The time of the present writer is not his own, and the charge of a Bengal District with an area of over six thousand square miles and a population of over three millions, leaves little leisure for other work. To arrange my materials, under these circumstances, has been an arduous work, and I can only ask the indulgent consideration of my readers for any errors and defects which may have crept into this work.

MYMENSING DISTRICT,

BENGAL,

13th August 1888.

R. C. DUTT.

INTRODUCTION.

EPOCHS AND DATES.

THE History of Ancient India is a history of thirty centuries of human culture and progress. It divides itself into several distinct periods, each of which, for length of years, will compare with the entire history of many a modern people.

Other nations claim an equal or even a higher antiquity than the Hindus. The Egyptians have records on their everlasting monuments of a civilization which goes beyond three thousand years before Christ. Assyrian scholars have claimed an equally remote antiquity for the Shumiro-Accadian civilization of Chaldea, which is said to have flourished over a thousand years before Neniveh and Babylon were founded. The Chinese, too, have a history which dates from about 2,400 B. C. For India, modern scholars have not claimed a higher antiquity than 2,000 B. C., though future researches may require an extension of this date.

But there is a difference between the records of the Hindus and the records of other nations. The hieroglyphic records of the ancient Egyptians yield little information beyond the names of kings and R. C. D., A. I.

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pyramid-builders, and accounts of dynasties and wars. The cuneiform inscriptions of Assyria and Babylon tell us much the same story. And even ancient Chinese records shed little light on the gradual progress of human culture and civilization.

Ancient Hindu works are of a different character. If they are defective in some respects, as they undoubtedly are, they are defective as accounts of dynasties, of wars, of so-called historical incidents. On the other hand they give us a full, connected, and clear account of the advancement of civilization, of the progress of the human mind, such as we shall seek for in vain among the records of any other equally ancient nation. The literature of each period is a perfect picture—a photograph, if we may so call it— of the Hindu civilization of that period. And the works of successive periods, form a complete history of Hindu civilization for over three thousand years, so full, so clear, that he who runs may read.

Inscriptions on stone and writings on papyri are recorded with a design to to commemorate passing events. The songs and hymns and philosophical and religious effusions of a people are an unconscious and true reflection of its civilization and its thought. The earliest effusions of the Hindus were not recorded in writing, they are, therefore, full and unrestricted,— they are a natural and true expression of the nation's thoughts and feelings. They were preserved, not on

stone, but in the faithful memory of the people, who handed down the great heritage from century to century with a scrupulous exactitude which, in modern days, would be considered a miracle.

Scholars who have studied the Vedic hymns historically are aware that the materials they afford for constructing a history of civilization are fuller and truer than any accounts which could have been recorded on stone or papyri. And those who have pursued Hindu literature through the different periods of Hindu history, are equally aware that they form a complete and comprehensive story of the progress and gradual modifications of Hindu civilization, thought, and religion through over three thousand years. And the philosophical historian of human civilization need not be a Hindu to think that the Hindus have preserved the fullest, the clearest, and the truest materials for his work.

We have made

We wish not to be misunderstood. the foregoing remarks simply with a view to remove the very common and very erroneous impression that Ancient India has no history worth studying, no connected and reliable chronicle of the past which would be interesting or instructive to the modern reader.

Ancient India has a connected story to tell, and so far from being uninteresting, its special feature is its intense attractiveness. We read in that ancient story how a gifted Aryan people, separated by

circumstances from the outside world, worked out their civilization amidst natural and climatic conditions which were peculiarly favourable. We note their intellectual discoveries age after age; we watch their religious progress and developments through successive centuries; we mark their political career, as they gradually expand over India, and found new kingdoms and dynasties; we observe their struggles against priestly domination, their successes and their failures; we study with interest their great social and religious revolutions and their far-reaching consequences. And this great story of a nation's intellectual life—more thrilling in its interest than any tale which Shaharzadi told is nowhere broken and nowhere disconnected. The great causes which led to great social and religious changes are manifest to the reader, and he follows the gradual revolution of Hindu civilization through thirty centuries without a break or interruption.

The very shortcomings of Hindu civilization, as compared with the younger civilization of Greece or Rome have their lessons for the modern reader. The story of our successes is not more instructive than the story of our failures. The hymns of Visvâmitra, the philosophy of Kapila and the poetry of Kâlidâsa have no higher lessons for the modern reader than the deep causes which led to the decadence of our political life and the ascendancy of priests. The story of the religious rising of the people under the leadership of