It must be confessed that the impressions of a flying traveller are not generally worth recording; but as circumstances have given me peculiar opportunities of observing the country, and mixing with the natives, after many years spent in studying their languages and literature, some value may possibly attach to my experiences, which I propose to recount under distinct heads, commencing with a few notes on the political divisions of India, ancient and modern.

Ancient Political Divisions.

Hence

India has no historical literature of its own. there are only three means of arriving at any knowledge of its early history; 1. By sifting fact from fiction, sober narrative from poetical exaggeration in its early heroic poetry, especially in its two great poems, the Rāmāyana, and Mahā-bhārata; 2. By examining the inscriptions on rocks, pillars, and monuments, on copperplate grants of land, and coins scattered in various places from Kasmir to Kuttack; 3. By putting together all allusions to India, and observations on its condition to be found in the literature of other countries. The accounts written by two Chinese travellers-Fa-hian in the beginning of the fifth century of our era, and Hiouen Thsang in the beginning of the seventh-who made pilgrimages to all the early Buddhist shrines, have done good service in this latter way.

The very name India is partly derived from a foreign source. It is the European adaptation of the word Hindū, which was used by the Persians for their Aryan brethren, because the latter settled in the districts surrounding the streams of the Sindhu (pronounced by them Hindhu, and now called Indus). The Greeks, who probably gained their first conceptions of India from the Persians, changed the hard aspirate into a soft, and named the Hindus 'Ivooí (Herodotus IV. 44, V. 3). After the Indo

Aryans had spread themselves over the plains of the Ganges, the Persians called the whole of the region between the Panjab and Benares Hindustan, or abode of the Hindus,' and this name is used in India at the present day, especially by the Musalman population.

The classical names for India, however, as commonly employed in Sanskrit literature and recognized by the whole Sanskritic race, are Āryāvarta, ' abode of the 'Aryas,' and Bhārata-varsha, 'the country of king Bharata' (a prince of the lunar dynasty, who must have ruled over a large extent of territory in ancient times). The former name is more particularly applicable to India above the Vindhya mountains.

After its occupation by the great Aryan race, India appears to have yielded itself up an easy prey to every invader. According to Herodotus (IV. 44), it was subjugated by Darius Hystaspes (called in Persian Dārā Gushtasp). This conquest, if conquest it deserves to be called, probably took place between 521 and 518 B.C., about the time of the rise of Buddhism, and must have been very partial. It was doubtless followed by a certain amount of traffic between Persia and India, and to this commercial intercourse may be due the introduction into India of many new ideas-religious and philosophicaland perhaps also of the Phoenician alphabet, with which that of some of the Aśoka edicts and inscriptions is thought to be connected (see p. 129, note 1).

The expedition of Alexander the Great (called by the Hindūs, Iskandar, or Sikandar) to the banks of the Indus, about 327 B.C., is a well-known and better authenticated fact. To this invasion is due the first trustworthy information obtained by Europeans concerning the northwesterly portion of India and the region of the five rivers, down which the Grecian troops were conducted in ships by Nearchus.

The first reliable date in Indian History is the era of Candra-gupta (Sandrokottus)—the founder of the Maurya

dynasty, who, after taking possession of Pațaliputra (Palibothra, Patna) and the kingdom of Magadha (Behār), extended his dominion over all Hindustan, and presented a determined front towards Alexander's successor, Seleukos Nikator, the date of the commencement of whose reign was about 312 B.C. When the latter contemplated invading India from his kingdom of Bactria, so effectual was the resistance offered by Candra-gupta that the Greek thought it politic to form an alliance with the Hindū king, and sent his own countryman Megasthenes as an bassador to reside at his court1.

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To this circumstance we owe the earliest authentic account of Indian manners, customs, and usages by an intelligent observer who was not a native, and Megasthenes's narrative, preserved by Strabo, furnishes a basis on which a fair inference may be founded that Brahmanism and Buddhism existed side by side in India on amicable terms in the fourth century B.C. There is even ground for believing that King Candra-gupta himself was secretly a Buddhist, though in public he gave homage to the gods of the Brahmans.

Candra-gupta's reign is thought to have lasted from 315 to 291 B.C., and that of his son and successor Vindusara from 291 to 263 B.C.

Aśoka (who called himself Priyadarsin) the grandson of Ćandra-gupta, did for Buddhism what Constantine did for Christianity-gave an impetus to its progress by adopting it as his own creed. Buddhism, then, became the state religion, the national faith of the whole kingdom of Magadha, and therefore of a great portion of India. For gradually during this period most of the petty princes of India from Peshawar and Kasmir to the river Kistna, and from Surat to Bengal and Orissa, if not actually brought under subjection to the kings of Magadha, were compelled to acknowledge their paramount authority. Aśoka's reign

1 In the second century B.C. some of the Bactrian kings made conquests

in India.

was remarkable for a great Buddhist council (the third since Buddha's time), held about 246 or 247 B.C., when the Tripitaka or three collections of writings in the Pālī language (brought from ancient Magadha, and a form of Magadhi Prakrit, though different from Jain Māgadhi), containing all the teachings of Buddha-who is supposed to have never written anything himself-was finally settled.

Moreover, Aśoka's edicts in Palī1 inscribed on rocks and stone pillars (probably between 251 and 253 B.C.) furnish the first authentic records of Indian history. According to Mr. R. N. Cust 2, ten of the most important inscriptions are found on five rocks and five pillars, though numerous other monuments are scattered over the whole of Northern India, from the Indian Ocean on the west to the Bay of Bengal on the east, from the slopes of the Vindhya range on the south to the Khaiber Pass on the north.

The five most important rock inscriptions are those on (1) the Rock of Kapurda-garhi in British Afghānistān, forty miles east-north-east of Peshāwur; (2) the Rock of Khalsi, situated on the bank of the river Jumna, just where it leaves the Himalaya mountains, fifteen miles west of the hill-station of Mussourie; (3) the Rock of Girnar, half a mile to the east of the city of Junagurh, in Kathiawār; (4) the Rock of Dhauli in Kuttack (properly Katak), twenty miles north of Jagan-nath; (5) the Rock of Jaugadha, in a large old fort eighteen miles west-north-west of Ganjam, in Madras.

The five most important pillars are: (1) the Pillar at

1 These inscriptions are in two quite distinct kinds of writing. That at Kapurda-garhi-sometimes called Northern Aśoka or Ariano-Pāli-is clearly Semitic, and traceable to a Phoenician source, being written from right to left. That at Girnar is not so clearly so. It probably came through a Pahlavi channel, and gave rise to Deva-nagari. General Cunningham believes this character-sometimes called Southern Aśoka or Indo-Pali-to have originated in India.

2 See an interesting article in the 'Journal of the National Indian Association,' for June 1879.

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Delhi, known as Firoz Shah's Lat; (2) another Pillar at Delhi, which was removed to Calcutta, but has recently been restored; (3) the Pillar at Allahabad, a single shaft without capital, of polished sandstone, thirty-five feet in height; (4) the Pillar at Lauriya, near Bettiah, in Bengal ; (5) another Pillar at Lauriya.

The inscriptions on these monuments present us with the best and most interesting edicts of Asoka. They prohibit the slaughter of animals either for food or for sacrifice, appoint missionaries for the propagation of Buddhistic doctrines in various countries, inculcate peace and mercy, charity and toleration, morality and self-denial, and what is still more remarkable, enjoin seasons of general national humiliation and confession of sin every five years.

Seven Buddhist kings of the Maurya dynasty, under whom the kingdom of Magadha continued to enjoy great prosperity (though probably not an equally extended dominion), reigned after Asoka, until the year 195 B.C. They were succeeded by the Sanga Rājas, the chief of whom built the great Buddhist tope at Sanchi about 188 B.C., and by another line of Buddhist kings called Kanwa, who reigned till about 31 B.C. An Andhra dynasty then acquired power in Magadha.

There were of course many rival principalities existing in India long before the rise of the kingdom of Magadha, some of which traced back the pedigrees of their kings to the ancient dynasties of the heroic period. No one kingdom ever acquired universal dominion, though occasionally a single prince, conspicuous for unusual energy and administrative power, compelled a large number of less able chieftains to submit to his suzerainty, in which case he was sometimes called a Mahārājādhirāja, and sometimes a Cakravarti.

To fix the chronological order of the most ancient dynasties, is of course impossible. It will be sufficient to enumerate some of the most important (with occasional approximate dates) from the earliest times, merely pre