THE TIBETAN TRADITIONS.

177

Tibetan records might settle the point. These hopes have, however, been disappointed, as the earliest Tibetan records prove to be a reflex of foreign influences rather than a depository of indigenous traditions.

nature of

Tibet, Khoten, and other countries to the north of the Artificial Himalayas, on adopting Buddhism, more or less unconsciously Tibetan re-cast their national traditions into Buddhist moulds.1 These traditions. countries formed the meeting-place of two distinct streams of civilisation, the material civilisation of China, and the religious civilisation of India. Some of the early Tibetan legends seem to be clumsy copies of the stories of the first Chinese sovereigns recorded in the Bamboo Books.2 The Tibetan classics further obscure the historical facts, by a tendency to trace the royal lines of Central Asia to the family or early converts of Buddha; as certain medieval families of Europe claimed descent from the Wise Men of the East; and noble gentes of Rome found their ancestors among the heroes of the Trojan war. Thus the first Tibetan monarch derived his line from Prasenadjit, King of Kosala, the life-long friend of Buddha; and the dynasty of Khoten claimed, as its founder, a son of King Dharmasoka.

Tibetan

The truth is, that while Tibet obtained much of its material Sources of civilisation from China, its medicine, its mathematics, its ideas and weights and measures, its chronology, its clothing, its mul- traditions. berries, tea, and ardent spirits; it received its religion and letters from India, together with its philosophy, and its ideal of the spiritual life. The mission of the seven Tibetan nobles to India to find an alphabet for the yet unwritten language of Tibet, is an historical event of the 7th century A.D. The Indian monastery of Nalanda was reproduced with fidelity in the great Hsamyas, or religious house at Lhasa. The struggle between Chinese and Indian influences disclosed itself alike in the public disputations of the Tibetan sects, and in the inner intrigues of the palace. One of the greatest of the Tibetan monarchs married two wives, an Indian princess who brought Buddhist images. from Nepal, and a Chinese princess who brought silk-brocades and whisky from China. We must therefore receive with caution the evidence as to the original signification of the word Sakya, derived from the records of a nation which was so largely indebted for its ideas and its traditions to later foreign sources.

1 Early Histories of Tibet and Khoten, in Mr. Rockhill's Life of the Buddha, p. 232, etc.

2 Idem, p. 203.

VOL. VI.

3 Idem, pp. 213-215.

M

Evidence

of Tibetan traditions

as to the Sakyas.

Sakya race

customs.

Scythic

in India,

40-634

A.D.

That evidence should, however, be stated. The Tibetan sacred books preserve an account of the Sakya creation; of the non-sexual procession of the ancient Sakya kings; and of the settlement of the Sakyas at Kapila, the birthplace of Buddha. Their chief seat was the kingdom of Kosala, near the southern base of the Himalayas. Tibetan traditions place the early Indian homes of the Sakyas on the banks of the Bhágírathi, as distinctly as the Vedic hymns place the homes of the primitive Aryans on the tributaries of the Indus. They claim, indeed, for Buddha a Kshattriyan descent from the noble Ishkvaku or Solar line. But it is clear that the race customs of the IndoSakyas differed in some respects from those of the Indo-Aryans. At birth, the Sakya infant was made to bow at the feet of a tribal image, Taksha Sakya-vardana, which, on the presentation of Buddha, itself bowed down to the divine child.1 In regard to marriage, the old Sakya law is said to have allowed a man only one wife. The dead were disposed of by burial, although cremation was not unknown. In the topes or funeral mounds of Buddhism is apparently seen a reproduction of the royal Scythian tombs of which Herodotus speaks. Perhaps more remarkable is the resemblance of the great co-decease of Buddha's companions to the Scythian holocausts of the followers, servants and horses of a dead monarch. On the death of Buddha, according to the Tibetan texts, a co-decease of 18,000 of his disciples took place. On the death of the faithful Maudgalyayana, the co-decease of disciples amounted to 70,000; while on that of Sariputra, the co-decease of Buddhist ascetics was as high as 80,000.5 The composite idea of a co-decease of followers, together with a funeral mound over the relics of an illustrious personage, was in accordance with obsequies of the Scythian type.

Whatever may be the value of such analogies, the influence Buddhism of the Scythian dynasties in Northern India is a historical fact. The Northern or Tibetan form of Buddhism, represented by the Scythian monarch Kanishka and the Fourth Council" in 40 A.D., soon made its way down to the plains of Hindustán, and during the next six centuries competed with the earlier Buddhism of Asoka. The Chinese pilgrim in 629-645

1 Mr. Rockhill's Life of the Buddha, p. 17.

3 Herodotus, iv. 71, 127.

2 Idem, p. 15.

The slaughter of the king's concubine, cup-bearer, and followers is also mentioned in Herodotus, iv. 71 and 72.

5 Mr. Rockhill's Life of the Buddha, p. 141, footnote 3, and p. 148.

SCYTHIC (2) JATS AND RAJPUTS.

179

A.D. found both the Northern or Scythic and the Southern forms of Buddhism in full vigour in India. He spent fourteen months at China-pati, the town where Kanishka had kept his Chinese hostages in the Punjab; and he records the debates between the Northern and Southern sects of Buddhists in various places. The town of China-pati, ten miles west of the Beas river,1 bore witness to later ages of the political connection of Northern India with the Trans-Himálayan races of Central and Eastern Asia. The Scythic influence in India was a Scythic dynastic as well as a religious one. The evidence of coins settlements and the names of Indian tribes or reigning families, such as the Sákas, Huns, and Nágas, point to Scythian settlements. as far south as the Central Provinces.2

4

in India.

Some scholars believe that the Scythians poured down upon Scythian India in such masses as to supplant the previous population. elements in the popu The Jats or Játs,3 who now number 4 millions and form one- lation. fifth of the inhabitants of the Punjab, are identified with the Getae; and their great sub-division the Dhe with the Dahae, whom Strabo places on the shores of the Caspian. This view has received the support of eminent investigators, from Professor H. H. Wilson to General Cunningham, the late Director-General of the Archæological Survey of India. The existing division between the Játs and the Dhe has, indeed, been (1) The traced back to the contiguity of the Massa-getae or Great Játs. Getae, and the Dahae, who dwelt side by side in Central Asia, and who may have advanced together during the Scythian movements towards India on the decline of the Græco-Bactrian Empire. Without pressing such identifications too closely in the service of particular theories, the weight of authority is in favour of a Scythian origin for the Játs, the most numerous and valuable section of the agricultural population of the Punjab. A similar descent has been assigned to certain of the Rájput

1 General Cunningham's Anc. Geog. of India, p. 200.

* Muir's Sanskrit Texts, chap. v. vol. i. (1868); Sir C. Grant's Gazetteer of the Central Provinces, lxx., etc. (Nagpur, 1870); Reports of the Archaological Survey of India and of Western India; Professor H. H. Wilson (and Dr. F. Hall), Vishnu Furána, ii. 134.

3 The word occurs as Játs and Jats; but the identity of the two forms has been established by reference to the Ain-i-Akbari. Some are now Hindus, others Muhammadans.

See among other places, part iv. of his Archæological Reports, p. 19. * Massa means 'great' in Pehlevi.

6 It should be mentioned, however, that Dr. Trumpp believed them to be of Aryan origin (Zeitsch. d. Deutsch. Morg. Gesellsch., xv. p. 690). See Mr J. Beames' admirable edition of Sir Henry Elliott's Glossary of the Races of the North-Western Provinces, vol. i. pp. 130-137, ed. 1869.

(2) The

tribes. Colonel Tod, still the standard historian of Rájásthán, strongly insisted on this point.

The relationship between the Játs and the Rajputs, Rajputs. although obscure, is acknowledged; and although the jus connubii no longer exists between them, an inscription seems to show that they intermarried in the 5th century A.D. Professor Cowell, indeed, regards the arguments for the Scythic descent of the Rájputs as inconclusive. But authorities of weight have deduced, alike from local investigation 3 and from Sanskrit literature, a Scythic origin for the Játs and for certain of the Rájput tribes. The question has lately been discussed, with the fulness of local knowledge, by Mr. Denzil Ibbetson, the chief Census officer for the Punjab in 1881. His conclusions are-First, that the terms Rájput and Ját indicate a difference in occupation and not in origin. Second, that even if they represent distinct waves of migration, separated by an interval of time, 'they belong to one and the same ethnic stock.' Third, 'that whether Játs and Rajputs were or were not originally distinct,' 'the two now form a common stock; the distinction between Ját and Rájput being social rather than ethnic.' We shall see that earlier migrations of Central Asian hordes also supplied certain of the Nágá, or so-called aboriginal, races of India.

Indian

The Scythic settlements were not effected without a struggle. struggle As Chandra Gupta had advanced from the Gangetic valley, and against the Scythians. rolled back the tide of Græco-Bactrian conquest, 312-306 B.C.,

1 Inscription discovered in Kotah State; No. 1 of Inscription Appendix to Colonel Tod's Annals and Antiquities of Rájásthán, vol. i. p. 701. note 3 (Madras Reprint, 1873). Although Tod is still the standard historian of Rajputána, and will ever retain an honoured place as an original investigator, his ethnical theories must be received with caution. Appendix to Elphinstone's Hist. Ind., pp. 250 et seq., ed. 1866.

2

3 Tod's Rájásthán, pp. 52, 483, 500, etc., vol. i. (Madras Reprint, 1873).

Dr. Fitz-Edward Hall's edition of Professor H. H. Wilson's Viskan Purána, vol. ii. p. 134. The Húnas, according to Wilson, were the white Huns who were established in the Punjab, and along the Indus, as we know from Arrian, Strabo, and Ptolemy, confirmed by recent discoveries of their coins and by inscriptions.' 'I am not prepared,' says Dr. FitzEdward Hall, to deny that the ancient Hindus when they spoke of the Húnas included the Huns. In the Middle Ages, however, it is certain that a race called Húna was understood by the learned of India to form a division of the Kshattriyas.' Professor Dowson's Dict. Hind. Mythology, etc., p. 122.

See the ethnographical volume of the Punjab Census for 1881, paras. 421, 422 et seq., by Mr. Denzil Jelf Ibbetson, of the Bengal Civil Service, p. 220 (Government Press, Calcutta, 1883).

SAMVAT AND SAKA ERAS.

181

so the native princes who stemmed the torrent of Scythian invasion are the Indian heroes of the first century before and after Christ. Vikramaditya, King of Ujjain, appears to have won his paramount place in Indian story by driving out the invaders. An era, the Samvat, beginning in 57 B.C., was Samvat founded in honour of his achievements. Its date1 seems era, 57 at variance with his legendary victories over the Scythian Kanishka in the 1st century after Christ. But the very title of its founder suffices to commemorate his struggle against the northern hordes, as Vikramáditya Sakári, or Vikramaditya, the Enemy of the Scythians.

The name of Vikramaditya, 'A very Sun in Prowess,' was borne, as we have seen, by several Indian monarchs. In later ages their separate identity was merged in the ancient renown of the Slayer of the Scythians, who thus combined the fame of many Vikramadityas. There was a tendency to assign to his period the most eminent Indian works in science. and poetry,-works which we know must belong to a date long after the first century of our era. His reign forms the Augustan era of Sanskrit literature; and tradition fondly ascribed the highest products of the Indian intellect during many later centuries to the poets and philosophers, or Nine Gems, of this Vikramaditya's Court. As Chandra Gupta, who freed India from the Greeks, is celebrated in the drama Mudrá-rákshasa; so Vikramaditya, the vanquisher of the Scythians, forms the central royal personage of the Hindu stage.

B.C.

era, 78

Vikramaditya's achievements, however, furnished no final de- Sáka or liverance, but merely form an episode in the long struggle between Scythian the Indian dynasties and new races from the north. Another A. D. popular era, the Sáka, literally the Scythian, takes its commencement in 78 A.D.,3 and is supposed to commemorate the defeat of the Scythians by a king of Southern India, Saliváhaná.1 During the seven centuries which followed, three powerful monarchies, the Senas, Guptas, and Valabhís, established themselves

1 Samvatsara, the 'Year.' The uncertainty which surrounds even this long-accepted finger-post in Indian chronology may be seen from Dr. J. Fergusson's paper 'On the Sáka and Samvat and Gupta eras' (Journal Roy. As. Soc., New Series, vol. xii.), especially p. 172.

The Hushka, Jushka, and Kanishka family of the Rájá Tarangini, or Chronicles of Kashmir, are proved by inscriptions to belong to the 4th century of the Seleucidan era, or the 1st century A.D.

3

Monday, 14th March 78 A.D., Julian style.

* General Cunningham; see also Mr. Edw. Thomas' letter, dated 16th September 1874, to The Academy, which brings this date within the period of the Kanishka family (2 B. C. to 87 A. D.).