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Taking therefore the names, which are probably a better clue than the round number of one thousand years, which seems thrown in for the sake of symmetry, I should assign them conjecturally three hundred years, thereby allowing them to reign, on the average, as long as any Indian dynasty which we can trace clearly in any age when the Indians managed war and politics after their indigenous fashion. But even if their reigns were ftdl generations, they would require only six hundred years. DATE OF MAHiLBHJ^RATA. 253 " We may now then come to a summary — Chandragupta is 305 B. c. Nanda and his family extend over one hundred years. Ten Saisunaga princes have three hundred and sixty-two allowed them. For the five next princes of the Pradyota dynasty, what number do the PurS.nas say?" The Achirya answered, "One hundred and thirty-eight." " Be it so," proceeded Blancombe. " Then for the twenty earlier kings up to Sahad^va, imtil better data are supplied to us, we may allow as a conjecture three hundred years, or not much more. This would make Sahaddva about nine hundred years earlier than Chandragupta, and place the Great War somewhere about twelve centuries before the Christian era. The dynasties of Magadhi, with some help from the Bauddha chronology, and from impartial notices of India by foreigners, will have supplied our clue to this probable result. " Then, if we were right in our manner of treating the earlier twenty-nine kings of Oude from Bama to the Mah&bh&rata, to whom, by striking off thousands, we allowed eight hundred and sixty-four years, it will follow that the date of your great con- queror, B&ma, and of the events imaginatively depictured in the Epic of Valmiki, will be rather more than two thousand years before the Christian era, or if you like, I will say, ftdly two thousand before the date you assign to Vicramaditya, (which is 56 B. c.) If then one might venture to go farther, and treat the sixty generations or reigns from your Adam or Manu to B&ma, in a similar spirit of conjecture, one might say that the earliest gleams of Hindti history, as yet in its most legendary form, ap- pear to fall rather more than three thousand years before Christ. If, however, you persist in saying, that men in those early ages lived longer, or if you think that the reigns of kings, being free from modem treacheries and disasters, should be calculated then as fully equal to generations, I have no objection to throw you in another thousand years for that dim patriarchal period which preceded B&ma. This is allowing each of those earliest reigns, or rather generations, upwards of thirty years. Only it must be remembered, that for those earlier stages, we do not profess to 264 TRADITIONAL DAWN OF HINDU' HISTORY. recognise a history, so much as an hypothesis, upon which scanty and traditional notices may be tolerated. Nor would I deny that the period beyond what we have clear historical accounts of, may have been longer and more varied in its fea- tures than many persons would suppose. Perhaps some in- ferences respecting it may be drawn by ingenious men*, either from Yedic or other earlier songs, or from traces of common origin in languages which we know must have been long separated. Let such questions be here left by me undefined. I have only ventured to criticise such elements as you present to me of your own earlier history and chronology. Whether then I consider the vast vagueness of the numbers, or the lists of names, not to mention here the poetical character of some of the authorities, which must be touched on hereafter, I see no reason, which will stand the daylight of criticism, for supposing that any history of the Hindti race, or even any tradition be- longing to them in your written monuments with the nature of history, need be placed farther back than about 4000 B. c. '' Bather, indeed, there are many stray features in the general aspect of the comparative history of nations, which lead me to think, the chronological sketch I have attempted is right so far as it is positive, and not wrong so far as it hesitates. Not but that I am aware, that the interpreters of the Hebrew records in the Byzantine Church would put back the first dawn of the history of mankind as far as 5502 b. c. ; and although British scholars have, for the most part, considered this date too remote, I should scarcely myself call it so ; and again, I am aware, that those who consider the dynasties recorded by the Egyptian priest Manetho as having been chiefly consecutive, rather than con- temporary in different cities, would make the kingdom of Menes in Egypt as early as 3626 b. c. ; moreover, I am boimd to re- mark, by way of concession, that we can dimly trace the ex- istence of certain obscure empires in Central Asia during a * Compare BCax Mttller, in the Oafcrd Enoy$ for 1856, and in Bunsen's Philo$opkjf qf SUUny, London, 1854. AGE OF OBSCURE EMPIRES. 255 period at least previous to 2000 B.C., and that some theories would, partly from the analogy of Egypt, (supposing the date of Menes proved,) and partly from the dubious fragments of Assyrian and Chinese chronicles, make that period extend back for fifteen hundred or possibly two thousand years farther. For *^7 say, that both the cities and the arts of the age we have assigned to Kdma, and such things as the use of fine linen, with a trade in spices, such as appears to have existed between Eastern and Western Asia, all require a long growth ; and they conceive themselves to find, in the antiquities of various Asiatic nations, stronger testimony to such a period than we in Britain generally admit. " But, on the other hand, I have to remark, that so far as we can trace those early empires, previous to 2000 b. c, they seem to have been for the most part of Semitic or Asiatic aflSnities, or at least not of that Indo-European race, to which you in common with ourselves belong. But since these words are used in different senses by different people, let me briefly explain what I mean. You remember that in the hymns of the Kig- Yeda the Hindtis are called Aryas, and as such, are opposed to the Dasyus, who are enemies, or such as by Manu would be classed under the head of Mlechchas, or barbarians. The first are called performers of religious rites ; the latter, disturbers of them. The first are lighter* of complexion, and come from the North ; the latter are dark, and indigenous to the South. So it is said, that *the thunderer divided the fields among his white-complex- ioned friends, having slain the Dasyus, and the Simyus, with his thimderbolt.' (Stikta. 100.) Again, that the Aryas, your ancestors, came from the North-west, and were invaders of India, is clear from their sacred names ; since Saraswati, the name of your goddess of eloquence, is also the name of a river in the Punjaub ; and the holy land of the laws of Manu is also in the same coimtry. The same sort of testimony to the quarter from whence you came, is also furnished by your language in * Vama, otjste, meami properly colour. 256 FAMILIES OF NATIONS. general; since its oldest form, I mean the Sanscrit, is most clearly akin to the oldest form of the ancient Persian. You might, therefore, be called a Medo-Persic race; and the name A'ryas seems properly to comprehend the people of Iran, or of central Asia, South and South-east of the Caspian sea, as well as the Hindds. But this affinity of language also extends more or less closely through various nations and tribes, radiating, as it were, from Iran to the extreme West of Europe, on the one hand, and to India on the other. All the people, then, falling under that class, whether Persian, Pelasgic, Sclavonian, Grothic, Cim- bric, or Graelic, may be called Indo-European, or, from the ancestor ascribed to them in the Hebrew records, lapetic. But, besides these early European ramifications in Asia, there are also at least two great Asiatic families of nations ; the one called Semitic in modem times, under which are included all whose language is akin to that of the Hebrews ; and another, which the great Hebrew genealogist speaks but faintly of, as haying had less to do with it; I mean all the Mongolian and Chinese nations; and if it were necessary to be complete, I should also have to mention the mountain tribes to the North-west of Iran, who are rightly termed Caucasian, and the place of whose languages is not yet fixed.