ANCIENT INDIA 2000 B.C.-800 a.D. BY ROMESH CHUNDER DUTT, C.I.E., I.C.S. BARRISTER-AT-law, fellow OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALCUTTA AUTHOR OF A HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION IN ANCIENT INDIA", ETC. WITH TWO MAPS LONDON LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. AND NEW YORK: 15 EAST 16th STREET 1893 All rights reserved gift Heirs W. H. Wart 10.6.41 EDITOR'S PREFACE. THE present volume is the first of a series of EPOCHS OF INDIAN HISTORY. To write a history of India on the scale of a Freeman, or even of a Macaulay, would, from the multiplicity and diversity of detail, be a task of superhuman magnitude. The story of India during the past four thousand years is the story not of one country but of many countries, not of one nation but of many nations, told not in one language but in many languages, and influenced in turn by the greatest religions of the world. In consequence we find the best historical work in the Indian field is bestowed upon special periods or particular areas. The result is evident in the shorter histories which attempt to cover the whole ground. There is a universal want of balance; the writer insensibly, but inevitably, brings to the front the epoch he has studied in detail, or the district where his experience has been gained. The present Series will endeavour to correct this tendency by assigning each epoch to a writer who has made it a subject of special research; while it will be the task of the Editor to endeavour to preserve continuity on the one hand and to prevent overlapping on the other. The volume now published summarizes the history of ancient India,—or more properly, of those northern regions that first came under the influence of Aryan civilization-down to the time when the Hindu sovereignties were swept away for ever by Muhammadan invaders from the north. The history of those invaders and of the dynasties they founded will form the subject of another volume. Southern India-the Dravidian Peninsula-long maintained an independent civilization. It never was- -it is not yet-more than partially Aryanized; the Moslem occasionally raided through but never remained. On its shores, too, the European explorer first set his foot, and within its territories French and English had their final struggle for Eastern Empire. The history of Drávida, down to the time when the death of Tippu Sultán made it irretrievably a British Province, will thus naturally constitute a third epoch. Between North and South lies the middle land of the Dekhan. It, too, has a history of its own. At first the wilderness of Dandaka, peopled with strange monsters; later the home of the conquering Andhras; subsequently the debatable land whence it was the ambition of every warlike follower of the Prophet to carve for himself a kingdom; and finally the seat of the Hindu empire of the Mahrattas,—its story furnishes a fourth epoch. The end of the Mysore wars, the overthrow of the Mahratta power, and the pensioning of the Moghul kings of Delhi, occurring as they do within a period of twenty years, mark the definite establishment of the British Ráj throughout |