The History of Antiquity, Vol. 4 (of 6). Duncker Max

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and so ascended the throne of Magadha, can be fixed with accuracy from the accounts of western writers. It was the year 315 B.C. As 6042 years are supposed to elapse between Spatembas and the accession of Sandrakottos, Spatembas must have begun to reign over the Indians in the year 6717 B.C. But this date it is impossible to maintain. In the first place it is impossible that 153 reigns should have filled up a space of 6400 years. This would allow each king a reign of 42 years, or of about 38 years if we deduct 600 years for the three interruptions in the series. Moreover, the Indian lists of kings, at any rate as we now find them in the Epos and in the Puranas, present a smaller total of kings than 153, whether they come down to Chandragupta himself, or to his age. From Chandragupta to Brihadratha, the supposed founder of the race, the lists of the kings of Magadha give 53 kings according to the lesser total and 64 according to the larger. If to these lists we add the rulers who unite the kings of Magadha to the family of Kuru, and those who carry back the family of Kuru to Manu, we are still able to add no more than 28 or 38 kings according as we take the shorter or longer lists. Hence in these lists, instead of 153 kings, we get at most only 100, as reigning before Chandragupta. The list given in the Vishnu Purana for the kings of the Koçalas is somewhat longer; it enumerates 116 kings from Manu to Prasenajit, whose reign fills the interval between 600 and 550 B.C. If we add 10 or 14 reigns for the period between Prasenajit and the accession of Chandragupta, the longest of the lists preserved by the Indians would still only present 130 reigns before the time of Chandragupta.131

      It is not clear from the account of Megasthenes, or at any rate from the excerpts which have come down to us, what was the extent of the period which elapsed between the last interruption in the list of kings and Sandrakottos. Hence we are not in a position to ascertain the duration of the fourth age, or Kaliyuga, as it was fixed among the Indians in his time; we must therefore have recourse to other proofs in order to discover whether the year given in the Puranas, 3102 B.C., may be taken for the commencement of a new period, i. e. the post-epic, or historic, in the valley of the Ganges. The fixed point from which we must start is the year of the accession of Sandrakottos, a date rendered certain by the accounts of the Greeks. In the period before this date, the lists of the Brahmans taken together with the lists of Buddhists carry back the series of the kings of Magadha, which was the most important kingdom on the Ganges long before Sandrakottos, with tolerable certainty as far as the year 803 B.C., i. e. to the beginning of the sway of the dynasty of the Pradyotas over Magadha.132

      Can we ascend beyond this point? According to the Puranas, the race of the Barhadrathas had ruled over Magadha before the Pradyotas, from Somapi to Ripunjaya, the last of the family, and their sway had continued 1000 years. Of this family the Vayu-Purana enumerates 21 kings, and the Matsya-Purana 32 kings. This domination of a thousand years is obviously a round, cyclic sum: and both in the Vayu-Purana and the Matsya-Purana the total of the reigns given for the several rulers of this dynasty falls below the sum of 1000 years. If we take 25 years, the highest possible average for each reign, 21 reigns or 525 years will only bring us to the year 1328 B.C. (803 + 525). At this date, then, the Barhadrathas may have begun to reign over Magadha. If, on the other hand, we keep 32 as the number of these kings, and an average of only 15 years is allotted to the several reigns – an average usually correct in long lists of reigns in the East – we arrive at 1283 B.C. as the date of the beginning of the reign of the Barhadrathas (803 + 480). To this date, or near it, we come, if we test the lists of kings supplied by the Puranas for the series of the kings of the Koçalas and the Bharatas in the land of the Ganges. The time at which Prasenajit was king of the Koçalas can be fixed at the first half of the sixth century B.C. (see below). Before him the Vishnu-Purana gives a series of 23 kings down to the close of the great war. Twenty-three reigns, allowing an average of 25 years for each, carry us 575 years beyond the commencement of Prasenajit, i. e. up to 1175 B.C. (600 + 575). In the list of the rulers of Hastinapura, for which throne the great war was waged, Çatanika appears as the twenty-fourth successor of Parikshit, to whom, as we found, this throne fell, after the conclusion of the great war. As Çatanika died about the year 600 B.C. (cf. Book VI. chap, i.), 24 reigns of 25 years before him would bring us to the year 1200 B.C. as the beginning of the year of Parikshit. The statement of the Puranas that he ascended the throne in the year 3102 B.C. and that the Kaliyuga began with that year cannot therefore be maintained. And this date is contradicted not only by the results of an examination of the lists of the kings of Magadha, of the Koçalas and Bharatas, but also by a statement in the Vishnu-Purana. This tells us that, from the beginning of the Kaliyuga to the date when the first Nanda ascended the throne of Magadha, a period of 1015 years elapsed.133 The accession of this king we can place with tolerable certainty in the year 403 B.C.; and thus, even on the evidence of the Vishnu-Purana, the Kaliyuga began in the year 1418 B.C., and Parikshit ascended the throne of the Bharatas in that year. It is not impossible, therefore, that the 32 reigns which the Matsya-Purana gives to the Barhadrathas may have filled up the time from the year 1418 to the year 803 B.C. (615 years).134 Before the first Barhadrathas, Sahadeva, Jarasandha, and Brihadratha are said to have reigned over Magadha. Hence the foundation of the kingdom of Magadha would have to be placed, at the earliest, in the year 1480 B.C., and not earlier; but rather, if we follow the comparison of the parallel reigns as above, a century later. If the great movement towards the east and in the east was brought to an end at the accession of Parikshit and the commencement of the Kaliyuga in the year 1418 B.C., and thus in the course of the fifteenth or fourteenth century the foundation could be laid for the kingdom of Magadha, i. e. for a great civic community far to the east, the migration into the regions of the Yamuna and the upper Ganges must have commenced at the least about the year 1500 B.C. We have already referred to the fact that the colonisation of such extensive districts, the foundation and fortification of large kingdoms in them, which was moreover rendered still more difficult by severe contests among the immigrants, could not have been the work of a few decades of years.

      If the immigration of the Aryas into the land of the Ganges took place about 1500 B.C. we should have a point whereby to fix the time at which the hymns of the Veda were composed, for in them, as has been already remarked, the Ganges is rarely mentioned. The great number of the hymns must therefore have received the form in which they were retained and handed down by the families of minstrels before the year 1500 B.C. The period of migration brought with it more serious and earnest tasks than had occupied the Aryas in the Panjab. The struggles against the old population, the wars of the newly-established states with one another, claimed the whole power of the emigrants. Hence the duties of the sacrificial songs or of hymns of thanksgiving were thrown into the background by the imperative necessities of the moment. Men were contented with the invocations of the gods which lived in the memory of the minstrel-families, and had been brought from the ancient home. The minstrels also, who led the emigrant princes and tribes, naturally gave their attention to songs of war and victory – songs of which the fragment preserved from the wars of the Bharatas against the Tritsus is an example (p. 67). When at length the period of emigration, of settlement, and struggle was over, with the advent of more peaceful times, the excitement of the moment gave place to reflection and to the remembrance of the great deeds of the ancestors. The inspired flights, the pressure of immediate feeling which had prompted the songs before the battle and after the victory, were followed by a more peaceful and narrative tone. Hence grew up a series of songs of the marvels and deeds of the heroes who had conquered the land in the Yamuna and Ganges, and had founded states and cities there. As the heroes and events thus celebrated passed into the background, as the intervening periods became wider, the greater was the tendency of this mass of song to gather round a few great names and incidents. The less prominent forms and struggles disappeared, and in the centuries which followed the strain of settlement and establishment an artificial culture of this warlike minstrelsy united the whole recollections of the heroic times into the narrative of the great war, the Mahabharata.

      If we could present to ourselves this Epos of the Indians in the form which it may have assumed two or three centuries after the close of the great migrations and struggles, i. e. about the eleventh century B.C., it would still be a valuable source of historical knowledge. We could not indeed have taken the occurrences

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