The synchronism between the grandson of Chandragupta and one of the early successors of Seleucus leaves no doubt of the contemporary existence of the elder princes; and fixes an epoch in Hindú chronology, to which the dates of former events may with confidence be referred. CHAP. III. Nanda's The first date to fix is that of Nanda. Though Date of there were eight kings between him and Chan- reign. dragupta, it is not known whether they were in lineal or collateral succession, one account making them all brothers; but four of the Puránas agree in assigning only 100 years to the whole nine, including Nanda. We may therefore suppose Nanda to have come to the throne 100 years before Sandracottus, or 400 years before Christ. The sixth king, counting back from Nanda inclusive, is Ajata Satru, in whose reign Sakya died. The date of that event has been shown, on authorities independent on the Hindús, to be about 550 B.C.; and as five reigns interposed between that and 400 would only allow thirty years to each, there is no irreconcileable discrepancy between the epochs. Between Nanda and the war of the "Mahá Bhárat" there had been three dynasties; and the number of years during which each reigned is given in four Puránas. The aggregate is 1500 years; but the longest list gives only forty-seven kings; and the same four Puránas in another place give, with equal confidence, a totally different number of years. One makes the interval between Nanda Date of the death of Budha. Probable date of the war of the "Mahá Bhárat." III. BOOK and the war of the "Mahá Bhárat " 1015 years; two others, 1050; and the fourth, 1115. Now, the shortest of these periods, divided among forty-seven kings, gives upwards of twenty-one years to a reign; and to make out 1500 years, would require more than thirty-one years to each reign. Such a duration through forty-seven continuous reigns is so unlikely, that we can scarcely hesitate to prefer the medium between the shorter periods, and decide, as far as depends on the evidence of the Puránas, that the war of the "Mahá Bhárat" ended 1050 years before Nanda, or 1450 before Christ. If we adopt the belief of the Hindús, that the Védas were compiled, in their present form, at the time of the war, we must place the latter event in the fourteenth century before Christ, upwards of fifty years later than the date given by the Puránas. This alteration is recommended by the circumstance that it would still further reduce the length of the reigns. It would place the war of the "Mahá Bharat" about 200 years before the siege of Troy. But even the longest period (of 1500 years from Nanda) would still leave ample room since the commencement of the cáli yúg, or since the flood, to dispose of the few antecedent events in Hindú history. Supposing the flood and the cáli yúg to be about the same time (as many opinions justify), there would be considerably more than 1400 years from that epoch to the war of the "Mahá Bhárat." Dates after Chandragupta. Two Puránas give the period from Nanda for III. wards, to the end of the fifth dynasty from him, CHAP. or fourth from Sandracottus: the whole period is 836 or 854 years from Nanda, or 436 or 454 A. D. The last of these dynasties, the Andras, acceded to power about the beginning of our æra; which agrees with the mention by Pliny, in the second century, of a powerful dynasty of the same name ; and although this might refer to another family of Andras in the Deckan, yet the name of Andre Indi, on the Ganges, in the Peutengerian tables, makes it equally probable that it applied to the one in question. cidence Chinese The Chinese annals, translated by De Guignes, Coinnotice, in A. D. 408, the arrival of ambassadors with the from the Indian prince Yue-gnai, King of Kia-pi-li. annals. Kia-pi-li can be no other than Capili, the birthplace and capital of Budha, which the Chinese have put for all Magada. Yue-gnai again bears some resemblance to Yaj-nasri, or Yajna, the king actually on the throne of the Andra at the period referred to. The Andra end in Pulimat, or Pulomárchish, A. D. 436; and from thence forward the chronology of Magada relapses into a confusion nearly equal to that before the war of the "Mahá Bhárat." An embassy is indeed mentioned in the Chinese annals, as arriving in a. D. 641, from Ho-lo-mien, of the family of Kie-li-tie, a great king in India. M. de Guignes supposes his kingdom to have been Magada; but neither the king's name nor that of BOOK III. Obscurity after A.D. 436. the dynasty bears the least resemblance to any in the Puránas.* The Vishnu Purána states (in the prophetic tone which, as a professed work of Vyása, it is compelled to assume, in speaking of events subsequent to that sage's death,) that "after these" [Andras] there will reign 7 A'bhíras, 10 Garddharbas, 16 Sakas, 8 Yavanas, 14 Tusháras, 13 Múndas, and 11 Maunas; who will be sovereigns of the whole earth for 1390 years: 11 Pauras follow, who reign for 300 years, and are succeeded by the Kailaka Yavanas, who reign for 106 years. All this would carry us nearly 500 years beyond the present year 1840; but, if we assume that the summing up the first dynasties into 1390 is an error, and * The note in which M. de Guignes offers this opinion is curious, as showing, from a Chinese work which he quotes, that Magada was called Mo-kia-to, and its capital recognised by both its Hindú names Kusumapúra, for which the Chinese wrote Kia-so-mo-pou-lo, and Pataliputra, out of which they made Po-to-li-tse, by translating Putra, which means a son in Shanscrit, into their own corresponding word tse. The ambassadors in A. D. 641 could not, however, have come from Pataliputra, which had long before been deserted for Rájgrihi (or Behár); for the capital was at the latter place when visited by the Chinese traveller, in the beginning of the fifth century (Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, vol. v. p. 132.); and another Chinese, who wrote in A.D. 640, states that Pataliputra was a mass of ruins when he had seen it on his travels. that they were in reality contemporaneous, or nearly so, the conclusion we are led to is, that after the Andras, a period of confusion ensued, during which different parts of India were possessed by different races, of whom nothing further is known. If the Yavans be Greeks, it would, no doubt, be surprising to find eight of their monarchs reigning after A. D. 436; and the Kaikala Yavans would be still more embarrassing. They may possibly be Mussulmans.* Immediately after all this confusion comes a list of dynasties reigning in different kingdoms; and among them is a brief notice of "the Guptas of Magada, along the Ganges, to Prayaga." Now, it has been put out of all dispute, by coins and inscriptions, that a race, some of whose names ended in Gupta, did actually reign along the Ganges from the fourth or fifth to the seventh or eighth century. There is, therefore, some truth mixed with these crudities, but it cannot be made available without external aid; and as nearly the same account is given in the other historical Puránas, we have nothing left but to give up all further attempts at the chronology of Magada. The era of Vicramaditya in Málwa, which begins fifty-seven years before Christ, and is in Professor Wilson, Vishnu Purána, p. 474–481. Dr. Mills, translation from the Allahabad column, in the Journal of the Asiatic Society of Calcutta, vol. iii. p. 257.; and other papers in that Journal, quoted by Professor Wilson. CHAP. III. Eras of Viand Salivá cramaditya hana. |