Pantaleon, Bactnan and Graeco-
Mithradates 1, king of Parthia, Indian king of the house 01
119, 124, 126, 139, 142 Euthydemus, coin of, 152
Mithradates 11 the Great, king of Paropanisadae = Paruparaesanna,
Parthia, 138-9 *4 .
Mitra g0 Paropanisus or Paropamisus =
Moabite stone, 18 Hindu Kush, 84, 89, 140, 168
M o g a = Moa = Maues. q .v. Parthia, Hellenic kingdom, 118-9,
Mongolian races and languages, 26 142
Mudra-rakshata , 100, 103 âka invasion, 127, 137
Mughal empire, >6, 5 3 , >73 P “ MavM anJ ? akas h° ld ,he
Mura, roo " .t e r n pror.uce., >3«-9
- r
j . <SI.
I96 A N C I E N T IN D IA .
P a ru s h n i = Iravatl = Hydraotes = prose , li crature, development CU „
Ravi, 1 68; 93 5- “ , P*
1741 A iia d e 1 |u » , king ot
Patika^Caka'satrap of Takshapila, Punfab, ' lndia’ = the country ot

14 1-2 . the Indus
Paurava = Porus, Indian king, 92, 1 uiilnas, 73-5 , 7 °
g Maurya dynasty, 1 xo
Periplus marts Erythrai, 1 29 Qufig* dynasty, I I 3-4
Persepolis, inscriptions of Darius Andhra kings (ptavahana
at 8^ 84 dynasty), 117, 160
Persia, connexion with India, 25-6, chronology and dynastic lists,
28,81,88,140 7 > i 6‘ 7 > 7 4 - 5 . I ! 4
Persian (Achasmenid) empire, 80 purohita, 45
subject peoples in inscriptions Puru, 9’
of Darius, 82 o. also Paurava
nomes or fiscal units, 83, 85 1 Pushyamitra, 114, 130, 170
dominions in India, 81-8, j . . .
1 2 ,_4 RAjAGKiHA = Ginvraja, 109, x66
expeditions against Greece, Rnjula or Raj uvula = Ranjubuia,
g5_7 9 aka ‘ Great Satrap
Persian influence on India, 26, 82, coin;., 14°) *43 .
inscr. on Mathura Lion-
Persian religion, ancient, 43-4 Capital, 143, 15^
philology, comparative, of Indo- Rama, hero of the Ramayana,
European languages, 2-6 7 1-2 „
Photius, 83 R n m s y a fp 7 X-2 ; 57
Phraates II, king of Parthia, 137 Rari]ubula_Rajala, q^v.
.fe Rsvi = Iravatl = Hydraote, =
PI in v 1 Parushni, q .y .’
portraits on Bactrian coins, 120 Rawlinson, Sir Henry, 82 -
Porus = Paurava, Indian king, 92, religion of knowledge, 58-61, 64-5
g religion of works, 58-60, 64 .
P r a th a h =zPr 3iSioi, q .v . religions: _ e
prdftctus, 45 *• Pr‘mltlTe inhabitant* of
Prakrit, 13-4 ^ndiaJ ' *
coin-legends, 18-9, 125-6, 140 Persian religion, ancient;
Praiioi = P r achyah, the ‘ Easterns’ Rig-veda; Yajur-veda; Ath-
= the peoples of the country of arva-ve4 a ; Brahmanas ;
the Ganges and Jumna (Hin- ; Upanishads; Brahmanism;
dustan), 93, 100 Jainism;
Pratishthana = Paithan, 174-5 Buddhism
PraySga, 175 i religious toleration in India, n i - 2
primitive inhabitants of India, 8, Rig-veda, 36-9 ; 4, 30
28, 46, 49 geography, 39, 40, 81
religious beliefs and social in- language, xo, 38
stitutions, 35, 49 religion, 4*-4
if f :* INDEX 197
§l
deities worshipped by kings Sei9tan = (Jakasth5 na, 137-8; 27,
of Mitanni, 80 14.00144
hymns and metres, 44 Seleucus Nicator, king of Syria,
social and political condi- invasion of the Punjab, 101 ;
tions; 40-2, 44-6 , 20, 98, 120-1
rivers, Indian, change of courses, Shahanshah , 139
95; 51, 163 Shakespeare, 170
mentioned in Rig-veda, 39 Sialkot = (îikala, 130, 172
Rohinx, 161 Siddhartha Gautama=Buddha, q. v.
Rome, trade with S. India, 162 Sijistan =Seistan, q.i>.
coins found in S. India, 162 Sind = ‘ India,’ the country of the
Rudradaidan, Great Satrap of Indus, q.v.
Surashira and Malava, 149 Sindhu = Indus, 24. 119, 126, 146,
168
, traces of human, 54
s a c r if ic e Slta, heroine of the Ramsyana, 72,
in Rig-veda, 42-3, 44-5 171, 174
in Yajur-veda, 47-8 Skandagupta, Gupta emperor, 149
SadanTra, 56, 171 Skeat, Prof., 10
Saketa, 131, 172 Smith, Mr V. A ., 103
Samatata, 168 smriti, 59
Sama-veda, 46 Sogdiana = Bukhara, conquered by
samhita-patha, 38 Alexander,89
Sandrokottos = Chandragupta, invaded by Yueh-chi, 127*8
Maurya emperor, q .v. ' soma, 43
SWro/>Aflf«=:Chandrabhnga, 161 Sophytes = SaubhQti, coin of, 151-2
Sanskrit, the 'discovery' of, 2, Southern India, 31-2
5, 6 history of, 9
varieties of the language, Tamil kingdoms mentioned in
11-2 Aqoka’s inscriptions, 107,
the sacred language of Brah- 150
manism, 14, 69 Dravidian languages, 9, 29,
used also by Jains and Bud- 66
dhists, 15 Spalirises, Pahlava king, 144
Vedic, 10, 38 Stein, Sir Aurel, 27
Brahmana, 11, 55-6 Strabo, 104, 122, 129-30
epic, 11-2, 72-3 Strato I Soter, reigning con-
classical, io-2, 14-5, 130-2 jointly with his grandson,
Buddhist in Nepal, 105 Strato II Philopator, Graeco-
Sarasvatl = SarsQti, 47, 51 Indian kings of the house
Satiyaputra, 150 of Euthydemus, coins of, 129-
•atraps, government by, 141 130, 140, 143
appointed by Alexander, 95-6 stupa = tope, 115, 158, 172-3
Saubhati = Sophy tes, coin of, 151-2 SuMaôj<'/»a = Sophagasenus, 121
Snyana, 39 Sudas, 168
Scylax, 84, 94 Sumerian civilization, 79
Scythian races and languages, 26 Surashtra, 168-9
Scythians, v . £akas Qaka kings ot, 147
seals, as sources of history, 8, 19 Susian language, 82, 84
■G
°ks*\
'(«> I98 A N C IE N T IN D IA
<SL
SOtras, 76-7 ; 53 yplmTKI,
Smargflgii’i, 109 I ivaWfantie/uirita, 74
Suvastu = Swat, 169 Vanga=Bengal, 170
svarnf, 55 Vardhanl.lna Jnntaputra — Jin a —
Syria, Seleucid kingdom of, i o i , Mahavira, 65 ; 2 2, 1 6 9
J19 varna, ^
revolts of Bactria and Parthia, Varuna, 54, 80
118-9 Vasumitra, 1 1 4 , 130
relations with the Maurya Vatasvaia, 152
empire, 1 0 1 -2, 108 Va’tsa, 170
veda, 36
T.AKSiMgjLA = Taxila, 92, 175 Vedas, ^ Rig-veda ; Sama-veda ;
Alexander the Great, 92, 96 Tr Yajur-veda ; Atharva-veda
Grajco-Indian kings, 13 3 , 157 edanta, j 2
âka satraps, 133, 140-3 , 154 Vems, Prof., 157
copperplate inscription of l^vamitra, (igme of, v. coin-
Patika, 141 AK
Tamil kingdoms in Aroka’s in- Vidarbha, 1 1 4 , 170
scriptions, 107, 150 Videha = Videgha, 56, 69, 170-1
language,literarydevelopment v 'deo> 3^'
of, 66 wdh'» 53
Tnmraparni ( 1 ) = Tambapannl = VidiSn= Bhllsa, 1 .5 , 166
Ceylon,'ro7, 169 '* Vikrama era, 22
(2 ) = Tambraparni, 169 Vikramnditya ( 1 ) = a king ot
Tiindya Brilhmana, 5 5 ' Ujjain, 143
T n p ia e T a p tl, 16*9 ( * ; = ChandragUPta 11, G up ta
Taxila = Takshacila, g.v. emperor, 115
Thomas, Dr F. W ., 158 ' r;!lage communities, 1 1 1
Thomas, St, 145 Vindhya, 1 7 1 ; 50
Tibetan Buddhist scriptures, 69 V ,Pn? or V ,PaS5 = Hyphasis = Beas,
Tissa, king of Ceylon, 109 . T.93 ; ‘ S0* 1 7 1
T jiv : T lives-d a v — Tuesday. 43 ^ ' r^ ! 11/1 -
topz —stupa, 1 1 5 , 158, 172-3 ishjju, T34, 15 "7
Toramana, Huna king, 173 Vitasta = Hydaspes = Jhelum, 1 7 1 ;
Traikntaka era, 22 9 *> I 2 6 p m t,- r -i r
Trop-us 122 Vonones, Pahlava king, family of,
i 39> J 44-5
1 7nrATA h a vratya-stoma, 5 5
tt 1 1 ^ Vriji, 169
Udumbara, 154-5 •3 *
Ujjayini = Ujjain, 143, 175 Weber, Prof A ^ J5
ufuu-.i ad, 53 Western Asia, early civilizations
Upamshads, 58-6 3 ; 72, 76, 81 of| 7g.go
Uihasa, 43 connexion with India, 80-1
Wima Kadphises, Kushana king,
V aiâ u , 169 146
Vaitjya caste, 45 -wit-an (cf. Eng. w it, •wisdom, etc.),
Vaijayantl = Banav2si, 175 36
\) V
IN D E X 199
<SL
X erxks I, Iting o f Persia, expedition tw o chief royal houses in
against Greece. 85-6 llactria and India, 114.
tran sfe re n ce oi ru le iro m
Y a j n a v a l k y a , 63 Bactria to India, 125
Yajur-veda, 46, 52 conflict with (ûnga dynasty,
geography, 4 7 130-1; 114
religious and social conditions, conquered by <Jakas and
47-9 Kushanas, 132-3, 146
Yamunn = Jumna, 1 7 x influence in India, 134-5
Yaska, 1 1 , 3 8 absorbed in the Indian social
fauna ‘ Ionians ’ = Yavana, Yona, 86 system, 134-5, i 57
Yavanas, Yonas = Bactrian and Yueh-chi, 127-8, 137
Indian Greeks:
mentioned in inscriptions of Z adadrus , Zaradrus = QutudrT =
Darius, 86 Sutlej, 163
in Indian literature and in- Zeus pater, 43
scriptions, 86 Zoroaster, 30, 43
*5 .1 • £/£■;«, X v
26286 '
I * ' )* •
\
"
, ~
¥
. "
^
9 ft
*>■
\ - S
#
•Jr
i
(SI
*• • O ' * «•
-. , , ly
** > - 4 ■1 •
t c ’
** •
% O
* jio r p V
P R IN T ED BY
T U R N B U L L AND SPKARS.
EDIN BU RGH
V
*
n tu 1

As 002587

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

As 002587

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

As 002587

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

m j ■ '' %

CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS

GbinbutQh: 100 PRINCES STR EET

?fi % ^. <£?:' ,m^[ ' ’W_- jfx *•£ C*''l£y-*'

rV^i( It ^ *~r *_**'^-••Jfe^SfiBBnP^^"

T H E G IR N A E UOCK IN 18 6 9 . [See An-m ’ ••■

W FOR CONSULTATION ONLW

i* •r^ rrr: — , <.(*h l <b « 4 * » }

I. T he S ources of the H istor.y of A ncient I ndia i

IV. T he P eriod of the B rahmanas ani > UJ?anishads 52

V. T he R ise of J ainism and B uddhism . . 64

VI. T he I ndian D ominions of the P ersian and

VII T he M aurya E mpire . . • • • 99

IX. T he S uccessors of A lexander the G reat . 122

' X . P arthian and S cythian I nv ad er s . . . 136

N otes on the I llustrations . . . 1 4 9

N otes on the A ncient G eography of I ndia t 59

O utlines of C hronology . . . . 181

P late I. i he G irnar R ock in 186 9 . . Frontispiece

P late I I I . T he B esnagar C olumn . . . 134

P late IV . T he M athura L ion- C apital . „ 142

P late V . I nscriptions on the G irnar R ock and

P late V I . I nscriptions on the B esnagar C olumn „ 157

T he P rincipal C ountries of A ncient I ndia . A t the end

I n the following pages I have tried to write the

THE SOURCES OF THE HISTORY OF ANCIENT

The ‘ discovery ’ of Sanskrit— T he Indo-European family of

“ T he Sanscrit language, whatever be its

founder o f the science of Comparative Philology,’

Chinese Turkestan in the East to Ireland in the

had lived in association for some considerable

and that its literature, which reflects the course

f(I )i ' . ■' vsl

ancient civilizations of Greece, Italy, and Germany.

advances, the dialect of some particular district,

extended itself in a south-easterly direction over

being, from their very character, intended to

probably in the third century b.c., and became

are now. It is probably derived from the type of

H K l w j| Ti'j,*.. ■•«% J i i ‘S j ' k ^E

! Sv,. ■ - rw- • • ''-ji .v ' ^ j f - ''~ w '- '■ '■■ ^ B H

titles of the king, and on the reverse a translation

THE CIVILIZATIONS OF INDIA

The names of India— Its natural limits— Its chief invaders—

T he word India originally meant the country o f

one hand and with Persia on the other. At the

history of India, lies in the consideration that its

with bows and arrows, and holding the most

India enable 11s to trace with a remarkable degree

THE PERIOD OF THE VEDAS

The Rig-veda— Oral transmission — Geography— State of

T he Sanskrit word veda comes from the root

old age in learning the sacred texts and in teaching

of S.E. Afghanistan, the N.-W. Frontier Province,

are divided into a number of tribes, some of whom •

a plant, find their exact counterpart in the

that certain indications of this earlier state of

us not only to a new region, but also to a complete

elements in religion seem to have disappeared,

?fi % ^. <£?:' ,m^[ ' ’W_- jfx •£ C''l£y-*'

rV^i( It ^ ~r _**'^-••Jfe^SfiBBnP^^"

i* •r^ rrr: — , <.(h l <b « 4 » }

The founders of Jainism and Buddhism— Their doctrines con

so much the better; but, if they resisted his pre

^J ' • Jr^ •’«'/ X?- .¥••" ’"S

present be determined. The most plausible con

vations which are now being made by the Archaeo

------ _ __________°