Freda Bedi Cont'd (#3)

[admin]

Part 1 of 3

Remarks on the History of the Seven Roman Kings, Occasioned by Sir Isaac Newton’s Objections to the Supposed Two Hundred and Forty-Four Years’ Duration of the Regal State of Rome, from The Roman History From the Building of Rome to the Ruin of the Commonwealth, Illustrated with Maps
by N. Hooke, Esq.
A New Edition in Six Volumes
Vol. I
1823

Remarks on the History of the Seven Roman Kings, Occasioned by Sir Isaac Newton’s Objections to the Supposed Two Hundred and Forty-Four Years’ Duration of the Regal State of Rome
  
It is commonly admitted, upon the authority of the ancient chronologers, that the fall of Troy was about 676 years before the expulsion of Tarquin the last king of Rome, who was indisputably expelled about the year before Christ 508. But Sir Isaac Newton has, by many arguments, made it probable, that those chronologers have placed the taking of Troy* [Mr. Whiston, p. 971 of Authent. Rec. part 2. seems confident that Troy was taken just 1270 years before the Christian era, which computation (he says) agrees with the chronology of the author of the Life of Homer, supposed to be Herodotus.] near 300 years farther back than they ought to have done: and one of his arguments is drawn from the too long space of time supposed to be filled up by the reigns of only twenty-one kings in succession (fourteen at Alba, and seven at Rome). For in no country, of which the historical and chronological accounts are certain, is it found, that the like number of kings in succession reigned near so long as 676 years. And because most of the seven Roman kings were untimely slain, and one deposed, he thinks it not reasonable to believe that their reigns took up half the 244 years allotted to them by the Roman historians. 
 
As the following remarks, offered in support of Sir Isaac Newton's conclusion, may happen to fall under the inspection of several persons who have not perused that great man's chronological work, it may to such perhaps be agreeable, if the remarks be introduced by some of his fundamental reasons for questioning the truth of the received chronology of ancient kingdoms in general, and of the Roman kingdom in particular.
 

'All nations, before they began to keep exact accounts of time, have been prone to raise their antiquities; and this humour has been promoted by the contentions between nations about their originals.
 
'Herodotus tells us, that the priests of Egypt reckoned from the reign of Menes to that of Sethon [He is supposed to be Mizraim the son of Cham, and grandson of Noah, and to have founded a kingdom in Egypt, A.M. 1772.—Ant. Chr. 2232. ], who put Senacherib to flight  [†: Missing FN], 341 generations of men, and as many priests of Vulcan, and as many kings of Egypt; and that 300 generations make 10,000 years; for, saith Herodotus, three generations of men make 100 years: and the remaining forty and one generations 1340 years: and so the whole time from the reign of Menes to that of Sethon was 11,340 years. And by this way of reckoning, and allotting longer reigns to the gods of Egypt than to the kings which followed them, Herodotus tells us from the priests of Egypt, that from Pan to Amosis were 15,000 years, and from Hercules to Amosis 17,000.
  
'So also the Chaldeans boasted of their antiquity; for Callisthenes, the disciple of Aristotle, sent astronomical observations from Babylon to Greece, said to be of 1903 years' standing before the times of Alexander the Great. And the Chaldeans boasted farther, that they had observed the stars 473,000; and there were others who made the kingdoms of Assyria, Media, and Damascus, much older than the truth.
  
'Some of the Greeks called the times before the reign of Ogyges unknown, [Section: According to the old chronology, the flood of Ogyges happened 1796 years before the Christian era: but according to Sir I. N. little more than 1100 years. Short Chron. p. 10. 'In the beginning of that [the Persian] monarchy, Acusilaus made Phoroneus as old as Ogyges and his flood, and that flood 1020 older than the first Olympiad; which is above 680 years older than the truth.' Chron. of the Greeks, p. 45.] because they had no history of them; those between his flood and the beginning [‡: Missing FN] of the Olympiads fabulous, because their history was much mixed with poetical fables; and those after the beginning of the Olympiads historical, because their history was free from such fables. The fabulous ages wanted a good chronology, and so also did the historical, for the first sixty or seventy Olympiads.
 
'The Europeans had no chronology before the times of the Persian empire, and whatsoever chronology they now have of ancienter times hath been framed since by reasoning and conjecture.
 
'Plutarch tells us, that the philosophers anciently delivered their opinions in verse, as Orpheus, Hesiod, Parmenidcs, Xenophanes, Eropedocles, Thales.
 
'Solon wrote in verse, and all the seven wise men were addicted to poetry, as
Anaximenes affirmed. [||: Missing FN.]
 
'Till those days the Greeks wrote only in verse, and while they did so, there could be no chronology, nor any other history than such as was mixed with poetical fancies.
 
'Pliny, in reckoning up the inventors of things, tells us, that Pherecydes Scyrius taught to compose discourses in prose in the reign of Cyrus; and Cadmus Milesius to write history. And in another place he saith, that Cadmus Milesius was the first that wrote in prose.
 
'Josephus tells us, that Cadmus Milesius and Acusilaus were but a little before the expedition of the Persians against the Greeks: and Suidas calls Acusilaus a most ancient historian, and saith that he wrote genealogies out of tables of brass, which his father, as was reported, found in a corner of his house. Who hid them there may be doubted: for the Greeks had no public table or inscription older than the laws of Draco.
 
'Pherecydes Atheniensis, in the reign of Darius Hystaspis, or soon after, wrote of the antiquities and ancient genealogies of the Athenians in ten books; and was one of the first European writers of this kind, and one of the best; whence he had the name of Genealogus, and by Dionysius Halicarnassensis is said to be second to none of the genealogers.
 
'Epimenides (not the philosopher, but) an historian, wrote also of ancient genealogies: and
 
'Hellanicus (who was twelve years older than Herodotus) digested his history by the ages or successions of the priestesses of Juno Argiva. Others digested theirs by those of the archons of Athens, or kings of the Lacedemonians.
 
'Hippias the Elean published a breviary of the Olympiads, supported by no certain arguments, as Plutarch tells us:* [ ] he lived in the 105th Olympiad, [cross:     ]  and * was derided by Plato for his ignorance. This breviary seems to have contained nothing more than a short account of the victors in every Olympiad.
 
‘Then Ephorus the disciple of Isocrates formed a chronological history of Greece,* [ ]  beginning with the return of the Heraclides into Peloponnesus, and ending with the siege of Porinthus in the twentieth year of Philip, the father of Alexander the Great, that is, eleven years before the fall of the Persian empire: but he digested things by generations, and the reckoning by the Olympiads, [Sir I.N. says the same in the introduction to his short Chronicle, and adds there these words, 'Nor does it appear that the reigns of kings were yet set down by numbers of years.'] or by any other era, was not yet in use among the Greeks.
 
‘The Arundelian marbles were composed sixty years after the death of Alexander the Great [An. 4. Olymp. 128.], and yet mention not the Olympiads, nor any other standing era, but reckon backwards from the time then present.
 
'But chronology was now reduced to a reckoning by years; and, in the next Olympiad,
 
‘Timaeas Siculus improved it: for he wrote a history, in several books, down to his own times according to the Olympiads; comparing the Ephori, the kings of Sparta, the archons of Athens, and the priestesses of Argos, with the Olympic victors, so as to make the Olympiads and the genealogies and successions of kings and priestesses, and the poetical histories, suit one another, according to the best of his judgment; and, where he left off, Polybius began, and carried on the history.
 
'Eratosthenes wrote above 100 years after the death of Alexander the Great. He was followed by Apollodorus, and these two have been followed ever since by chronologers.
 
‘But how uncertain their chronology is, and how doubtful it was reputed by the Greeks of those times, may be understood by these passages of Plutarch. “Some reckon Lycurgus,” saith he, “contemporary to Iphitus, and to have been his companion in ordering the Olympic festivals, amongst whom was Aristotle the philosopher; arguing from the Olympic disc, [N.B. In p. 58. Sir I.N. shows the fallacy of this argument. Iphitus, says he, did not restore all the Olympic games. He restored indeed the racing in the first Olympiad, Coroebus being victor. In the 14th Olympiad, the double stadium was added, Hypaenus being victor. And in the 18th Olympiad, the quinquertium and wrestling were added, Lampus and Erybatus, two Spartans, being victors; and the disc was one of the games of the quinquertium.] which had the name of Lycurgus upon it. Others supputing the times by the kings of Lacedemon, as Eratosthenes and Apollodorus, affirm that he was not a few years older than the first Olympiad.” He began to flourish in the 17th or 18th Olympiad, and at length Aristotle made him as old as the first Olympiad; and so did Epaminondas, as he is cited by Aelian and Plutarch: and then Eratosthenes, Apollodorus, and their followers, made him above 100 years older.'
 
[Mr. Winston accuses Sir I. Newton of not informing his readers how very difficult a thing it is to tell the age of Lycurgus; nor that Plutarch himself declares, “how every thing about Lycurgus is disputed; and, above all the rest, the time when he lived.” I cannot see any good ground for this quarrel with Sir I. N.; but I wonder that Mr. Whiston or any body should build much upon the authority of chronological canons, the framera of which were so destitute of authentic records as to be reduced to conjectures concerning the time when Lycurgus lived, than whose legislature there is not a more memorable event in the history of Greece. And it ought to be observed, that the uncertainty with regard to Lycurgus must be attended with a like uncertainty as to the times of the kings in the line of Procles; Lycurgus having been tutor to his nephew Charilaus the seventh king of that race. And it is remarkable that the chronologers have not pretended to know the number of years which each of those kings reigned, though they have marked the length of the several reigns of the kings in the line of Eurysthenes down to Polydorus the tenth king.]
 
In another place Plutarch tells us: 'The congress of Solon with Croesus some think they can confute by chronology. But a history so illustrious, and verified by so many witnesses, and which is more, so agreeable to the manners of Solon, and worthy of the greatness of his mind and of his wisdom, I cannot persuade myself to reject because of some chronological canons, as they call them, which hundreds of authors correcting, have not yet been able to constitute any thing certain, in which they could agree amongst themselves, about repugnances.
 
'Diodorus, in the beginning of his history, tells us, that be did not divine, by any certain space, the times preceding the Trojan war, because he had no certain foundation to rely upon: but from the Trojan war, according to the reckoning of Apollodorus, whom he followed, there were eighty years to the return of the Heraclides into Peloponnesus; and that from that period to the first Olympiad, there were 328 years, computing the times from the kings of the Lacedemonians. Apollodorus followed Eratosthenes, and both of them followed Thucydides in reckoning eighty years from the Trojan war to the return of the Heraclides: but in reckoning 328 years from that return to the first Olympiad, Diodorus tells us, that the times were computed from the kings of the Lacedemonians; and Plutarch tells us, that Apollodorus, Eratosthenes, and others, followed that computation: and since this reckoning is still received by chronologers, and was gathered by computing the times from the kings of the Lacedemonians, that is from their number, let us re-examine that computation.
 
'The Egyptians reckoned the reigns of kings equipollent to generations of men, and three generations to 100 years, as above; so did the Greeks and Latins, and accordingly they have made their kings reign one with another thirty and three years a-piece, and above.
'For they make the seven kings of Rome, who preceded the consuls, to have reigned 244 years, which is thirty-five years a-piece:
 
'And the first twelve kings of Sicyon, AEgialeus, Europs, &c. to have reigned 529 years, which is forty-four years a-piece:
 
'And the first eight kings of Argos, Inachus, Phoroneus, &c. to have reigned 371 years, which is above forty-six years a-piece:
 
'And between the return of the Heraclides into Peloponnesus, and the end of the first Messenian war, the ten kings of Sparta in one race,

1. Eurysthenes,  
2. Agis,  
3. Echestratus,  
4. Labotas,
 5. Doryagus,
6. Agesilaus, 
7. Archelaus, 
8, Teleclus, 
9. Alcamenes, and 
10. Polydorus;

 
the nine in the other race,* [1. Procles, 2. Sous, 3. Eurypon, 4. Prytanis, 5. Eunomus, 6. Polydectes, 7. Charilaus, 8. Nicander, 9. Theopompus.]  the ten kings of Messene. [1. Cresphontes, 2. Epytus, 3. Glaucus, 4. Isthmus, 5. Dotadas, 6. Sibotas, 7. Phintas, 8. Antiochus, 9. Euphaes. 10. Aristodemus.] and the nine of Arcadia, [1. Cypselus, 2. Olaus, 3. Buchalion, 4. Phialus, 5. Simus, 6. Pompus, 7. AEgineta, 8. Polymnestor, 9. AEchmis.] according to chronologers, took up 379 years: which is thirty-eight years a-piece to the ten kings, and forty-two years a-piece to the nine. And the five kings [following Polydorus] of the race of Eurysthenes, between the end of the first Messenian war, and the beginning of the reign of Darius Hystaspis; Eurycrates, Anaxander, Eurycrates II., Leon, Anaxandrides, reigned 202 years, which is above forty years a-piece.
 
‘Thus the Greek chronologers, who follow Timaes and Eratosthenes, have made the kings of their several cities, who lived before the times of the Persian empire, to reign about thirty-five or forty years a-piece, one with another; which is a length so much beyond the course of nature as is not to be credited. For by the ordinary course of nature, kings reign, one with another, about eighteen or twenty years a-piece: and if in some instances they reign, one with another, five or six years longer, in others they reign as much shorter: eighteen or twenty years is a medium.
 
'So the eighteen kings of Judah who succeeded Solomon reigned 390 years, which is one with another twenty-two years a-piece.
 
‘The fifteen kings of Israel after Solomon reigned 259 years, which is seventeen years and a quarter a-piece
 
‘The eighteen kings of Babylon; Nabonassar, &c. reigned 209 years, which is eleven years and two-thirds a-piece.
 
'The ten kings of Persia; Cyrus, Cambyses, &c. reigned 208 years, which is almost twenty-one years a-piece.
 
'The sixteen successors of Alexander the Great, and of his brother and son in Syria; Seleucus, Antiochus Soter, &c. reigned 244 years after the breaking of that monarchy into various kingdoms, which is fifteen years and a quarter a-piece.
 
'The eleven kings of Egypt; Ptolemaeus Lagi, &c. reigned 276 years, counted from the same period, which is twenty-five years a-piece.
 
'The eight in Macedonia; Cassander, &c. reigned 138 years, which is seventeen years and a quarter a-piece.
 
‘The thirty kings of England; William the Conqueror, William Rufus, &c. reigned 648 years, which is twenty-one years and a half a-piece.
 
'The first twenty-four kings of France; Pharamundus, &c. reigned 458 years, which is nineteen years a-piece.
 
‘The next twenty-four kings of France, Ludovicus Balbus, &c. 451 years, which is eighteen years and three quarters a-piece.
 
'The next fifteen, Philip Valesius, &c. 315 years, which is twenty-one years a-piece.  
 
'And all the sixty-three kings of France, 1224 years, which is nineteen years and a half a piece.
 
'Generations from father to son may be reckoned, one with another, at about thirty-three or thirty-four years a-piece, or about three generations to 100 years: but if the reckoning proceed by the eldest sons, they are shorter, so that three of them may be reckoned at about seventy-five or eighty years; and the reigns of kings are still shorter, because kings are succeeded not only by their eldest sons, but sometimes by their brothers, and sometimes they are slain or deposed; and succeeded by others of an equal or greater age, especially in elective or turbulent kingdoms.
 
‘In the later ages, since chronology hath been exact, there is scarce an instance to be found of ten kings reigning any where in continual succession above 260 years; but Timaeus and his followers, and I think also some of his predecessors, after the example of the Egyptians, have taken the reigns of kings for generations, and reckoned three generations to 100, and sometimes to 120 years; and founded the technical chronology of the Greeks upon this way of reckoning. Let the reckoning be reduced to the course of nature, by putting the reigns of kings one with another, at about eighteen or twenty years a-piece: and the ten kings of Sparta by one race, the nine by another race, the ten kings of Messene, and the nine of Arcadia, above-mentioned, between the return of the Heraclides into Peloponnesus, and the end of the first Messenian war, will scarce take up above 180 or 190 years: whereas, according to chronologers, they took up 379 years.
 
'Cnronologers have [not only] lengthened the time, between the return of the Heraclides into Peloponnesus and the first Messenian war—they have also lengthened the time between that war and the Persian empire.
 
'For in the race of the Spartan kings, descended from Eurysthenes; after Polydorus reigned these kings:

11. Eurycrates,  
12. Anaxander,
13. Eurycrates II.  
14. Leon,
15. Anaxandrides, 
16. Cleomenes,
17. Leonides, &c.

 
‘And in the other race descended from Procles; after Theopompus [the ninth long] reigned these, Anaxandrides, Archidemus, Anaxileus, Leutychides, Hippocratides, Ariston, Demaratus, Leutychides II. &c. according to Herodotus. These kings reigned till the sixth year of Xerxes, in which Leonidas was slain by the Persians at Thermopylae; and Leutychides IL soon after, flying from Sparta to Tegea, died there.
 
‘The seven reigns of the kings of Sparta, which follow Polydorus. being added to the ten reigns above-mentioned, which began with that of Eurysthenes, make up seventeen reigns of kings between the return of the Heraclides into Peloponnesus and the sixth year of Xerxes: and the eight reigns following Theopompus, being added to the nine reigns above-mentioned, which began with that of Procles, made up also seventeen reigns, and these seventeen reigns, at twenty years a-piece one with another, amount unto 340 years. Count these 340 years upwards from the sixth year of Xerxes, and one or two years more for the war of the Heraclides, and the reign of Aristodemus, the father of Eurysthenes and Procles; and they will place the return of the Heraclides into Peloponnesus 159 years after the death of Solomon, and forty-six years before the first Olympiad,* [ ] in which Coroebus was victor. But the followers of Timaeus have placed this return 280 years earlier.* [ ] Now this being the computation upon which the Greeks, as you have heard from Diodorus and Plutarch, have founded the chronology of their kingdoms, which were ancienter than the Persian empire; that chronology is to be rectified by shortening the times which preceded the death of Cyrus, in the proportion of almost two to one; for the times which follow the death of Cyrus are not much amiss.'
 
[The truth of Sir I. N.'s computation with regard to the reigns of the seventeen kings of Sparta, of whom Leonidas was the last, seems to be well supported by the space of time filled up by the reigns of the thirteen kings (of the same line) who reigned in succession after Leonidas.
 
Leonidas was slain in the year before Christ, 480.
 
Cleomenes, the last of the thirteen kings who reigned after him, being expelled Peloponnesus, killed himself in Egypt (as Petavius hath shown [‡ Missing FN.]), in 219 before Christ.
 
The years between the deaths of these two kings are 261, so that the thirteen kings in succession from Leonidas reigned but about twenty years a-piece one with another.]
 
'As for the chronology of the Latins, that is still more uncertain [than the chronology of the Greeks]. Plutarch represents great uncertainties in the originals of Rome, [§: Missing FN.] and so doth Servius [||: Missing FN.] The old records of the Latins were burnt by the Gauls 120 years after the Regifuge, and sixty-four years before the death of Alexander the Great: [ ¶: Missing FN.] and Quintus Fabius Pictor, the oldest historian of the Latins, lived 100 years later than that king, and took almost all things
 
[concerning tne originals of Rome] from Diocles Peparethius, a Greek,
 
‘When the Romans conquered the Carthaginians, the archives of Carthage came into their hands. And thence Appian, in his History of the Punic Wars, tells in round numbers that Carthage stood 700 years; and Solinus adds the odd number of  years [thirty-seven] in these words, “Adrymeto atque Carthagini author est a Tyro populus. Urbem istam, ut Cato in oratione senatoria autumat, cum rex Hiarbas rerum in Libya potiretur, Elissa mulier extruxit, domo Phoenix, et Carthadam dixit, quod Phoenicum ore exprimit civitatem novam; mox sermone verso Carthago dicto est, quae post annos septingentos triginta septem exciditur quam fuerat extructa.”
 
'Elissa was Dido, and Carthage was destroyed in the consulship of Lentulus and Mummius, in the year of the Julian period 4568; from whence count backward 737 years, [*: Missing FN.] and the eucaenia or dedication of the city will fall upon the sixteenth year of Pygmalion the brother of Dido, and king of Tyre. She fled in the seventh year of Pygmalion, but the era of the city began with its encaenia.
 
'Now Virgil and his scholiast Servius, who might have some things from the archives of Tyre and Cyprus, as well as from those of Carthage, relate that Teucer came from the war of Troy to Cyprus, in the days of Dido, a little before the reign of her brother Pygmalion; and in conjunction with her father, seized Cyprus, and ejected Cinyras: and the marbles say, that Teucer came to Cyprus seven years after the destruction of Troy, and built Salamis; and Apollodorus, that Cinyras married Metharme the daughter of Pygmalion, and built Paphos. Therefore, if the Romans, in the days of Augustus, followed not altogether the artificial chronology of Eratosthenes, but had those things from the records of Carthage, Cyprus, or Tyre; the arrival of Teucer at Cyprus will be in the reign of the predecessor of Pygmalion, and by consequence the destruction of Troy, about seventy-six years later than the death of Solomon.
 
'Dionysius Halicarnassensis tells us that in the time of the Trojan war Latinus was king of the Aborigines in Italy, and that in the sixteenth age after that war Romulus built Rome. By ages he means reigns of kings; for after Latinus he names sixteen kings of the Latins, the last of which was Numitor, in whose days Romulus built Rome: for Romulus was contemporary to Numitor, and after him Dionysius and others reckon six kings more over Rome, to the beginning of the consuls. Now these twenty and two reigns, at about eighteen years to a reign one with another, for so many of these kings were slain, took up 396 years; which counted back from the consulship of Junius Brutus and Valerius Publicola, the two first consuls, place the Trojan war about seventy-eight years after the death of Solomon.
  
'When the Greeks and Latins were forming their technical chronology, there were great disputes about the antiquity of Rome; the Greeks made it much older than the Olympiads: some of them said it was built by AEneas; others, by Romus, the son or grandson of AEneas; others, by Romus, the son or grandson of Latinus, king of the Aborigines; others, by Romus, the son of Ulysses, or of Ascanius, or of Italus: and some of the Latins at first fell in with the opinion of the Greeks, saying that it was built by Romulus the son or grandson of AEneas. Timaeus Siculus represented it built by Romulus the grandson of AEneas, above 100 years before the Olympiads, and so did Naevius the poet, who was twenty years older than Ennius, and served in the first Punic war, and wrote the history of that war.
 
'Hitherto nothing certain was agreed upon, but about 140 or 150 years after the death of Alexander the Great, they began to say that Rome was built a second time by Romulus, in the fifteenth age after the destruction of Troy: by ages they meant reigns of the kings of the Latins at Alba, and reckoned the first fourteen reigns at about 432 years, and the following reigns of the seven kings of Rome at 344 years, both which numbers made up the time of about 676 years from the taking of Troy, according to these chronologers; but are much too long for the course of nature: and by this reckoning they placed the building of Rome upon the sixth or seventh Olympiad; Varro* [If this be not an error of the press, yet doubtless Sir Isaac Newton meant to write Cato, not Varro. Varro placed the foundation of Rome in the third year of the 6th Olympiad [Ant. Chr. 753], Cato in the first year of the 7th [Ant. Chr. 751). These two writers agreed in giving 244 years to the regal state of Rome, but, as they fixed the aera of the city by reckoning backward, and counted the years of the republic by the annual magistracies, and as Varro, in this way of counting, gave to the republic two years more than Cato; he of course placed the building of Rome two years farther back than Cato had done. There were three dictatorships, to each of which Varro allotted a whole year, which dictatorships Cato had considered as only superseding so many consulships, and therefore reckoned each consulship and the dictatorship that superseded it as filling but one year. And this would have made Varro's reckoning, upon the whole, exceed Cato's by three years; but Varro, by placing in one and the same year the third decemvirate and the succeeding consulship, to which magistracies Cato allotted distinct years, the reckoning of Varro, upon the whole, exceeded that of Cato by two years only. The Capitoline marbles, with regard to the three dictatorships and the third decemvirate, reckon like Varro; but as they give only 243 years to the regal state of Rome, their chronology upon the whole has a year less than Varro's, and a year more than Cato's. See notes Sur Chron. Grecque-Rom. selon D. Hal. by the French translator of Dionysius, p. 34.] placed it on the first year of the seventh Olympiad, and was therein generally followed by the Romans; but this can scarce be reconciled to the course of nature: for I do not meet with any instance in all history, since chronology was certain, wherein seven kings, most of whom were slain, reigned 244 years in continual succession.
 
‘The fourteen reigns of the kings of the Latins, at twenty years a-piece one with another, amount unto 280 years, and these years counted from the taking of Troy end in the 38th Olympiad: and the reigns of the seven kings of Rome, four or five of them being slain, and one deposed, may at a moderate reckoning amount to fifteen or sixteen years a-piece one with another: let them be reckoned at seventeen years a-piece, and they will amount unto 119 years; which, being counted backwards from the Regifuge, And also in the 38th Olympiad: and by these two reckonings Rome was built in the 38th Olympiad, or thereabout.
 
'The 280 years and the 119 years together make up 399 years; and the same number of years arises by counting the twenty and one reigns at nineteen years a-piece; and this being the whole time between the taking of Troy and the Regifuge, let these years be counted backward from the Regifuge An. 1. Olymp. 68. [*: Missing FN.]  and they will place the taking of Troy about seventy-four years after the death of Solomon.' [Which death of Solomon Sir Isaac Newton places 979 years before the Christian aera; so that the fall of Troy, soon after which AEneas began his voyages, will be about 905 years before that aera; and as Sir Isaac makes the flight of Dido from Tyre to be Ant. Chr. 892. there were, according to this computation, but about thirteen years between these two last-mentioned events.]

  
Mr. Whiston, in his treatise entitled a Confutation of Sir Isaac Newton's Chronology, observes, (p. 987.) that
 

“In England we have had nine successive reigns at almost thirty years a-piece, from Henry I. to Edward III.
 
“And twelve at almost twenty-eight years a-piece, from William the Conqueror to Richard II.
 
“And the French have had six reigns together at almost forty years a-piece, from Robert to Philip II.
 
“And eight reigns at above thirty-five years a-piece, from Robert to Louis IX.
 
“'And ten reigns at almost thirty-three years a-piece, from Robert to Philip IV. all inclusive, as these tables will show.
 

Kings of England.
 
1. William the Conqueror: 21
2.  William Rufus: 13
3. Henry I: 35
4. Stephen: 19
5. Henry II: 35
6. Richard I: 11
7. John: 17
8. Henry III: 56
9. Edward I: 34
10. Edward II: 19
11. Edward III: 51
12. Richard II: 22
_______
Total: 12)333 (27-3/4
 
Kings of France.
 
1. Rupert or Robert: 45
2. Henry I: 28
3. Philip I: 48
4. Lewis VI: 29
5. Lewis VII: 43
6. Philip II: 43
7. Lewis VIII: 3
8. Lewis IX: 55
9. Philip III: 15
10. Philip IV: 29
_______
Total: 10) 327 (32-1/4

  
From these examples Mr. Whiston infers, that we ought not to reject or alter the series of the reigns of the twelve kings of Macedonia, from Caranus, of the Heraclidae, to Archelaus, which twelve reigns take up 415 years. 12) 415 (34-1/2. Nor the series of the reigns of the eight last of the Latin kings, from Amulius to Tarquin the Proud, which takes up 286 years. 8) 286 (35-1/4. Which reigns of Macedonian and Latin kings, he observes, are of all he had before marked (in several series of ancient long reigns) the longest in proportion, because they began after human life was reduced to its present standard.
 
Now I think it must be granted, that the examples which Mr. Whiston has produced of long reigns in succession, both in England and in France, would be sufficient to make it credible, that the seven kings of Rome reigned as long as they are reported to have done, if there were no objection to this report, but its being uncommon to find, in authentic and undisputed history, seven kings reigning, in succession, thirty-five years a-piece one with another. But here it may be proper to consider,
 
I. That we have no better authority for the long reigns of the seven kings of Rome than for the long reigns of the fourteen kings of Alba, their predecessors; and there is no instance, since chronology was certain, of twenty-one kings in succession reigning near thirty-two years a-piece, one with another, as the twenty-one kings in question are represented to have done.
 
Mr. Whiston, as we see above, has given us ten kings of France in succession, who reigned 327 years, or thirty-two years and three-quarters a-piece. 
 
I think he has stretched the reign of Robert ten or eleven years beyond its true length. But, letting that pass, if to these ten kings we add the five that preceded them, and the six that followed them, to make the number twenty-one, we shall find that the twenty-one kings reigned but about twenty-one years a-piece one with another.
 
For Raoul, the first of the twenty-one, began to reign An. Dom. 923, and Jean II. the last of the twenty-one, died in 1363, the whole space 440 years.
 
If to the ten kings we add the eleven that preceded them, the reigns of the twenty-one will be still shorter.
 
Indeed, if to the ten we add the eleven that followed them, the twenty-one reigns amount to near twenty-four years a-piece one with another. But this is far short of thirty-two years a-piece, to which the twenty-one reigns of the Latin kings amount, within a trifle, according to Bishop Lloyd's tables, cited by Mr. Whiston.
 
So likewise, though we have had in England twelve successive reigns at almost twenty-eight years a-piece, from William the Conqueror to Richard II. yet, if to those twelve we add the nine reigns which followed that of Richard II. we shall find that the twenty-one kings did not reign quite twenty-three years a-piece one with another.
 
II. It may be farther observed, that the old chronology, which makes the reigns of twenty-one Latin kings fill up a space of time so much longer than the reigns of the same number of kings of any country have ever done since chronology was certain, does in like manner make the reigns of every series of kings of the most ancient kingdoms exceed, in duration, what the common course of nature, as known by true history, admits; which universal excess affords a probable argument, that the old chronology was wholly artificial, and not founded on authentic records or monuments.
 
When I say every series of kings, it might perhaps be expected that I should except the long successions of kings in Egypt (from the time of Mizraim the son of Ham), to which numerous kings short reigns are assigned by the old chronology:* [Mr. Whiston, in p. 975, makes the following observation: “Manetho, when he speaks of the several dynasties of Egypt, or of the several succession of collateral kingdoms, mentions the principal successions as extending to 113 generations in 3555 years: and implies, that the first sixteen, which were chiefly before the deluge, were more than equal to the other ninety-seven: those sixteen containing no fewer than 1985 years; and the ninety-seven no more than 1570 years: the former allowing to each generation or succession 124 years: as the duration of human life before the deluge well admitted; and (the Chaldean succession at Babylon in Abydenus and Berosus equally admitted also) while the latter allows but a little above sixteen years to such a succession, till the days of Alexander the Great: which last small number might yet well agree to those latter ages of the kingdom of Egypt, which might be subject to great disturbances and changes of government all along.”] but I consider those series of Egyptian monarchs as fabulous. For indeed the short reigns, assigned to them, are alone almost a demonstrative proof, that the greater number of the kings, in those series, never existed, or at least not in line of succession; as I shall show hereafter.
 
III. That most of the seven kings of Rome being slain, and one deposed, there arises hence a great improbability of their reigning thirty-five years a-piece, one with another.
 
IV. And lastly, that in the accounts given us of those seven kings, there are some particulars by which the historians discover the uncertainty of their chronology, and some that seem entirely to refute it, as the following remarks will show.

[admin]

Part 2 of 3
 
ROMULUS. 
 
The historians give thirty seven or thirty-eight years to the reign of Romulus, yet if they had not expressly affirmed that he reigned so long, we should never have imagined from any thing they relate of his life and death that his government was of near so long a duration: we should rather have concluded, from what they themselves have written concerning him, that he reigned little more than seventeen years.
 
I. Plutarch having related how Romulus took Fidenae, and sent thither a Roman colony on the ides of April, goes on to tell us, that shortly after a plague broke out, and that before the plague ceased the Camerini invaded the Roman territory; that Romulus without delay marched against them, defeated them, took Camerium, their city, transplanted half its inhabitants to Rome, and on the kalends of August sent from Rome double the number of Roman citizens to Camerium: so greatly (adds Plutarch) was the number of his citizens increased in sixteen years' time from the building of the city.
 
The same author proceeds immediately to relate, that the Veientes, alarmed at this increase of the Roman power, made Fidenae the pretence for beginning a war with Rome. They demanded Fidenae back as a city belonging to them; and their demand being scornfully rejected, they took the field, dividing their forces into two bodies: one attacked the Roman army of Fidenae with success; the other marched against Romulus, and was defeated by him. One battle more put an end to the war: Romulus obtained a decisive victory, for which he triumphed on the ides of October.
 
Not only Plutarch, but Livy and Dionysius make Fidenae the pretence for the war undertaken by the Veientes; and they speak of this war as begun presently after the reduction of that town by the Romans. It is not therefore without good reason that Pighius places the king's triumph over the Veientes in his seventeenth year.
 
II. It appears from Dionysius, Livy, and Plutarch, that the victory over the Veientes was the last military exploit of Romulus's life.
 
Dionysius having related the particulars of the war with Veii, the decisive victory gained by Romulus, and his triumph on that occasion, concludes with words to this effect: “These are the most memorable wars of Romulus; an untimely death, when he was in the bloom of his military glory, hindered him from subduing any of the other neighbouring nations.”* [[x], p. 144.]
 
Livy, when he has spoken of the same war, goes on much in the same manner with Dionysius: [Haec ferme Romulo regnante domi militiaeque gesta. 1.1. c. 15.] “These were almost all the achievements at home and abroad during the reign of Romulus;” and then speaks of his death. And,
 
Plutarch says expressly, that this war [with the Veientes] was the last war that Romulus ever waged. [[x], Vit. Rom. p. 33.]
 
If then these two points be granted, that Romulus's war with Veii was his last war, and that this was finished About the seventeenth year of Rome, it will follow, that the twenty last years of his reign, if he reigned thirty-seven, were years of peace. But is it probable that a prince of so active and enterprising a spirit should pass twenty years in peace with all his neighbours? Or if the Romans, when they sent an offer of the kingdom to Numa, had of thirty-seven years (the whole period since the birth of their state) been the last twenty in peace, how could he, with any propriety or truth, in his answer to the deputies, speak of the Romans as a people of a restless spirit, ever in war, and insatiably eager of conquest? Plutarch tells us, that the Romans, when Numa ascended the throne, were become hard as iron by war; and that this prince thought religion the only means to soften such stubborn minds, and moderate their martial fury: and Livy calls them animos militia efferatos. There is nothing in any of the historians to favour the supposition of Rome's continuing twenty years in peace in Romulus's time, except this only, that they fix his death to the thirty-seventh year of the city, and make his wars end about the seventeenth.
 
III. May it not be fairly collected from all the three historians beforementioned, that Romulus's victory over the Veientes was not only the last military exploit of his life, but an exploit which did not long precede his death? It has been already observed, that Dionysius and Livy pass immediately from the conclusion of the Veientan war to the king's assassination. Plutarch does the same; and it is farther to be remarked, that Plutarch and Dionysius make the affront which Romulus put upon the senators, when, without consulting them, he restored to the Veientes fifty hostages (which they had given him to secure the performance of their engagements by the treaty of peace) to be one of the chief provocations which incited the senators to murder him. And this offence is mentioned as a thing recent at the time of his death: “his sudden disappearing soon after this (says Plutarch) brought the senate under suspicion and calumny.'' And the same historian mentions another recent offence given the senate; that the king by his sole authority shared among the soldiers the lands acquired by the war. It is not indeed said at what time the king gave the senators these provocations, but we cannot easily suppose it to have been a great while after the war; and it will be very hard to suppose that it was twenty years after.
 
Plutarch is, I think, the only ancient writer who speaks of Romulus's moderation in not possessing himself of the kingdom of Alba, upon the death of his grandfather Numitor, to which kingdom he supposes Romulus to have had a right of inheritance. Now supposing Romulus to have been heir apparent to his grandfather, and yet never to have possessed Alba, it is much more probable that the grandfather outlived the grandson, than that the grandson declined a succession to which he had an hereditary right. This imagination which Plutarch had of the politic moderation of Romulus (for it was to regain the good-will of his people) seems wholly founded on the supposition that he reigned thirty-seven years, in which case he probably outlived his grandfather: but if Romulus reigned but seventeen years, his grandfather may very well be supposed to have outlived him; for, according to Plutarch himself, Romulus was but seventeen years old when he began to reign.
 
NUMA.

Pythagoras, one of the most famous and controversial ancient Greek philosophers, lived from ca. 570 to ca. 490 BCE. He spent his early years on the island of Samos, off the coast of modern Turkey. At the age of forty, however, he emigrated to the city of Croton in southern Italy and most of his philosophical activity occurred there. Pythagoras wrote nothing, nor were there any detailed accounts of his thought written by contemporaries. By the first centuries BCE, moreover, it became fashionable to present Pythagoras in a largely unhistorical fashion as a semi-divine figure, who originated all that was true in the Greek philosophical tradition, including many of Plato's and Aristotle's mature ideas. A number of treatises were forged in the name of Pythagoras and other Pythagoreans in order to support this view.

The Pythagorean question, then, is how to get behind this false glorification of Pythagoras in order to determine what the historical Pythagoras actually thought and did. In order to obtain an accurate appreciation of Pythagoras' achievement, it is important to rely on the earliest evidence before the distortions of the later tradition arose. The popular modern image of Pythagoras is that of a master mathematician and scientist. The early evidence shows, however, that, while Pythagoras was famous in his own day and even 150 years later in the time of Plato and Aristotle, it was not mathematics or science upon which his fame rested. Pythagoras was famous (1) as an expert on the fate of the soul after death, who thought that the soul was immortal and went through a series of reincarnations; (2) as an expert on religious ritual; (3) as a wonder-worker who had a thigh of gold and who could be two places at the same time; (4) as the founder of a strict way of life that emphasized dietary restrictions, religious ritual and rigorous self discipline.

It remains controversial whether he also engaged in the rational cosmology that is typical of the Presocratic philosopher/scientists and whether he was in any sense a mathematician. The early evidence suggests, however, that Pythagoras presented a cosmos that was structured according to moral principles and significant numerical relationships and may have been akin to conceptions of the cosmos found in Platonic myths, such as those at the end of the Phaedo and Republic. In such a cosmos, the planets were seen as instruments of divine vengeance (“the hounds of Persephone”), the sun and moon are the isles of the blessed where we may go, if we live a good life, while thunder functioned to frighten the souls being punished in Tartarus. The heavenly bodies also appear to have moved in accordance with the mathematical ratios that govern the concordant musical intervals in order to produce a music of the heavens, which in the later tradition developed into “the harmony of the spheres.” It is doubtful that Pythagoras himself thought in terms of spheres, and the mathematics of the movements of the heavens was not worked out in detail. There is evidence that he valued relationships between numbers such as those embodied in the so-called Pythagorean theorem, though it is not likely that he proved the theorem.

Pythagoras' cosmos was developed in a more scientific and mathematical direction by his successors in the Pythagorean tradition, Philolaus and Archytas. Pythagoras succeeded in promulgating a new more optimistic view of the fate of the soul after death and in founding a way of life that was attractive for its rigor and discipline and that drew to him numerous devoted followers.

-- Pythagoras, by Carl Huffman, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

 
There are several considerations which make it seem very improbable that Numa reigned forty-three years. His reign is by all represented as a reign of uninterrupted peace; and the sole object of his government, to turn the minds of his subjects wholly from war to agriculture and other honest occupations, and to religious exercises. His people look upon him as the wisest man and best king in the world, and revere him as their common father. Nevertheless, this very people, of whom not a man fit to bear arms had ever drawn a sword, are, after forty-three years' habit of industry and devotion, brought at once, as soon as Numa is dead, totally to neglect his religious institutions, pick quarrels with their neighbours, and go to fighting as readily as if war had been their constant and only trade. Has this any appearance of probability? Is it not natural to believe rather that Numa's reign did not last above fifteen or sixteen years, and that the army which Tullus Hostilius led into the field consisted chiefly of Romulus's soldiers, who had been early inured to robbery and plundering, and whom Numa's discipline had not cured of their first habits and dispositions?
 
But as to Numa, there is another difficulty, with which Livy, Dionysius, and Plutarch, were much embarrassed, and which will be wholly removed by Sir Isaac Newton's calculations.
 
All those three historians take notice of a tradition which had universally prevailed among the Romans, that Numa was instructed by Pythagoras, the Samian philosopher. This tradition they all reject; and they imagine it had no foundation but the conformity between the tenets of Pythagoras and those of Numa. At the same time, they have no argument against the truth of the fact but what they draw from the received chronology of the regal state of Rome.* [Plutarch speaks of some writers who (probably to get rid of the difficulty arising from this old tradition, compared with the received chronology of the kings of Rome) imagined, that a certain Pythagoras, a Spartan, who gained the prize at the races in the 16th Olympiad, might be Numa's instructor. Dionysius likewise mentions this racer, but declares that he knows of no good author, Greek or Roman, who speaks of him as conversing with Numa.]
 
“Pythagoras (says Dionysius) was posterior to Numa, not a few years, but four entire generations,” i.e. four reigns of kings: for (as he goes on) “Numa began his reign in the middle of the 16th Olympiad, and Pythagoras taught in Italy after the 50th Olympiad,* [Cicero says,* [Tusc. Qu. 1. I, c. 16. Ibid. 1.4. c. I.] that Pythagoras came into Italy in the reign of Tarquin the Proud; and that he was in Italy when Brutus freed Rome from tyranny, i.e. 206 years after the beginning of Numa's reign, and in the 68th Olympiad. He supposes, that posterity being ignorant of the remote times ["cum states et tempora ignorarent propter vetustatem" [Google translate: when he states that the times were not known because of their antiquity]], and comparing the wisdom of Numa with that of Pythagoras, imagined, from that comparison, the king to have been a disciple of the philosopher. Now on this I observe, 1. That whatever reasons Cicero might have to place the coming of Pythagoras into Italy in the reign of Tarquin the Proud, it is plain, that Livy, Dionysius, and Pliny, thought the orator in a mistake, and had no deference to his authority in this particular. ["The most accurate chronology (says Mr. Stanley) teacheth (as Mr. Selden observes) that Pythagoras flourished betwixt the 50th and 52d Olympiad." p. 350.] 2. I observe, that Cicero supposes his countrymen, when they first entertained the notion of Numa's being instructed by Pythagoras, to have been extremely ignorant of the times of their kings, and particularly of the time when Numa lived. For, as to the time of Pythagoras, Cicero, who believed that he was still living in Italy in the first year of the republic, could hardly suppose that the Romans made a mistake of 200 years in their reckoning; and especially after their conquest of that country where Pythagoras had resided. Yet the notion of his being contemporary with Numa prevailed after that conquest. It would seem, therefore, that the chronology of the regal state of Rome was invented and framed long after the opinion concerning the intercourse between Numa and Pythagoras had been entertained; and if so, that the chronology ought rather to be rejected on account of the tradition, than the tradition rejected on account of the chronology, especially as the latter is not agreeable to the common course of nature, with regard to the reigns of kings; and the former is entirely consistent with it.] [x] [in the fourth year of which Olympiad he places the accession of Servius Tullius, [When Dionysius places the accession of Servius to the throne in the 50th Olympiad, he goes upon the supposition, that Servius reigned forty-four years. But I shall presently endeavour to show, that it is probable he did not reign above twenty years, nor come to the throne till about the 56th Olympiad, and yet that Pythagoras might be then living at Crotona, though he had been Numa's instructor.] the fifth king from Numa. The whole number of years between Numa's accession and that of Servius Tullius is 157.]
 
Now taking it for granted that Dionysius means to say that Pythagoras began to teach in Italy soon after the 50th Olympiad, and that he is right in this particular, a strong presumption will arise, from the constant tradition of his intercourse with Numa, that this king did not begin to reign in the 16th Olympiad, but much later.
 
According to Sir Isaac Newton's computations, Rome was not built till about the 38th Olympiad; on which supposition, if we allow about seventeen years for the reign of Romulus, Numa's accession to the throne will have been about the middle of the 42d Olympiad. And if this computation be just, there will have been but about thirty-four years (not 137) between the accession of Numa to the throne and the arrival of Pythagoras in Italy, even supposing that Pythagoras did not come into Italy till the 51st Olympiad; which however is not asserted by Dionysius
 
“St. Austin (says Mr. Bayle) would easily have believed that Numa was a disciple of Pythagoras; for he says that Thales lived during the reign of Romulus. Now we know that Thales and Pherecydes were contemporary, and that Pythagoras was a disciple of Pherecydes; and some pretend that Thales was so too. [*: Missing FN.] It is certain, at least, that Pythagoras and Anaximander, a disciple of Thales, lived at the same time.”
 
That Pythagoras was contemporary with Thales is no less certain, if Thales outlived Pherecydes, to whom Pythagoras was a disciple. And that Thales outlived Pherecydes is manifest from a letter which Pherecydes, upon his death-bed, wrote to Thales.
 
It is generally admitted that Thales was born in the first year of tne 35th Olympiad. This opinion is adopted by Petavius, Mr. Bayle, and Mr. Stanley; and Sir Isaac Newton seems to follow it, when he supposes, “that Thales in the 41st Olympiad applied himself to astronomical studies, and predicted eclipses, being then a young man” [about twenty-eight years of age].
 
If then Sir Isaac Newton be right in placing the foundation of Rome about the 38th Olympiad, St. Austin will not have erred in thinking that Thales was contemporary with Romulus, though Mr. Bayle seems to smile at the bishop's notion.
 
The ancient writers are of different opinions concerning the times of Pythagoras's birth, and of his going into Egypt and into Italy, and of his death. But it seems to be universally agreed that he was contemporary with Thales and the rest of the seven wise men, who all flourished between the 40th and 55th Olympiads.
 
And, if we may believe Pliny, Pythagoras could not be much younger than Thales. For Pliny says, that “Pythagoras observed the nature of the star Venus about the 42d Olympiad, year of Rome 142,” ["Both these numbers (says Father Harduin, in his notes on Pliny) must be gross corruptions, or Pliny must have grievously blundered, graviter hallucinatum. [Google translate: severely hallucinations]" Why so?' Because Laertius says, that Pythagoras was in the 60th Olympiad, Clemens Alexandrinus and Tatian in the 62d Olympiad, and Eusebius writes, that he died in the 70th Olympiad: and Dionys. Halic. says, that Pythagoras flourished after the 50th Olympiad; he seems, indeed, to speak without precision and at large," i.e., he does not say how long after. I must here observe, that F. Harduin would have us understand the passage in Dionysius to mean certainly, that Pythagoras did not begin to flourish till after the 50th Olympiad. But this is not the clear import of the historian's words. He says nothing of the time when Pythagoras began to flourish, but says, that he was posterior to Numa four entire generations [or four reigns of kings], and that he lived or taught [there are two readings] in Italy after the 50th Olympiad, that is, so late as after that Olympiad, so late as in the reign of the fifth king from Numa. He does not say at what time the philosopher came into Italy, and began to teach there. This might be long before the both Olympiad: but it was enough for Dionysius's purpose, that Pythagoras was living after the 50th Olympiad: for if so, and if Numa came to the throne in the 16th Olympiad, the king could not have been a disciple of the philosopher, which was all that Dionysius wanted to make out. His affirming that Pythagoras taught in Italy after the 50th Olympiad does in no wise clash with the passage above-cited from Pliny. But as to Pliny's blundering, why may not Laertius, Clemens, Tatian, and Eusebius, be as easily supposed to blunder as he? It is not improbable, that they all four took Cicero for their guide, who, in the opinion of Livy and Dionysius, did grossly blunder with regard to the point in question. And as to the corruption of Pliny's text by transcribers; since there are two eras made use of, and the numbers in both ways of reckoning coincide in one and the same year, there is little ground to suppose a corruption, unless it can be shown, that Pliny has elsewhere said something that is repugnant to what is expressed in the passage before us; but the annotator having produced nothing of this sort, one may naturally conclude that he met with nothing in his author to the purpose. Indeed, there is in Pliny one passage, which, as Sir Isaac Newton has happened (not according to his usual exactness) to translate it, seems not to square with Pythagoras's making astronomical observations in the 42d Olympiad. Sir Isaac Newton's words are these: "Pliny, in reckoning up the inventors of things, tells us, that Pherecydes Scyrius taught to compose discourses in prose in the reign of Cyrus." Now Cyrus did not found the Persian monarchy till the fourth year of the 62d Olympiad: and if Pythagoras was old enough in the 42d Olympiad to observe the nature of the star Venus, we must suppose that his master Pherecydes was born as early at least as the 32d Olympiad, in which case he must have been 120 years old at the beginning of the Persian monarchy. But Pliny does not say, that Pherecydes taught to compose discourses in prose in the reign of Cyrus, Cyro rege regnante, but in the time, the age of Cyrus, Cyri regis actate; (1. 7. c. 26.) and Cyrus was born in the second year of the 45th Olympiad, and was sixty-three years old when he came to the empire. So that supposing Pherecydes born so early as about the 32d Olympiad, he was but fifty-two or fifty-three years old at the birth of Cyrus; and if he taught prose writing in any part of Cyrus's life, the objection is removed. Farther: that Pherecydes did not teach in the 62d Olympiad is evident; because he died before Thales, who died in the 58th Olympiad, as is generally agreed. There is another passage in Pliny, which, with regard to the point in question, deserves to be remarked. In 1. 36. c. 9. he speaks of an Egyptian obelisk that was made by King Semneserteus, in whose reign (he says) Pythagoras was in Egypt. "Is autem obeliscus excisus est a rege Semneserteo, quo regnante Pythagoras in AEgypto fuit." F. Harduin, possessed with the opinion, that Pythagoras flourished not so early as Pliny represents him in 1.2. c. 8. and, therefore, that Pliny blundered in that part of his work, supposes that he is right here, when he says that the philosopher was in Egypt in the reign of King Semneserteus. But who is King Semneserteus? According to F. Harduin, Pliny can mean no other than Psamminitus, the successor of Amasis. And why must Pliny, by Semneserteus, mean the successor of Amasis? Because Laertius and Tzetzet say, that Pythagoras went into Egypt in the reign of Amasis [who reigned long, and died about the beginning of the 64th Olympiad]. So we are to understand, that Pliny knew this, and means to say, that Pythagoras was still in Egypt when Psamminitus came to the throne. Now I observe, 1. That Cambyses was preparing to invade Egypt before Amasis died, and in six months after his death dispossessed his successor Psamminitus, who therefore, it is highly probable, had no leisure to attend to the making obelisks. 2. That it seems somewhat extraordinary, that Pliny should take occasion, from the mention of Psamminitus, who can hardly be said to have reigned at all, to speak of his reign, as the time when Pythagoras was in Egypt. If Pliny had believed that Pythagoras went into Egypt in the reign of Amasis, and during that reign continued there many years, as he is represented by other writers to have done, it is natural to think he would have taken occasion, rather from the mention of Amasis than from the mention of his successor, a half-year king, to speak of Pythagoras being in Egypt. I rather conclude, therefore, that, by Semneserteus, Pliny means Psammitichus, who courted the Greeks, and encouraged strangers to settle in his country, and was the first king of Egypt who did so. He reigned long, and died in the third year of the 40th Olympiad. Pythagoras, who is said to have gone very young into Egypt, may have studied there some years in the latter part of this king's reign; and this will suit with what Pliny says of his observing the nature of the star Venus in the 42d Olympiad. N.B. When Sir Isaac Newton places the building of Rome about the 38th Olympiad, it is by a reckoning backward from the Regifuge (which was about the first year of the 68th Olympiad), and by allowing to the seven kings seventeen years a-piece, one with another. Nevertheless, as four or five of these kings were slain, and one deposed, he thinks that, at a moderate reckoning, the seven reigns may be computed at fifteen or sixteen years a-piece. Now, computing them at fifteen years a-piece, we shall bring down the building of Rome to the 41st Olympiad, and, of course, the accession of Numa (allowing to Romulus seventeen years) to the 45th Olympiad; and on this supposition Pythagoras may have been in Italy early enough to be Numa's instructor, before his accession to the throne.] [i.e. the 42d of Rome according to the reckoning of Cato.]
 
Now, as I observed before, it was in this very Olympiad that Numa came to the throne, according to Sir Isaac Newton's computations, if we allow but seventeen years to the reign of Romulus.
 
Livy agrees with Dionysius as to the time of Pythagoras being in Italy, and makes use of the same argument against the old tradition. “It is manifest (says he) that Pythagoras in the time of Servius Tullius kept a school of young students in the remotest coast of Italy, in the neighbourhood of Metapontum, Heraclea, and Crotona.” Be it so. It may nevertheless be true that Pythagoras was contemporary with Numa. For if the reigns of Tullus Hostilius, Ancus Martius, and Tarquinius Priscus, were very short, as from many particulars in the history there is great reason to believe they were, Pythagoras, who is said to have lived to the ages of eighty, ninety, ninety-nine, and a hundred and four, may very well have been contemporary with both Numa and Servius Tullius.
 
When Livy adds, “that the school kept by Pythagoras was above 100 years after Numa,* [It is to be observed, that Livy affects no exactness in his reckoning. When he says above 100 years after, if he counts from the death of Numa to the accession of Servius, the space of time is but ninety-four years: if he counts from the beginning of Numa's reign to the accession of Servius, the years are 137, by the old chronology.] centum amplius post annos,” it is to conform himself to the received chronology of the kings of Rome; of which chronology I shall presently show, that in his own mind he made little account, notwithstanding any thing he says. And indeed, if one considers the reasons which he gives, why Pythagoras, supposing him contemporary with Numa, could not be his instructor, they must incline one to think that the historian is not serious in his opposing the common tradition. “How (says he) could the fame of Pythagoras reach from the south-east coast of Italy, where Pythagoras kept school, into Sabinia? By an intercourse in what language could Pythagoras excite in Numa a desire of learning? Under what protection could the one pass to the other through so many nations of different languages and manners? I am rather of opinion, therefore, that Numa's mind was naturally virtuous, and was improved, not so much by science acquired from abroad, as by the severe doctrines and discipline of the ancient Sabines.”
 
As to the want of a common language in which the king and the philosopher might converse, it is to be observed, that Livy, when he relates (after the prior historians) the discovery of Numa's books under ground, does not object to that part of the story which said that seven of those books were written in Greek, but to what Valerius Antias adds, namely, that those Greek books contained the doctrines of Pythagoras. In this (says Livy) Valerius suited his faith to the common opinion, that Numa was a disciple of Pythagoras; a lie which has an appearance of truth: “Vulgatae opinioni qui creditur Pythagorae auditorum fuisse Numam mendacio probabili accommodata fide. [Google translate: The opinion of the Vulgate, who is believed to have been the hearers of Pythagoras, was based on a false belief that Numa was probable.]”
 
That this lie, if it be a lie, has an appearance of truth, must doubtless be admitted on account of the constancy of the tradition concerning the intercourse between Numa and Pythagoras, and on account of the undisputed conformity of the king's tenets with those of the philosopher. And there is one particular which gives this pretended lie so great an appearance of truth, that I should think we may admit it for a truth without being over credulous.
 
By Livy's report, Numa's books were discovered under ground in the consulship of Cornelius Cethegus and Baebius Tamphilus, which, according to the common reckoning, was in the year of Rome 571, or 573. Plutarch and Pliny place this discovery in the same consulship, and Pliny reckons 535 years from the beginning of Numa’s reign to this discovery of his books, which reckoning places the latter in 573 of Rome, supposing Numa's reign to begin with the 39th of the city.
 
It being certain, as was before observed, that Numa's tenets resembled those of Pythagoras, they must without question have been contrary to the religion which had been long established by law, at Rome, when his books were found; and accordingly these were, by order of the senate, burnt as heterodox: so Livy informs us; but at the same time tells us, that, before they were burnt, they had been read by so many persons, that they were in a manner public. Now, though Livy cites no authority on this occasion but Valerius Antias, we learn from Pliny, that the historians Lucius Piso Censorius and Cassius Hemina (who adhered to the old tradition) reported that Numa's books contained the tenets of Pythagoras. And these authorities are very considerable in this case: because Piso being a tribune of the people in the consulship of Manilius and Censorinus, about thirty-three years after finding the books; and Cassius Hemina flourishing in the consulship of Cornelius Lentulus and Mummius Achaicus, about thirty-seven years after the same discovery; those two historians were near enough to the time of the discovery to have very good means of informing themselves, concerning the contents of the books, from some of the many persons who had perused them.
 
Ovid in his 15th book of Metamorphoses represents Numa as instructed by Pythagoras, which shows at least that this was still the popular and prevailing opinion in the time of Augustus.
 
The aim of all that has been said on the subject of Pythagoras is to show, that Sir Isaac Newton's computations, which bring down Numa to the time of Pythagoras, have the support of traditional and historical facts.
 
TULLUS HOSTILIUS. 
 
To this third king of Rome the historians allot a reign of thirty-two years, and he is represented to us as a prince of a more fierce, restless, enterprising spirit than even Romulus, and as seeking every where pretences for war: “Ferocior etiam Romulo fuit: turn aetas viresque, tum avita quoque gloria animum stimulabat—undique materiam excitandi belli quaerebat.” [Google translate: He was even more ferocious to Romulus: both his age and his strength, and also his ancestral glory, spurred his mind on him—he sought on every side the occasion of stirring up the war.] Yet the reduction and demolition of Alba in the beginning of his reign, and one victory which he soon after obtained over the Sabines, are the whole sum of his military exploits.
 
Not long after his victory he is seized with some lingering distemper, his spirit sinks, he falls into superstition, and is killed by Jupiter for not performing a sacrifice in due form [that is to say, is privately murdered by Ancus Martius, who succeeded him].
 
If Livy, after this account of him, had not told us that he reigned thirty-two years, we should hardly have imagined that he reigned two.
 
ANCUS MARTIUS.
 
THOUGH more action be ascribed to this king, whose character is both martial and pacific, than to his predecessor, it does not seem that all his performances could require a fourth part of the twenty-four years that are given to his reign.
 
This remark, however, and that made on the history of Tullus Hostilius, are not offered as sufficient proofs that these kings did not reign thirty-two and twenty-four years respectively, but only as probable arguments, which in conjunction with others will have a degree of force. And thus much at least is certain, that the reigns of these two kings may have been very short, notwithstanding any achievements ascribed to them.
 
TARQUINIUS PRISCUS.
 
THE historians represent the elder Tarquin as very rich when he comes first from Hetruria to Rome, as very prosperous in war after his ascending the throne, and as having a taste for magnificence. This taste, and his ability to gratify it, carry him to design and begin several great works. He does not live to finish these, nor even to make any considerable progress in them, which affords some ground to conjecture that he did not reign thirty-eight years. But without laying any greater stress on this argument than it will bear, I proceed to another of more force with regard to the present purpose.
 
Whether this fifth king of Rome was the father or the grandfather of Tarquinius Superbus, the seventh king, is a question considered, and with full confidence determined by Dionysius. He decides, contrary to the report of Fabius, and all the other prior historians (except L. Piso), that Priscus was the grandfather of Superbus, and he imputes the supposed error of the historians from whom he differs to their not being aware of the absurdities in which their opinion involved them.
 
Those absurdities he thus exposes:
 
It is agreed that Priscus with his wife Tanaquil came to Rome in the time of Ancus Martius.
 
Gellius places the arrival of Priscus in the first year of King Ancus; Licinius in the eighth: but both agree, that he was employed as general of the horse to Ancus, in the ninth year of his reign: the arrival therefore of Priscus at Rome could not be later than the eighth of Ancus.
 
As Priscus, before he came to Rome, had aspired to dignities and high offices in his own country, he was doubtless twenty-five years old when he arrived; and as, after his arrival, Ancus reigned seventeen years and Priscus thirty-eight, Priscus was eighty when he died.
 
Tanaquil was probably five years younger than her husband, consequently seventy-five at the time of his death.
 
She cannot be supposed to have borne children after the age of fifty. [Mr. Bayle observes, that Dionysius, by making Brutus to be the son of Tarquinia, a daughter of Tanaquil, has fallen into one of the absurdities he imputes to those who differ from him concerning the birth of Tarquin the Proud; for by his own way of reasoning it will appear, that Tanaquil must have been fifty-four when she bore that daughter.]
 
Aruns, the brother of Superbus, was two years younger than he; consequently, if Superbus was the son of Tanaquil, she could not be more than forty-eight when she bore him. And if so, Superbus must have been at least twenty-seven when his father died, his mother being then seventy-five.
 
But if Superbus was twenty-seven when his father Priscus died, then, as Servius Tullius the successor of Priscus reigned forty-four years, Superbus must have been seventy-one at the time of his own accession to the throne: and as he reigned twenty-five years, he must have been ninety-six at the time of his dethronement. And as, after his dethronement, he maintained a war against the Romans fourteen years, he must have lived to the age of 110.
 
Now (says Dionysius) would Tanaquil (the wife of Priscus), had she been the mother of Superbus, have placed a stranger on the throne preferably to her own son, if her own son had been of an age to govern? A stranger, who was but three years older than her son? (For Servius Tullius was then but thirty.) Or would Superbus, a man of so much spirit, have quietly suffered it?
 
Can we believe that Superbus was seventy-one years old, when with so much strength and vigour he seized Servius Tullius by the waist, hurried him in his arms through the senate-house, and cast him headlong from the top of' the steps at the entrance of it?
 
Or is it credible that he was ninety-six years of age, when at the head of an army he performed all the functions of a general, as it is agreed he did, in the siege of Ardea, at the time of his dethronement?
 
Or, since it is agreed that Superbus after his dethronement maintained a war against the Romans fourteen years, and was in every action of that war, can it be admitted that he was ninety-six when that war commenced? Could he possibly keep the field till he was 110?
 
These things, says Dionysius, are incredible: and hence he concludes, that the second Tarquin was the grandson, and not the son of the first.
 
But, notwithstanding all the force of this reasoning, we do not find that Plutarch was convinced by it. He only tells us, that Superbus was either the son or grandson of Priscus, without declaring for either opinion.
 
And Livy, who, being no stranger to the reasons which determined Dionysius, says the matter is not clear, yet declares that he adheres to the opinion, that Superbus was the son of Priscus. [Hic L. Tarquinius Prisci Tarquinii regis filius, neposne fuerit, parum liquet: pluribus tamen auctoribus filium ediderim. L. i. c. 46.]
 
Now which way can we account for Livy's rejecting the conclusion in Dionysius's argument, but by supposing that he did not believe what he himself, as well as Dionysius, relates, namely, that Priscus reigned thirty-eight years, Servius Tullius forty-four, and Tarquin the Proud twenty-five? Indeed, as Livy does not say in what year of King Ancus Martius Priscus arrived at Rome, it is possible he might, in his own mind, place that arrival some years later than Dionysius (following Licinius) has done; in which case Superbus need not have been twenty-seven years old when his father died. Yet, since Livy represents Priscus so great a favourite of Ancus as to be by him left guardian of his children, the historian could not but allow a considerable time for Priscus to ingratiate himself with the king to that degree. Let us suppose, that Priscus came to Rome about six years only before the death of Ancus, the consequences will be, that Superbus was at least seventeen when he lost his father, eighty-six when dethroned, and near 100 at the battle of the Regillus, in which battle (according to Livy) he rode briskly up to attack the Roman general hand to hand.
 
“Is it not astonishing (says Mr. Bayle) that, considering the absurdities which attend the supposition that Superbus was the son of Priscus, Dionysius could find but one writer who makes him the grandson? This writer was Lucius Piso, whose opinion Dionysius has adopted. Livy had not the same discernment: he has chosen to follow the crowd of authorities, and thereby loaded himself with a heap of difficulties that dishonour his memory.” Artie. Tanaquil. (F.)
 
This charge upon Livy of wanting discernment I apprehend to be entirely groundless. Supposing him to believe that the Roman chronology was true, he could not but be aware of the insuperable objections to his opinion concerning the birth of Superbus. But I take the case to be this. That Superbus was the son of Priscus is a simple fact, which could easily be preserved by tradition; much more easily than the ages of successive kings, or the number of years they reigned. Tradition universally supported that simple fact, and there was nothing to bring the truth of it in question, but such reasonings as Dionysius has employed, founded on the received but uncertain chronology of the regal state of Rome. Livy believed the fact, and did not believe the chronology; yet knowing that it would be unpopular and offensive, should he, in his history, lower the antiquity of the Roman state explicitly and expressly, he has avoided that, and, at the same time, by declaring for the opinion, that Superbus was the son of Priscus, has discovered to his attentive readers his disbelief of the chronology commonly received. [Virgil seems to have acted the like part in making AEneas and Dido contemporary. Without giving offence, he has covertly insinuated, that the reckonings of the chronologers were very erroneous. Mr. Rollin (Hist. Anc. vol. i. p. 238, 242.) seems to admit that Carthage was built by Dido 883 years before the Christian era, and 300 years after the fall of Troy, and the voyage of AEneas: and he supposes Virgil to have known himself guilty of a great anachronism, in bringing AEneas and Dido together; yet, with many others, he excuses the poet by the doctrine of poetic licence, "it being (he says) a great beauty in the Aeneid, to represent the implacable enmity between Rome and Carthage as taking its rise in the remotest origin of the two states." But in reality, is Virgil more excusable than a modern poet would be, who should imagine a war between Constantine the first Christian emperor, and Mahomet the founder of the Mussulman religion? Would any body pardon such a licence on account of any beauties whatsoever? Surely reason will carry us to believe, that Virgil knew he was not guilty of any considerable anachronism with regard to AEneas and Dido. The Jesuits Catrou and Rouille, who likewise take for granted, that AEneas and Dido lived at a great distance of time from each other, and that Virgil knew it, yet observe, that none of the critics who were contemporary with Virgil, or who lived after him, till Macrobius's time [in the end of the fourth century], ever charged him with any anachronism. And they farther observe, that Cedrenus and several other historians have brought AEneas and Dido under the same roof.]
 
Nor is it only by relating facts, inconsistent with the truth of the common chronology, that he discovers his disregard to it, but by one of his reckonings. For in 1. 1. c. 40. he speaks of the thirty-eighth year of Tarquinius Priscus as being almost 100 years after the reign of Romulus, though by the common chronology it was 137 years after Romulus's death.
 
It is remarkable, that Livy does not tell us how long any one of the Roman kings lived; nor does he mention the lengths either of the lives or reigns of the fourteen Latin kings who preceded them.
 
With regard to several of the kings of Rome, I should conjecture, that the first annalists, who pretended to fix the number of years which each of them reigned, did, either through mistake or design, give the lengths of their lives for the lengths of their reigns. What has been already remarked concerning Romulus and Tullus Hostilius affords some ground for this conjecture; and the history of Servius Tullius seems to favour it with regard to him; or at least to furnish a very good argument for shortening the duration of his government.
 
SERVIUS TULLIUS.
 
DIONYSIUS tells us in the very beginning of his history of Servius's reign (and he plainly speaks of the beginning of this prince's reign), that the patricians being much dissatisfied to find that Servius having taken the reins of government into his hands only as a regent, intended to hold them as a king, came to this resolution; that the very first time he assembled the senate, they would oblige him to lay down the fasces and all the other ensigns of royalty, and would choose inter-kings, in order to proceed to a legal election of a successor to Tarquin: that Servius being apprised of their design, applied himself to gain the people to support him; and that, to this end, having assembled the people, he promised, among other benefits, to ease them with regard to the public taxes, by assessing every one in proportion to his substance, it being unreasonable (as he said) that the poor should contribute equally with the rich to the expenses of the state. Servius, in consequence of his promise, when they had chosen him king, and he had made some previous regulations, instituted the census, dividing the citizens into classes and centuries, &c. by which institution the burden of the taxes was thrown all upon the great and the rich.
 
As the senate obstinately refused to confirm the people's choice of Servius to be king, and as Servius depended wholly on the people's affections for the preservation of his authority, is it reasonable to suppose, that he put twenty-four years' distance between so important a promise and the performance? Now if the census, which was to be renewed every five years, and to be always closed by a lustrum, was instituted in the beginning of Servius Tullius's reign, how came it to pass that there were no more than four lustra during the forty-four years of this prince's administration? That this was the number of lustra in Servius's time, Pighius (p. 48.) says, may be collected from the Capitoline marbles; and we also have Val. Maximus's authority for it, b. 4. Would Servius neglect the observance of his own institution? An institution that was his masterpiece of policy, and his chief glory? To have four lustra in his reign required strictly but sixteen years, the first lustrum being at the time of the institution; and should we suppose that he was killed just before a new census should have been taken, still the four lustra could demand but twenty years. And this therefore is as long a space of time as can reasonably be allowed for his reign.
 
It must be confessed, that Livy, in his account of Servius Tullius, differs considerably from Dionysius, and, upon the whole, is more consistent, and more worthy of credit. [The ingenious author of The Dissertation on the Uncertainty of the Roman History [M. de Beaufort] has, with great judgment, compared the differing accounts given by the two historians of Servius's reign; and has clearly shown, that Livy's is the more credible, not only with regard to the disposition of the senate towards the king at the time of his accession, but with regard to that plan of republican government, which the king had formed some time before he died. Dionysius would have us believe, that the senators combined with Tarquin the Proud to destroy Servius, because this latter intended to change the government into a democracy. Now it is manifest from the king's own establishments, that he preferred aristocratical government to democratical. And therefore what Livy reports is highly credible, that the meditated change regarded only the monarchy. "Id ipsum tam mite ac tam moderatum imperium, tamen, quia unius esset, deponere eum in animo habuisse quidam auctores sunt. [Google translate: Some authors state that this very mild and moderate government, however, because he was the only one, had intended to depose him.]" (l.1. c. 48.) The same historian relates, that when two annual consuls were first created to govern the state, this creation was according to the plan of Servius Tullius. "Duo consules inde comitiis centuriatis a praefecto urbis ex commentariis Servii Tullii creati sunt. [Google translate: Two consuls were then elected in the election of centuries by the prefect of the city according to the commentaries of Servius Tullius.]" (l.1. c. 60.) What was it then that induced the senators to side with Tarquin, since Servius's new plan of government was so favourable to their ambition? Livy has answered this question. They were dissatisfied with the division which the king had made of the public lands among the people. For though he did not think it expedient that the lower sort should govern, yet he thought it reasonable they should live free, and be made easy in their inferiority; whereas it was the constant policy of the nobles of Rome to keep the commons in indigence, and of course in a slavish dependence. Tarquin seized the favourable opportunity of the senate's fit of anger, suddenly to perpetrate the murder of Servius and seat himself on the throne. Yet we find, that the usurper, when he had got power in his hands, and when the anger of the senate against Servius was subsided, would not trust to their good-will to support him in possession: he would not put his crown to the hazard of an election. He did not seek to be elected king by the senate more than by the people. Supported by foreign troops, he deprived both orders of their privileges, cruelly oppressed the nobles, but soothed the plebeians (as more to be dreaded on account of their greater strength) by his liberalities, and by sharing; among them the rich spoils acquired in war. See Hist. b. 2. c. 7. § iii. The nobles languished after that liberty and authority of which Servius had given them a taste; and the shocking atrocious deed of Sextus Tarquinius, which awakened the people, and made them thoroughly feel the slavery they were in, furnished the nobles with an opportunity of drawing them at once into measures for recovering the common freedom. This seems to be the true state of things with regard to Tarquin and the revolution. And the quick settlement of the new government without any opposition, sufficiently indicates, that Brutus and his associates went upon a plan already formed, and to which the chief men of the plebeians were no strangers, namely, that of Servius Tullius.] The Latin historian reports, that Servius took the crown with the consent of the fathers. And if we consider, that, by the institution of the census, and the centuriate comitia, the king threw all the power of the general assemblies into the hands of the nobles, it is not very probable that the nobles were his enemies. It seems more probable, that when he possessed himself of the throne, he did it in concert with the senators, and that he engaged them to support him by letting them into the secret of his intentions.
 
Be this as it will, it was absolutely necessary that Servius, in order to a quiet possession, should conciliate to him by some speedy measures both senate and people. And this we find he did by his new regulation of the government, pleasing the ambition of the nobles, and relieving the indigence of the plebeians. His situation, I say, required that his measures to gain the hearts of his subjects should be speedy; and therefore it is not to be questioned, but his institution of the census, and his division of the citizens into classes and centuries, &c. were in the beginning of his reign. And if so, I ask again, how came it to pass, that there were no more than four lustra in forty-four years? It is against all reason to suppose, that the king neglected an institution of his own invention, and which, giving satisfaction to both orders in the state, gained him their esteem and affection, and established his authority.

[admin]

Part 3 of 3
 
TARQUINIUS SUPERBUS. 
 
As to the twenty-five years which this king is said to have reigned, I shall only observe, that if his reign was really of that length (which does not seem improbable, since he began and finished the temple of Jupiter Capitolinus, and the famous common sewers), it aids the argument against the long reign of Servius Tullius. For if Servius reigned forty-four years, and Superbus twenty-five, the latter, let him be the grandson of Priscus, as Dionysius will have it, could not be far from ninety years of age at the battle near the lake Regillus, fourteen years after his dethronement, since he was some years old at the death of Priscus: and, accordingly, the Greek historian gives him that age, and infers from it, that Gellius and Licinius (whom Livy has followed) and all the other historians, who say that Superbus fought on horseback in that battle, are not to be credited, because a man ninety years old could not fight on horseback. Now surely the juster way of reasoning would have been this: Tradition and history, uncontradicted, tell us that Superbus fought on horseback in the battle near the Regillus; therefore he could not be then ninety years of age: but, according to the common chronology, which gives forty-four years to the reign of Servius Tullius, and twenty-five to that of Superbus, the latter was ninety years old at that battle; consequently the common chronology is false.
 
It appears, that Dionysius (a critic by profession) had laid it down as a fundamental principle, that the received chronology of the regal state of Rome was true and exact; and therefore, let a fact be never so well attested, he rejects it, if he cannot make it square with that chronology.
 
Tradition and history said, that Superbus was the son of Priscus; that Superbus fought on horseback at the battle of Regillus; that Collatinus (the husband of Lucretia) was the son of Egerius (nephew of the elder Tarquin). No, says Dionysius, none of these things can be true; for they are not consistent with the long reigns of the kings. He produces no authority against the facts; nor does he know who was the father of Superbus, or the father of Collatinus; but he reasons from the received chronology, and concludes, contrary to all historical testimony, that Superbus was not the son, but the grandson of Priscus; that he did not fight on horseback at the abovementioned battle; and that Collatinus was not the son, but the grandson of Egerius.
 
Livy, on the other hand, though he durst not openly contradict the received chronology, seems to have been fully persuaded, that it was not so well vouched as many historical facts, that were incompatible with it. He therefore adheres to the facts, and leaves it to such notable critics as Dionysius to reconcile them with the chronology as well as they can.
 
As I have ventured thus far in an attempt to support Sir Isaac Newton's opinion concerning the duration of the regal state of Rome, it seems fit, that before I quit the subject I should take some notice of what the learned Dr. Shuckford has said in answer to Sir Isaac Newton's arguments, and in defence of the old chronology.
 
In the preface to the second volume of his Sacred and Profane History of the World connected, he writes thus:  

“Our great and learned author remarks, that the seven kings of Rome who preceded the consuls reigned one with another thirty-five years a-piece. I am sensible that it may be observed, that the reigns of these kings not falling within the times I am to treat of, I am not concerned to vindicate the accounts that are given of them; but I would not entirely omit mentioning them, because the lengths of their reigns may be thought an undeniable instance of the inaccuracy of the ancient computations, more especially because these kings were all more modern than the times of David; for supposing Rome to be built by Romulus, A.M. 3256 [Usher's Annals], we must begin Romulus's reign 300 years after the death of David, and the lives of men in these times being reduced to what has been esteemed the common standard ever since, it may perhaps be expected, that the reigns of those kings should not be longer, one with another, than the reigns of our kings of England, from William the Conqueror; or of the kings of France, from Pharamond; or of any other series of kings mentioned by our illustrious author: but here I would observe, that these seven kings of Rome were not descendants of one another. Plutarch remarks of these kings, that not one of them left his crown to his son. Two of them, namely, Ancus Martius and Tarquinius Superbus, were descendants from the sons of former kings, but the other five were of different families.
 
“The successors of Romulus were elected to the crown, and the Roman people did not confine their choice even to their own country, but chose such as were most likely to promote the public good. It is evident, therefore, that the lengths of these kings' reigns ought not to be estimated according to the common measure of successive monarchs, &c,
 
“I might remark farther, that there were interregna between the reigns of several of them.—Each of these interregna might perhaps take up some years. The historians allot no space of time to these interregna, but it is known to be no unusual thing for writers to begin the reign of a succeeding king from the death of his predecessor, though he did not immediately succeed to his crown.”

 
We see here that the learned writer, to get rid of the objection, drawn from the course of nature against the long reigns of the seven Roman kings, suggests two considerations by which we may account for them.
 
I. He observes that the Roman kings were elected. Very true; but it is likewise true that reigns will naturally be shorter in elective monarchies than in hereditary. And I observe, that this circumstance of election serves our learned writer to account for short reigns when he has occasion so to do. For when he would account for the short reigns of the first kings of Egypt, he has recourse to election.

“The first twelve kings of the Egyptian kingdoms, according to Sir John Marsham's tables, did not reign full so long” [as the first twelve kings of Assyria, i.e. not full forty years a-piece]. “But it must be remembered, that in the first times the kings of Egypt were frequently elected; and so, many times, sons did not succeed their fathers.''

 
According to Sir John Marsham's tables, the first twelve kings of no one of the Egyptian kingdoms reigned thirty-four years a-piece one with another. And yet these Egyptian kings are supposed to have reigned when men lived to the ages of 400, 300, 200. But, as the learned writer supposes that the Romans were induced by the circumstances of their affairs to elect men who were in the prime of life to be their kings, which accounts for the great length of their reigns; so, doubtless, he supposes that the Egyptians, on account of the circumstances of their affairs, elected old men to be their kings, men of about 300, 200, or 180 years old; by which supposition the whole difficulty arising from the short reigns of the first kings of Egypt is removed.
 
I must here observe, that the learned writer thinks it very reasonable to believe that the eight first kings of Edom, who reigned between the times of Moses and Saul, might reign above forty-eight years a-piece, one with another [as they are represented to have done], “because it suits very well with the length of men's lives in those times.” Now in those times the lives of men were not half so long as in the times of the first Egyptian kings, who by the tables did not reign thirty-four years a-piece, one with another. And the difficulty which arises from the comparison will not be solved by the supposed election of the Egyptian kings to the throne; because it is pretty evident that the eight first kings of Edom were elected, not one of them being the son or brother of his predecessor.
 
To return to the kings of Rome: the learned writer observes,
 
II. That, “between the reigns of several of the Roman kings there were interregna, and that each of these interregna might perhaps take up some years, and that the historians allot no space of time to these interregna.”

Now Livy tells us expressly, that the interregnum which followed the death of Romulus was of one year, [Annuum intervallum regni fuit [Google translate: There was an annual period in the kingdom.] L. 1. c. 17.] and the reason he gives for its being then terminated was the jealousy of the people, who apprehended an intention in the senate to reduce the government to an aristocracy; a reason which would naturally operate with like force in all future interregna.
 
Upon the death of Numa, the same historian relates that there was an interregnum, [Numae morte ad interregnum res rediit. Inde Tullum Hostilium—regem populus jussit [Google translate: By the death of Numa, the matter returned to an interregnum. Then the people ordered Tullus Hostilius—king.]. c. 22.] and that then Tullus Hostilius was chosen king, but says nothing to make us think that the interregnum lasted longer than was necessary for the ceremony of the election.
 
After the death of Tullus Hostilius it would seem by Livy's words, [Mortuo Tullo, res, ut institutum jam inde ab initio erat, ad patres redierat: hique interregem nominaverant. Quo comitia habente, Ancum Martium regem populus creavit [Google translate: Upon the death of Tullus, the matter had returned to the senate, as it had been established from the beginning, and these had named an interrex. When the election was held, the people created Ancus, king of Mars.]. c. 32.] that there was but one interrex before a successor to the crown was chosen.
 
After the death of Ancus Martius we are told by the same historian, [Jam filii [Anci] prope puberem aetatem erant. Eo magis Tarquinius instare, ut quam primum comitia regi creando fierent. Quibus indictis, sub tempus pueros venatum ablegavit [Google translate: Now the sons of Anci were almost immature. Tarquinius urged him the more, that the elections should be held as soon as possible for the election of a king. When this was announced, he sent away the boys to hunt at the time.]. c. 35.] that Tarquin, who was left guardian to the sons of Ancus, brought on the election of a successor with all expedition, and got himself chosen king.
 
After the death of Tarquin there was no interregnum. Nor after the death of Servius Tullius.
 
N.B. The learned writer takes no notice that most of the seven kings of Rome were slain, and one deposed.
 
As the learned writer, though the Roman kings did not fall within the times he was to treat of, judged it proper nevertheless to take notice of what Sir Isaac Newton has remarked concerning those kings, “Because the lengths of their reigns might be thought an undeniable instance of the inaccuracy of the ancient computations,” perhaps I may be excused, if, for a like prudential reason, I take notice of some things which the learned writer has said in support of the ancient computations, with regard to the kingdoms of Egypt, Sicyon, and Argos. For though these computations may be true, and that concerning the duration of the regal state of Rome be nevertheless false; yet, if it appears that the former cannot be supported with any show of argument, this will certainly go a great way towards discrediting the latter, as it will give ground to suspect that the profane chronology regarding the most ancient times has been all conjectural and technical. 

“The catalogues of kings (says Dr. Shuckford) which our great and learned author produces to confirm his opinion, are all of Inter date, some of them many ages later than the times of David.
 
“It cannot be inferred from these reigns of kings mentioned by Sir Isaac Newton, that kings did not reign, one with another, a much longer space of time in the ages which I am concerned with, in which men generally lived to a much greater age, than in the times out of which Sir Isaac Newton has taken the catalogues of kings which he has produced.
 
“From Abraham down almost to David men lived, according to the Scripture accounts of the lengths of their lives, to I think at a medium above 100 years, exceeding that time very much in the times near Abraham, and seldom falling short of it until within a generation or two of David; but in David's time the length of human life was, at a medium, but seventy years: now any one that considers this difference must see that the lengths of kings' reigns, as well as of generations, must be considerably effected by it. Successions in both must come on slower in the early ages according to the greater length of men's lives.
 
“I am sensible I could produce many catalogues of successions from father to son to confirm what I have offered; but since there is one which takes in almost the whole compass of the times which I am concerned in, and which has all the weight that the authority of the sacred writers can give it, and which will bring the point in question to a clear and indisputable conclusion, I shall for brevity's sake omit all others, and offer only that to the reader's farther examination. From Abraham to David (including both Abraham and David) were fourteen generations: now from Abraham's birth, A.M. 2008, [*: Missing FN.], to David's death, about A.M. 2986, [†:Missing FN.] are 978 years; so that generations in these times took up one with another near seventy years a-piece, i.e., they were above double the length which Sir Isaac Newton computes them, and which they were (I believe) after the times of David. We must therefore suppose the reigns of kings in these ancient times to be longer than his computation in the same proportion, and, if so, we must calculate them at above forty years a-piece one with another; and so the profane historians have recorded them to be: for, according to the lists we have from Castor of the ancient kings of Sicyon and Argos, the first twelve kings of Sicyon reigned more than forty-four years a-piece one with another, and the first eight kings of Argos something above forty-six, as our great author has remarked.
 
“But the reigns of the first twelve kings of Sicyon extended from A.M. 1920 to A.M. 2450, [By this reckoning the reigns of the twelve kings took up 530 years. But Dr. Shuckford, vol. ii. p. 41, gives only thirty-eight years a-piece to the first six kings, the whole time 228 years: so that the second six must have reigned above fifty years a-piece one with another, the whole time 302 years.] so that they began eighty-eight years before the birth of Abraham, and ended in the times of Moses.
 
“And the reigns of the first eight kings of Argos began A.M. 2154, ended A.M. 2525, so that they reached from the latter end of Abraham's life to a few years after the exit of the Israelites out of Egypt.
 
“And let any one form a just computation of the length of men's lives in these times, and it will in no wise appear unreasonable to imagine that the reigns of kings were of this length in these days.
 
“I might observe, that the ancient accounts of the kings of different kingdoms in these times agree to one another, as well as our great author's more modern catalogues,”

&c.
 
I. We see here, that the learned writer would have it granted him, and reasons all along upon the supposition that it will be granted him, that the first-named kings of Sicyon and Argos in the old catalogues reigned in the times he is concerned with, that is, in the times of longevity: and he seems not to be aware that this is begging§ [Mr. Whiston has made the same petitio principii [Google translate: begging.].] the very question in dispute, and that while he begs the question he furnishes reasons to reject his petition. He very justly advances, “that the difference there has been in the common length of human life, in the different ages of the world, must have had a considerable effect upon the length of both reigns and generations; both which must be longer or shorter in this or that age, in some measure, according to what is the common standard of the length of men's lives in the age they belong to.” But this undoubted truth furnishes an argument irresistible against the long reigns of the kings in the catalogues abovementioned.
 
Sir Isaac Newton has never said, that twelve kings of Sicyon, of whom the first began to reign in A.M. 1920 (Ant. Chr. 2084), might not reign forty-four years a-piece one with another; or that eight kings of Argos, of whom the first began to reign A.M. 2154 (Ant. Chr. 1850), might not reign forty-six years a-piece: but all his reasonings tend to prove, that the kingdoms, said to have commenced at those periods, did not then commence; that AEgialeus did not begin to reign in A.M. 1920, nor Inachus in 2154, but many centuries after those dates, and in the times of short life.
 
As to AEgialeus, Sir Isaac Newton has sufficiently shown by authorities, that he was the son of Inachus and brother of Phoroneus, who is counted the second king of Argos: the beginning of which kingdom was consequently prior to that of Sicyon. And he has likewise shown it to be highly probable that Apis, the fourth king of Sicyon, and Epopeus, the seventeenth king in the catalogue, were one and the same person, and that the twelve kings inserted between those two names were imaginary. The judicious Mr. Stanyan, in his Grecian History, seems much disposed to adopt this opinion. And even Mr. Whiston confesses (p. 983) that “the series of kings of Sicyon is more suspected by the learned than almost any that pretends to be very ancient; and that there are not wanting some plausible arguments against it.”
 
I shall therefore take no farther notice of the Sicyonian kings, but apply Sir Isaac Newton's method of reasoning from the course of nature to the succession of kings at Argos, of whom the eight first are said to have reigned above forty-six years a-piece one with another.
 
It is held by some learned men, that the life of man became reduced to the present standard in the time of Moses; others defer it to within a generation or two of David.
 
Moses, at eighty years of age, came out of Egypt in the year Ant Chr. 1491.
 
David died, at about seventy years of age, A.M. 2986, Ant Chr. 1018. He was therefore born about Ant. Chr. 1087.
 
The time between the Exodus and the birth of David is 404 years.
 
Let us take the middle number 202, and add it to 1087, and this will carry us back to Ant. Chr. 1289.
 
During these 1289 years, preceding the Christian era, we are authorized by Sir Isaac's catalogues to compute (when there is no certainty) the reigns of any considerable number of kings in succession at about twenty years a-piece one with another.
 
Let us then accept Sir Isaac's allowance of 340 years (instead of 622) for the reigns of the seventeen kings, ending with Leonidas, who was slain in the year Ant. Chr. 480.
 
If to these 480 years we add the 340, this will carry us back to the year 820 Ant. Chr. the time of the return of the Heraclides into Peloponnesus, and the beginning of the reign of Eurysthenes, the first of the seventeen kings of Sparta of that race.
 
It is generally admitted, that the beginning of the reign of Eurysthenes (who ejected Tisamenus, [N.B. Tisamenus was king of Argos, Mycenae, and Sparta, when the Heraclides dethroned him.] the son of Orestes and grandson of Agamemnon) was eighty years after the fall of Troy. These 80 years being added to the 820, we are got to the year 900 before Christ, the year when Troy was taken.
 
Agamemnon, king of Mycenae (who was slain just upon his return from Troy), is given us for the nineteenth king in succession from Inachus, the first king of Argos (Perseus, the fifteenth king of Argos, having removed the regal seat from Argos to Mycenae).
 
Now supposing all these nineteen kings in succession to have really existed, [Mr. Stanyan mentions the following kings of Argos, as said to have reigned in succession. Inachus, Phoroneus, Apis, Argus, Criasus, Phorbas, Iasus, Crotopus. But as to Apis, he tells us (p. 19), it is not generally assented to, that there was such a king of Argos. And in p. 22, he has these words: "As Iasus is not generally reckoned in the number of these kings, so it is doubted whether Phorbas and his son Triopas ought not to be excluded, it being said that they fled from Argos to the island of Rhodes: and the same doubt has been raised concerning Crotopus, because he is likewise said to have left Argos, and to have built a new city for himself in Megaris." I observe that Sir Isaac Newton (p. 170), by placing the beginning of the reign of Phoroneus, the second king of Argos, about the twelfth of Samuel, or Ant. Chr. 1088, supposes that at least eight or nine of the kings in the Argive catalogue were fictitious. In p. 172, he has these words: "Acusilaus wrote, that Phoroneus was older than Ogyges, and that Ogyges flourished 1020 years before the first Olympiad.''—But Acusilaus was an Argive, and feigned these things in honour of his country.—Inachus might be as old as Ogyges, but Acusilaus and his followers made them 700 years older than the truth; and chronologers, to make out this reckoning, have lengthened the races of the kings of Argos and Sicyon, and changed several contemporary princes of Argos into successive kings, and inserted many feigned kings into the race of the kings of Sicyon." If Sir Isaac Newton had not cut off eight or nine of the kings of Argos, he could not have placed Phoroneus so late as 1088 by his own method of computation.] yet if we allow them but twenty years a-piece one with another (and there is no reason to allow them more, for we are not yet got to the times of longevity), the sum will be 380, which, being added to 900, carries us back to the year 1280 before Christ, about which time we have supposed the life of man to have been first reduced to the present standard. And this brings down the commencement of the kingdom of Argos 570 years later than where it is placed by the old chronology.
 
But as we have here supposed, what perhaps many persons will not grant, that the life of man was brought to the present standard 202 years before the birth of David, let us fix the date of this abbreviation of human life at only forty years before David's birth, and then it will be in the year before Christ 1127. This is, I think, as low a date as any body contends for; at least Dr. Shuckford will be content with it.
 
Of the nineteen kings it will require eleven, at about twenty years and a half a-piece, to carry us up from the death of Agamemnon (which, by the foregoing computation, happened about the year before Christ 900) to the fortieth year before David's birth, Ant. Chr. 1127: and consequently, if we will adhere to the pretended date of the commencement of the kingdom of Argos, viz. Ant. Chr. 1850 (or A.M. 2154), we must suppose the eight first kings to have reigned above ninety years a-piece one with another, and their reigns to have taken up 723 years; for this is the number that must be added to 1127 to make 1850.
 
But if the eight first kings of Argos reigned ninety years a-piece one with another, what the learned writer advances in the following passage concerning monuments, stone pillars, and incriptions, can have no foundation.

“As to our illustrious author's arguments from the length of reigns: I might have observed that it is introduced upon a supposition which can never be allowed, namely, that the ancient chronologers did not give us the several reigns of their kings as they took them from authentic records, but that they made the lengths of them by artificial computations, calculated according to what they thought the reigns of such a number of kings as they had to set down would at a medium one with another amount to: this certainly never was fact; but as Acusilaus, a most ancient historian mentioned by our most illustrious author, wrote his genealogies out of tables of brass, so it is by far most probable that all the other genealogists who have given us the lengths of lives or reigns of their kings or heroes, took their accounts either from monuments, stone pillars, or ancient incriptions, or from other antiquaries of unsuspected fidelity, who had faithfully examined such originals.”

 
To this I farther answer,
 
I. If these genealogists were so faithful and had such good vouchers, whence came “those repugnances in their chronological canons (mentioned by Plutarch) which hundreds of authors correcting have not been able to constitute any thing certain in which they could agree?” For instance, how came AEgialeus, king of Sicyon, to be, according to some chronologers, 234 years, and, according to others, above 500 years older than Phoroneus, king of Argos, when “Acusilaus, Anticlides, and Plato, accounted Phoroneus the oldest king in Greece; and Apollodorus tells us, AEgialeus was the brother of Phoroneus?”

II. Dr. Shuckford, in another part of his work, seems to admit that the ancients made use of an artificial chronology, as appears by the following passage, vol. i. p. 207.

1. “He [Sir John Marsham] observes from Diodorus, that Menes was succeeded by fifty-two kings, whose reigns altogether took up the space of above 1400 years. In all which time the Egyptians had done nothing worth the recording in history.

2. “He supposes these 1400 years to end at Sesostris; for Herodotus is express that the first illustrious actions were done in Egypt in the time of Sesostris; before Sesostris, says he, they had done nothing famous; and Diodorus says that Sesostris performed the most illustrious actions, far exceeding all before him.

3. “He supposes, with Josephus, that this Sesostris was Sesac, who besieged Jerusalem in the fifth year of Rehoboam king of Judah, about A.M. 3033.

“The only difficulty in this argumentation will be, that it places Menes, or Mizraim, above a century earlier than his true age; for if we reckon backward 1400 years, from the year before named [3033], in which Sesac besieged Jerusalem, we shall place Mizraim A.M. 1633, i.e. twenty-three years before the flood, and 139 years earlier than the true time of his reign, which began A.M. 1772; but this difficulty may be easily cleared: the number 1400 years is a mistake: Diodorus says expressly that there were but fifty-two kings from Menes to the time where Sesostris's reign is supposed to begin; ["According to Diodorus, Sesostris was about eighty successions after Menes or Mizraim. Diodorus must indeed have made a mistake in this computation, for from the death of Menes A.M. 1943 to Sesac about A.M. 3033 are but 1090 years, and fifty-five successions may very well carry us down thus far," &c. Pref. p. xxxi. vol. ii.] and according to Sir John Marsham's tables of the Theban kings, from Menes to Sesostris is but 1370 years, though we suppose Sesostris the fifty-fifth king from Menes, and even this number is too great, if, as Diodorus computes, there were fifty-two kings only.
 
“The ancients generally allowed about thirty-six years and a half to the reign of a king [when they made use of an artificial chronology], and therefore if we deduct three times thirty-six years and a half, or about 110 years from 1370 (the number of years between Menes and Sesostris, according to Sir John Marsham’s tables), I say, if we deduct three times thirty-six years and a half, or about 110 years (supposing those tables to have the names of three kings too many, the number of kings being, according to Diodorus, fifty-two, and not fifty-five), we shall then make the space of time between Menes and Sesostris about 1260 years; and so it really is according to the Hebrew chronology, Menes beginning his reign, as we before said, anno mundi 1772; and Sesostris or Sesac besieging Jerusalem in the fifth year of Rehoboam, anno mundi 3033.”

 
I cannot but observe here, that the learned writer, who in imitation of the ancients makes use of an artificial chronology, has in the present instance employed it somewhat unluckily; for supposing he might have allowed 110 years to three reigns in any other succession of ancient kings, he has no right to make that allowance here, where the reigns of the fifty-two kings filling only 1260 years, they could reign but about twenty-four years a-piece one with another. And indeed the shortness or these reigns furnishes a good argument against that catalogue of fifty-two kings (as well as Diodorus's eighty kings), and against the learned writer's opinion concerning the ancient chronologers, that they took their successions of kings, and the numbers of years which each of them reigned, from authentic records.
 
For is it not highly incredible that fifty-two Egyptian kings, beginning with Mizraim, and reaching through the times of longevity from A.M. 1772 to 3033, should reign but three or four years a-piece one with another longer than the like number of successive kings in modern kingdoms? A consideration that seems sufficient to overthrow all imaginary tables of brass, stone pillars, monuments, inscriptions, &c recording the succession of those fifty-two kings or fifty-five kings between Mizraim and Sesostris. [See in p. lii. the citation from Mr. Whiston.]
 
Or, if it be credible that the reigns of fifty-two kings of Egypt in succession from Mizraim took up but 1260 years, is it not improbable, that the reigns of thirty-nine kings in succession, from Inachus, took up 1370 years; [The nineteen kings ending with Agamemnon, the three between Agamemnon and Eurysthenes, and the seventeen beginning with Eurysthenes and ending with Leonidas, make up the thirty-nine. They reign from Ant. Chr. 1850 to Ant. Chr. 480.] that if the former kings reigned but about twenty-four years a-piece one with another, the latter should reign thirty-five; especially if we consider that the reign of Mizraim is supposed to have begun 382 years before the reign of Inachus, and but 116 after the flood?
 
Arphaxad was coeval with Mizraim. Now had Arphaxad established a kingdom A.M. 1772, and the crown had gone in lineal descent, it is probable there would not have been more than fifteen kings in 1260 years, i.e., from the beginning of Arphaxad's reign to the time of Sesostris, who was contemporary with Solomon. For from Arphaxad to Solomon (both included) there were but twenty-three generations: and, during the first nine generations, there would have been but three kings, Arphaxad, Salah, and Eber: for Eber outlived Abraham, the seventh in descent from him.
 
And it is to be observed, that these three reigns would have taken up 415 years (there being from A.M. 1772 to A.M. 2187, the year when Eber died, exactly that number), whereas in no series of Egyptian reigns in Sir John Marsham's tables do the twelve first take up more than 407 years.
 
And as to the fourteen generations, beginning with Isaac and ending with Solomon, it is probable they would not have furnished more than twelve kings: for while the life of man was shortening from 180 years to 70, fathers would frequently outlive their sons, and the reigns would be fewer than the generations.
 
But supposing a king for each of the fourteen generations from Isaac to Solomon (both included), the whole number of kings in 1260 years, from Arphaxad to Solomon, would have been but seventeen.
 
That the reigns of fifty-two kings in succession from Mizraim should take up no longer a space of time than twenty-three generations from Arphaxad, has surely at first sight an appearance of improbability. How far the difficulty may be solved by the suppositions of election, rebellion, and king-killing, I shall leave to the reader to consider.
 
But in the passage above cited (from pref. p. xix.) the learned writer, to support the credit of the old chronologers, observes farther, that “the ancient accounts of the kings of different kingdoms agree to one another as well as Sir Isaac Newton's more modern catalogues.”
 
Yes, in some instances, they agree so well, as by their agreement to discover their technical original. For the twenty-two first kings of Thebes, in Sir John Marsham's tables, take up but 676 years, and the twenty-one kings of Alba and Rome take up just the same number, though the first are supposed to have reigned in the times when men lived to the ages of 400, 300, 200, 120, and the other when the life of man was shortened to seventy years.
 
So, in the times of short life, the twelve kings of Macedonia, from Caranus to Archelaus, reign thirty-four years and a half a-piece. And the eight last of the Latin kings, from Amulius to Tarquin the Proud, reign thirty-five and three quarters.
 
And in the times of long life, the twelve first kings of Assyria reign about forty years a-piece one with another.
 
How can these things be made to square with that principle, laid down by the learned writer (pref. p. xv.) that “the difference there has been in the common length of human life, in the different ages of the world, must have had a considerable effect upon the length of reigns, which must be longer or shorter in this or that age in some measure, according to what is the common standard of the length of men's lives in the age they belong to?”
 
I should think that the great mistake of the annalists who wrote of the first ages after the flood is not in allowing so many as 100 or 120 years to three reigns, but in not allowing more. [The fourteen first Egyptian kings of Thebes are said to have reigned 414 years, i.e., from A.M. 1772 to 2186, or till three years after the death of Abraham (who died at the age of 175), and though they lived in these times of longevity, yet they reigned but twenty-nine years some months a-piece; they are not made to reign so long as the fourteen Latin kings, after the fall of Troy, which is supposed to have happened A.M. 2820, 634 years after the last of the fourteen Egyptian kings.] They seem to have known nothing of the fact, that men's lives extended to so great a length, during some centuries after the flood, as they are represented to do in Scripture: for had they known this, surely they would never have made their accounts of kings' reigns in the earlier and later ages agree so well together.
 
As to the long argumentation which the learned writer has employed in support of Ctesias's chronology of the Assyrian monarchs, against Sir Isaac Newton's objections, I shall not enter into any consideration of it; because to my apprehension the learned writer does not seem to be quite satisfied with it himself; nor to have a very advantageous opinion of Ctesias.

“We find (says he) from Scripture, that after Abraham's defeating his armies'' [the armies of Chederlaomer], “the Assyrian kings appear not to have had any dominion over the nations between the Mediterranean and the Euphrates: this indeed seems to confine the Assyrian empire within narrower bounds than can well agree with the accounts which the heathen writers give of it; but then it is remarkable, that these enlarged accounts come from hands comparatively modern. Diodorus informs us, that he took his from Ctesias; Ctesias might have the number of his ancient Assyrian kings from the Persian chronicles; but as all writers have agreed to ascribe no great actions to any of them, from after Ninus to Sardanapalus; so it appears most reasonable to imagine, that the Persian registries made but a very short mention of them” [probably none at all]; “for ancient registries afforded but little history, and therefore I suspect, that Ctesias's estimate of the ancient Assyrian grandeur was rather formed from what he knew to be true of the Persian empire, than taken from any authentic accounts of the ancient Assyrian.”

 
And Mr. Whiston says (p. 980), “I desire not to be misunderstood in this place, as if I believed all the strange stories of Ctesias [Ktesias] either as to the beginning or ending of this Assyrian kingdom. I do not depend upon such legendary relations. I have not here set down the several years which each of these kings [in all thirty-two from Belus to Sardanapalus out of Moses Chorenensis] reigned, because it must be acknowledged that the copies differ much about them: and I suspect several mistakes in those particular numbers of successions and of years, though the general sum of the years, within a little more than a century, is well attested by the ancients.”

The ancient Greeks, till even a comparatively late period in their history, possessed little, if any, real knowledge of India. It is indeed scarcely so much as mentioned by name in their greatest poets, whether epic, lyric, or dramatic. They must, however, have known of its existence as early as the heroic times, for we find from Homer that they used even then articles of Indian merchandize, which went among them by names of Indian origin, such as kassiteros, tin, and elephas, ivory. But their conception of it, as we gather from the same source, was vague in the extreme. They imagined it to be in Eastern Ethiopia which stretched away to the uttermost verge of the world, and which, like the Ethiopia of the West, was inhabited by a race of men whose visages were scorched black by the fierce rays of the sun. [Ktesias... who wrote somewhat later than Herodotos, frequently calls the Indians by the name of Ethiopians...]...

This explains why we find in Greek literature mention of peculiar or fabulous races, both of men and other animals, which existed apparently in duplicate, being represented sometimes as located in India, and sometimes in Ethiopia ...

Perhaps, as Dr. Robertson has observed, they disdained, through pride of their own superior enlightenment, to pay attention to the transactions of people whom they considered as barbarians, especially in countries far remote from their own. But, in whatever way the fact may be accounted for, India continued to be to the Greeks little better than a land of mystery and fable till the times of the Persian wars, when for the first time they became distinctly aware of its existence. The first historian who speaks clearly of it is Hekataios of Miletos (B.C. 549-486), and fuller accounts are preserved in Herodotos, and in the remains of Ktesias, who, having lived for some years in Persia as private physician to king Artaxerxes Mnemon, collected materials during his stay for a treatise on India, the first work on the subject written in the Greek language. ["The few particulars appropriate to India, and consistent with truth, obtained by Ctesias, are almost confined to something resembling a description of the cochineal plant, the fly, and the beautiful tint obtained from it, with a genuine picture of the monkey and the parrot; the two animals he had doubtless seen in Persia, and flowered cottons emblazoned with the glowing colours of the modern chintz were probably as much coveted by the fair Persians in the harems of Susa and Ecbatana as they still are by the ladies of our own country; ... but we are not bound to admit his fable of the Martichora, his pygmies, his men with the heads of dogs, and feet reversed, his griffins, and his four-footed birds as big as wolves." — Vincent.]

His descriptions were, unfortunately, vitiated by a large intermixture of fable....

Regarding the veracity of Megasthenes, and his value as a writer, Schwanbeck writes to this effect: --

"The ancient writers, whenever they judge of those who have written on Indian matters, are without doubt wont to reckon Megasthenes among those writers who are given to lying and least worthy of credit, and to rank him almost on a par with Ktesias. ...

-- Ancient India as Described by Megasthenes and Arrian; Being a Translation of the Fragments of the Indika of Megasthenes Collected by Dr. Schwanbeck, and of the First Part of the Indika of Arrian, by J.W. McCrindle, M.A., Principal of the Government College, Patna, Member of the General Council of the University of Edinburgh, Fellow of the University of Calcutta, With Introduction, Notes and Map of Ancient India, 1877

 
Nor shall I meddle with Sir Isaac Newton's astronomical argument for fixing the time of the Argonautic expedition (and of course the time of the fall of Troy, which was only one generation later), from the position of the solstitial and equinoctial points on the sphere which Chiron made for the use of the Argonauts. I am too little acquainted with the science of astronomy to speak pertinently on the subject. I shall only observe that Mr. Whiston does not agree with Dr. Shuckford concerning the grounds of the argument. 

"The fallacy of this argument (says Dr. Shuckford) cannot but appear very evident to any one that attends to it: for suppose we allow that Chiron did really place the solstices, as Sir Isaac Newton represents (though I should think it most probable that he did not so place them), yet it must be undeniably plain, that nothing can be certainly established from Chiron's position of them, unless it appears, that Chiron knew how to give them their true place.

"If indeed it could be known what was the true place of the solstitial points in Chiron's time, it might be known, by taking the distance of that place from the present position of them, how much time has elapsed from Chiron to our days.
 
But I answer, it cannot be accurately known from any schemes of Chiron what was the true place of the solstices in his days; because, though it is said that he calculated the then position of them, yet he was so inaccurate an astronomer, that his calculation might err four or five degrees from their true position."

Mr. Whiston (p. 991) writes thus:

"As to the first argument from the place of the two colures in Eudoxus from Chiron the Argonaut, preserved by Hipparchus of Bithynia, I readily allow its foundation to be true, that Eudoxus's sphere was the same with Chiron's, and that it was first made and showed Hercules and the rest of the Argonauts in order to guide them in their voyage to Colchis. And I take the discovery of this sure astronomical criterion of the true time of that Argonautic expedition (in the defect of eclipses) to be highly worthy the uncommon sagacity of the great Sir Isaac Newton, and in its own nature a chronological character truly inestimable. Nor need we, I think, any stronger argument in order to overturn Sir Isaac Newton's own Chronology, than this position of the colures at the time of that expedition, which its proposer has very kindly furnished us withal."

In p. 996:

I now proceed to Eudoxus's accurate description of the position of the two colures as they had been drawn on their celestial globes, ever since the days of Chiron, at the Argonautic expedition, and as Hipparchus has given us that description in the words of Eudoxus."

Again (p. 1002):

"Sir Isaac Newton betrays his consciousness how little Eudoxus's description of Chiron's colures agreed to his position of them, by pretending that these observations of the ancients were coarse and inaccurate. This is true if compared with the observations of the moderns which read to minutes; and, since, the application of telescopic sights to astronomic instruments, to ten or fewer seconds. But as to our present purpose this description in Eudoxus is very accurate, it both taking notice of every constellation, through which each of the coloures passed, that were visible in Greece; and hardly admitting of an error of half a degree in angular measures, or thirty-six years in time. Which is sufficiently exact."

How far Mr. Whiston has succeeded in his argumentation about the neck of the swan and the tail of the bear, &c. I must leave to others to consider. I shall only observe, with regard to the last paragraph cited from his discourse, that when Sir Isaac Newton calls the observations of the ancient astronomers coarse, he cannot well be understood to use that word but in a comparative sense, that sense in which Mr. Whiston admits it may be justly used. For otherwise Sir Isaac would not have inferred any thing as certain from those ancient observations. Now, in p. 95, after he has finished his argument from Chiron's sphere, he thus writes:

"Hesiod tells us, that sixty days after the winter solstice, the star Arcturus rose at sunset: and thence it follows, that Hesiod flourished about 100 years after the death of Solomon, or in the generation or age next after the Trojan war, as Hesiod himself declares.
 
From all these circumstances, grounded upon the coarse observations of the ancient astronomers, we may reckon it certain, that the Argonautic expedition was not earlier than the reign of Solomon: and if these astronomical arguments be added to the former arguments taken from the mean length of the reigns of kings according to the course of nature; from them all we may safety conclude, that the Argonautic expedition was after the death of Solomon, and most probably that it was about forty-three years after.
 
The Trojan war was one generation later than that expedition -- several captains of the Greeks in that war being sons of the Argonauts,"

&c.
 
By the last words here cited, I am brought round again to the point from whence I set out in this discourse, the fall of Troy: the time of which event, if it be rightly settled, or pretty near the truth, by Sir Isaac Newton, the received chronology of the regal state of Rome is totally discredited and overturned. For then the whole space of time, between the taking of Troy and the expulsion of Tarquin the Proud, will not have been about 400 years; and of these nobody, I imagine, will be inclined to give 244 to the seven kings of Rome, most of whom were slain, and but 156 to the fourteen Latin Kings their predecessors.
 
To the probable arguments brought by Sir Isaac for shortening the duration of the regal state, I have added another, taken from certain traditions which prevailed among the Romans, and of which the chronology, framed afterwards, was not able to destroy the belief, though the truth of those traditions was incompatible with the truth of that chronology.
 
And I have shown, that in the Roman story there are other particulars repugnant to the received chronology, but perfectly consistent with Sir Isaac Newton's computations.
 
Tradition and the earliest Roman historians said,
 
1. That Numa was contemporary with Pythagoras.
 
2. That Tarquin the Proud was the son of Tarquin the Elder.
 
3. That Tarquin the Proud was at the head of his army, and fought on horseback in his last battle with the Romans [about fourteen years after his expulsion].
 
4. That Collatinus, the husband of Lucretia, and created consul on the expulsion of Tarquin the Proud, was the son of Egerius, nephew of Tarquin the Elder.
 
Now all these facts are inconsistent with the old chronology; and for this reason, and this alone, Dionysius rejects them. Livy, aware of the inconsistency, adheres nevertheless to the three last of these facts, and speaks of the first in such a manner as to make one think he really believed that too. So that he seems to have had little faith in the received chronology, though he durst not openly and expressly contradict it.
 
On the other hand, all those facts are consistent with Sir Isaac Newton's computations, which shorten the reigns of the kings. And the same computations being admitted, we get rid of other difficulties.
 
1. We see plainly why the historians could give no account of any thing done by Romulus after the seventeenth year of his reign, while they tell us that he reigned thirty-seven years.
 
2. By shortening the duration of Numa's peaceful and religious reign, we can account for that martial disposition, which the Romans still retained, when Tullus Hostilius came to the throne.
 
3. If we shorten the reigns of Tullus Hostilius, Ancus Martius, and Tarquinius Priscus, we are at no loss for a reason why three such ambitious and active princes did so little.
 
4. By cutting off about twenty-four years of the forty-four given to the reign of Servius Tullius, we can explain how it came to pass that there were no more than four lustra in his time; which otherwise seems very difficult to be accounted for.
 
It surely cannot be denied, that there is a great coincidence of circumstances to support Sir Isaac Newton’s computations; and that his computations, if admitted, render credible many historical facts, which are incredible so long as we adhere to the old chronology.
 
A writer not less distinguished for his depth of thought, and logical exactness, than for his amiable benevolent fairness in argument, observes, “The evidence arising from various coincidences, which confirm and support each other, is that kind of evidence upon which most questions of difficulty in common practice are determined. – And that probable proofs, by being added, not only increase the evidence, but multiply it.”
 
Supposing it easy to show, that in the present argument (consisting of Sir Isaac Newton’s reasons, and those I have added to them), this or that particular thing, offered in proof, is liable to objection, and of little weight in itself; yet the united force of all the particulars, in one view, may perhaps be irresistible; and certainly the conclusion we make from a view of the particulars ought to be such as results from their united force. 

[admin]

Jason [And the Argonauts and the Quest for the Golden Fleece]
by Wikipedia
Accessed: 1/17/21

"The season of Sisira is from the first of Dhanishtha to the middle of Revati; that of Vasanta from the middle of Revati to the end of Rohini; that of Grishma from the beginning of Mrigasiras to the middle of Aslesha; that of Versha from the middle of Aslesha to the end of Hasta; that of Sanad from the first of Chitra to the middle of Jyeshtha; that of Hemanta from the middle of Jyeshtha to the end of Sravana."

This account of the six Indian seasons, each of which is co-extensive with two signs, or four lunar stations and a half, places the solstitial points, as Varaha has asserted, in the first degree of Dhanishtha, and the middle, or 6°40', of Aslesha, while the equinoctial points were in the tenth degree of Bharani and 3°20' of Visacha; but in the time of Varaha, the solstitial colure passed through the 10th degree of Punarvasu and 3°20' of Uttarashara, while the equinoctial colure cut the Hindu ecliptic in the first of Aswini and 6°40' of Chitra, or the Yoga and only star of that mansion, which, by the way, is indubitably the Spike of the Virgin, from the known longitude of which all other points in the Indian Zodiac may be computed. It cannot escape notice, that Parasara does not use in this passage the phrase at present, which occurs in the text of Varaha; so that the places of the colures might have been ascertained before his time, and a considerable change might have happened in their true position without any change in the phrases by which the seasons were distinguished; as our popular language in astronomy remains unaltered, though the Zodiacal asterisms are now removed a whole sign from the places where they have left their names. It is manifest, nevertheless, that Parasara must have written within twelve centuries before the beginning of our era, and that single fact, as we shall presently show, leads to very momentous consequences in regard to the system of Indian history and literature.

On the comparison which might easily be made between the colures of Parasar and those ascribed by Eudoxus to Chiron, the supposed assistant and instructor of the Argonauts, I shall say very little; because the whole Argonautic story, (which neither was, according to Herodotus, nor, indeed, could have been originally Grecian) appears, even when stripped of its poetical and fabulous ornaments, extremely disputable; and whether it was founded on a league of the Helladian princes and states for the purpose of checking, on a favourable opportunity, the overgrown power of Egypt, or with a view to secure the commerce of the Euxine and appropriate the wealth of Colchis; or, as I am disposed to believe, on an emigration from Africa find Asia of that adventurous race, who had first been established in Chaldea; whatever, in short, gave rise to the fable, which the old poets have so richly embellished, and the old historians have so inconsiderately adopted, it seems to me very clear, even on the principles of Newton, and on the same authorities to which he refers, that the voyage of the Argonauts must have preceded the year in which his calculations led him to place it.[!!!]

-- XXVII. A Supplement to the Essay on Indian Chronology, by the President (Sir William Jones), Asiatic Researches, Volume 2, 1788

Nor shall I meddle with Sir Isaac Newton's astronomical argument for fixing the time of the Argonautic expedition (and of course the time of the fall of Troy, which was only one generation later), from the position of the solstitial and equinoctial points on the sphere which Chiron made for the use of the Argonauts. I am too little acquainted with the science of astronomy to speak pertinently on the subject. I shall only observe that Mr. Whiston does not agree with Dr. Shuckford concerning the grounds of the argument. 

"The fallacy of this argument (says Dr. Shuckford) cannot but appear very evident to any one that attends to it: for suppose we allow that Chiron did really place the solstices, as Sir Isaac Newton represents (though I should think it most probable that he did not so place them), yet it must be undeniably plain, that nothing can be certainly established from Chiron's position of them, unless it appears, that Chiron knew how to give them their true place.

"If indeed it could be known what was the true place of the solstitial points in Chiron's time, it might be known, by taking the distance of that place from the present position of them, how much time has elapsed from Chiron to our days.
 
But I answer, it cannot be accurately known from any schemes of Chiron what was the true place of the solstices in his days; because, though it is said that he calculated the then position of them, yet he was so inaccurate an astronomer, that his calculation might err four or five degrees from their true position."

Mr. Whiston (p. 991) writes thus:

"As to the first argument from the place of the two colures in Eudoxus from Chiron the Argonaut, preserved by Hipparchus of Bithynia, I readily allow its foundation to be true, that Eudoxus's sphere was the same with Chiron's, and that it was first made and showed Hercules and the rest of the Argonauts in order to guide them in their voyage to Colchis. And I take the discovery of this sure astronomical criterion of the true time of that Argonautic expedition (in the defect of eclipses) to be highly worthy the uncommon sagacity of the great Sir Isaac Newton, and in its own nature a chronological character truly inestimable. Nor need we, I think, any stronger argument in order to overturn Sir Isaac Newton's own Chronology, than this position of the colures at the time of that expedition, which its proposer has very kindly furnished us withal."

In p. 996:

I now proceed to Eudoxus's accurate description of the position of the two colures as they had been drawn on their celestial globes, ever since the days of Chiron, at the Argonautic expedition, and as Hipparchus has given us that description in the words of Eudoxus."

Again (p. 1002):

"Sir Isaac Newton betrays his consciousness how little Eudoxus's description of Chiron's colures agreed to his position of them, by pretending that these observations of the ancients were coarse and inaccurate. This is true if compared with the observations of the moderns which read to minutes; and, since, the application of telescopic sights to astronomic instruments, to ten or fewer seconds. But as to our present purpose this description in Eudoxus is very accurate, it both taking notice of every constellation, through which each of the coloures passed, that were visible in Greece; and hardly admitting of an error of half a degree in angular measures, or thirty-six years in time. Which is sufficiently exact."

How far Mr. Whiston has succeeded in his argumentation about the neck of the swan and the tail of the bear, &c. I must leave to others to consider. I shall only observe, with regard to the last paragraph cited from his discourse, that when Sir Isaac Newton calls the observations of the ancient astronomers coarse, he cannot well be understood to use that word but in a comparative sense, that sense in which Mr. Whiston admits it may be justly used. For otherwise Sir Isaac would not have inferred any thing as certain from those ancient observations. Now, in p. 95, after he has finished his argument from Chiron's sphere, he thus writes:

"Hesiod tells us, that sixty days after the winter solstice, the star Arcturus rose at sunset: and thence it follows, that Hesiod flourished about 100 years after the death of Solomon, or in the generation or age next after the Trojan war, as Hesiod himself declares.
 
From all these circumstances, grounded upon the coarse observations of the ancient astronomers, we may reckon it certain, that the Argonautic expedition was not earlier than the reign of Solomon: and if these astronomical arguments be added to the former arguments taken from the mean length of the reigns of kings according to the course of nature; from them all we may safety conclude, that the Argonautic expedition was after the death of Solomon, and most probably that it was about forty-three years after.
 
The Trojan war was one generation later than that expedition -- several captains of the Greeks in that war being sons of the Argonauts,"

&c.
 
By the last words here cited, I am brought round again to the point from whence I set out in this discourse, the fall of Troy...

-- Remarks on the History of the Seven Roman Kings, Occasioned by Sir Isaac Newton’s Objections to the Supposed Two Hundred and Forty-Four Years’ Duration of the Regal State of Rome, from The Roman History From the Building of Rome to the Ruin of the Commonwealth, Illustrated with Maps, by N. Hooke, Esq., 1823

-- Of The Argo, and Argonautic Expedition, from A New System, Or, An Analysis of Ancient Mythology: Wherein an Attempt is Made to Divest Tradition of Fable; and to Reduce the Truth to its Original Purity, by Jacob Bryant, 1775

Jason on an antique fresco from Pompeii

Jason (/ˈdʒeɪsən/ JAY-sən; Greek: Ἰάσων, translit. Iásōn [i.ǎːsɔːn]) was an ancient Greek mythological hero and leader of the Argonauts, whose quest for the Golden Fleece featured in Greek literature. He was the son of Aeson, the rightful king of Iolcos. He was married to the sorceress Medea. He was also the great-grandson of the messenger god Hermes, through his mother's side.

Jason appeared in various literary works in the classical world of Greece and Rome, including the epic poem Argonautica and the tragedy Medea. In the modern world, Jason has emerged as a character in various adaptations of his myths, such as the 1963 film Jason and the Argonauts and the 2000 TV miniseries of the same name.

Persecution by Pelias


Pelias, king of Iolcos, stops on the steps of a temple as he recognises young Jason by his missing sandal; Roman fresco from Pompeii, 1st century AD.

Pelias (Aeson's half-brother) was power-hungry and sought to gain dominion over all of Thessaly. Pelias was the progeny of a union between their shared mother, Tyro ("high born Tyro"), the daughter of Salmoneus, and the sea god Poseidon. In a bitter feud, he overthrew Aeson (the rightful king), killing all the descendants of Aeson that he could. He spared his half-brother for unknown reasons.[1]

Aeson's wife Alcimede I had a newborn son named Jason whom she saved from Pelias by having female attendants cluster around the infant and cry as if he were still-born. Fearing that Pelias would eventually notice and kill her son, Alcimede sent him away to be reared by the centaur Chiron.[1] She claimed that she had been having an affair with him all along. Pelias, fearing that his ill-gotten kingship might be challenged, consulted an oracle, who warned him to beware of a man wearing only one sandal.

Many years later, Pelias was holding games in honor of Poseidon when the grown Jason arrived in Iolcus, having lost one of his sandals in the river Anauros ("wintry Anauros") while helping an old woman (actually the goddess Hera in disguise) to cross.[1] She blessed him, for she knew what Pelias had planned. When Jason entered Iolcus (present-day city of Volos), he was announced as a man wearing only one sandal. Jason, aware that he was the rightful king, so informed Pelias. Pelias replied, "To take my throne, which you shall, you must go on a quest to find the Golden Fleece." Jason readily accepted this condition.

The Argonauts and the Quest for the Golden Fleece

Jason assembled for his crew, a number of heroes, known as the Argonauts after their ship, the Argo.[1] The group of heroes included:[2]: 485 

• Acastus;
• Admetus;
• Argus, the eponymous builder of the Argo;
• Atalanta;
• Augeas;
• the winged Boreads, Zetes & Calaïs;
• the Dioscuri, Castor & Polydeuces;
• Euphemus;
• Heracles;
• Idas;
• Idmon, the seer;
• Lynceus;
• Meleager;
• Orpheus;
• Peleus;
• Philoctetes;
• Telamon; and
• Tiphys, the helmsman

The Isle of Lemnos

The isle of Lemnos is situated off the Western coast of Asia Minor (modern day Turkey). The island was inhabited by a race of women who had killed their husbands. The women had neglected their worship of Aphrodite, and as a punishment the goddess made the women so foul in stench that their husbands could not bear to be near them.

The men then took concubines from the Thracian mainland opposite, and the spurned women, angry at Aphrodite, killed all the male inhabitants while they slept. The king, Thoas, was saved by Hypsipyle, his daughter, who put him out to sea sealed in a chest from which he was later rescued. The women of Lemnos lived for a while without men, with Hypsipyle as their queen.

During the visit of the Argonauts the women mingled with the men creating a new "race" called Minyae. Jason fathered twins with the queen. Heracles pressured them to leave as he was disgusted by the antics of the Argonauts. He had not taken part, which is truly unusual considering the numerous affairs he had with other women.[note 1]

Cyzicus

After Lemnos the Argonauts landed among the Doliones, whose king Cyzicus treated them graciously. He told them about the land beyond Bear Mountain, but forgot to mention what lived there. What lived in the land beyond Bear Mountain were the Gegeines, which are a tribe of Earthborn giants with six arms and wore leather loincloths.

While most of the crew went into the forest to search for supplies, the Gegeines saw that few Argonauts were guarding the ship and raided it. Heracles was among those guarding the ship at the time and managed to kill most of them before Jason and the others returned. Once some of the other Gegeines were killed, Jason and the Argonauts set sail.

The Argonauts departed, losing their bearings and landing again at the same spot that night. In the darkness, the Doliones took them for enemies and they started fighting each other. The Argonauts killed many of the Doliones, among them the king Cyzicus. Cyzicus' wife killed herself. The Argonauts realized their horrible mistake when dawn came and held a funeral for him.

Phineus and the harpies

Soon Jason reached the court of Phineus of Salmydessus in Thrace. Zeus had sent the harpies to steal the food put out for Phineus each day. Jason took pity on the emaciated king and killed the Harpies when they returned; in other versions, Calais and Zetes chase the harpies away. In return for this favor, Phineus revealed to Jason the location of Colchis and how to pass the Symplegades, or The Clashing Rocks, and then they parted.


Jason bringing Pelias the Golden Fleece, Apulian red-figure calyx krater, ca. 340 BC–330 BC, Louvre. The Symplegades

The only way to reach Colchis was to sail through the Symplegades (Clashing Rocks), huge rock cliffs that came together and crushed anything that traveled between them. Phineus told Jason to release a dove when they approached these islands, and if the dove made it through, to row with all their might. If the dove was crushed, he was doomed to fail. Jason released the dove as advised, which made it through, losing only a few tail feathers. Seeing this, they rowed strongly and made it through with minor damage at the extreme stern of the ship. From that time on, the clashing rocks were forever joined leaving free passage for others to pass.

The arrival in Colchis

Jason arrived in Colchis (modern Black Sea coast of Georgia) to claim the fleece as his own. It was owned by King Aeetes of Colchis. The fleece was given to him by Phrixus. Aeetes promised to give it to Jason only if he could perform three certain tasks. Presented with the tasks, Jason became discouraged and fell into depression. However, Hera had persuaded Aphrodite to convince her son Eros to make Aeetes' daughter, Medea, fall in love with Jason. As a result, Medea aided Jason in his tasks.[3]

First, Jason had to plow a field with fire-breathing oxen, the Khalkotauroi, that he had to yoke himself. Medea provided an ointment that protected him from the oxen's flames. Then, Jason sowed the teeth of a dragon into a field. The teeth sprouted into an army of warriors (spartoi). Medea had previously warned Jason of this and told him how to defeat this foe.[3]

Before they attacked him, he threw a rock into the crowd. Unable to discover where the rock had come from, the soldiers attacked and defeated one another. His last task was to overcome the sleepless dragon which guarded the Golden Fleece. Jason sprayed the dragon with a potion, given by Medea, distilled from herbs. The dragon fell asleep, and Jason was able to seize the Golden Fleece.[3]

He then sailed away with Medea. Medea distracted her father, who chased them as they fled, by killing her brother Apsyrtus and throwing pieces of his body into the sea; Aeetes stopped to gather them. In another version, Medea lured Apsyrtus into a trap. Jason killed him, chopped off his fingers and toes, and buried the corpse. In any case, Jason and Medea escaped.

The return journey


Jason and Medea - as depicted by John William Waterhouse, 1907.

On the way back to Iolcus, Medea prophesied to Euphemus, the Argo's helmsman, that one day he would rule Cyrene. This came true through Battus, a descendant of Euphemus. Zeus, as punishment for the slaughter of Medea's own brother, sent a series of storms at the Argo and blew it off course. The Argo then spoke and said that they should seek purification with Circe, a nymph living on the island of Aeaea. After being cleansed, they continued their journey home.

Sirens

Chiron had told Jason that without the aid of Orpheus, the Argonauts would never be able to pass the Sirens—the same Sirens encountered by Odysseus in Homer's epic poem the Odyssey. The Sirens lived on three small, rocky islands called Sirenum scopuli and sang beautiful songs that enticed sailors to come to them, which resulted in the crashing of their ship into the islands. When Orpheus heard their voices, he drew his lyre and played music that was more beautiful and louder, drowning out the Sirens' bewitching songs.

Talos

The Argo then came to the island of Crete, guarded by the bronze man, Talos. As the ship approached, Talos hurled huge stones at the ship, keeping it at bay. Talos had one blood vessel which went from his neck to his ankle, bound shut by only one bronze nail (as in metal casting by the lost wax method). Medea cast a spell on Talos to calm him; she removed the bronze nail and Talos bled to death. The Argo was then able to sail on.

Jason returns


Jason and the Snake

Thomas Bulfinch has an antecedent to the interaction of Medea and the daughters of Pelias. Jason, celebrating his return with the Golden Fleece, noted that his father was too aged and infirm to participate in the celebrations. He had seen and been served by Medea's magical powers. He asked Medea to take some years from his life and add them to the life of his father. She did so, but at no such cost to Jason's life. Medea withdrew the blood from Aeson's body and infused it with certain herbs; putting it back into his veins, returning vigor to him.[4] Pelias' daughters saw this and wanted the same service for their father.

Medea, using her sorcery, claimed to Pelias' daughters that she could make their father smooth and vigorous as a child by chopping him up into pieces and boiling the pieces in a cauldron of water and magical herbs. She demonstrated this remarkable feat with the oldest ram in the flock, which leapt out of the cauldron as a lamb. The girls, rather naively, sliced and diced their father and put him in the cauldron. Medea did not add the magical herbs, and Pelias was dead.[5] Pelias' son, Acastus, drove Jason and Medea into exile for the murder, and the couple settled in Corinth.

Treachery of Jason

In Corinth, Jason became engaged to marry Creusa (sometimes referred to as Glauce), a daughter of the King of Corinth, to strengthen his political ties. When Medea confronted Jason about the engagement and cited all the help she had given him, he retorted that it was not she that he should thank, but Aphrodite who made Medea fall in love with him. Infuriated with Jason for breaking his vow that he would be hers forever, Medea took her revenge by presenting to Creusa a cursed dress, as a wedding gift, that stuck to her body and burned her to death as soon as she put it on.[5]

Creusa's father, Creon, burned to death with his daughter as he tried to save her. Then Medea killed the two boys that she bore to Jason, fearing that they would be murdered or enslaved as a result of their mother's actions. When Jason came to know of this, Medea was already gone. She fled to Athens in a chariot of dragons sent by her grandfather, the sun-god Helios.[5]

Although Jason calls Medea most hateful to gods and men, the fact that the chariot is given to her by Helios indicates that she still has the gods on her side. As Bernard Knox points out, Medea's last scene with concluding appearances parallels that of a number of indisputably divine beings in other plays by Euripides. Just like these gods, Medea "interrupts and puts a stop to the violent action of the human being on the lower level, ... justifies her savage revenge on the grounds that she has been treated with disrespect and mockery, ... takes measures and gives orders for the burial of the dead, prophesies the future," and "announces the foundation of a cult."[6]

Later Jason and Peleus, father of the hero Achilles, attacked and defeated Acastus, reclaiming the throne of Iolcus for himself once more. Jason's son, Thessalus, then became king.

As a result of breaking his vow to love Medea forever, Jason lost his favor with Hera and died lonely and unhappy. He was asleep under the stern of the rotting Argo when it fell on him, killing him instantly.[7]

Family

Parentage


Jason with the Golden Fleece by Bertel Thorvaldsen

Jason's father is invariably Aeson, but there is great variation as to his mother's name. According to various authors, she could be:

• Alcimede, daughter of Phylacus[8]
• Polymede,[9] or Polymele,[10] or Polypheme,[11] a daughter of Autolycus
• Amphinome[12]
• Theognete, daughter of Laodicus[11]
• Rhoeo[13]
• Arne or Scarphe[14]

Jason was also said to have had a younger brother Promachus.[15]

Children

Children by Medea:

• Alcimenes, murdered by Medea.
• Thessalus, twin of Alcimenes and king of Iolcus.
• Tisander, murdered by Medea
• Mermeros killed either by the Corinthians or by Medea
• Pheres, as above
• Eriopis, their only daughter
• Medus or Polyxenus, otherwise son of Aegeus
• Argus[16]
• seven sons and seven daughters[17]

Children by Hypsipyle:[18]

• Euneus, King of Lemnos and his twin
• Nebrophonus[19] or
• Deipylus[20] or
• Thoas[21]

In literature

Though some of the episodes of Jason's story draw on ancient material, the definitive telling, on which this account relies, is that of Apollonius of Rhodes in his epic poem Argonautica, written in Alexandria in the late 3rd century BC.

Another Argonautica was written by Gaius Valerius Flaccus in the late 1st century AD, eight books in length. The poem ends abruptly with the request of Medea to accompany Jason on his homeward voyage. It is unclear if part of the epic poem has been lost, or if it was never finished. A third version is the Argonautica Orphica, which emphasizes the role of Orpheus in the story.

Jason is briefly mentioned in Dante's Divine Comedy in the poem Inferno. He appears in the Canto XVIII. In it, he is seen by Dante and his guide Virgil being punished in Hell's Eighth Circle (Bolgia 1) by being driven to march through the circle for all eternity while being whipped by devils. He is included among the panderers and seducers (possibly for his seduction and subsequent abandoning of Medea).

The story of Medea's revenge on Jason is told with devastating effect by Euripides in his tragedy Medea.

William Morris wrote an English epic poem, The Life and Death of Jason, published in 1867.

The mythical geography of the voyage of the Argonauts has been connected to specific geographic locations by Livio Stecchini[22] but his theories have not been widely adopted.

Popular culture

Main article: Jason in popular culture


Jason portrayed by Todd Armstrong in Jason and the Argonauts (1963).

Jason appeared in the Hercules episode "Hercules and the Argonauts" voiced by William Shatner. He is shown to have been a student of Philoctetes and takes his advice to let Hercules travel with him.

In the series The Heroes of Olympus's first novel The Lost Hero, there was a reference to the mythical Jason when Jason Grace and his friends encounter Medea.

The BBC series Atlantis, which premiered in 2013, featured Jason as the protagonist.

See also

• Cape Jason
• Mermeros and Pheres
• Jason in popular culture

Explanatory notes

1. In Hercules, My Shipmate Robert Graves claims that Heracles fathered more children than anyone else of the crew.

References

Notes

1. Wood, Michael. "Jason and the Argonauts", In Search of Myths & Heroes, PBS
2. Powell, Barry B. (2015). Classical Myth. with translations by Herbert M. Howe (8th ed.). Boston: Pearson. ISBN 978-0-321-96704-6.
3. "Metamorphoses".
4. William Godwin (1876). "Lives of the Necromancers". p. 41.
5. Godwin 1876, p. 42.
6. B.M.W. Knox. Word and Action: Essays on the Ancient Theatre. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1979, p. 303.
7. Euripides; Murray, Gilbert (1912). The Medea. Translated into English rhyming verse with explanatory notes by Gilbert Murray. Robarts - University of Toronto. New York Oxford University Press. pp. 77–78, 96.
8. Apollonius Rhodius, Argonautica 1.45 ff., 233 & 251 ff.; Valerius Flaccus, Argonautica 1.297; Hyginus, Fabulae 3, 13 & 14
9. Apollodorus, 1.9.16; Tzetzes on Lycophron, Alexandra 175 & 872
10. Hesiod, Ehoiai fr. 38; Tzetzes, Chiliades 6.979; Scholia on Homer, Odyssey 12.69
11. Scholia on Apollonius Rhodius, Argonautica 1.45
12. Diodorus Siculus, Bibliotheca historica 4.50.2
13. Tzetzes, Chiliades 6.979
14. Tzetzes on Lycophron, Alexandra 872
15. Diodorus Siculus, Bibliotheca historica 4.50.2; Apollodorus, 1.9.27
16. Smith, William (1870). "Medeia". A Dictionary of Greek and Roman biography and mythology: Vol 2. p. 1004. Retrieved 6 December 2016. Her children are, according to some accounts, Mermerus, Pheres or Thessalus, Alcimenes and Tisander, and, according to others, she had seven sons and seven daughters, while others mention only two children, Medus (some call him Polyxemus) and Eriopis, or one son Argos.
17. Ptolemy Hephaestion, 2
18. Ovid, Heroides 6.119
19. Apollodorus, 1.9.17
20. Hyginus, Fabulae 15
21. Euripides, Hypsipyle (fragments)
22. The Voyage of the Argo

Bibliography

• Alain Moreau, Le Mythe de Jason et Médée. Le Va-nu-pied et la Sorcière. Paris: Les Belles Lettres, collection «Vérité des mythes», 2006 (ISBN 2-251-32440-2).
• Apollodorus, The Library with an English Translation by Sir James George Frazer, F.B.A., F.R.S. in 2 Volumes, Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1921. ISBN 0-674-99135-4. Online version at the Perseus Digital Library. Greek text available from the same website.
• Apollonius Rhodius, Argonautica translated by Robert Cooper Seaton (1853-1915), R. C. Loeb Classical Library Volume 001. London, William Heinemann Ltd, 1912. Online version at the Topos Text Project.
• Apollonius Rhodius, Argonautica. George W. Mooney. London. Longmans, Green. 1912. Greek text available at the Perseus Digital Library.
• Bulfinch's Mythology, Medea and Aeson.
• Diodorus Siculus, The Library of History translated by Charles Henry Oldfather. Twelve volumes. Loeb Classical Library. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press; London: William Heinemann, Ltd. 1989. Vol. 3. Books 4.59–8. Online version at Bill Thayer's Web Site
• Diodorus Siculus, Bibliotheca Historica. Vol 1-2. Immanel Bekker. Ludwig Dindorf. Friedrich Vogel. in aedibus B. G. Teubneri. Leipzig. 1888–1890. Greek text available at the Perseus Digital Library.
• Gaius Julius Hyginus, Fabulae from The Myths of Hyginus translated and edited by Mary Grant. University of Kansas Publications in Humanistic Studies. Online version at the Topos Text Project.
• Gaius Valerius Flaccus, Argonautica translated by Mozley, J H. Loeb Classical Library Volume 286. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1928. Online version at theio.com.
• Gaius Valerius Flaccus, Argonauticon. Otto Kramer. Leipzig. Teubner. 1913. Latin text available at the Perseus Digital Library.
• Hesiod, Catalogue of Women from Homeric Hymns, Epic Cycle, Homerica translated by Evelyn-White, H G. Loeb Classical Library Volume 57. London: William Heinemann, 1914. Online version at theio.com
• King, David. Finding Atlantis: A True Story of Genius, Madness, and an Extraordinary Quest for a Lost World. Harmony Books, New York, 1970. (Based on works of Olof Rudbeck 1630–1702.)
• Powell, B. The Voyage of the Argo. In Classical Myth. Upper Saddle River, NJ. Prentice Hall. 2001. pp. 477–489.
• Publius Ovidius Naso, The Epistles of Ovid. London. J. Nunn, Great-Queen-Street; R. Priestly, 143, High-Holborn; R. Lea, Greek-Street, Soho; and J. Rodwell, New-Bond-Street. 1813. Online version at the Perseus Digital Library.
• Publius Ovidius Naso, Metamorphoses translated by Brookes More (1859-1942). Boston, Cornhill Publishing Co. 1922. Online version at the Perseus Digital Library.
• Publius Ovidius Naso, Metamorphoses. Hugo Magnus. Gotha (Germany). Friedr. Andr. Perthes. 1892. Latin text available at the Perseus Digital Library.

External links

• Jason and the Argonauts, extensive site by Jason Colavito
• Timeless Myths – Argonauts, a summary of Jason and his Quest for the Golden Fleece
• Argonautica at Project Gutenberg
• The Story of Jason and the Argonauts Read the classic heroic myth, in modern English prose.

[admin]

I. Restoration of the Inscription, No. 2, on the Allahabad Column
by the Rev. W.H. Mill, D.D.
Principal of Bishop's College, Vice-President of the Asiatic Society, &c.
(Read at the Meeting of the 28th ultimo.)
Journal of the Asiatic Society, No. 30
June, 1834
p. 257-270.

One of the most important services rendered to the cause of oriental research of late years, is, perhaps, “the restoration and decyphering of the Allahabad inscription, No. 2,” achieved by Doctor Mill, and published in the Asiatic Journal of June, 1834. [I. Restoration of the Inscription, No. 2, on the Allahabad Column, by the Rev. W.H. Mill, D.D. Principal of Bishop's College, Vice-President of the Asiatic Society, &c. (Read at the Meeting of the 28th ultimo.), Journal of the Asiatic Society, No. 30, June, 1834, p. 257-270.]

In reference to this historical inscription, the learned Principal observes,

"Were there any regular chronological history of this part of Northern India, we could hardly fail in the circumstances of this inscription, even if it were without names, to determine the person and the age to which it belongs. We have here a prince who restores the fallen fortunes of a royal race that had been dispossessed and degraded by the kings of a hostile family — who removes this misfortune from himself and his kindred by means of an able guardian or minister, who contrives to raise armies in his cause; succeeding at last in spite of vigorous warlike opposition, including that of some haughty independent princesses, whose daughters, when vanquished, become the wives of the conqueror — who pushes his conquests on the east to Assam, as well as to Nepal and the more western countries — and performs many other magnificent and liberal exploits, constructing roads and bridges, encouraging commerce, &c. &c. -- in all which, allowing fully for oriental flattery and extravagance, we could scarcely expect to find more than one sovereign, to whom the whole would apply. But the inscription gives us the names also of the prince and his immediate progenitors: and in accordance with the above mentioned account, while we find his dethroned ancestors, his grandfather and great grandfather, designated only by the honorific epithet Maha-raja, which would characterize their royal descent and rights — the king himself (Samudragupta) and his father are distinguished by the title of Mahu-raja-Adhi-raja, which indicates actual sovereignty. And the last mentioned circumstance might lead some to conjecture, that the restoration of royalty in the house began with the father, named Chandragupta, whose exploits might be supposed to be related in the first part of the inscription, to add lustre to those of the son.

"Undoubtedly we should be strongly inclined, if it were possible, to identify the king thus named— though the name is far from being an uncommon one) with a celebrated prince so called, the only one in whom the Puranic and the Greek histories meet, the Chandragupta or Sandracoptus, to whom Seleucus Nicator sent the able ambassador, from whom Strabo, Arrian, and others derived the principal part of their information respecting India. This would fix the inscription to an age which its character (disused as it has been in India for much more than a thousand years), might seem to make sufficiently probable, viz. the third century before the Christian era. And a critic, who chose to maintain this identity, might find abundance of plausible arguments in the inscription: he might imagine he read there the restoration of the asserted genuine line of Nanda in the person of Chandragupta, and the destruction of the nine usurpers of his throne: and in what the inscription, line 16, tells of the guardian Giri-Kalkaraka-Svami, he might trace the exploits of Chandragupta's wily brahman counsellor Chanakya, so graphically described in the historical play called the Mudra-Raxasa [Rakshasa], in levying troops for his master, and counterplotting all the schemes of his adversaries able minister Raxasa [Rakshasa], until he recovered the throne: nay the assistance of that Raxasa [Rakshasa] himself, who from an enemy was turned to a faithful friend, might be supposed to be given with his name in line 10 of the inscription. And the discrepancy of all the other names besides these two, viz. of Chandragupta’s son, father, grandfather, and guardian minister, to none of whom do the known Puranic histories of that prince assign the several names of the inscription, might be overcome by the expedient — usual among historical and chronological theorists in similar cases, — of supposing several different names of the same persons.

"But there is a more serious objection to this hypothesis than any arising from the discrepancy of even so many names — and one which I cannot but think fatal to it. In the two great divisions of the Xattriya Rajas of India, the Chandragupta of the inscription is distinctly assigned to the Solar race — his son being styled child of the Sun. On the other hand, the celebrated founder of the Maurya dynasty, if reckoned at all among Xattiiyas, (being, like the family of the Nandas, of the inferior caste of Sudras, as the Greek accounts unite with the Puranas in respecting him,) would rather find his place among the high-born princes of Magadha whose throne he occupied, who were children of the moon: and so he is in fact enumerated, together with all the rest who reigned at Pataliputra or Patibothra, in the royal genealogies of the Hindus. It is not therefore among the descendants or successors of Curu, whether reigning (like those Magadha princes) at Patna, or at Delhi, that we must look for the subject of the Allahabad inscription; but if I mistake not, in a much nearer kingdom, that of Canyacubja or Canouje.”

Laudable as is the caution with which Dr. Mill abandons this important identification, the annals of Pali literature appear to afford several interesting notices, well worthy of his consideration, tending both to remove some of these doubts, and to aid in elucidating this valuable inscription. It will be found in the ensuing extracts from the commentary on the Mahawanso, that the Moriyan was a branch of the Sakyan dynasty, who were the descendants of Ixkswaku, of the solar line: though the name of Chandragupta’s father is not given in the particular work under consideration, to admit of its being compared with the inscription, it is specifically stated that he was the last sovereign of Moriya of that family, and lost his life with his kingdom: his queen, who was then pregnant, fled with her brothers to Pataliputta (where Chandragupta was born) to seek protection from their relations the Nandos, whose grandfather, Susunago, was the issue of a Lichchawi raja, by a "nagarasobhini,” — one of the Aspasias of Rajagaha: he married the daughter of the eldest of these maternal uncles, who were of the Lichchawi line: the issue of that princess would hence appropriately enough be termed “maternal grandson of Lichhawi and he and his son, the subject of this inscription, as the supreme monarchs of India could alone he entitled, of all the rajas whose names are inscribed, to the title Maha raja Adhi raja.” Dr. Mill thus translates the 26th line of the inscription.

"Of him who is also maternal grandson of Lichchawi, conceived in the great goddess-like Cumara-Dewi, the great king, the supreme monarch Samudra Gupta, illustrious for having filled the whole earth with the revenues arising from his universal conquest, (equal) to Indra, chief of the gods" —

If, under these multiplied coincidences and similarities, and this apparent removal of the Reverend Principal’s objections, the identity of Chandragupta may be considered to be established, Samudragupta would be the Bindusaro of Pali history, to whom, as one of the supreme monarchs of India, the designation would not be inappropriate. And indeed, in the Mahawanso, in describing the completion of the buddhistical edifices in the reign of his son and successor, Dhammasoko, a similar epithet is applied to his empire.

Sammuddapariyantan so Jambudipan samantato passi sabbe wiharecha nana, puja wibhusite.

"He saw (by the power of a miracle) all the wiharos, situated in every direction through the ocean-bound Jambudipo, resplendent with offerings."

-- The Mahawanso [Mahavamsa] in Roman Characters With the Translation Subjoined And an Introductory Essay on Pali Buddhistical Literature, In Two Volumes, Volume I, Containing the First Thirty Eight Chapters, by the Hon. George Turnour, Esq., Ceylon Civil Service, 1837

The March number of the Journal of the Asiatic Society contained the result of the Pandit Madhu Rao’s collation of the Allahabad Inscription, No. 2, with others in a similar character -- together with Captain Troyer’s English version and valuable remarks. The learned Pandit’s transcript exhibits such letters only of the pillar in Devanagari as were capable of tolerably certain identification with those found on monuments already deciphered, leaving frequent and often considerable intervals for the remaining letters: and the version, as was indeed unavoidable from such a text, presented still wider intervals. The translation of many of the clauses thus insulated was necessarily of a conjectural kind: and except in the valuable discovery of lines 25 and 26, where the Prince's genealogy occurred, contained nothing like a connected sentence.

A cursory inspection of the transcript and the version convinced me that, where so much was done, more might be certainly attained. To those acquainted with the art of deciphering unknown arbitrary characters in any known language, it is needless to remark that the clear possession of a key to two or three common letters, necessarily draws after it the discovery of all the rest: and that where the further progress of discovery is really barred, it is an infallible proof of some error in the previous assumption. No such error was suspected here (except in some comparatively inconsiderable instances, which may be seen by any one that will take the trouble of comparing the two transcripts together;) and therefore nothing could impede the progress to deciphering the inscription as far as it remained -- provided only the language in which it was written were sufficiently known to us.

Now that this language was the well-known classic Sanscrit -- the language of Menu's Institutes, the Puranas, the Kavyas, &c. admits of no reasonable doubt. The supposition of its being any older Sanscrit, resembling that of the Vedas, to the understanding of which a bhashya or gloss is all but indispensable, is rendered extremely improbable by the apparent date of the monuments on which inscriptions of the same character appear. The style of the Gya Inscription, so satisfactorily deciphered by Sir Charles Wilkins in the 1st volume of the Asiatic Researches; and the metre in which it is composed, the Sardula-vikridita, (which, like all other lyrical measures of that kind occurring in the Hindu drama and elsewhere, belongs to a period in the history of the language long posterior to that of the great sacred epics, the Ramayana and Mahabharata, by which the present classical Sanscrit was fixed,) would alone be sufficient to remove such a supposition.

With this conviction, I determined to subject the Allahabad Inscription to a close critical examination; discarding in the first instance all reference to other interpretations of the inscription itself, and proceeding only upon the indubitably deciphered letters of the above mentioned Gya Inscription, or rather of that portion of it, of which Lieutenant Burt has now given us a far better facsimile than what is contained in the Society's first volume. Applying this to his excellent copy of the Allahabad Pillar, though at first the limits of discovery appeared no wider, and indeed much narrower, than in what has already been presented to the Society, yet by carrying on the results of what was thus ascertained, whenever any glimpses of decided meaning appeared, to the investigation of characters before unknown, and testing the conjectures, thus made by other places — the usual result of such inquiries displayed itself. What was at first mere assumption turned to probability, and then to certainty: and such places as the juxta-position of the names of known countries in line 19, but above all, the short clause in line 27 on which the rest of the inscription hangs — (ravi-bhuvo bahur ayam ucchritas stambhas, "of this Sun-born king this lofty pillar is the arm") — occurring as they did to me not as the basis of conjecture, but as the unexpected results of inferences from other probable assumptions, — removed all possibility of doubt. And notwithstanding the turgid character of the composition, and the enormous length of the epithets affixed to this "child of the Sun," consisting often of more than 25 words, and fitting the whole line — the meaning is sufficiently connected and definite in this, which is the greatest part of the inscription; to remove all doubt of the accuracy with which Devanagari letters are assigned to the several characters* [In one instance I was assisted to the meaning of an ill-defined letter resembling a [x] in the accurate facsimile, — by the partial specimen of the inscriptions on the pillar given in the 7th Volume of the As. Res. (Plate xiv.) — which though very inferior in accuracy to Lieutenant Burt's, yet having been taken at a time when the pillar had not been so much defaced as at present, may be conceived to convey some characters more perfectly. The character was there [x] distinctly, and as this happily made sense of what was before unintelligible, its accuracy could not be questioned.]. In one only of the regal proper names, that of the king’s grandfather GHATOTKACHA, does my reading differ from Captain Troyer’s: and it is observable that this is also the name of a son of the Pandava hero Bhima Sena, brother of Yudhisthira and Arjuna in the Mahabharata, and might perhaps have given rise to the popular appellation of this pillar in Hindustan, "the Staff of Bhima Sen."

The test arising from definite and continuous meaning applies of course only to those parts where the inscription is itself complete, and clear of all considerable interruption, viz. all from the 14th to the 29th lines inclusive, (for the 30th is separate from the rest, and appears broken off like the earlier lines,) perhaps also the 2nd and 3rd, which, though short, seem to me to be very nearly complete. But even in the other lines, the words and the compounds are intelligible: and if we except the 1st, and the end of the 6th, lines (the first containing but nine insulated letters, and the last breaking off in the midst of a compound, leaving the preceding words in that compound uncertain as to their bearing) — the separate clauses may be pretty well traced, though their import in the sentence is lost. In all these, lacunae of various lengths occur in the pillar, which I have scrupulously filled up with precisely the same number of letters as are designated by Lieutenant Burt for the several intervals. It is not by any means intended to ascribe to these added† [These letters are distinguished in the transcript by a much smaller character.] letters of my own, (except when the interval is very small, as in line 24,) the same degree of accuracy which I should be disposed to claim for all, with one or two exceptions only, of the transcribed letters: for the most part they merely indicate the probable (and in some cases of very marked meaning, as in line 28, the certain) equivalents of the letters that formerly occupied the same spaces. Where lacunas occur at the end of a line, I had no such consideration to guide me: here, as in lines 18 and 26, it was merely my object to close the imperfect compound by as few letters as would serve the purpose of expressing the evident meaning. In the earlier lines, the idea of completing the sentence by such means was out of the question.

In these conjectural supplements, as well as for ascertaining the true transcript of letters in doubtful cases, the discovery of a lyric measure like that of the Gya Inscription, in which the succession of long and short syllables is determined by invariable rule, would have been a most valuable assistance. But not merely is such measure as this undiscoverable in the greater part of the inscription — but every rhythm whatever (including the freer measures of the Arya genus, or the loose Anustup of Valmiki) is equally absent from it — as an examination of all the complete lines from the 14th downward will evidently show* [The apparent rhyme observed by Lieut. Burt, is merely the genitive termination asye at the end of each huge compound epithet, agreeing with "the Sun- born King" above-mentioned.]. Some of the incomplete lines have indeed a deceitful resemblance to metre— the 4th line to the Sardula-vikridita, (the measure of the Gya Inscription,) and the 12th to a yet longer lyric measure of twenty-one syllables, called Srag-dhara: but in each of these cases perfect application of the prosodiacal rule is forbidden† [The name kavyam applied by the author himself in line 28 to his inscription, will apply to unmetrical poetry, as well as to that which has the advantage of prosody.] by some one or more syllables in the line, whose reading cannot be mistaken. The only genuine appearance of metre that the closest examination could detect is in the 8th and 9th lines, which are proved by the undeviating regularity of all the syllables, as far as they can be traced on the pillar, to form together a stanza of the measure called Mandakranta, (the same in which Calidasa’s beautiful poem, the Cloud Messenger, is composed,) one of very frequent occurrence in the lyric poetry of the Hindus. In this measure, each of the four padas or versicles which compose the stanza consists of two Spondees, a Proceleusmatic, and three Bacchii, having the caesura after the tenth syllable; thus;

- - - - u u u u u - ' - u - - u - -

Accordingly, in the additions necessary for these two lines, I have taken care not only to preserve the measure, but to expand them so as to complete the hemistich in each case. But this slight and solitary advance beyond the usual necessary addition of letters is made more to indicate the prosody of the preceding syllables, and to mark precisely the certain length of the line in these places, than with any pretence of supplying the very words that are effaced. The real termination of these lines, as of the fourth and others, if found, would clear up the obscurity that now necessarily attaches to all the early part of the inscription, and on which it would be now vain to offer any conjecture.

To the Devanagari transcript is annexed a close interlineary version, in the only language (one excepted) whose freedom of collocation and general analogy to Sanscrit made it available for the purpose— distinguishing always by brackets the version of the intercalated or added syllables, the necessity of which will thus be often apparent to the Western reader. I have now to subjoin a somewhat looser version in English— to which I would prefix merely the following brief analysis of the inscription.

LINE 1. Unintelligible, and most probably unconnected with what follows.

2, 3. Invocation in behalf of the sculptor and blackener of the letters of the inscription.

4-12. Various descriptions, at first dependent on the relatives yas, yasya (who and whose), but afterwards governed by the antecedent personal pronoun sa, (he,) all of which evidently relate to the same person, and that the king— but which, from the incompleteness of the lines, and the absence of verbs governing the principal substantives, cannot be traced in their conjunct meaning as one sentence, which it is evident they must have composed.

13-27. Panegyrical descriptions of the same king in the genitive case, (connected at first with the nominatives of line 13, but afterwards evidently with the Pillar-Arm at the conclusion,) viz. Samudra-Gupta, son of Chandra-Gupta, of the Solar race, all sufficiently perfect and intelligible.

28. Comparison of the king’s glory to the sacred water of the nethermost Ganges in the Mahabharata.

28, 29. Name and description of the self-satisfied author of this panegyric, (whose intellect, as he tells us himself, was utterly subverted by his intimacy with the great king, when he ventured on this composition,) concluding with a salutation to the Deity.

Then, after a very wide space, comes

30. A compliment, somewhat obscure and imperfect, to the author's immediate superior and patron.

Translation.

1. The jackal [left the b]ear in the forest. (Y).

2. This goodly s[ign] of one endued by nature with a mind of fire having been, for the conveyance of his commands, covered over with ink; may the ma[ker also] fixed [as the letters themselves by the durability and immortality of the monument he has raised, viz.]

3. The [king’s] dependant Vitka, having formed these [letters] for the love of the multiplied virtues of the son of the bow-armed Siva [viz. Ganesa patron of letters] enjoy in heaven, even in the city of Vrdhas [BRAHMA] himself, the royal glory of eminent poetical dignity!

4. He who while worthy of eulogy, yet by means of informers, whose character is much to be concealed, men whose hair is diminished by being often pulled, was entangled and impeded by the pride of men of obscure family, a hoary-headed counsellor being - - - - - - - - .

5. He who was distinguished in letters, even by the able ontologist Chaxan, called familiarly the talking Guru, with the honourable appellation of one in whom all [admirable qualities] are united.

6. By this [excellent Guru] resembling those [true sages] who are utterly alien from all delight in selfish worldly occupations, - - - - -

7. He, having been inflamed with warlike prowess, before whom prostration being made even by the enemies' forces, the conjoined battle strife of armies disappeared, - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

8. Whose mothers-in-law* [The great Rajas of India have frequently been polygamists— and in these cases, the father and mother of each wife, as well as those of the sole rightful queen, bear the honourable names of svasura and svasu (socer and socrus), i.e. father and mother-in-law. The mothers-in-law here appear to have been independent princesses, whose daughters were thus won in battle by Samudra Gupta, and seem to me undoubtedly those, whose homage to the conqueror is described as increased by their alliance and hope of royal offspring, in lines 18, 19, With respect to the grievous sin for which his repentance is recorded in line 12, the incompleteness of the line precludes all but the merest conjecture.— On the 6th and 7th lines it may be remarked that the heroic ages of India afford examples of Brahmanical military tutors to young Rajas,— who like Drona are said to have united great skill in war to eminent contemplative devotion.], formerly proud and addicted to high minded oppressions perpetually, having been by his own arm subdued with the sword of battle, [viz. Sanharica and the rest, - - (line 18.)] - -

9. By their passions, at first fiercely erect and tall as the stalks of green barley, at length bursting forth and ripening into affection through the abundant juices within, thus became penitent [in heart permanently from that time; and]

10. When, sprung from the bank of the [sacred ?] river, the strength of the arm of Raxasa and the rest, directing his arms, had even removed mountains, by the death of the formidable [rapid victor] Xanajit,— then he also

11. With assiduous offerings to the planetary deities — did in his own pleasure gardens, from which are gathered noble garlands of flowers woven as it were from the Sesbana grandiflora — [seek to propitiate the immortals].

12. But though the glories of greatness, of clemency, and of warlike prowess were in him blended into one, as [the several colours] in the pure white rays of the moon; yet was there at this time no [remis] sion of his past grievous offence.

13. Still not his was the path of those devoted to the present life, nor any dereliction of the wisdom and power which belongs to contemplative sages; nor was there any poetical censurer of him, whose gifts were without end.

14. Of him therefore, skilled in the due performance of the hundred libations of consecrated ghee to Brahma, who by the strength and power of his arm reduces his foes to bondage, and brandishes for the destruction of their hosts barbed darts and swords and lances* [Or "iron clubs." For the Sanscrit [x] bears both meanings.]; —

15. Of him whose salvation is in the guardian of waters [Varuna] the terrible Siva and Vishnu, surpassing the graces of the most adorned recited speech by the rising splendours of a name illustrious for the hundred wounds inflicted on the [rival] tribe by strokes of the flesh-devouring arrows of iron, as well as of weapons grasped by the hand and others; —

16. Of him, who after the royal insignia had been destroyed by the hand of the [hostile] monarch, as it were the tiger of the forest, the great lord of wild buffaloes, — yet having from the resources of his excellent guardian Giri-kahlaraka the gift of infantry and other soldiers— became by the mixture of this benevolent aid with the royal majesty that sprung from it, no longer unfortunate; —

17. Of him whose mind was next intent upon the capture of all the kings of the South and of the East, as well as of Dhananjaya, protector of the North country, springing from the race of the divine Ugrasena, splendid as the sun, and patron of Hastivarman — a bard equal to the blue sovereign [Siva?] himself;— who therefore is justly worshipped by his ministering lieges, as sole king of all the gods; —

18. Of him whose state might be propounded as an object of imitation, in respect of troops, chariots, and other [war-like apparatus] even to the divine Rudra, the wise Nagadatta, to Chandra [god of the moon] to Vahni [or Agni, lord of fire], to Ganesa, to Nriga, [brother of Ixvacu, of the solar race], to Nagasena, and to the unmoveable forces of the Nandis [Siva’s attendant gods]— and who moreover by Sanharica and all the rest [of the vanquished mothers-in-law] who have the accumulative incentive of the wish and prayer for a royal offspring, is approached with all just payment of tribute, with propitiatory gifts, and with reverent prostration; --

19. Of him who when his fame penetrated to the friendly province of Pines —to Camarupa [the present kingdom of Assam] — and to Nepal, did for the sake of procuring a shower of darts to pierce the princes even of the extreme west and other quarters, dispose his soldiers in ambush behind the stations of the cowherds of Madra — and is therefore celebrated by the poet whom this battle raised up [to commend the stratagem], as equal in the rapid destruction of his foes to the Lord Siva, or to Cama or Aruni, [the gods of love and fire— thus celebrated] also by Sanharica and all the rest [of the allied princesses]; —

20. Of him whose governments invariably strict— who moreover has the glory, a glory pervading the highest heaven, of largesses to destitute persons, invited by him in pursuance of the restitution of a royal race sprung from a kingdom which the [enemies] soldiers had subverted— who moreover imposed on the rank foliage of forests, on the lakes, and on the land, the chains [of clear roads and of bridges respectively]-— who on the earth has no equal as a car-borne warrior; —

21. Of him who bears a gentle and kind disposition, to be hailed by the inhabitants of all the islands of the ocean with pure constant worship of oblation and sacrifice — the materials of which spring from the revenues obtained by his wise assessment from the produce of cultivators firmly and devotedly subjected to him as was the bird Garuda to Vishnu, [a devotion testified] by the harmonious confluence of their loyal words and songs addressed to himself — who also without being addicted to works [alone, but spiritual science also, yet] bestows hundreds and thousands upon the affairs of heaven and of earth; --

22. Of him whose glory in war obliterates that of all other kings beside himself, by reason of the multitude of virtues, diverse in kind, embellished in hundreds of poems — from fear of whose [vigorous rule] dissensions never arise — who is alike pure from the stains of grief and of foolish laughter — who is in devotion unrivalled — and who having by his own arm subdued so many kings, has succeeded further in taming the so great fury and wrath [that such reverse naturally produces] by the continual intercourse and profit of the western commerce begun with the riches derived from that conquest; —

23. Of him who is pleased with long poems of victory closely following the battle-array formed by the king himself, whose disposition is that of the [Supreme Lord, the] Lord of the Poor; who is at the same time the slayer of elephants that smite in war — and is consecrated as the most excellent of learned kings by [Cuvera] giver of wealth, by Varuna, by Indra, and him who dwells in the mansions of death [Yama]; who is renowned for noble exploits to be heard to distant times, and sounded even to heaven; —

24. Of him by whom are well understood, the Gandharvas or celestial songsters, learned and of excellent wisdom; also the regent of the planet Mars; also [Balarama* [So I conjecture from the legend found in the Sri Bhagavat and elsewhere concerning Balarama, the 8th incarnation of Vishnu, having depressed all the eastern part of the earth. But perhaps the epithet may refer to the deities of the destroying elements Water or Fire.]] foe of the earth; also the preceptor of Indra himself, the lord of the thrice-blessed immortals [viz. Vrihaspati, regent of Jupiter]; also Tumbaru [the wise Gandharva], and Narada, and all the rest [of the ultra-deified sages] — who moreover is consecrated as the most excellent of kings by acts worthy of the poems of the great Rishi Vyannaca [or the foodless† [Perhaps a title of the great Valmiki, author of the Ramayana, who is said to have fasted ten thousand years! unless the terms of the inscription should be thought to require the name of some poet who has sung the exploits of Samudra-Gupta himself. ]], who is renowned for noble exploits to be heard to distant times, and sounded even to heaven; --

25. Of him whose mind is in time of affliction and distress, ever singly intent on the disposition and arrangement of charitable works; who is a god in the mansion of the world; the great grandson of the great king GUPTA, grandson of the great king GHATOTKACHA, son of the great king, the supreme monarch CHANDRA GUPTA; --

26. Of him who is also maternal grandson of Lichhavi, conceived in the great goddess-like Cumara-Devi, the great king, the supreme monarch Samudra Gupta, illustrious for having filled thee whole earth with the revenues arising from his universal conquest, [equal] to Indra chief of the gods; —

27. Of this child of the Sun, though clothed in hairy flesh, this lofty pillar is the arm, sustaining all his friends with powerful assistance both at home and in foreign travel; of him, [I say,] whose fame raised by gradual accumulation of materials to the most exalted eminence in the strength of the arm of his liberality, and the abundance of his sentences respecting the law of tranquil meditation, is extended in various directions.

28. And that [fame] purifies the three worlds; even as the [sacred stream given by Arjuna the hero] of the house of Pandu, [purified the dying] Bhishma, thus encircled within the noble bandage of the slotted hair of Siva [whence Ganges first sprung]. Such is the unequalled eulogy, the composition of him who serves the countenance of the great monarch, who by reason of the favour of continually going about in his presence is even infatuated in mind, —

29. The mature* [I am by no means satisfied with this rendering of [x] but I can find no better. The translation "culinary dwarf" had occurred to me: thus associating to the character of dwarf (in Sanscrit [x]) that attachment to good cheer, which is a standing characteristic of the half buffoon, half counsellor, called Viddshana in the Indian drama, and considered as a Brahmanical appendage to royalty. But the words scarcely bear out either interpretation -- nor is this association of the characters of dwarf and of royal attendant confirmed by any Indian example that I am aware of, however common in the fairy tales of Persia and the West.] dwarf — son of the great superintendant of penal justice Srava-bhuti, who is both in peace and war, the counsellor of the young king, the great superintendant [of penal justice] Hari Nana. Salutation to [God], the kind friend of all creatures.

30. But with whom, however devoted to the study of the Rig Veda, the best gift of the Supreme Sovereign, [can we compare] Tilabhatta, the great superintendant of penal justice, surrounded by his army [of inferior ministers of the law]?

Remarks on the above Inscription.

The style of laboured ornament affected in the public inscriptions of India is strongly contrasted with the severe simplicity of the same kind of composition in the monuments of other ancient nations; and the deciphering of the Allahabad pillar does not appear destined to remove in any degree this reproach from the national taste. With the criticism, however, of this inscription, as a literary work, we are little concerned: but only with light that it may help to throw on the history of the people for whom it wad written.

Were there any regular chronological history of this part of Northern India, we could hardly fail in the circumstances of this inscription, if it were without names, to determine the person and the age to which it belongs. We have here a prince who restores the fallen fortunes of a royal race that had been dispossessed and degraded by the kings a hostile family — who removes this misfortune from himself and his kindred by means of an able guardian or minister, who contrives to raise armies in his cause; succeeding at last in spite of vigorous warlike opposition, including that of some haughty independent princesses, whose daughters, when vanquished, become the wives of the conqueror— who pushes his conquests on the east to Assam, as well as to Nepal and the more western countries — and performs many other magnificent and liberal exploits, constructing roads and bridges, encouraging commerce, &c. &c. — in all which, allowing fully for oriental flattery and extravagance, we could scarcely expect to find more than one sovereign, to whom the whole would apply. But the inscription gives us the names also of the prince and his immediate progenitors: and in accordance with the above-mentioned account, while we find his dethroned ancestors, his grandfather and great-grandfather, designated only by the honorific epithet Maha-raja, which would characterize their royal descent and rights — the king himself (Samudragupta) and his father are distinguished  by the title of Maha-raja Adhirdja, which indicates actual sovereignty. And the last-mentioned circumstance might lead some to conjecture, that the restoration of royalty in the house began with the father, named Chandragupta, whose exploits might be supposed to be related in the first part of the inscription to add lustre to those of the son.

Undoubtedly we should be strongly inclined, if it were possible, to identify the king thus named — (though the name is far from being an uncommon one) with a celebrated prince so called, the only one in whom the Puranic and the Greek* [This identity, which after the researches of Schlegel (Indische Bibliothek), and Wilson (preface to the Mudra Raxasa in the 3rd volume of the Hindu Theatre); may be considered as established, has been questioned on very insufficient grounds by Professor Heeren in the last volume of his admirable Researches into the Politics, Intercourse, and Trade of, the Principal Nations of Antiquity. The Indian accounts vary as much from each other concerning Chandragupta as they do even the classical accounts of Sandracoptus.] histories meet, the Chandragupta or Sandracoptus, to whom Seleucus Nicator sent the able ambassador, from whom Srabo, Arrian and others derived the principal part of their information respecting India. This would fix the inscription to an age which its character (disused as it has been in India for much more than a thousand years), might seem to make sufficiently probable, -- viz, the third century before the Christian era. And a critic, who chose to maintain this identity, might find abundance of plausible arguments in the inscription: he might imagine he read there the restoration of the asserted genuine line of NANDA in the person of CHANDRAGUPTA, and the destruction of the nine usurpers of his throne: and in what the inscription, line 16, tells of the guardian Giri-Kahlaraka-Svami, he might trace the exploits of Chandragupta's wily Brahman counsellor Chanakya, so graphically described in the historical play called the Mudra-Raxasa, in levying troops for his master, and counterplotting all the schemes of his adversaries' able minister Raxasa, until he recovered the throne: nay the assistance of that Raxasa himself, who from an enemy was turned to a faithful friend, might be supposed to be given with his name in line 10 of the inscription. And the discrepancy of all the other names beside these two, viz. of Chandragupta's son, father, grandfather, and guardian minister, to none of whom do the known Puranic histories of that prince assign the several names of the inscription — might be overcome by the expedient usual among historical and chronological theorists in similar cases, — of supposing several different names of the same persons.

But there is a more serious objection to this hypothesis than any arising from the discrepancy of even so many names — and one which I cannot but think fatal to it. In the two great divisions of the Xattriya Rajas of India, the Chandragupta of the inscription is distinctly assigned to the Solar race — his son being styled child of the Sun. On the other hand, the celebrated founder of the Maurya dynasty, if reckoned at all among Xattriyas, (being, like the family of the Nandas, of the inferior caste of Sudras, as the Greek accounts unite with the Puranas in representing him,) would rather find his place among the high-born princes of Magadha whose throne he occupied, who were children of the Moon: and so he is in fact enumerated, together with all the rest who reigned at Pataliputra or Palibothra, in the royal genealogies of the Hindus. It is not therefore among the descendants or successors of Curu, whether reigning (like those Magadha princes) at Patna, or at Dehli, that we must look for the subject of the Allahabad inscription; but if I mistake not, in a much nearer kingdom, that of Canyacubja or Canouje. This is well known to have been the seat of an extensive empire on the Ganges, founded by a branch of the Solar family, after the decline of Ayodhya or Oude, the ancient capital of Rama and his ancestors. And this opinion is confirmed by the coins lately discovered at Canouje, in which we find characters exactly corresponding to those of our inscription — and the same prefix to the king's name on the reverse of the coin, viz. Maha-raja Adhiraja Sri. One of these, a gold coin, communicated to me by Mr. J. Prinsep, and exhibited in the last number Pl. IX. fig. 24, had struck me, before I saw the engraving, as seeming to bear on the obverse the name of GHATOTKACHA, (not, however the father of Chandragupta so named on the pillar, from whom the title of Adhiraja is withholden, as I before remarked -- but a reigning prince of the same name and family.) But another gold coin of the same class, in Plate I. fig. 19 of the XVIIth. volume of the As. Res. seems to me an undoubted coin of our Chandragupta* [No. 13 bears the cognate name of Sasigupta, and Nos. 5, 7, 12, 17, &c. contain names, more or less distinct, of others of the same dynasty. -- Mr. Prinsep, whose attention I called to those coins, thinks also that No. 12, which is in his possession, bears the name of our Samudragupta: and indeed the resemblance is sufficiently striking to authorize the belief.].

Unfortunately the catalogues of the children of the Sun, in the Hari-Vansa, the Bhagavat, and the Vansa-lata, as published by Dr. HAMILTON, are far from being so full and ample as those of the Lunar race, (to which the heroes both of the Mahabharata and the Sri Bhagavat belong:) and neither these, nor I believe the Vishnu and Kurma Puranas, extend their lists to the princes of this particular dynasty. From the first formation of this solar royalty at Canouje to its extinction in the person of Jaya Chandra, A. D. 1193, I know no authenticated name but that of Yasovarman, said in the Raja Tarangini to have been the patron of the dramatist Bhavabhuti, and to have been expelled from his kingdom by the Cashmirian conqueror Lilitaditta, about A.D. 720: — till we come to the last five, viz. the Rahtore princes, whose names from Chandradeva to Jayachandra, are known from inscriptions and coins, all in modern Devanagari, and posterior by several centuries to our inscription. (A.R. vols. 9, 15, 17). Until further lists be obtained, therefore, the apparent absence† [Unless indeed the mysterious isolated words at the end, [x] "on the Aran's bank or shore," should be thought to inclose a date. According to some numeral rules used amongst Hinda mathematicians, these words might denote 22: and this applied to the era of Vicramaditta, the usual era in those parts, would bring us to B.C. 34. But I need not observe how slippery such a conclusion must be.] of all date on this part of the column, must preclude any thing like exact determination of the time that elapsed between its hero Samudragupta and Yasovarman.

As far as it is possible to form a judgment on internal evidence concerning the age of so short a composition as this, from the enumeration of deities, or the traces of manners that may be discoverable in it, I should be inclined to think that it was written after the hero-worship, which the sacred epics first introduced, had begun decidedly to take place of the simple elementary adoration visible in the ancient hymns of the Vedas — yet before it had altogether its present shape, and apparently before the worship of the linga, and that of the sactis, the most impure parts of an impure system, had begun to attain the footing which they had in India at the period of the first Mahometan invasions. While the distinction of works and of spiritual science, as taught in the Upanishads, and pervading all the literature of the Hindus, is alluded to more than once in the inscription; — the Brahmans have that honor as spiritual superiors which we find assigned to them in the Ramayana and Mahabharata — not that excessive superiority and extravagant homage which in subsequent ages they claimed from princes: the Brahman here contributes to the honour of the king, not, as in some later inscriptions, the king to the honour of the Brahmans. But I cannot forbear from quoting at length the passage of the Mahabhrata to which allusion is made in line 28 — proving, that at the date of this inscription, the sacred epic of Vyasa was regarded and quoted in nearly the same manner as in later ages. The passage is from the 118th canto of the Bhishma-parva, describing that hero's death, surrounded by the chiefs of both the rival branches of the house of Curu: and is as follows;



But Bhishma, O chief of the Bharatas, with firmness suppressing the sense of pain, while burning with the arrows that pierced him, and breathing hardly like a serpent — nor only with body inflamed, but with mind also maddened with the wounds of those sharp weapons, exclaimed only "Water!" when he saw the princes approaching. Then, O king, did those Xattriyas collect immediately from every quarter food of various kinds, and goblets of cold water upon seeing which the son of Santanu sadly exclaimed, "Not now can such ordinary human pleasures be tasted by me: for now cut off from mankind, I am stretched upon my arrowy* [The sara-sayya, or arrowy bed, was assumed as a voluntary penance in imitation of Bhishma by a singular devotee, who was living at Benares in the year 1792, a curious account of whose travels and adventures, together with a portrait of him stretched on his pointed bed, was given by Mr. Jonathan Duncan in the 5th volume of the Society’s Transactions. [In that account, p. 5, Bhskma Pitamamha, is merely the Indul mode ([x] for [x]) of writing "Bhishma the grandsire," or rather grand-uncle of the contending chiefs of the houses of Dhritarashtra and Pandu.] bed, and lie expecting the hour when the sun and moon shall be closed to me." But having spoken thus, O Bharata! chiding by his words the assembled chiefs, the son of Santanu added, “I would see Arjuna." Upon which, he of the mighty arm approaching with salutation his grand-uncle, and standing with hands joined and body bent forward, said, "What shall I do?" And the pious Bhishma, with pleasure beholding the great Pandava chief standing before him, answered, "My body burns, covered as I am with thy arrows, my vitals are racked, my mouth is dry: bring some water, Arjuna, to my tortured frame, for thou of the great bow art able to give me such streams as I require." The brave Arjuna thus addressed, having mounted his car, and fitted his bow-string, bent his strong bow called Gandiva, for the intended shot: and on hearing the twang of that bow-string, a sound as if bursting from the thunder-bolt of Indra -- all creatures trembled, even all those chiefs themselves. Then he, the best of charioteers, having wheeled his car in a reverential circle round Bhishma on his right, the prostrate son of Bharata, best of all hurlers of weapons — and having taken a flaming arrow, and breathed a magical sentence (mantra) over it, and fitted it to his bow -- the whole world looking on — did with that dart of thunder pierce the whole earth close on the right side of Bhishma — and thence sprung up a pure beauteous stream of cold water, like the nectar of the immortals, of divine scent and flavour: and with this cold stream did he powerfully refresh Bhishma, prince of the Curus, of god-like works and prowess. With this work of the prince Arjuna, as of a mighty transforming magician, the lords of the earth were seized with extreme astonishment, beholding it as a deed equally compassionate and transcending all human power.  

[admin]

VII. On the Chronology of the Hindus
by the President (Sir William Jones)
Written in January 1788
Asiatic Researches, Volume 2
1788
Page 88-114

Sir W. Jones himself led the way in the discussion of the chronology of the hindus.* [A.R. vol. i. p. 71.] After a speculative dissertation, tending to an identification or reconciliation, in some particular points, of the hindu with the mosaic history, he has with all that fascination which his richly stored mind enabled him to impart to all his discussions, developed the scheme of hindu chronology, as explained to him from hindu authorities, by Radhacanta Serman [Radha Canta Sarman], "a pundit of extensive learning and great same among the hindus.” The chronology treated of in this dissertation, extends back through “the four ages,” which are stated to embrace the preposterous period of 4,320,000 years; and contains the genealogies of kings collected from the puranas, which were then considered works of considerable antiquity. It is only in the middle of the “fourth age,” when he comes to the Magadha dynasty, that hindu authorities enable him to assign a date to the period at which any of those kings ruled. On obtaining this “point d'appui,” [strategic point] Sir W. Jones thus expresses himself: —

Paranjaya, son of the twentieth king, was put to death by his minister, Sunara, his own son Pradyota on the throne of his master; and this revolution constitutes an epoch of the highest importance in our present inquiry; first, because it happened, according to the Bhagawatanwerta, two years before Baddha's appearance in the same kingdom: next, because it is believed by the hindus to have taken place 3333 years ago, or 2100 before Christ; and, lastly, because a regular chronology, according to the number of years in each dynasty, has been established, from the accession of Pradyota, to the subversion of the genuine hindu government, and that chronology I will now lay before you, after observing only, that Radhacanta himself says nothing of Buddha in this part of his work, though he particularly mentions two preceding avataras in their proper places.

Kings of Magadha / Y.B.C. Pradyota

Palaca / 2100
Visachayupa
Rajaca
Nandiwerdhana / 5 reigns = 133
Sisunaga
Cacaverna / 1962
Cshemadherman
Cshetrajnya
Vidhisara
Ajatasatru
Darbhaca
Ajaya
Nandiverdhana
Mahanandi / 10 reigns = 360 years 1602
Nanda

"This prince, of whom frequent mention is made in the Sanscrit books is said to have been murdered, after a reign of a hundred years, by a very learned and ingenious, but passionate and vindictive, brahman, whose name was Chanacya [Chanakya], and who raised to the throne a man of the Maurya race, named Chandragupta. By the death of Nanda and his sons, the Cshatriya family of Pradyota became extinct.

Maurya Kings / Y.B.C.

Chandragupta / 1502
Varisara
Asocaverdhana
Sunyasas
Desaratha / 5
Sangata
Salisuca
Somasarman
Satadhanwas
Vrihadratha / 10 reigns = 137

"On the death of the tenth Maurya king, his place was assumed by his commander-in-chief, Pushamitra, of the Sanga nation or family."

It is thus shown that, according to the hindu authorities, Chandragupta, the Sandracottus, who was contemporary with Alexander and Sileucus Nicator, to whose court at Palibothra Megasthenes was deputed, is placed on the throne about B.C. 1502; which is at once an anachronism of upwards of eleven centuries.

Sir W. Jones sums up his treatise by commenting on this fictitious chronology of the hindus, with the view to reconciling it, by rational reasoning, founded on the best attainable data, with the dates which that reasoning would suggest, as the probably correct periods of the several epochs named by him.

The whole of that paper, but more particularly as it treats of the "fourth age,” bears a deeply interesting relation to the question of the authenticity of the buddhistical chronology; and it exhibits, in a remarkable degree, the unconscious approaches to truth, as regards the history of the Buddhos, made by rational reasoning, though constantly opposed by the prejudices and perversions of hindu authorities, and his hindu pundit, in the course of the examination in which Sir W. Jones was engaged.

-- The Mahawanso [Mahavamsa] in Roman Characters With the Translation Subjoined And an Introductory Essay on Pali Buddhistical Literature, In Two Volumes, Volume I, Containing the First Thirty Eight Chapters, by the Hon. George Turnour, Esq., Ceylon Civil Service, 1837

The great antiquity of the Hindus is believed so firmly by themselves, and has been the subject of so much conversation among Europeans, that a short view of their Chronological System, which has not yet been exhibited from certain authorities, may be acceptable to those, who seek truth without partiality to receive opinions, and without regarding any consequences, that may result from their inquiries: the consequences, indeed, of truth cannot but be desirable, and no reasonable man will apprehend any danger to society from a general diffusion of its light; but we must not suffer ourselves to be dazzled by a false glare, nor mistake enigmas and allegories for historical verity. Attached to no system, and as much disposed to reject the Mosaic history, if it be proved erroneous, as to believe it, if it be confirmed by sound reasoning from indubitable evidence, I propose to lay before you a concise account of Indian Chronology extracted from Sanscrit books, or collected from conversations with Pandits, and to subjoin a few remarks on their system, without attempting to decide a question, which I shall venture to start, "whether it is not in fact the same with our own, but embellished and obscured by the fancy of their poets and the riddles of their astronomers."

One of the most curious books in Sanscrit, and one of the oldest after the Vedas, is a tract on religious and civil duties, taken, as it is believed, from the oral instructions of Menu, son of Brahma, to the first Inhabitants of the earth: a well-collated copy of this interesting law-tract is now before me; and I begin my dissertation with a few couplets from the first chapter of it:

"The sun causes the division of day and night, which are of two sorts, those of men and those of the Gods; the day, for the labour of all creatures in their several employments; the night for their slumber. A month is a day and night of the Patriarchs; and it is divided into two parts; the bright half is their day for laborious exertions; the dark half, their night for sleep. A year is a day and night of the Gods; and that is also divided into two halves; the day is, when the sun moves toward the north; the night, when it moves toward the south. Learn now the duration of a night and day of Brahma, with that of the ages respectively and in order. Four thousand years of the Gods they call the Crita, (or Satya) age, and its limits at the beginning and at the end are, in like manner, as many hundreds. In the three successive ages, together with their limits at the beginning and end of them, are thousands and hundreds diminished by one. This aggregate of four ages, amounting to twelve thousand divine years, is called an age of the Gods; and a thousand such divine ages added together must be considered as a day of Brahma: his night has also the same duration. The before-mentioned age of the Gods, or twelve thousand of their years, multiplied by seventy-one, form what is named here below a Manwantara. There are alternate creations and destructions of worlds through innumerable Manwantaras: the Being Supremely Desirable performs all this again and again.”

Such is the arrangement of infinite time, which the Hindus believe to have been revealed from heaven, and which they generally understand in a literal sense: it seems to have intrinsic marks of being purely astronomical; but I will not appropriate the observations of others, nor anticipate those in particular, which have been made by two or three of our members, and which they will, I hope, communicate to the Society. A conjecture, however, of Mr. PATERSON has so much ingenuity in it, that I cannot forbear mentioning it here, especially as it seems to be confirmed by one of the couplets just-cited: he supposes, that, as a month of mortals is a day and night of the Patriarchs from the analogy of its bright and dark halves, so, by the same analogy, a day and night of mortals might have been considered by the ancient Hindus as a month of the lower world; and then a year of such months will consist only of twelve days and nights, and thirty such years will compose a lunar year of mortals; whence he surmises, that the four million three hundred and twenty thousand years, of which the four Indian ages are supposed to consist, mean only years of twelve days; and, in fact, that sum, divided by thirty, is reduced to an hundred and forty-four thousand: now a thousand four hundred and forty years are one pada, a period in the Hindu astronomy, and that sum, multiplied by eighteen, amounts precisely to twenty-five thousand nine hundred and twenty, the number of years in which the fixed stars appear to perform their long revolution eastward. The last mentioned sum is the product also of an hundred and forty four, which, according to M. Bailly, was an old Indian cycle, into an hundred and eighty, or the Tartarian period, called Van, and of two thousand eight hundred and eighty into nine, which is not only one of the lunar cycles, but considered by the Hindus as a mysterious number and an emblem of Divinity, because, if it be multiplied by any other whole number, the sum of the figures in the different products remains always nine, as the Deity, who appears in many forms, continues One immutable essence. The important period of twenty-five thousand nine hundred and twenty years is well known to arise from, the multiplication of three hundred and sixty into seventy-two, the number of years in which a fixed star seems to move through a degree of a great circle; and, although M. Le Gentil assures us, that the modern Hindus believe a complete revolution of the stars to be made in twenty-four thousand years, or fifty-four seconds of a degree to be passed in one year, yet we may have reason to think, that the old Indian astronomers had made a more accurate calculation, but concealed their knowledge from the people under the veil of fourteen Menwantara's, seventy-one divine ages, compound cycles, and years of different sorts, from those of Brahma to those of Patala, or the infernal regions. If we follow the analogy suggested by Menu, and suppose only a day and night to be called a year, we may divide the number of years in a divine age by three hundred and sixty, and the quotient will be twelve thousand, or the number of his divine years in one age: but, conjecture apart, we need only compare the two periods 4320000 and 25920, and we shall find, that among their common divisors, are 6, 9, 12 &c. 18, 36, 72, 144, &c, which numbers with their several multiples, especially in a decuple progression, constitute some of the most celebrated periods of the Chaldeans, Greeks, Tartars, and even of the Indians. We cannot fail to observe, that the number 432, which appears to be the basis of the Indian system, is a 60th part of 25920, and, by continuing the comparison, we might probably solve the whole enigma. In the preface to a Varanes Almanac I find the following wild stanza:

"A thousand Great Ages are a day of Brahma; a thousand such days are an Indian hour of Vishnu; six hundred thousand such hours make a period of Rudra; and a million of Rudras (or two quadrillions five hundred and ninety-two thousand trillions of lunar years), are but a second to the Supreme Being."

The Hindu theologians deny the conclusion of the stanza to be orthodox: Time, they say, exists not at all with God; and they advise the Astronomers to mind their own business without meddling with theology. The astronomical verse, however, will answer our present purpose; for it shows, in the first place, that cyphers are added at pleasure to swell the periods; and, if we take ten cyphers, from a Rudra or divide by ten thousand millions, we shall have a period of 259200000 years, which, divided by 60 (the usual divisor of time among the Hindus) will give 4320000, or a great Age, which we find subdivided in the proportion of 4, 3, 2, 1, from the notion of virtue decreasing arithmetically in the golden, silver, copper, and earthen, ages. But, should it be thought improbable, that the Indian astronomers in very early times had made more accurate observations than those of Alexandria, Bagdad, or Maraghah, and still more improbable that they should have relapsed without apparent cause into error, we may suppose, that they formed their divine age by an arbitrary multiplication of 24000 by 180 according to M. Le Gentil, or of 21600 by 200, according to the comment on the Surya Siddhanta. Now, as it is hardly possible, that such coincidences should be accidental, we may hold it nearly demonstrated, that the period of a divine age was at first merely astronomical, and may consequently reject it from our present inquiry into the historical or civil chronology of India. Let us, however, proceed to the avowed opinions of the Hindus, and see, when we have ascertained their system, whether we can reconcile it to the course of nature and the common sense of mankind.

The aggregate of their four ages they call a divine age, and believe that, in every thousand such ages, or in every day of Brahma, fourteen Menu’s are successively invested by him with the sovereignty of the earth: each MENU, they suppose, transmits his empire to his sons and grandsons during a period of seventy-one divine ages; and such a period they name a Manwantara; but, since fourteen multiplied by seventy-one are not quite a thousand, we must conclude, that six divine ages are allowed for intervals between the Manwantaras, or for the twilight of Brahma's day. Thirty such days, or Calpas, constitute, in their opinion, a month of Brahma; twelve such months, one of his years; and an hundred such years, his age; of which age they assert, that fifty years have elapsed. We are now then, according to the Hindus, in the first day or Calpa of the first month of the fifty first year of Brahma’s age, and in the twenty-eighth divine age of the seventh Manwantara, of which divine age the three first human ages have passed, and four thousand eight hundred and eighty-eight of the fourth.

In the present day of Brahma the first Menu was surnamed Swayamuhuva, or Son of the Self existent; and it is He, by whom the Institutes of Religious and Civil Duties are supposed to have been delivered: in his time the Deity descended at a Sacrifice, and, by his wife Satarupa, he had two distinguished sons, and three daughters. This pair was created, for the multiplication of the human species, after that new creation of the world, which the Brahmans call Padmacalpiya, or the Lotos-creation.

If it were worth while to calculate the age of Menu's Institutes according to the Brahmans, we must multiply four million three hundred and twenty thousand by six tines seventy-one, and add to the product the number of years already past in the seventh Manwantara. Of the five Menu’s, who succeeded him, I have seen little more than the names; but the Hindu writings are very diffuse on the life and posterity of the seventh Menu, surnamed Vaivaswata, or Child of the Sun: he is supposed to have had ten sons, of whom the eldest was Icshwacu; and to have been accompanied by seven Rishis, or holy persons, whose names were, Casyapa, Atri, Vasishtha, Viswamitra, Gautama, Jamadagni, and Bharadwaja; an account, which explains the opening of the fourth chapter of the Gita:

"This immutable system of devotion, says Crishna, I revealed to Vivaswat, or the Sun; Vivaswat declared it to his son Menu; Menu explained it to Ichwacu: thus the Chief Rishis know this sublime doctrine delivered from one to another.”

In the reign of this Sun-born Monarch the Hindus believe the whole earth to have been drowned, and the whole human race destroyed by a flood, except the pious Prince himself, the seven Rishi's, and their several wives; for they suppose his children to have been born after the deluge. This general pralaya, or destruction, is the subject of the first Purana, or Sacred Poem, which consists of fourteen thousand Stanza's; and the story is concisely, but clearly and elegantly, told in the eighth book of the Bhagawata, from which I have extracted the whole, and translated it with great care, but will only present you here with an abridgement of it.

“The demon Hayagriva having purloined the Vedas from the custody of Brahma, while he was reposing at the close of the sixth Manwantara, the whole race of men became corrupt, except the seven Rishis and Satyavrata, who then reigned in Dravira, a maritime region to the south of Carnata: this prince was performing his ablutions in the river Critamala, when Vishnu appeared to him in the shape of a small fish, and, after several augmentations of bulk in different waters, was placed by Satyavrata in the ocean, where he thus addressed his amazed votary: 'In seven days all creatures, who have offended me, shall be destroyed by a deluge, but thou shalt be secured in a capacious vessel miraculously formed: take therefore all kinds of medicinal herbs and esculent grain for food, and, together with the seven holy men, your respective wives, and pairs of all animals, enter the ark without fear; then shalt thou know God face to face, and all thy questions shall be answered.'

Saying this, he disappeared; and, after seven days, the ocean ‘began to overflow the coasts, and the earth to be flooded by constant showers, when Satyavrata, meditating on the Deity, saw a large vessel moving on the waters: he entered it, having in all respects conformed to the instructions of Vishnu; who, in the form of a vast fish, suffered the vessel to be tied with a great sea-serpent, as with a cable, to his measureless horn. When the deluge had ceased, Vishnu slew the demon, and recovered the Veda's, instructed Satyavrata in divine knowledge, and appointed him the seventh MENU by the name of Vaivaswata.'"

Let us compare the two Indian accounts of the Creation and the Deluge with those delivered by Moses. It is not made a question in this tract, whether the first chapters of Genesis are to be understood in a literal, or merely in au allegorical, sense: the only points before us are whether the creation described by the first MENU, which the Brahmans call that of the Lotos, be not the same with that recorded in our Scripture, and whether the story of the seventh Menu be not one and the same with that of Noah. I propose the questions, but affirm nothing; leaving others to settle their opinions, whether Adam be derived from adim, which in Sanscrit means the first, or Menu from Nuh, the true name of the Patriarch; whether the Sacrifice, at which God is believed to have descended, allude to the offering of Abel; and, on the whole, whether the two Menus can mean any other persons than the great progenitor; and the restorer, of our species.

On a supposition, that Vaivaswata, or Sun-born, was the Noah of Scripture, let us proceed to the Indian account of his posterity, which I extract from the Puranarthaprecasa, or The Puranas Explained, a work lately composed in Sanscrit by Radhacanta Sarman, a Pandit of extensive learning and great fame among the Hindus of this province. Before we examine the genealogies of kings, which he has collected from the Puranas, it will be necessary to give a general idea of the Avataras, or Descents, of the Deity: the Hindus believe innumerable such descents or special interpositions of providence in the affairs of mankind, but they reckon ten principal Avatara's in the current period of four ages; and all of them are described, in order as they are supposed to occur, in the following Ode of Jayadeva, the great Lyric Poet of India.

1. Thou recoverest the Veda in the water of the ocean of destruction, placing it joyfully in the bosom of an ark fabricated by thee; O Cesava, assuming the body of a fish: be victorious, O Heri, lord of the Universe!

2. The earth stands firm on thy immensely broad back, which grows larger from the callus occasioned by bearing that vast burden, O Cesava, assuming the body of a tortoise: be victorious, O Heri, lord of the Universe!

3. The earth, placed on the point of thy tusk, remains fixed like the figure of a black antelope on the moon, O Cesava, assuming the form of a boar: be victorious, O Heri, lord of the Universe!

4. The claw with a stupendous point, on the exquisite lotos of thy lion's paw, is the black bee, that stung the body of the embowelled Hiranyacasipu, O Desava, assuminng the form of a man-lion: be victorious, O Heri, lord of the Universe.

5. By thy power thou beguilest Bali, O thou miraculous dwarf, thou purifier of men with the water (of Ganga) springing from thy feet, O Cesava, assuming the form of a dwarf: be victorious, O Heri, lord of the Universe!

6. Thou bathest in pure water, consisting of the blood of Cshatriyas, the world, whose offences are removed and who are removed from the pain of other births, O Cesava, assuming the form of Parasu-Rama: be victoriou, O Heri, lord of the Universe!

7. With ease to thyself, with delight to the Genii of the eight regions, thou scatterest on all sides in the plain of combat the demon with ten heads, O Cesava, assuming the form of Rama-Chandra: be victorious, O Heri, lord of the Universe!

8. Thou wearest on thy bright body a mantle shining like a blue cloud, or like the water of Yamuna tripping toward thee through fear of thy furrowing plough share, O Cesava, assuming the form of Bala-Rama: be victorious, O Heri, lord of the Universe!

9. Thou blamest, (oh, wonderful!) the whole Veda, when thou seest, O kind-hearted, the slaughter of cattle prescribed for sacrifice, O Cesava, assuming the body of Buddha: be victorious, O Heri, lord of the Universe!

10. For the destruction of all the impure thou drawest thy cimeter like a blazing comet, (how tremendous!) O Cesava, assuming the body of Calci: be victorious, O Heri, lord of the Universe!

These ten Avataras are by some arranged according to the thousands of divine years in each of the four ages, or in an arithmetical proportion from four to one; and, if such an arrangement were universally received, we should be able to ascertain a very material point in the Hindu Chronology; I mean the birth of Buddha, concerning which the different Pandits, whom I have consulted, and the same Pandits at different times, have expressed a strange diversity of opinion. They all agree, that Calci is yet to come, and that Buddha was the last considerable incarnation of the Deity; but the Astronomers at Varanes place him in the third age, and Radhacant insists, that he appeared after the thousandth year of the fourth: the learned and accurate author of the Dabistan, whose information concerning the Hindus is wonderfully correct, mentions an opinion of the Pandits, with whom he had conversed, that Buddha began his career ten years before the close of the third age; and Goverdhana of Cashmir, who had once informed me, that Crishna descended two centuries before Buddha, assured me lately, that the Cashmirians admitted an interval of twenty-four years (others allow only twelve) between those two divine persons. The best authority, after all, is the Bhagawat itself, in the first chapter of which it is expressly declared, that “BUDDHA, the son of Jina, would appear at Cioata, for the purpose of confounding the demons, just at the beginning of the Caliiyug." I have long been convinced, that, on these subjects, we can only reason satisfactorily from written evidence, and that our forensic rule must be invariably applied, to take the declarations of the Brahmans most strongly against themselves, that is, against their pretensions to antiquity; so that, on the whole, we may safely place Buddha just at the beginning of the present age: but what is the beginning of it? When this question was proposed to Radhacant, he answered:  

of a period comprising more than four hundred thousand years, the first two or three thousand may reasonably be called the beginning."

On my demanding written evidence, he produced a book of some authority, composed by a learned Goswami, and entitled Bhagawatamrita, or, the Nectur of the Bhagawat, on which it is a metrical comment; and the couplet, which he read from it deserves to be cited: after the just mentioned account of Buddha in the text, the commentator says,

Asau vyactah calcrabdasahasradwitaye gate,
Murtih pat alaverna sya dwibhuja chicurojj hita.

He became visible, the thousand-and-second-year-of-the-Cali-age being past; his body of-a-colour-between-white-and-ruddy, with- two-arms, without-hair on his head.'

Cicata, named in the text as the birth place of Buddha, the Goswami supposes to have been Dhermaranya, a wood near Gaya, where a colossal image of that ancient Deity still remains: it seemed to me of black stone; but, as I saw it by torch-light, I cannot be positive as to its colour, which may, indeed, have been changed by time.

The Brahmans universally speak of the Bauddhas with all the malignity of an intolerant spirit; yet the most orthodox among them consider BUDDHA himself as an incarnation of Vishnu: this is a contradiction hard to be reconciled; unless we cut the knot, instead of untying it, by supposing with Giorgi, that there were two Buddhas, the younger of whom established the new religion, which gave so great offence in India, and was introduced into China in the first century of our era. The Cashmirian before mentioned asserted this fact, without being led to it by any question that implied it; and we may have reason to suppose, that Buddha is in truth only a general word for a Philosopher: the author of a celebrated Sanscrit Dictionary, entitled from his name Amaracosha, who was himself a Bauddha, and flourished in the first century before Christ, begins his vocabulary with nine words, that signify heaven, and proceeds to those, which mean a deity in general; after which come different classes of Gods, Demigods, and Demons, all by generic names; and they are followed by two very remarkable heads; first, (not the general names of Buddha, but) the names of a Buddha-in- general, of which he gives us eighteen, such as Muni, Sastri, Munindra, Vinayaca, Samantabhadra, Dhermaraja, Sugata, and the like; most of them significative of excellence, wisdom, virtue, and sanctity; secondly, the names of a-particular-Buddha-Muni-who- descended-in-the-family-of-Sacya, (those are the very words of the original) and his titles are, Sacyamuni, Sacyasinha, Servarthasiddha, Saudhodani, Gautama, Arcabandhu, or Kinsman of the Sun, and Mayadevisuta, or Child of Maya: thence the author passes to the different epithets of particular Hindu Deities. When I pointed out this curious passage to Radhacant, he contended, that the first eighteen names were general epithets, and the following seven, proper names, or patronymics, of one and the same person; but Ramalochan, my own teacher, who, though not a Brahman, is an excellent scholar and a very sensible unprejudiced man, assured me, that Buddha was a generic word, like Deva, and that the learned author, having exhibited the names of a Devata in general, proceeded to those of a Buddha in general, before he came to particulars: he added, that Buddha might mean a Sage or a Philosopher, though Budha was the word commonly used for a mere wise man without supernatural powers. It seems highly probable, on the whole, that the Buddha, whom Jayadeva celebrates in his Hymn, was the Sacyasinha, or Lion of Sacya, who, though he forbade the sacrifices of cattle, which the Vedas enjoin, was believed to be Vishnu himself in a human form, and that another Buddha, one perhaps of his followers in a later age, assuming his name and character, attempted to overset the whole system of the Brahmans, and was the cause of that persecution, from which the Bauddhas are known to have fled into very distant regions. May we not reconcile the singular difference of opinion among the Hindus as to the time of Buddha’s appearance, by supposing that they have confounded the Two Buddhas, the first of whom was born a few years before the close of the last age, and the second, when above a thousand years of the present age had elapsed? We know, from better authorities, and with as much certainty as can justly be expected on so doubtful a subject, the real time, compared with our own era, when the ancient Buddha began to distinguish himself; and it is for this reason principally, that I have dwelled with minute anxiety on the subject of the last Avatar.

The Brahmans, who assisted Abulfazl in his curious, but superficial, account of his master’s Empire, informed him, if the figures in the Ayini Acbari be correctly written, that a period of 2962 years had elapsed from the birth of Buddha to the 40th year of Acbar's reign, which computation will place his birth in the 1366th year before that of our Saviour; but, when the Chinese government admitted a new religion from India in the first century of our era, they made particular inquiries concerning the age of the old Indian BUDDHA, whose birth, according to COUPLET, they place in the 41st year of their 28th cycle, or 1036 years before Christ, and they call him, says he, Foe the son of Moye or Maya; but M. De Guignes, on the authority of four Chinese Historians, asserts, that Fo was born about the year before Christ 1027, in the kingdom of Cashmir: Giorgi, or rather Cassiano, from whose papers his work was compiled, assures us, that, by the calculation of the Tibetians, he appeared only 959 years before the Christian epoch; and M. Bailly, with some hesitation, places him 1031 years before it, but inclines to think him far more ancient, confounding him, as I have done in a former tract, with the first Budha, or Mercury, whom the Goths called WODEN, and of whom I shall presently take particular notice. Now, whether we assume the medium of the four last-mentioned dates, or implicitly rely on the authorities quoted by De Guignes, we may conclude, that Buddha was first distinguished in this country about a thousand years before the beginning of our era, and whoever, in so early an age, expects a certain epoch unqualified with about or nearly, will be greatly disappointed, Hence it is clear, that, whether the fourth age of the Hindus began about one thousand years before CHRIST, according to Goverdhan's account of Buddha's birth, or two thousand, according to that of Radhacant, the common opinion, that 4888 years of it are now elapsed, is erroneous; and here for the present we leave Buddha, with an intention of returning to him in due time; observing only, that, if the learned Indians differ so widely in their accounts of the age, when their ninth Avatar appeared in their country, we may be assured, that they have no certain Chronology before him, and may suspect the certainty of all the relations concerning even his appearance.

The received Chronology of the Hindus begins with an absurdity so monstrous, as to overthrow the whole system; for, having established their period of seventy-one divine ages as the reign of each Menu, yet thinking it incongruous to place a holy personage in times of impurity, they insist, that the Menu reigns only in every golden age, and disappears in the three human ages that follow it, continuing to dive and emerge, like a waterfowl, till the close of his Manwantara: the learned author of the Puranarthapracasa, which I will now follow step by step, mentioned this ridiculous opinion with a serious face; but, as he has not inserted it in his work, we may take his account of the seventh Menu according to its obvious and rational meaning, and suppose, that Vaivaswata, the son of Surya, the son of Casyapa, or Uranus, the son of Marichi, or Light, the son of Brahma, which is deafly an allegorical pedigree, reigned in the last golden age, or, according to the Hindus, three million eight hundred and ninety-two thousand eight hundred and eighty-eight years ago. But they contend, that he actually reigned on earth one million seven hundred and twenty-eight thousand years of mortals, or four thousand eight hundred years of the Gods; and this opinion is another monster so repugnant to the course of nature and to human reason, that it must be rejected as wholly fabulous, and taken as a proof, that the Indians know nothing of their Sun- born Menu, but his name and the principal event of his life; I mean the universal deluge, of which the three first Avatars are merely allegorical representations, with a mixture, especially in the second, of astronomical Mythology.

From this Menu the whole race of men is believed to have descended; for the seven who were preserved with him in the ark, are not mentioned as fathers of human families; but, since his daughter Ila was married, as Indians tell us, to the first Budha, or Mercury, the son of Chandra, or the Moon, a male Deity, whose father was Atri, son of Brahma, (where again we meet with an allegory purely astronomical or poetical) his posterity are divided into two great branches, called the Children of the Sun from his own supposed father, and the Children of the Moon, from the parent of his daughter’s husband: the lineal male descendants in both these families are supposed to have reigned in the cities of Ayodhya, or Audh, and Pratishthana, or Vitora, respectively till the thousandth year of the present age, and the names of all the princes in both lines having been diligently collected by Radhacant from several Puranas I exhibit them in two columns arranged by myself with great attention.

SECOND AGE.

CHILDREN OF THE

SUN / MOON.

Icshwacu / Budha
Vicucshi / Pururavas
Cacutstha / Ayush
Anenas / Nahusha
5. Prithu / Yayati, 5
Viswagandhi / Puru
Chandra / Janamejaya
Yuvanaswa / Prachinwat
Srava / Pravira
10. Vrihadaswa / Menasyu, 10
Dhundhumara / Charupada
Dildhaswa / Sudyu
Heryaswa / Bahugava
Nicumbha / Sanyati
15. Crisaswa / Ahanyati, 15
Senajit / Raudraswa,
Yuvanaswa / Riteyush
Mahdhatri / Rantinava
Purucutsa / Sumati
20. Trasadasyu / Aiti, 20
Anaranya / Dushmanta
Heryaswa / Bharata
Praruna / Vitatha
Trivindhana / Manyu
25. Satyavrata / Viihatcshetra, 25
Trisancu / Hastin
Harischandra / Ajamidha
Rohita / Ricsha
Harita / Samwarana
30. Champa / Curu, 30
Sudeva / Jahnu
Vijaya / Suratha
Bharuca / Viduratha
Vrica / Sarvabhauma
35. Bahuca / Jayatsena, 35
Sagara / Radhica
Asamanjas / Ayutayush
Ansumat / Acrodhana
Bhagiratha / Devatithi
40. Sruta / Ricsha, 40
Nabha / Dilipa
Sindhudwipa / Pratipa
Ayutayush / Santanu
Ritaperna / Vichitravirya
45. Saudasa / Pandu, 45
Asmaca / Yudhishthir
Mulaca / --
Dasaratha / --
Aidabidi / --
50. Vis'wasaha / --
Chatwanga / --
Dirghabahu / --
Raghu / --
Aja / --
55. Dasaratha / --
Rama / --

It is agreed among all the Pandits, that Rama, their seventh incarnate Divinity, appeared as king of Ayodhya, in the interval between the silver and the brazen ages; and, if we suppose him to have begun his reign at the very beginning of that interval, still three thousand three hundred years of the Gods, or a million one hundred and eighty-eight thousand lunar years of mortals will remain in the silver age, during which the fifty-five princes between Vaivaswata and Rama, must have governed the world; but, reckoning thirty years for a generation, which is rather too much for a long succession of eldest sons, as they are said to have been, we cannot, by the course of nature, extend the second age of the Hindus beyond sixteen hundred and fifty solar years: if we suppose them not to have been eldest sons, and even to have lived longer than modern princes in a dissolute age, we shall find only a period of two thousand years; and, if we remove the difficulty by admitting miracles, we must cease to reason, and may as well believe at once whatever the Brahmans choose to tell us.

In the Lunar pedigree we meet with another absurdity equally fatal to the credit of the Hindu system: as far as the twenty-second degree of descent from Vaivaswata, the synchronism of the two families appears tolerably regular, except that the Children of the Moon were not all eldest sons; for king Yayati appointed the youngest of his five sons to succeed him in India, and allotted inferior kingdoms to the other four, who had offended him; part of the Dacshin or the South, to Yadu, the ancestor of Crishna; the north, to Anu; the east, to Druhya; and the west, to Turvasu, from whom the Pandits believe, or pretend to believe, in compliment to our nation, that we are descended. But of the subsequent degrees in the lunar line they know so little, that, unable to supply a considerable interval between Bharat and Vitatha, whom they call his son and successor, they are under a necessity of asserting, that the great ancestor of Yudhishthir actually reigned seven and twenty thousand years; a fable of the same class with that of his wonderful birth, which is the subject of a beautiful Indian Drama: now, if we suppose his life to have lasted no longer than that of other mortals, and admit Vitatha and the rest to have been his regular successors, we shall fall into another absurdity; for, then, if the generations in both lines were nearly equal, as they would naturally have been, we shall find Yudhishthir, who reigned confessedly at the close of the brazen age, nine generations older than Rama, before whose birth the silver age is allowed to have ended. After the name of Bharat, therefore, I have set an asterisk to denote a considerable chasm in the Indian History, and have inserted between brackets, as out of their places, his twenty-four successors, who reigned, if at all, in the following age immediately before the war of the Mahabharat. The fourth Avatar, which is placed in the interval between the first, and second ages, and the fifth which soon followed it, appear to be moral fables grounded on historical facts: the fourth was the punishment of an impious monarch by the Deity himself bursting from a marble Column in the shape of a lion; and the fifth was the humiliation of an arrogant Prince by so contemptible an agent as a mendicant dwarf. After these, and immediately before Buddha, come three great warriors all named Rama; but it may justly be made a question, whether they are not three representations of one person, or three different ways of relating the same History: the first and second Ramas are said to have been contemporary; but whether all or any of them mean Rama, the son of Cush, I leave others to determine. The mother of the Second Rama was named Caushalya, which is a derivative of CUSHALA, and, though his father be distinguished by the title or epithet of Dasaratha signifying, that his War-chariot bore him to all quarters of the world, yet the name of Cush, as the Cashmirians pronounce it, is preserved entire in that of his son and successor, and shadowed in that of his ancestor Vicucshi; nor can a just objection be made to this opinion from the nasal Arabian vowel in the word Ramah mentioned by MOSES, since the very word begins with the same letter, which the Greeks and Indians could not pronounce; and they were obliged, therefore, to express it by the vowel, which most resembled it. On this question, however, I assert nothing; nor on another, which might be proposed: “whether the fourth and fifth Avatars be not allegorical stories of the two presumptuous monarchs, Nimrod and Belus." The hypothesis, that government first established, laws enacted, and agriculture encouraged in India by Rama about three thousand eight hundred years ago, agrees with the received account of Noah's death, and the previous settlement of his immediate descendants.

THIRD AGE

CHILDREN OF THE

SUN / MOON

Cusha / --
Atithi / --
Nishadha / --
Nabhas / --
5. Pundarica / --
Cshemadhanwas / Vitatha
Devanica / Manyu
Ahinagu / Vrihatcshetra
Paripatra / Hastin
10. Ranachhala / Ajamidha, 5
Vajranabha / Ricsha
Arca / Samwarana
Sugana / Curu
Vidhriti / Jahnu
15. Hiranyanabha / Suratha, 10
Pushya / Viduratha
Dhruvasahdhi / Sarvabhauma
Sudersana / Jayatsena
Agniverna / Radhica
20. Sighra / Ayutayush, 15
Maru, supposed to be still alive / Acrodhana
Prasusruta / Devatithi
Sandhi / Ricsha
Amersana / Diliopoa
25. Mahaswat / Pratipa, 20
Viswabhahu / Santanu
Prasenajit / Vichitravirya
Tacshaca / Pandu
Vrshadbala / Yudhishthira
30. Vrihadrarna, Y. B. C. 3100 / Paricshit, 25

Here we have only nine and twenty princes of the solar line between Rama and Vrihadrana exclusively; and their reigns, during the whole brazen age, are supposed to have lasted near eight hundred and sixty-four thousand years, a supposition evidently against nature; the uniform course of which allows only a period of eight hundred and seventy, or, at the very utmost, of a thousand, years for twenty-nine generations. Paricshit, the great nephew and successor of Yudhishthir, who had recovered the throne from Duryodhan, is allowed without controversy to have reigned in the interval between the brazen and earthen ages, and to have died at the setting in of the Calijug; so that, if the Pandits of Cashmir and Varanes have made a right calculation of Buddha’s appearance, the present, or fourth, age must have begun about a thousand years before the birth of Christ, and consequently the reign of Icshwacu, could not have been earlier than four thousand years before that great epoch; and even that date will, perhaps, appear, when it shall be strictly examined, to be near two thousand years earlier than the truth. I cannot leave the third Indian age, in which the virtues and vices of mankind are said to have been equal, without observing, that even the close of it is manifestly fabulous and poetical, with hardly more appearance of historical truth, than the tale of Troy or of the Argonauts; for Yudhishthir, it seems, was the sort of Dherma, the Genius of Justice; Bhima of Pavan, or the God of Wind; Arjun of Indra, or the Firmament; Nacul and Sahadeva, of the two Cumars, the Castor and Pollux of India; and Bihshma their reputed great uncle, was the child of Ganga, or the Ganges, by Santanu, whose brother Devapi is supposed to be still alive in the city of Calapa; all which fictions may be charming embellishments of an heroic poem, but are just as absurd in civil History, as the descent of two royal families from the Sun and the Moon.

FOURTH AGE

CHILDREN OF THE

SUN / MOON

Urucriya / Janamajaya
Vatsavriddha / Satanica
Prativyoma / Sahasranica
Bhanu / Aswamedhaja
5. Devaca / Asimacrishna, 5
Sahadeva / Nemichacra
Vira / Upta
Viihadaswa / Chitraratha
Bhanumat / Suchiratha
10. Praticaswa / Dhritimat, 10
Supratica / Sushena
Marudeva / Sunitha
Sunacshatra / Nrihacshuh
Pushcara / Suchinala
15. Antaricsha / Pariplava, 15
Sutapas / Sunaya
Amitrajit / Medhavin
Vrihadraja / Nripanjaya
Barhi / Derva
20. Ciitanjaya / Timi, 20.
Rananjaya / Vrihadratha
Sanjaya / Sudasa
Slocya / Satanica
Suddhoda / Durmadana
25. Langalada / Rahinara, 25
Prasenajit / Dandapani
Cshudraca / Nimi
Sumitra, Y. B. C. 2100 / Cshemaca

In both families, we see, thirty generations are reckoned from Yudhishthir and from Vrihadbala his contemporary, (who was killed, in the war of Bharat, by Abhimanyu, son of Arjun and father of Paricshit), to the time, when the Solar and Lunar dynasties are believed to have become extinct in the present divine age; and for these generations the Hindus allot a period of one thousand years only, or a hundred years for generations; which calculation, though probably too large, is yet moderate enough, compared with their absurd accounts of the preceding ages: but they reckon exactly the same number of years for twenty generations only in the family of Jarasandha, whose son was contemporary with Yudhishthir, and founded a new dynasty of princes in Magadha, or Bahar; and this exact coincidence of the time, in which the three races are supposed to have been extinct, has the appearance of an artificial chronology, formed rather from imagination than from historical evidence; especially as twenty kings, in an age comparatively modern, could not have reigned a thousand years. I, nevertheless, exhibit the list of them as a curiosity; but am far from being convinced, that all of them ever existed: that, if they did exist, they could not have reigned more than seven hundred years, I am fully persuaded by the course of nature and the concurrent opinion of mankind.

KINGS OF MAGADHA.

Sahadeva / Suchi
Marjari / Cshema
Srutasravas / Suvrata
Ayutayush / Dhermasutra
5. Niramitra / Srama, 15.
Sunacshatra / Dridhasena
Vrihetsena / Sumati
Carmajit / Subala
Srutanjaya / Sunita
10. Vipra / Satyajit, 20.

Puranjaya, son of the twentieth king, was put to death by his minister Sunaca, who placed his own son Pradyota on the throne of his master; and this revolution constitutes an epoch of the highest importance in our present inquiry; first, because it happened according to the Bhagawatamrtta, two years exactly before BUDDHA'S appearance in the same kingdom; next, because it is believed by the Hindus to have taken place three thousand eight hundred and eighty-eight years ago, or two thousand one hundred years before Christ; and lastly, because a regular chronology, according to the number of years in each dynasty, has been established from the accession of Pradyota to the subversion of the genuine Hindu government; and that chronology I will now lay before you, after observing only, that Radhacant himself says, nothing of Buddha in this part of his work, though he particularly mentions the two preceding Avataras in their proper places.

KINGS OF MAGADHA

King / Y.B.C.

Pradyota / 2100
Palaca / --
Visachayupa / --
Rajaca / --
Nandiverdhana, 5 reigns=138 years / --
Sisunaga / 1962
Cacaverna / --
Cshemadherman / --
Cshetrajnya / --
Vidhisara, 5 / --
Ajatasatru / --
Darbhaca / --
Ajaya / --
Nandiverdhana / --
Mahanandi, 10 r=360 y. / --
Nanda / 1602

This prince, of whom frequent mention is made in the Sanscrit books, is said to have been murdered, after a reign of a hundred years, by a very learned and ingenious, but passionate and vindictive, Brahman, whose name was Chanacya, and who raised to the throne a man of the Mauya race,, named Chandragupta: by the death of Nanda, and his sons, the Cshatriya family of Pradyota became extinct.

MAURYA KINGS.

King / Y.B.C.

Chandragupta / 1502
Varisara / --
Asocaverdhana / --
Suyasas / --
Desaratha, 5 / --
Sangata / --
Salisuca / --
Somasarman / --
Satadhawas / --
Vrihadratha, 10 r=137 y.

On the death of the tenth Maurya king, his place was assumed by his Commander-in-Chief, Pushpamitra, of the Sunga nation or family.

SUNGA KINGS.

King / Y.B.C.

Pushpamitra / 1365
Agnimitra / --
Sujyeshtha / --
Vasumitra / --
Abhadraca, 5. / --
Pulinda / --
Ghosha / --
Vajramitra / --
Bhagavata / --
Devabhuti, 10 r=112 y.

The last prince was killed by his minister Vasudeva, of the Canna race, who usurped the throne of Magadha.

CANNA KINGS.

King / Y.B.C.

Vasudeva / 1253
Bhumitra / --
Narayana / --
Susarman, 4 r=345 y.

A Sudra, of the Andhra family, having murdered his master Susarman, and seized the government, founded a new dynasty of

ANDHRA KINGS.

King / Y.B.C.

Balin / 908
Crishna / --
Srisantacarna / --
Paurnamasa / --
Lambodara / --
Vivilaca / --
Meghaswata / --
Vatamana / --
Talaca / --
Sivaswati / --
Purishabheru / --
Sunandana / --
Chacoraca / --
Bataca / --
Gomatin, 15. / --
Purimat / --
Medasiras / --
Sirascandha / --
Yajnasasri / --
Vijaya, 20. / --
Chandrabija, 21 r= 456 y. / --

After the death of Chandrabija, which happened, according to the Hindus, 396 years before Vicramaditya, or 452 B.C. we hear no more of Magadha as an independent kingdom; but Radhacant has exhibited the names of seven dynasties, in which seventy-six princes are said to have reigned one thousand three hundred and ninety-nine years in Avabhriti, a town of the Dacshin, or South, which we commonly call Decan; the names of the seven dynasties, or of the families who established them, are Abhira, Gardabhin, Canca, Yavana, Turushcara, Bhurunda, Maula; of which the Yavanas are by some, not generally, supposed to have been Ionians, or Greeks, but the Turushcars and Maulas are universally believed to have been Turcs Moglus; yet Radhacant adds; “when the Maula race was extinct, five princes, named Bhunanda, Bangira, Sisunandi, Yasonandi, and Praviraca, reigned an hundred and six years (or till the year 1053) in the city of Cilacila," which, he tells me understands to be in the country of the Maharashtras, or Mahratas; and here ends his Indian Chronology; for “after Praviraca, says he, this empire was divided among Mlechhas, or Infidels.” This account of the seven modern dynasties appears very doubtful in itself, and has no relation to our present inquiry; for their dominion seems confined to the Decan, without extending to Magadha; nor have we any reason to believe, that a race of Greecian princes ever established a kingdom in either of those countries: as to the Moguls, their dynasty still subsists, at least nominally; unless that of Chengiz be meant, and his successors could not have reigned in any part of India for the period of three hundred years, which is assigned to the Maulas; nor is it probable, that the word Turc, which an Indian could have easily pronounced and clearly expressed in the Nagari letters, should have been corrupted into Turushcara. On the whole we may safely close the most authentic system of Hindu Chronology, that I have yet been able to procure, with the death of Chandrabija. Should any farther information be attainable, we shall, perhaps, in due time attain it either from books or inscriptions in the Sanscrit language; but from the materials, with which we are at present supplied, we may establish as indubitable the two following propositions; that the three first ages of the Hindus are chiefly mythological. whether their mythology was founded on the dark enigmas of their astronomers or on the heroic fictions of their poets, and, that the fourth, or historical, age cannot be carried farther back than about two thousand years before CHRIST. Even in the history of the present age, the generations of men and the reigns of kings are extended beyond the course of nature, and beyond the average resulting from the accounts of the Brahmans themselves; for they assign to an hundred and forty-two modern reigns a period of three thousand one hundred and fifty-three years, or about twenty-two years to a reign one with another; yet they represent only four Canna princes on the throne of Magadha for a period of three hundred and forty-five years; now it is even more improbable, that four successive kings should have reigned eighty-six years and three months each, than that Nanda should have been king a hundred years and murdered at last. Neither account can be credited; but, that we may allow the highest probable antiquity to the Hindu government, let us grant, that three generations of men were equal on an average to an hundred years, and that Indian princes have reigned, one with another, two and twenty: then reckoning thirty generations from Arjun, the brother of Yudhishthira, to the extinction of his race, and taking the Chinese account of BUDDHA'S birth from M. DeGuignes, as the most authentic medium between Abulfazl and the Tibetians, we may arrange the corrected Hindu Chronology according to the following table, supplying the word about or nearly, (since perfect accuracy cannot be attained and ought not to be requireed), before every date.

King / Y.B.C.

Abhimanyu son of Arjun / 2029
Pradyota / 1029
Buddha / 1027
Nanda / 699
Balin / 149
Vicramaditya / 56
Devapala, king of Gaur / 23

If we take the date of Buddha's appearance from Abulfazl, we must place Abhimanyu 2368 years before CHRIST, unless we calculate from the twenty kings of Magadha, and allow seven hundred years, instead of a thousand, between Arjun and Pradyota, which will bring us again very nearly to the date exhibited in the table; and, perhaps, we can hardly approach nearer to the truth. As to Raja Nanda, if he really sat on the throne a whole century, we must bring down the Andhra dynasty to the age of Vicramaditya, who with his feudatories had probably obtained so much power during the reign of those princes, that they had little more than a nominal sovereignty, which ended with Chandrabija in the third or fourth century of the Christian era; having, no doubt, been long reduced to insignificance by the kings of Gaur, descended  from Gopala. But, if the author of the Dabistan be warranted in fixing the birth of Buddha ten years before the Caliyug, we must thus correct the Chronological Table:

King / Y.B.C.

Buddha / 1027
Paricshit / 1017
Pradyota, (reckoning 20 or 30 generations) / 317 or 17
Nanda / 13 or 313

This correction would oblige us to place Vicramaditya before NANDA, to whom, as all the Pandits agree, he was long posterior; and, if this be an historical fact, it seems to confirm the Bhagawatamrita, which fixes the beginning of the Caliyug about a thousand years before BUDDHA; besides that Balin would then be brought down at least to the sixth and Chandrabija to the tenth century after CHRIST, without leaving room for the subsequent dynasties, if they reigned successively.

Thus have we given a sketch of Indian History through the longest period fairly assignable to it, and have traced the foundation of the Indian empire above three thousand eight hundred years from the present time; but, on a subject in itself so obscure, and so much clouded by the fictions of the Brahmans, who, to aggrandize themselves, have designedly raised their antiquity beyond the truth, we must be satisfied with probable conjecture and just reasoning from the best attainable data; nor can we hope for a system of Indian Chronology, to which no objection can be made, unless the Astronomical books in Sanscrit shall clearly ascertain the places of the colures in some precise years of the historical age, not by loose traditions, like that of a coarse observation by CHIRON, who possibly never existed, (for he lived, says Newton, in the golden age,'’ which must long have preceded the Argouautic expedition) but by such evidence as our own astronomers and scholars shall allow to be unexceptionable.

A CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE, according to one of the Hypotheses intimated in the preceding tract.

CHRISTIAN and MUSELMAN / HINDU / Years from 1788 of our era

Adam / Menu I. Age I. / 5794
Noah / Menu II. / 4737
Deluge / -- / 4138
Nimrod / Hiranyacasipu, Age II. / 4006
Bel / Bali / 3892
Rama / Rama. Age III. / 3817
Noah's death / -- / 3787
-- / Pradyota / 2817
-- / Buddha. Age IV. / 2815
-- / Nanda / 2487
-- / Balin / 1937
-- / Vicramaditya / 1844
-- / Devapala / 1811
Christ / -- / 1787
-- / Narayanpala / 1721
-- / Saca / 1709
Walid / -- / 1080
Mahmud / -- / 786
Chengiz / -- / 548
Tatmur / -- / 391
Babur / -- / 276
Nadirshah / -- / 49

[admin]

Part 1 of 2

Gandhara
by Wikipedia
Accessed: 1/26/22


Gandhāra
गन्धार (Sanskrit)
c. 800 BCE–c. 500 CE
Gandhara is located in Pakistan
Location of Gandhara in South Asia (Afghanistan and Pakistan)

Approximate geographical region of Gandhara centered on the Peshawar Basin, in present-day northwest Pakistan.
Capital: Kapisi (Bagram); Puṣkalavati (Charsadda); Puruṣapura (Peshawer); Takshashila (Taxila)' Udabhandapura (Hund)
Government: Monarchy
• c. 750 BCE: Nagnajit
• c. 518 BCE: Pushkarasakti (last ruler of Gandhara kingdom)
• c. 500 CE: Kandik
Historical era Ancient Era
• Established: c. 800 BCE
• Disestablished: c. 500 CE
Preceded by: Gandhara grave culture
Succeeded by: Alchon Huns
Today part of: Afghanistan; Pakistan


19th century map of northern Gandhara.


A modern satellite view of Gandhara (October 2020).

Gandhāra was an ancient region comprising Kabul, Peshawar, Swat, and Taxila areas of what are now northwestern Pakistan and eastern Afghanistan.[1][2][3] The cultural influence of "Greater Gandhara" extended across the Indus River into the Potohar Plateau of Punjab, westward into Bamyan, and northward up to the Karakoram range.[4][5][6] The wider region around Gandhara, including Sattagydia (Bannu basin) in the south, was also known as Paropamisadae.[7] In the 6th century BCE, Paropamisadae became a taxation district of the Achaemenid Empire and was known in Old Persian as Gandāra.

Famed for its unique Gandharan style of art which is heavily influenced by the classical Greek and Hellenistic styles, Gandhara attained its height from the 1st century to the 5th century CE under the Kushan Empire, who had their seasonal capitals at Bagram (Kapisi) and Peshawar (Puruṣapura). Gandhara "flourished at the crossroads of Asia," connecting trade routes and absorbing cultural influences from diverse civilizations; Buddhism thrived until the 8th or 9th centuries, when Islam first began to gain sway in the region.[8] It was also the centre of Vedic and later forms of Hinduism.[9]

Gandhara's existence is attested since the time of the Rigveda (c. 1500 – c. 1200 BCE),[10][11] as well as the Zoroastrian Avesta, which mentions it as Vaēkərəta, the sixth most beautiful place on earth created by Ahura Mazda. Gandhara was conquered by the Persian Achaemenid Empire in the 6th century BCE, Alexander the Great in 327 BCE, and later became part of the Maurya Empire before being a centre of the Indo-Greek Kingdom.

Many of the dates, territories, and relationships between Indo-Greek kings are tentative...

The following list of kings, dates and territories after the reign of Demetrius is derived from the latest and most extensive analysis on the subject, by Osmund Bopearachchi and R. C. Senior.

The invasion of northern India, and the establishment of what would be known as the "Indo-Greek kingdom", started around 200 BCE when Demetrius, son of the Greco-Bactrian king Euthydemus I, led his troops across the Hindu Kush. Apollodotus, may have made advances in the south, while Menander, led later invasions further east. Following his conquests, Demetrius received the title ανικητος ("Anicetus", lit. invincible), a title never given to any king before.

-- History of the Indo-Greek Kingdom, by Wikipedia

The region was a major centre for Greco-Buddhism under the Indo-Greeks and Gandharan Buddhism under later dynasties. Gandhara was also a central location for the spread of Buddhism to Central Asia and East Asia.[12]

The region steadily declined after the violent invasion by Alchon Huns in 6th century, and the name Gandhara disappeared after Mahmud Ghaznavi's conquest in 1001 CE.[13]

Terminology


Cremation urn, Gandhara grave culture, Swat Valley, c. 1200 BC.

Gandhara was known in Sanskrit as Gandhāra ([x]), in Avestan as Vaēkərəta, in Old Persian as Gadāra (Old Persian cuneiform: [x], Gadāra, also transliterated as Gandāra since the nasal "n" before consonants was omitted in the Old Persian script, and simplified as Gandara),[14] in Akkadian and Elamite as Paruparaesanna (Para-upari-sena),[15] in Chinese as T: [x]/S: [x] (Qiántuóluó), and in Greek as Γανδάρα (Gandhara).[16]

Etymology

One proposed origin of the name is from the Sanskrit word गन्ध gandha, meaning "perfume" and "referring to the spices and aromatic herbs which they (the inhabitants) traded and with which they anointed themselves.".[17][18] The Gandhari people are a tribe mentioned in the Rigveda, the Atharvaveda, and later Vedic texts.[19] They are recorded in the Avestan language of Zoroastrianism under the name Vaēkərəta. The name Gāndhāra occurs later in the classical Sanskrit of the epics.[citation needed]

A Persian form of the name, Gandara, mentioned in the Behistun inscription of Emperor Darius I,[20][21] was translated as Paruparaesanna (Para-upari-sena, meaning "beyond the Hindu Kush") in Babylonian and Elamite in the same inscription.[15]

Kandahar is sometimes etymologically associated with Gandhara. However, Kandahar was not part of the territory of Gandhara.[22] It is instead etymologically related to "Alexandria".[23]

Geography


Female spouted figure, terracotta, Charsadda, Gandhara, 3rd to 1st century BCE Victoria and Albert Museum

The boundaries of Gandhara varied throughout history. Sometimes the Peshawar Valley and Taxila were collectively referred to as Gandhara; sometimes the Kabul Valley and Swat (Sanskrit: Suvāstu) were included.[24] The kingdom was ruled from capitals at Kapisi (Bagram),[25] Pushkalavati (Charsadda), Taxila, Puruṣapura (Peshawar) and in its final days from Udabhandapura (Hund) on the River Indus.[citation needed]

Early History


Mother Goddess (fertility divinity), possibly derived from the Indus Valley Civilization, terracotta, Sar Dheri, Gandhara, 1st century BC, Victoria and Albert Museum

Stone age

Evidence of the Stone Age human inhabitants of Gandhara, including stone tools and burnt bones, was discovered at Sanghao near Mardan in area caves. The artefacts are approximately 15,000 years old. More recent excavations point to 30,000 years before the present[citation needed].

Gandhara grave culture

Main articles: Gandhara grave culture and Indo-Aryan migration

Gandhara’s first recorded civilization was the Grave Culture that emerged c. 1400 BCE and lasted until 800 BCE,[26] and named for their distinct funerary practices. It was found along the Middle Swat River course, even though earlier research considered it to be expanded to the Valleys of Dir, Kunar, Chitral, and Peshawar.[27] It has been regarded as a token of the Indo-Aryan migrations, but has also been explained by local cultural continuity. Backwards projections, based on ancient DNA analyses, suggest ancestors of Swat culture people mixed with a population coming from Inner Asia Mountain Corridor, which carried Steppe ancestry, sometime between 1900 and 1500 BCE.[28]


Early Vedic Culture (1700-1100 BCE)


Late Vedic Culture (1100-500 BCE)

Vedic Gandhāris and Gandhāras

The first mention of the Gandhāris is attested once in the Rigveda as a tribe that has sheep with good wool. In the Atharvaveda, they are mentioned alongside the Mūjavants, the Aṅgas. and the Magadhas in a hymn asking Fever "Takman" to leave the body of the sick man and instead go those aforementioned tribes. The tribes listed were the furthermost border tribes known to those in Madhyadeśa, the Aṅgas and Magadhas in the east, and the Mūjavants and Gandhāris in the north.[29][30]

The later form of the name is Gandhāra, and in the Chāndogya Upaniṣad, the Gandhāras are stated to be far away from the composer. In the Aitareya Brāhmaṇa, Nagnajit, a king of Gandhāra is stated to be consencrated by Paravata and Nārada. The Śatapatha Brāhmaṇa states that Svarjit is his son.[31]

Gandhara Kingdom

Main article: Gandhara Kingdom


Kingdoms and cities of ancient Buddhism, with Gandhara located in the northwest of this region, during the time of the Buddha (c. 500 BC).

The Gandhara Kingdom was one of sixteen mahajanapadas of Buddhism.[32][33] The primary cities of Gandhara were Puruṣapura (Peshawar), Takṣaśilā (Taxila), Sagala (Sialkot) and Pushkalavati (Charsadda) - The latter remained the capital of Gandhara until the 2nd century CE, when the capital was moved to Peshawar. Gandhara produced influential thinkers such as the philosopher Kautilya, and Panini, whose grammar works standardized ancient Sanskrit.

Gandhara is mentioned in the Hindu epics, the Mahabharata and the Ramayana, as a western kingdom that was founded by the Druhyu prince Gandhara who was the son of King Angara. According to the epic poem Ramayana. In Dvapara Yuga, Gandhara prince Shakuni was the root of all the conspiracies of Duryodhana against the Pandavas, which finally resulted in the Kurukshetra War.

Achaemenid Gandhara

Main article: Gandāra

See also: Achaemenid invasion of the Indus Valley


Xerxes I tomb, Gandāra soldier, circa 470 BC.


Athens coin (c. 500/490–485 BCE) discovered in Pushkalavati. This coin is the earliest known example of its type to be found so far east.[34] Such coins were circulating in the area as currency, at least as far as the Indus, during the reign of the Achaemenids.[35][36][37][38]

During the reign of Gandharan king Pushkarasarin, the region’s security was fractured by him engaging in power struggles against his local rivals. King Darius I of the Achaemenid Empire took advantage of the opportunity and planned for an invasion. In 518 BCE, Darius led his army through the Khyber Pass and southwards in stages, eventually reaching the Arabian Sea coast in Sindh by 516 BCE.

Under Persian rule, a system of centralized administration, with a bureaucratic system, was introduced into the Indus Valley for the first time. Provinces or "satrapy" were established with provincial capitals.

Gandhara satrapy, established 518 BCE with its capital at Pushkalavati (Charsadda).[39] Gandhara Satrapy was established in the general region of the old Gandhara grave culture, in what is today Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. During Achaemenid rule, the Kharosthi alphabet, derived from the one used for Aramaic (the official language of Achaemenids), developed here and remained the national script of Gandhara until 200 CE.

The inscription on Darius' (521–486 BCE) tomb at Naqsh-i-Rustam near Persepolis records Gadāra (Gandāra) along with Hindush (Hənduš, Sindh) in the list of satrapies. By about 380 BC the Persian hold on the region had weakened. Many small kingdoms sprang up in Gandhara.

In 327 BCE, Alexander the Great conquered Gandhara as well as the Indian satrapies of the Persian Empire. The expeditions of Alexander were recorded by his court historians and by Arrian (around 175 CE) in his Anabasis Alexandri and by other chroniclers many centuries after the event.

Macedonian Gandhara

Main article: Paropamisadae

See also: Indian campaign of Alexander the Great and Macedonian Empire


"Victory coin" of Alexander the Great, minted in Babylon c. 322 BC, following his campaigns in Bactria and the Indus Valley. Obverse: Alexander being crowned by Nike. Reverse: Alexander attacking king Porus on his elephant. Silver. British Museum.

In the winter of 327 BCE, Alexander invited all the chieftains in the remaining five Achaemenid satraps to submit to his authority. Ambhi, then ruler of Taxila in the former Hindush satrapy complied, but the remaining tribes and clans in the former satraps of Gandhara, Arachosia, Sattagydia and Gedrosia rejected Alexander's offer.[citation needed]

The first tribe they encountered were the Aspasioi tribe of the Kunar Valley, who initiated a fierce battle against Alexander, in which he himself was wounded in the shoulder by a dart. However, the Aspasioi eventually lost and 40,000 people were enslaved. Alexander then continued in a southwestern direction where he encountered the Assakenoi tribe of the Swat & Buner valleys in April 326 BCE. The Assakenoi fought bravely and offered stubborn resistance to Alexander and his army in the cities of Ora, Bazira (Barikot) and Massaga. So enraged was Alexander about the resistance put up by the Assakenoi that he killed the entire population of Massaga and reduced its buildings to rubble. A similar slaughter then followed at Ora,[40] another stronghold of the Assakenoi. The stories of these slaughters reached numerous Assakenians, who began fleeing to Aornos, a hill-fort located between Shangla and Kohistan. Alexander followed close behind their heels and besieged the strategic hill-fort, eventually capturing and destroying the fort and killing everyone inside. The remaining smaller tribes either surrendered or like the Astanenoi tribe of Pushkalavati (Charsadda) were quickly neutralized where 38,000 soldiers and 230,000 oxen were captured by Alexander.[41] Eventually Alexander's smaller force would meet with the larger force which had come through the Khyber Pass met at Attock. With the conquest of Gandhara complete, Alexander switched to strengthening his military supply line, which by now stretched dangerously vulnerable over the Hindu Kush back to Balkh in Bactria.[citation needed]

After conquering Gandhara and solidifying his supply line back to Bactria, Alexander combined his forces with the King Ambhi of Taxila and crossed the River Indus in July 326 BCE to begin the Archosia (Punjab) campaign. Alexander nominated officers as Satraps of the new provinces, and in Gandhara, Oxyartes was nominated to the position of Satrap in 326 BCE.[citation needed]

Mauryan Empire


Coin of Early Gandhara Janapada: AR Shatamana and one-eighth Shatamana (round), Taxila-Gandhara region, c. 600–300 BCE


A monetary silver coin of the satrapy of Gandhara about 500–400 BCE. Obv: Gandhara symbol representing 6 weapons with one point between two weapons; At the bottom of the point, a hollow moon. Rev: Empty. Dimensions: 14 mm Weight: 1.4 g.

After a battle with Seleucus Nicator (Alexander's successor in Asia) in 305 BCE, the Mauryan Emperor extended his domain up to and including present Southern Afghanistan. With the completion of the Empire's Grand Trunk Road, the region prospered as a centre of trade. Gandhara remained a part of the Mauryan Empire for about a century and a half.

Ashoka, the grandson of Chandragupta, was one of the greatest Indian rulers. Like his grandfather, Ashoka also started his career in Gandhara as a governor. Later he became a Buddhist and promoted Buddhism. He built many stupas in Gandhara. Mauryan control over the northwestern frontier, including the Yonas, Kambojas, and the Gandharas, is attested from the Rock Edicts left by Ashoka. According to one school of scholars, the Gandharas and Kambojas were cognate people.[42][43][44] It is also contended that the Kurus, Kambojas, Gandharas and Bahlikas were cognate people and all had Iranian affinities,[45] or that the Gandhara and Kamboja were nothing but two provinces of one empire and hence influencing each other's language.[46] However, the local language of Gandhara is represented by Panini's conservative bhāṣā ("language"), which is entirely different from the Iranian (Late Avestan) language of the Kamboja that is indicated by Patanjali's quote of Kambojan śavati 'to go' (= Late Avestan šava(i)ti).[note 1]

Ancient Era

Indo-Greek Kingdom


Greco-Buddhist statue of standing Buddha, Gandhara (1st–2nd century), Tokyo National Museum

The decline of the Mauryan Empire left Gandhara open to Greco-Bactrian invasions. Present-day southern Afghanistan was absorbed by Demetrius I of Bactria in 180 BCE. Around about 185 BCE, Demetrius moved into Indian subcontinent; he invaded and conquered Gandhara and the Punjab. Later, wars between different groups of Bactrian Greeks resulted in the independence of Gandhara from Bactria and the formation of the Indo-Greek kingdom. Menander I was its most famous king. He ruled from Taxila and later from Sagala (Sialkot). He rebuilt Taxila (Sirkap) and Pushkalavati. He became a Buddhist and is remembered in Buddhist records for his discussions with the great Buddhist philosopher, Nāgasena, in the book Milinda Panha.[citation needed]


Marine deities, Gandhara.

Around the time of Menander's death in 140 BCE, the Central Asian Kushans overran Bactria and ended Greek rule there.

Indo-Scythian Kingdom

Around 80 BCE, the Sakas, diverted by their Parthian cousins from Iran, moved into Gandhara and other parts of Pakistan and Western India. The most famous king of the Sakas, Maues, established himself in Gandhara.[citation needed]

Indo-Parthian Kingdom

By 90 BCE the Parthians had taken control of eastern Iran and, around 50 BCE, they put an end to the last remnants of Greek rule in today's Afghanistan. Eventually an Indo-Parthian dynasty succeeded in taking control of Gandhara. The Parthians continued to support Greek artistic traditions. The start of the Gandharan Greco-Buddhist art is dated to about 75–50 BCE. Links between Rome and the Indo-Parthian kingdoms existed.[47] There is archaeological evidence that building techniques were transmitted between the two realms. Christian records claim that around 40 CE Thomas the Apostle visited the Indian subcontinent and encountered the Indo-Parthian king Gondophares.[48]

Kushan Gandhara


Casket of Kanishka the Great, with Buddhist motifs

The Parthian dynasty fell in about 75 to another group from Central Asia. The Kushans, known as Yuezhi in the Chinese source Hou Han Shu (argued by some[who?] to be ethnically Asii) moved from Central Asia to Bactria, where they stayed for a century. Around 75 CE, one of their tribes, the Kushan (Kuṣāṇa), under the leadership of Kujula Kadphises gained control of Gandhara. The Kushan empire began as a Central Asian kingdom, and expanded into Afghanistan and northwestern India in the early centuries CE.[49]

The Kushan period is considered the Golden Period of Gandhara. Peshawar Valley and Taxila are littered with ruins of stupas and monasteries of this period. Gandharan art flourished and produced some of the best pieces of sculpture from the Indian subcontinent. Many monuments were created to commemorate the Jatakas.[citation needed]


Head of a bodhisattva, c. 4th century CE


The Seated Buddha, dating from 300 to 500 AD, was found near Jamal Garhi, and is now on display at the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco.

Gandhara's culture peaked during the reign of the great Kushan king Kanishka the Great (127 CE – 150 CE). The cities of Taxila (Takṣaśilā) at Sirsukh and Purushapura (modern day Peshawar) reached new heights. Purushapura along with Mathura became the capital of the great empire stretching from Central Asia to Northern India with Gandhara being in the midst of it. Emperor Kanishka was a great patron of the Buddhist faith; Buddhism spread from India to Central Asia and the Far East across Bactria and Sogdia, where his empire met the Han Empire of China. Buddhist art spread from Gandhara to other parts of Asia. Under Kanishka, Gandhara became a holy land of Buddhism and attracted Chinese pilgrims eager to view the monuments associated with many Jatakas.[citation needed]

In Gandhara, Mahayana Buddhism flourished and Buddha was represented in human form. Under the Kushans new Buddhists stupas were built and old ones were enlarged. Huge statues of the Buddha were erected in monasteries and carved into the hillsides. Kanishka also built a great 400-foot tower at Peshawar. This tower was reported by Chinese monks Faxian, Song Yun, and Xuanzang who visited the country. This structure was destroyed and rebuilt many times until it was finally destroyed by Mahmud of Ghazni in the 11th century.[citation needed]

Kidarites

The Kidarites conquered Peshawar and parts of northwest Indian subcontinent including Gandhara probably sometime between 390 and 410 from Kushan empire,[50] around the end of the rule of Gupta Emperor Chandragupta II or beginning of the rule of Kumaragupta I.[51] It is probably the rise of the Hephthalites and the defeats against the Sasanians which pushed the Kidarites into northern India. Their last ruler in Gandhara was Kandik, around 500 CE.

Alchon Huns

The Alchon invasion of the Indian subcontinent eradicated the Kidarite Huns who had preceded them by about a century, and contributed to the fall of the Gupta Empire, in a sense bringing an end to Classical India.[52][53]

Hephthalite Empire


Gandhara fortified city depicted in a Buddhist relief

The Hūṇas (as they were known in India) were initially based in the Oxus basin in Central Asia and established their control over Gandhara in the northwestern part of the Indian subcontinent by about 465 CE.[54] From there, they fanned out into various parts of northern, western, and central India. The Hūṇas are mentioned in several ancient texts such as the Rāmāyaṇa, Mahābhārata, Purāṇas, and Kalidasa's Raghuvaṃśa.[55]

Numerous incidents of violence were reported during this period. The Dharmarajika Stupa at Takṣaśilā has evidence of a massacre there by the Huns.[56] Mihirakula is said to have become a "terrible persecutor" of Buddhism which may have contributed to decline of Buddhism in the Gandhara region.[57] Xuanzang tells us that initially Mihirakula was interested in learning about Buddhism, and asked the monks to send him a teacher; the monks insulted him by recommending a servant of his own household for the purpose. This incident is said to have turned Mihirakula virulently anti-Buddhist, although some have suggested the anti-Buddhist reputation was exaggerated. [58] It is possible that Mihirakula, who may have been inclined toward Shaivism (although his coins also have representations of other deities such as the goddess Lakshmi), was inimical toward both Buddhists and Jainas.[59]

The travel records of many Chinese Buddhist pilgrims record that Gandhara was going through a transformation during these centuries. Buddhism was declining, and Hinduism was rising.[citation needed] Faxian traveled around 400, when Prakrit was the language of the people, and Buddhism was flourishing. 100 years later, when Song Yun visited in 520, a different situation was described: the area had been destroyed by the White Huns and was ruled by Lae-Lih, who did not practice the laws of the Buddha. Xuanzang visited India around 644 CE and found Buddhism on the wane in Gandhara and Hinduism in the ascendant. Gandhara was ruled by a king from Kabul, who respected Buddha's law, but Taxila was in ruins, and Buddhist monasteries were deserted.[citation needed]

Later History

Kabul Shahi


Sharing of the Buddha's relics, above a Gandhara fortified city.

After the fall of the Sassanid Empire to the Arabs in 651 CE, the region south of the Hindukush along with Gandhara came under pressure from Muslims. After failure of multiple campaigns by Arabs they failed to extend their rule to Gandhara.[citation needed]

Gandhara was ruled from Kabul by the Kabul Shahi for next 200 years. Sometime in the 9th century the Kabul Shahi were replaced by the Hindu Shahi.

Hindu Shahi and Decline

Main article: Hindu Shahi

Based on various records it is estimated that Hindu Shahi was formed in 850 CE. According to Al-Biruni (973–1048), Kallar, a Brahmin minister, founded the Hindu Shahi dynasty around 843 CE. The dynasty ruled from Kabul, later moved their capital to Udabhandapura. They built great temples all over their kingdoms. Some of these buildings are still in good condition in the Salt Range of the Punjab.[citation needed]

Jayapala was the last great king of the Hindu Shahi dynasty. His empire extended from west of Kabul to the river Sutlej. However, this expansion of Gandhara kingdom coincided with the rise of the powerful Ghaznavid Empire under Sabuktigin. Defeated twice by Sabuktigin and then by Mahmud of Ghazni in the Kabul valley, Jayapala gave his life on a funeral pyre. Anandapala, a son of Jayapala, moved his capital near Nandana in the Salt Range. In 1021 the last king of this dynasty, Trilochanapala, was assassinated by his own troops which spelled the end of Gandhara. Subsequently, some Shahi princes moved to Kashmir and became active in local politics.[citation needed]

The city of Kandahar in Afghanistan is said to have been named after Gandhara. According to H.W. Bellow, an emigrant from the collapsing Gandhara region in the 5th century brought this name to modern Kandahar.

Writing in c. 1030, Al Biruni reported on the devastation caused during the conquest of Gandhara and much of north-west India by Mahmud of Ghazni following his defeat of Jayapala in the Battle of Peshawar at Peshawar in 1001:

Now in the following times no Muslim conqueror passed beyond the frontier of Kâbul and the river Sindh until the days of the Turks, when they seized the power in Ghazna under the Sâmânî dynasty, and the supreme power fell to the lot of Nâṣir-addaula Sabuktagin. This prince chose the holy war as his calling, and therefore called himself al-Ghâzî ("the warrior/invader"). In the interest of his successors he constructed, in order to weaken the Indian frontier, those roads on which afterwards his son Yamin-addaula Maḥmûd marched into India during a period of thirty years and more. God be merciful to both father and son ! Maḥmûd utterly ruined the prosperity of the country, and performed there wonderful exploits, by which the Hindus became like atoms of dust scattered in all directions, and like a tale of old in the mouth of the people. Their scattered remains cherish, of course, the most inveterate aversion towards all Muslims. This is the reason, too, why Hindu sciences have retired far away from those parts of the country conquered by us, and have fled to places which our hand cannot yet reach, to Kashmir, Benares, and other places. And there the antagonism between them and all foreigners receives more and more nourishment both from political and religious sources.[60]

During the closing years of the tenth and the early years of the succeeding century of our era, Mahmud the first Sultan and Musalman of the Turk dynasty of kings who ruled at Ghazni, made a succession of inroads twelve or fourteen in number, into Gandhar – the present Peshawar valley – in the course of his proselytizing invasions of Hindustan.[61]

Fire and sword, havoc and destruction, marked his course everywhere. Gandhar which was styled the Garden of the North was left at his death a weird and desolate waste. Its rich fields and fruitful gardens, together with the canal which watered them (the course of which is still partially traceable in the western part of the plain), had all disappeared. Its numerous stone built cities, monasteries, and topes with their valuable and revered monuments and sculptures, were sacked, fired, razed to the ground, and utterly destroyed as habitations.[61]

Rediscovery


Many stupas, such as the Shingerdar stupa in Ghalegay, are scattered throughout the region near Peshawar.

By the time Gandhara had been absorbed into the empire of Mahmud of Ghazni, Buddhist buildings were already in ruins and Gandhara art had been forgotten. After Al-Biruni, the Kashmiri writer Kalhaṇa wrote his book Rajatarangini in 1151. He recorded some events that took place in Gandhara, and provided details about its last royal dynasty and capital Udabhandapura.

In the 19th century, British soldiers and administrators started taking an interest in the ancient history of the Indian Subcontinent. In the 1830s coins of the post-Ashoka period were discovered, and in the same period Chinese travelogues were translated. Charles Masson, James Prinsep, and Alexander Cunningham deciphered the Kharosthi script in 1838. Chinese records provided locations and site plans for Buddhist shrines. Along with the discovery of coins, these records provided clues necessary to piece together the history of Gandhara. In 1848 Cunningham found Gandhara sculptures north of Peshawar. He also identified the site of Taxila in the 1860s. From then on a large number of Buddhist statues were discovered in the Peshawar valley.

Archaeologist John Marshall excavated at Taxila between 1912 and 1934. He discovered separate Greek, Parthian, and Kushan cities and a large number of stupas and monasteries. These discoveries helped to piece together much more of the chronology of the history of Gandhara and its art.

After 1947 Ahmed Hassan Dani and the Archaeology Department at the University of Peshawar made a number of discoveries in the Peshawar and Swat Valley. Excavation of many of the sites of Gandhara Civilization are being done by researchers from Peshawar and several universities around the world.

[admin]

Part 2 of 2

Language

Main article: Gandhari language

The Gandharan Buddhist texts are both the earliest Buddhist as well as Asian manuscripts discovered so far. Most are written on birch bark and were found in labelled clay pots. Panini has mentioned both the Vedic form of Sanskrit as well as what seems to be Gandhari, a later form of Sanskrit, in his Ashtadhyayi.[citation needed]

Gandhara's language was a Prakrit or "Middle Indo-Aryan" dialect, usually called Gāndhārī. Under the Kushan Empire, Gāndhārī spread into adjoining regions of South and Central Asia. It used the Kharosthi script, which is derived from the Aramaic script, and it died out about in the 3rd century CE, though Indo-Aryan languages like Punjabi, Hindko and Kohistani are still spoken in the region today.[62][63]

Religion

Buddhism

Further information: Silk Road transmission of Buddhism and Gandharan Buddhism


Maitreya Bodhisattva, Gautama Buddha, and Avalokiteśvara Bodhisattva. 2nd–3rd century CE, Gandhāra


Bronze statue of Avalokiteśvara Bodhisattva. Fearlessness mudrā. 3rd century CE, Gandhāra

Mahāyāna Buddhism

Mahāyāna Pure Land sutras were brought from the Gandhāra region to China as early as 147 CE, when the Kushan monk Lokakṣema began translating some of the first Buddhist sutras into Chinese.[64] The earliest of these translations show evidence of having been translated from the Gāndhārī language.[65] Lokakṣema translated important Mahāyāna sūtras such as the Aṣṭasāhasrikā Prajñāpāramitā Sūtra, as well as rare, early Mahāyāna sūtras on topics such as samādhi, and meditation on the Buddha Akṣobhya. Lokaksema's translations continue to provide insight into the early period of Mahāyāna Buddhism. This corpus of texts often includes and emphasizes ascetic practices and forest dwelling, and absorption in states of meditative concentration:[66]

Paul Harrison has worked on some of the texts that are arguably the earliest versions we have of the Mahāyāna sūtras, those translated into Chinese in the last half of the second century AD by the Indo-Scythian translator Lokakṣema. Harrison points to the enthusiasm in the Lokakṣema sūtra corpus for the extra ascetic practices, for dwelling in the forest, and above all for states of meditative absorption (samādhi). Meditation and meditative states seem to have occupied a central place in early Mahāyāna, certainly because of their spiritual efficacy but also because they may have given access to fresh revelations and inspiration.

Some scholars believe that the Mahāyāna Longer Sukhāvatīvyūha Sūtra was compiled in the age of the Kushan Empire in the 1st and 2nd centuries CE, by an order of Mahīśāsaka bhikṣus which flourished in the Gandhāra region.[67][68] However, it is likely that the longer Sukhāvatīvyūha owes greatly to the Mahāsāṃghika-Lokottaravāda sect as well for its compilation, and in this sutra there are many elements in common with the Lokottaravādin Mahāvastu.[67] There are also images of Amitābha Buddha with the bodhisattvas Avalokiteśvara and Mahāsthāmaprāpta which were made in Gandhāra during the Kushan era.[69]

The Mañjuśrīmūlakalpa records that Kaniṣka of the Kushan Empire presided over the establishment of the Mahāyāna Prajñāpāramitā teachings in the northwest.[70] Tāranātha wrote that in this region, 500 bodhisattvas attended the council at Jālandhra monastery during the time of Kaniṣka, suggesting some institutional strength for Mahāyāna in the north-west during this period.[70] Edward Conze goes further to say that Prajñāpāramitā had great success in the north-west during the Kushan period, and may have been the "fortress and hearth" of early Mahāyāna, but not its origin, which he associates with the Mahāsāṃghika branch of Buddhism.[71]

Destruction of Buddhist relics by Taliban

Swat Valley in Pakistan has many Buddhist carvings, and stupas, and Jehanabad contains a Seated Buddha statue.[72] Kushan era Buddhist stupas and statues in Swat valley were demolished after two attempts by the Taliban and the Jehanabad Buddha's face was dynamited.[73][74][75] Only the Buddhas of Bamiyan were larger than the carved giant Buddha statues in Swat near Manglore which the Taliban attacked.[76] The government did nothing to safeguard the statue after the initial attempts to destroy the Buddha, which did not cause permanent harm. But when a second attack took place on the statue, the feet, shoulders, and face were demolished.[77] Taliban and looters destroyed many of Pakistan's Buddhist artefacts from the Buddhist Gandhara civilization especially in the Swat Valley.[78]

Buddhist translators

Gandharan Buddhist missionaries were active, with other monks from Central Asia, from the 2nd century CE in the Han-dynasty (202 BC – 220 CE) at China's capital of Luoyang, and particularly distinguished themselves by their translation work. They promoted scriptures from Early Buddhist schools as well as those from the Mahāyāna. These translators included:

• Lokakṣema, a Kushan and the first to translate Mahāyāna scriptures into Chinese (167–186)
• Zhi Yao (fl. 185), a Kushan monk, second generation of translators after Lokakṣema
• Zhi Qian (220–252), a Kushan monk whose grandfather had settled in China during 168–190
• Zhi Yue (fl. 230), a Kushan monk who worked at Nanjing
• Dharmarakṣa (265–313), a Kushan whose family had lived for generations at Dunhuang
• Jñānagupta (561–592), a monk and translator from Gandhāra
• Śikṣānanda (652–710), a monk and translator from Oḍḍiyāna, Gandhāra
• Prajñā (fl. 810), a monk and translator from Kabul, who educated the Japanese Kūkai in Sanskrit texts

Textual finds

The Chinese Buddhist monk Xuanzang visited a Lokottaravāda monastery in the 7th century, at Bamiyan, Afghanistan. The site of this monastery has since been rediscovered by archaeologists.[79] Birchbark and palm leaf manuscripts of texts in this monastery's collection, including Mahāyāna sūtras, have been discovered at the site, and these are now located in the Schøyen Collection. Some manuscripts are in the Gāndhārī language and Kharoṣṭhī script, while others are in Sanskrit and written in forms of the Gupta script. Manuscripts and fragments that have survived from this monastery's collection include the following source texts:[79]

• Pratimokṣa Vibhaṅga of the Mahāsāṃghika-Lokottaravāda (MS 2382/269)
• Mahāparinirvāṇa Sūtra, a sūtra from the Āgamas (MS 2179/44)
• Caṃgī Sūtra, a sūtra from the Āgamas (MS 2376)
• Vajracchedikā Prajñāpāramitā Sūtra, a Mahāyāna sūtra (MS 2385)
• Bhaiṣajyaguru Sūtra, a Mahāyāna sūtra (MS 2385)
• Śrīmālādevī Siṃhanāda Sūtra, a Mahāyāna sūtra (MS 2378)
• Pravāraṇa Sūtra, a Mahāyāna sūtra (MS 2378)
• Sarvadharmapravṛttinirdeśa Sūtra, a Mahāyāna sūtra (MS 2378)
• Ajātaśatrukaukṛtyavinodana Sūtra, a Mahāyāna sūtra (MS 2378)
• Śāriputrābhidharma Śāstra (MS 2375/08)

A Sanskrit manuscript of the Bhaiṣajyaguruvaiḍūryaprabhārāja Sūtra was among the textual finds at Gilgit, Pakistan, attesting to the popularity of the Medicine Buddha in Gandhāra.[80] The manuscripts in this find are dated before the 7th century, and are written in the upright Gupta script.[80]

Art

See also: Greco-Buddhist art


Greco-Buddhist Portraits from the site of Hadda, Gandhara, 3rd century, Guimet Museum

Gandhāra is noted for the distinctive Gandhāra style of Buddhist art, which shows influence of Parthian, Scythian, Roman, Graeco-Bactrian and local Indian influences from the Gangetic Valley.[81] This development began during the Parthian Period (50 BCE–75 CE). The Gandhāran style flourished and achieved its peak during the Kushan period, from the 1st to the 5th centuries. It declined and was destroyed after the invasion of the White Huns in the 5th century. Siddhartha shown as a bejeweled prince (before the Sidhartha renounces palace life) is a common motif.[82]

Stucco, as well as stone, were widely used by sculptors in Gandhara for the decoration of monastic and cult buildings.[82] Stucco provided the artist with a medium of great plasticity, enabling a high degree of expressiveness to be given to the sculpture. Sculpting in stucco was popular wherever Buddhism spread from Gandhara – Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, Central Asia, and China.[citation needed]

Buddhist imagery combined with some artistic elements from the cultures of the Hellenistic world. An example is the youthful Buddha, his hair in wavy curls, similar to statutes of Apollo.[82]

Sacred artworks and architectural decorations used limestone for stucco composed by a mixture of local crushed rocks (i.e. schist and granite which resulted compatible with the outcrops located in the mountains northwest of Islamabad.[83]


Standing Bodhisattva (1st–2nd century)


Buddha head (2nd century)


Buddha head (4th–6th century)


Buddha in acanthus capital


The Greek god Atlas, supporting a Buddhist monument, Hadda


The Bodhisattva Maitreya (2nd century)


Wine-drinking and music, Hadda (1st–2nd century)


Maya's white elephant dream (2nd–3rd century)


The birth of Siddharta (2nd–3rd century)


The Great Departure from the Palace (2nd–3rd century)


The end of ascetism (2nd–3rd century)


The Buddha preaching at the Deer Park in Sarnath (2nd–3rd century)


Scene of the life of the Buddha (2nd–3rd century)


The death of the Buddha, or parinirvana (2nd–3rd century)


A sculpture from Hadda, (3rd century)


The Bodhisattva and Chandeka, Hadda (5th century)


The Buddha and Vajrapani under the guise of Herakles


Hellenistic decorative scrolls from Hadda, Afghanistan


Hellenistic scene, Gandhara (1st century)


A stone plate (1st century).


"Laughing boy" from Hadda


Bodhisattva seated in meditation

Important Gandharans

Main article: list of people from Gandhara

Important people from ancient region of Gandhara are as follows;

• Pāṇini (4th century BCE), he was a Sanskrit philologist, grammarian, and a revered scholar from Gandhara. Pāṇini is known for his text Aṣṭādhyāyī, a sutra-style treatise on Sanskrit grammar.
• Chanakya (4th century BCE), he was an ancient Gandharan teacher, philosopher, economist, jurist and royal advisor. Chanakya assisted the first Mauryan emperor Chandragupta in his rise to power, and his work Arthashastra is considered Pioneer of field of political science in India.


Chanakya

• Garab Dorje (1st century CE), founder of Dzogchen (Great Perfection) tradition.
• Kumāralāta (3rd century), Kumāralāta was the founder of Sautrāntika school of Buddhism.
• Vasubandhu (4th century), Vasubandhu is considered one of the most influential thinkers in the Gandharan Buddhist philosophical tradition. In Jōdo Shinshū, he is considered the Second Patriarch; in Chan Buddhism, he is the 21st Patriarch. His writing Abhidharmakośakārikā ("Commentary on the Treasury of the Abhidharma") is widely used in Tibetan and East Asian Buddhism.


Vasubandhu: Wood, 186 cm height, about 1208, Kofukuji Temple, Nara, Japan
Part of a series on

• Asanga (4th century), he was "one of the most important spiritual figures" of Mahayana Buddhism and the "founder of the Yogachara school". His book Mahāyānasaṃgraha (MSg) is the key work of the Yogācāra school of Mahāyāna Buddhist philosophy.
• Padmasambhāva (8th century), he is considered the Second Buddha by the Nyingma school, the oldest Buddhist school in Tibet known as "the ancient one".

Major cities

Major cities of ancient Gandhara are as follows:

• Puṣkalavati (Charsadda), Pakistan
• Takshashila (Taxila), Pakistan
• Puruṣapura (Peshawer), Pakistan
• Sagala (Sialkot), Pakistan
• Oddiyana (Swat), Pakistan
• Chiniotis (Chiniot), Pakistan
• Kapisi (Bagram), Afghanistan

Timeline

• c. 2300 – c. 1400 BCE Indus Valley civilization
• c. 1400 – c. 800 BCE Gandhara grave culture
• c. 1200 – c. 800 BCE Gandhari people mentioned in Rigveda and Atharvaveda.
• c. 800 – c. 518 BCE Gandhara Kingdom
• c. 518 – c. 326 BCE Persian Empire. Under direct Persian control and/or local control under Achaemenid suzerainty.
• c. 326 – c. 305 BCE Occupied by Alexander the Great and Macedonian generals
• c. 305 – c. 185 BCE Controlled by the Maurya dynasty, founded by Chandragupta. Converted to Buddhism under King Ashoka (273–232 BC)
• c. 185 – c. 97 BCE Under control of the Indo-Greek Kingdom, with some incursions of the Indo-Scythians from around 100 BC
• c. 97 BCE – c. 7 CE Saka (Indo-Scythian) Rule
• c. 7 – c. 75 CE Parthian invasion and Indo-Parthian Kingdom, Rule of Commander Aspavarman?.
• c. 75 – c. 230 CE Kushan Empire
• c. 230 – c. 440 CE Kushanshas under Persian Sassanid suzerainty
• c. 450 – c. 565 CE White Huns (Hephthalites)
• c. 565 – c. 644 CE Nezak kingdom, ruled from Kapisa and Udabhandapura
• c. 644 – c. 870 CE Kabul Shahi, ruled from Kabul
• c. 870 – 1021 CE Hindu Shahi, ruled from Udabhandapura
• c. 1021 – c. 1100 CE Conquered and controlled by the Ghaznavid empire

See also

• Gandhari people
• History of India
• History of Pakistan
• Kambojas
• Kashmir Smast
• Mahajanapadas
• Mankiala

Notes

1. NOTE: See long discussion under mahajanapada from the Ancient Buddhist text Anguttara Nikaya's list of mahajanapadas.

References

1. Kulke, Professor of Asian History Hermann; Kulke, Hermann; Rothermund, Dietmar (2004). A History of India. Psychology Press. ISBN 978-0-415-32919-4.
2. Warikoo, K. (2004). Bamiyan: Challenge to World Heritage. Third Eye. ISBN 978-81-86505-66-3.
3. Hansen, Mogens Herman (2000). A Comparative Study of Thirty City-state Cultures: An Investigation. Kgl. Danske Videnskabernes Selskab. ISBN 978-87-7876-177-4.
4. Neelis, Early Buddhist Transmission and Trade Networks 2010, p. 232.
5. Eggermont, Alexander's Campaigns in Sind and Baluchistan 1975, pp. 175–177.
6. Badian, Ernst (1987), "Alexander at Peucelaotis", The Classical Quarterly, 37 (1): 117–128, doi:10.1017/S0009838800031712, JSTOR 639350
7. Eggermont, Alexander's Campaigns in Sind and Baluchistan (1975, p. 176, 177): "One should, therefore, be careful to distinguish the limited geographical unit of Gandhāra from the political one bearing the same name."
8. Kurt A. Behrendt (2007), The Art of Gandhara in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, pp.4-5,91
9. * Schmidt, Karl J. (1995). An Atlas and Survey of South Asian History, p.120: "In addition to being a center of religion for Buddhists, as well as Hindus, Taxila was a thriving center for art, culture, and learning."
 Srinivasan, Doris Meth (2008). "Hindu Deities in Gandharan art," in Gandhara, The Buddhist Heritage of Pakistan: Legends, Monasteries, and Paradise, pp.130-143: "Gandhara was not cut off from the heartland of early Hinduism in the Gangetic Valley. The two regions shared cultural and political connections and trade relations and this facilitated the adoption and exchange of religious ideas. [...] It is during the Kushan Era that flowering of religious imagery occurred. [...] Gandhara often introduced its own idiosyncratic expression upon the Buddhist and Hindu imagery it had initially come in contact with."
 Blurton, T. Richard (1993). Hindu Art, Harvard University Press: "The earliest figures of Shiva which show him in purely human form come from the area of ancient Gandhara" (p.84) and "Coins from Gandhara of the first century BC show Lakshmi [...] four-armed, on a lotus." (p.176)
10. "Rigveda 1.126:7, English translation by Ralph TH Griffith".
11. Arthur Anthony Macdonell (1997). A History of Sanskrit Literature. Motilal Banarsidass. pp. 130–. ISBN 978-81-208-0095-3.
12. "UW Press: Ancient Buddhist Scrolls from Gandhara". Retrieved April 2018.
13. Mohiuddin, Yasmeen Niaz (2007). Pakistan: A Global Studies Handbook. ABC-CLIO. ISBN 9781851098019.
14. Some sounds are omitted in the writing of Old Persian, and are shown with a raised letter.Old Persian p.164Old Persian p.13. In particular Old Persian nasals such as "n" were omitted in writing before consonants Old Persian p.17Old Persian p.25
15. Perfrancesco Callieri, INDIA ii. Historical Geography, Encyclopaedia Iranica, 15 December 2004.
16. Herodotus Book III, 89-95
17. Thomas Watters (1904). "On Yuan Chwang's travels in India, 629–645 A.D." Royal Asiatic Society. p. 200. Taken as Gandhavat the name is explained as meaning hsiang-hsing or "scent-action" from the word gandha which means scent, small, perfume. At the Internet Archive.
18. Adrian Room (1997). Placenames of the World. McFarland. ISBN 9780786418145. Kandahar. City, south central Afghanistan At Google Books.
19. Macdonell, Arthur Anthony; Keith, Arthur Berriedale (1995). Vedic Index of Names and Subjects. Vol. 1. Motilal Banarsidass Publishers. p. 219. ISBN 9788120813328. At Google Books.
20. "Gandara - Livius".
21. Herodotus (1920). "3.102.1". Histories. "4.44.2". Histories (in Greek). With an English translation by A. D. Godley. "3.102.1". Histories. "4.44.2". Histories. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. At the Perseus Project.
22. "The Book Of Duarte Barbosa Vol. 1". Internet Archive. p. 136, footnote 2. 1918.
23. "Alexandria in Arachosia (Kandahar) - Livius". http://www.livius.org. Retrieved 23 November 2019.
24. Eggermont, Pierre Herman Leonard (1975), Alexander's Campaigns in Sind and Baluchistan and the Siege of the Brahmin Town of Harmatelia, Peeters Publishers, pp. 175–177, ISBN 978-90-6186-037-2
25. "Catalogue of coins in the Punjab museum, Lahore". 1914.
26. Olivieri, Luca M., Roberto Micheli, Massimo Vidale, and Muhammad Zahir, (2019). 'Late Bronze - Iron Age Swat Protohistoric Graves (Gandhara Grave Culture), Swat Valley, Pakistan (n-99)', in Narasimhan, Vagheesh M., et al., "Supplementary Materials for the formation of human populations in South and Central Asia", Science 365 (6 September 2019), pp. 137-164.
27. Coningham, Robin, and Mark Manuel, (2008). "Kashmir and the Northwest Frontier", Asia, South, in Encyclopedia of Archaeology 2008, Elsevier, p. 740.
28. Narasimhan, Vagheesh M., et al. (2019). "The formation of human populations in South and Central Asia", in Science 365 (6 September 2019), p. 11: "...we estimate the date of admixture into the Late Bronze Age and Iron Age individuals from the Swat District of northernmost South Asia to be, on average, 26 generations before the date that they lived, corresponding to a 95% confidence interval of ~1900 to 1500 BCE..."
29. Macdonell, Arthur Anthony; Keith, Arthur Berriedale (1912). Vedic Index of Names and Subjects. John Murray. pp. 218–219.
30. Chattopadhyaya, Sudhakar (1978). Reflections on the Tantras. Motilal Banarsidass Publishers. p. 4.
31. Macdonell & Keith 1912, p. 218-219, 432.
32. Higham, Charles (2014), Encyclopedia of Ancient Asian Civilizations, Infobase Publishing, pp. 209–, ISBN 978-1-4381-0996-1
33. Khoinaijam Rita Devi (1 January 2007). History of ancient India: on the basis of Buddhist literature. Akansha Publishing House. ISBN 978-81-8370-086-3.
34. O. Bopearachchi, “Premières frappes locales de l’Inde du Nord-Ouest: nouvelles données,” in Trésors d’Orient: Mélanges offerts à Rika Gyselen, Fig. 1 CNG Coins
35. Bopearachchi, Osmund. Coin Production and Circulation in Central Asia and North-West India (Before and after Alexander's Conquest). pp. 300–301.
36. "US Department of Defense". Archived from the original on 10 June 2020. Retrieved 7 October 2018.
37. Errington, Elizabeth; Trust, Ancient India and Iran; Museum, Fitzwilliam (1992). The Crossroads of Asia: transformation in image and symbol in the art of ancient Afghanistan and Pakistan. Ancient India and Iran Trust. pp. 57–59. ISBN 9780951839911.
38. Bopearachchi, Osmund. Coin Production and Circulation in Central Asia and North-West India (Before and after Alexander's Conquest). pp. 308–.
39. Rafi U. Samad, The Grandeur of Gandhara: The Ancient Buddhist Civilization of the Swat, Peshawar, Kabul and Indus Valleys. Algora Publishing, 2011, p. 32 ISBN 0875868592
40. Mukerjee, R. K. History and Culture of Indian People, The Age of Imperial Unity, Foreign Invasion. p. 46.
41. Curtius in McCrindle, p. 192, J. W. McCrindle; History of Punjab, Vol I, 1997, p 229, Punjabi University, Patiala (editors): Fauja Singh, L. M. Joshi; Kambojas Through the Ages, 2005, p. 134, Kirpal Singh.
42. Revue des etudes grecques 1973, p 131, Ch-Em Ruelle, Association pour l'encouragement des etudes grecques en France.
43. Early Indian Economic History, 1973, pp 237, 324, Rajaram Narayan Saletore.
44. Myths of the Dog-man, 199, p 119, David Gordon White; Journal of the Oriental Institute, 1919, p 200; Journal of Indian Museums, 1973, p 2, Museums Association of India; The Pāradas: A Study in Their Coinage and History, 1972, p 52, Dr B. N. Mukherjee – Pāradas; Journal of the Department of Sanskrit, 1989, p 50, Rabindra Bharati University, Dept. of Sanskrit- Sanskrit literature; The Journal of Academy of Indian Numismatics & Sigillography, 1988, p 58, Academy of Indian Numismatics and Sigillography – Numismatics; Cf: Rivers of Life: Or Sources and Streams of the Faiths of Man in All Lands, 2002, p 114, J. G. R. Forlong.
45. Journal of the Oriental Institute, 1919, p 265, Oriental Institute (Vadodara, India) – Oriental studies; For Kuru-Kamboja connections, see Dr Chandra Chakraberty's views in: Literary history of ancient India in relation to its racial and linguistic affiliations, pp 14,37, Vedas; The Racial History of India, 1944, p 153, Chandra Chakraberty – Ethnology; Paradise of Gods, 1966, p 330, Qamarud Din Ahmed – Pakistan.
46. Ancient India, History of India for 1000 years, four Volumes, Vol I, 1938, pp 38, 98 Dr T. L. Shah.
47. Rowland, Benjamin 1945 'Ganhdara and Early Christian Art: Buddha Palliatus', American Journal of Archaeology 49.4, 445–8 [1]
48. Bracey, R 'Pilgrims Progress' Brief Guide to Kushan History
49. Singh, Upinder (25 September 2017). Political Violence in Ancient India. p. 166. ISBN 9780674981287.
50. Dani, Ahmad Hasan; Litvinsky, B. A. (1996). History of Civilizations of Central Asia: The crossroads of civilizations, A.D. 250 to 750. UNESCO. p. 122. ISBN 9789231032110.
51. "The entry of the Kidarites into India may firmly be placed some time round about the end of rule of Candragupta II or beginning of the rule of Kumaragupta I (circa 410-420 a.d.)" in Gupta, Parmeshwari Lal; Kulashreshtha, Sarojini (1994). Kuṣāṇa Coins and History. D.K. Printworld. p. 122. ISBN 9788124600177.
52. "The Alchon Huns....established themselves as overlords of northwestern India, and directly contributed to the downfall of the Guptas" in Neelis, Jason (2010). Early Buddhist Transmission and Trade Networks: Mobility and Exchange Within and Beyond the Northwestern Borderlands of South Asia. BRILL. p. 162. ISBN 9789004181595.
53. Bakker, Hans (2017), Monuments of Hope, Gloom and Glory in the Age of the Hunnic Wars: 50 years that changed India (484–534), Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences, Section 4, ISBN 978-90-6984-715-3
54. Atreyi Biswas (1971). The Political History of the Hūṇas in India. Munshiram Manoharlal Publishers. ISBN 9780883863015.
55. Upendra Thakur (1967). The Hūṇas in India. Chowkhamba Prakashan. pp. 52–55.
56. Upinder Singh (2017). Political Violence in Ancient India. Harvard University Press. p. 241. ISBN 9780674981287.
57. Grousset, Rene (1970). The Empire of the Steppes. Rutgers University Press. pp. 69–71. ISBN 0-8135-1304-9.
58. Upinder Singh (2017). Political Violence in Ancient India. Harvard University Press. pp. 241–242. ISBN 9780674981287.
59. Upinder Singh (2017). Political Violence in Ancient India. Harvard University Press. pp. 241–242. ISBN 9780674981287.
60. Alberuni's India. (c. 1030 CE). Translated and annotated by Edward C. Sachau in two volumes. Kegana Paul, Trench, Trübner, London. (1910). Vol. I, p. 22.
61. Henry Walter Bellow. The races of Afghanistan Being a brief account of the principal nations inhabiting that country. Asian Educational services. p. 73.
62. Foundation, Encyclopaedia Iranica. "Welcome to Encyclopaedia Iranica". iranicaonline.org. Retrieved 20 July 2021.
63. West, Barbara A. (2010). Encyclopedia of the Peoples of Asia and Oceania. Infobase Publishing. p. 285. ISBN 9781438119137. The term Hindko as used in Pakistan refers to speakers of Indo-Aryan languages who live among the primarily Iranian Pashtuns of the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP). The origins of the term refer merely to "Indian speaking" rather than to any particular ethnic group. Nonetheless there are people in the region who claim Hindko identity and who trace their heritage back nearly 2,000 years to the inhabitants of the ancient city of Gandhara.
64. "The Korean Buddhist Canon: A Descriptive Catalog (T. 361)".
65. Mukherjee, Bratindra Nath. India in Early Central Asia. 1996. p. 15
66. Williams, Paul. Mahāyāna Buddhism: The Doctrinal Foundations. 2008. p. 30
67. Nakamura, Hajime. Indian Buddhism: A Survey With Biographical Notes. 1999. p. 205
68. Williams, Paul. Mahāyāna Buddhism: The Doctrinal Foundations. 2008. p. 239
69. "Gandharan Sculptural Style: The Buddha Image". Archived from the original on 18 December 2014. Retrieved 7 February 2016.
70. Ray, Reginald. Buddhist Saints in India: A Study in Buddhist Values and Orientations. 1999. p. 410
71. Ray, Reginald. Buddhist Saints in India: A Study in Buddhist Values and Orientations. 1999. p. 426
72. "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 19 October 2017. Retrieved 1 September 2015.
73. Malala Yousafzai (8 October 2013). I Am Malala: The Girl Who Stood Up for Education and Was Shot by the Taliban. Little, Brown. pp. 123–124. ISBN 978-0-316-32241-6. The Taliban destroyed the Buddhist statues and stupas where we played Kushan kings haram Jehanabad Buddha.
74. Wijewardena, W.A. (17 February 2014). "'I am Malala': But then, we all are Malalas, aren't we?". Daily FT.
75. Wijewardena, W.A (17 February 2014). "'I am Malala': But Then, We All Are Malalas, Aren't We?". Colombo Telegraph.
76. "Attack on giant Pakistan Buddha". BBC NEWS. 12 September 2007.
77. "Another attack on the giant Buddha of Swat". AsiaNews.it. 10 November 2007.
78. "Taliban and traffickers destroying Pakistan's Buddhist heritage". AsiaNews.it. 22 October 2012.
79. "Schøyen Collection: Buddhism". Retrieved 23 June 2012.
80. Bakshi, S.R. Kashmir: History and People. 1998. p. 194
81. Behrendt, Kurt (2011). Gandharan Buddhism: Archaeology, Art, and Texts. UBC Press. p. 241. ISBN 978-0774841283. Retrieved 16 August 2019.
82. "Buddhism and Buddhist Art".
83. Carlo Rosa; Thomas Theye; Simona Pannuzi (2019). "Geological overwiew of Gandharan sites and petrographical analysis on Gandharan stucco and clay artefacts" (pdf). Restauro Archeologico. Firenze University Press. 27 (1): Abstract. doi:10.13128/RA-25095. ISSN 1724-9686. OCLC 8349098991. Archived from the original on 15 February 2020. Retrieved 15 February 2020 – via archive.is. {{cite journal}}: External link in |via= (help) on DOAJ

Sources

• Beal, Samuel. 1884. Si-Yu-Ki: Buddhist Records of the Western World, by Hiuen Tsiang. 2 vols. Trans. by Samuel Beal. London. Reprint: Delhi. Oriental Books Reprint Corporation. 1969.
• Beal, Samuel. 1911. The Life of Hiuen-Tsiang by the Shaman Hwui Li, with an Introduction containing an account of the Works of I-Tsing. Trans. by Samuel Beal. London. 1911. Reprint: Munshiram Manoharlal, New Delhi. 1973.
• Bellew, H.W. Kashmir and Kashgar. London, 1875. Reprint: Sang-e-Meel Publications 1999 ISBN 969-35-0738-X
• Caroe, Sir Olaf, The Pathans, Oxford University Press, Karachi, 1958.
• Eggermont, Pierre Herman Leonard (1975), Alexander's Campaigns in Sind and Baluchistan and the Siege of the Brahmin Town of Harmatelia, Peeters Publishers, ISBN 978-90-6186-037-2
• Herodotus (1920). Histories (in Greek and English). With an English translation by A. D. Godley. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
• Hill, John E. 2003. "Annotated Translation of the Chapter on the Western Regions according to the Hou Hanshu". 2nd Edition: Through the Jade Gate to Rome: A Study of the Silk Routes, 1st to 2nd Centuries CE. 2015. John E. Hill. Volume I, ISBN 978-1500696702; Volume II, ISBN 978-1503384620. CreateSpace, North Charleston, S.C.
• Hussain, J. An Illustrated History of Pakistan, Oxford University Press, Karachi, 1983.
• Legge, James. Trans. and ed. 1886. A Record of Buddhistic Kingdoms: being an account by the Chinese monk Fâ-hsien of his travels in India and Ceylon (A.D. 399–414) in search of the Buddhist Books of Discipline. Reprint: Dover Publications, New York. 1965.
• Neelis, Jason (2010), Early Buddhist Transmission and Trade Networks: Mobility and Exchange Within and Beyond the Northwestern Borderlands of South Asia, BRILL, ISBN 978-90-04-18159-5
• Shaw, Isobel. Pakistan Handbook, The Guidebook Co., Hong Kong, 1989
• Watters, Thomas. 1904–5. On Yuan Chwang's Travels in India (A.D. 629–645). Reprint: Mushiram Manoharlal Publishers, New Delhi. 1973.

Further reading

• Lerner, Martin (1984). The flame and the lotus: Indian and Southeast Asian art from the Kronos collections. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. ISBN 0-87099-374-7.
• Rehman, Abdur (2009). "A Note on the Etymology of Gandhāra". Bulletin of the Asia Institute. 23: 143–146. JSTOR 24049432.
• Filigenzi, Anna (2000). "Reviewed Work: A Catalogue of the Gandhāra Sculpture in the British Museum, Vol. I: Text, Vol. II: Plates by Wladimir Zwalf". Wladimir Zwalf, Review by: Anna Filigenzi. Istituto Italiano per l'Africa e l'Oriente (IsIAO). 50 (1/4): 584–586. JSTOR 29757475.

External links

• Gandharan Connections Project (Cambridge, 2016-2021)
• Livius.org: Gandara
• The Buddhist Manuscript project
• University of Washington's Gandharan manuscript
• Coins of Gandhara janapada
• Gandhara Civilization- National Fund for Cultural Heritage (Pakistan)

[admin]

Part 1 of 7

An Essay on the Hindu History of Cashmir [Raja Taringini of Calhana Pandit]
by Horace Hayman Wilson, Esq., Sec. A.S.
Asiatic Researches, Volume 15
1825
pgs. 1-119

THE only Sanscrit composition yet discovered, to which the title of History, can with any propriety be applied, is the Raja Taringini, a history of Cashmir. This work was first introduced to the knowledge of the Mohammedans by the learned minister of Acber, Abulfazl, but the summary which he has given of its contents, was taken as he informs us from a Persian translation of the Hindu original, prepared by order of Acber. The example set by that liberal Monarch, introduced amongst his successors, and the literary men of their reigns, a fashion of remodelling, or retranslating the same work, and continuing the History of the Province, to the periods at which they wrote.

The earliest work of this description, after that which was prepared by order of Acber, is one mentioned by Bernier, who states an abridged translation of the Raja Taringini into Persian, to have been made, by command of Jehangir; he adds that he was engaged upon rendering this into French, but we have never heard anything more of his translation: at a subsequent period, mention is made in a later composition, of two similar works, by Mulla Husein, Kari, or the reader, and by Hyder Malec, Chadwaria* [A summary taken from this work, and which appears to have been the one alluded to by Bernier, is given in the Description de l'Inde from Tieffenthaler (1. 89.)] whilst the work, in which this notice occurs, the Wakiat-i-Cashmir was written in the time of Mohammed Shah, as was another History of the Province, entitled the Nawadir-ul-Akhbar. The fashion seems to have continued to a very recent date, as Ghulam Husein† [Seir Mutakherin— 3. 210.]  notices the composition of a History of Cashmir having been entrusted to various learned men, by order of Jivana the Sich, then Governor of the Province, and we shall have occasion to specify one History of as recent a date, as the reign of Shah-Alem.

The ill directed and limited enquiries of the first European settlers in India, were not likely to have traced the original of these Mohammedan compositions, and its existence was little adverted to, until the translation of the Ayia Acberi by the late Mr. Gladwin was published. The abstract then given naturally excited curiosity, and stimulated enquiry, but the result was unsatisfactory, and a long period intervened before the original work was discovered.‡ [A. R. i. 431; and iv. 188.] Sir Wm. Jones was unable to meet with it, although the history of India from the Sanscrit-Cashmir authorities, was amongst the tasks his undaunted and indefatigable intellect had planned, and it was not until the year 1805, that Mr. Colebrooke§ [A. R. ix. 294.] was successful in his search. At that time he procured a copy of the work from the heirs of a Brahman, who died in Calcutta, and about the same time, or shortly afterwards, another transcript of the Raja Taringini was obtained by the late Mr. Speke from Lucknow. To these two copies I have been able to add a third, which was brought for sale in Calcutta; and I have only to add, that both in that city and at Benares, I have been hitherto unable to meet with any other transcript of this curious work.

The Raja Taringini has hitherto been regarded as one entire composition: it is however in fact a series of compositions, written by different authors, and at different periods; a circumstance that gives greater value to its contents, as with the exception of the early periods of the history, the several authors may be regarded almost as the chroniclers of their own times. The first of the series is the Raja Taringini of Calhana Pandit, the son of Champaca, who states his having made use of earlier authorities, and gives an interesting enumeration of several which he had employed. The list includes the general works of Suvrata and Narendra; the History of Gonerda and hrs three successors, by Hela Raja, an Ascetic; of Lava, and his successors to Asoca, by Padma Mihira; and of Asoca and the four next princes by Sri Chhavillacara. He also cites the authority of Nila Muni, meaning probably the Nila Purana, a Purana known only in Cashmir; the whole forming a remarkable proof of the attention bestowed by Cashmirian writers upon the history of their native country: an attention the more extraordinary, from the contrast it affords, to the total want of historical enquiry in any other part of the extensive countries peopled by the Hindus. The history of Calhana commences with the fabulous ages, and comes down to the reign of Sangrama Deva, the nephew of Didda Rani, in Saca 949 or A.D. 1027, approaching to what appears to have been his own date, Saca 1070 or A.D. 1148.

The next work is the Rajavali of Jona Raja, of which I regret to state I have not yet been able to meet with a copy. It probably begins where Calhana stops, and it closes about the time of Zein ul Ab-ad-din, or the year of the Hijra 815, as we know from the next of the series.

The Sri Jaina Raja Taringini is the work of Sri Vara Pandita, the pupil of Jona Raja, whose work it professes to continue, so as to form with it, and the history of Calhana, a complete record of the Kingdom of Cashmir. It begins with Zein ul Ab-ed-din, whose name the unprepared reader would scarcely recognise, in its Nagari transfiguration, of Sri Jaina Ollabha Dina, and closes with the accession of Fatteh Shah, in the year of the Hijra 882, or A.D. 1477. The name which the author has chosen to give his work of Jaina Taringini has led to a very mistaken notion of its character: it has been included amongst the productions of Jaina literature, whilst in truth the author is an orthodox worshipper of Siva, and evidently intends the epithet he has adopted as complimentary to the memory of Zein ul Ab-ed din, a prince who was a great friend to his Hindu subjects, and a liberal patron of Hindu letters, and literary men.

The fourth work, which completes the aggregate current under the name of Raja Taringini, was written in the time of Acber, expressly to continue to the latest date, the productions of the author's predecessors, and to bring the history down to the time at which Cashmir became a province of Acber's empire. It begins accordingly where Sri Vara ended, or with Fatteh Shah, and closes with Nazek-Shah; the historian apparently, and judiciously, avoiding to notice the fate of the kingdom during Hamayun's retreat into Persia. The work is called the Raja vali Pataca, and is the production of Punya or Prajnya Bhatta.

Of the works thus described, the manuscript of Mr. Speke, containing the compositions of Calhana and Sri Vara, came into my possession at the sale of that gentleman's effects. Of Mr. Colebrooke's manuscript, containing also the work of Punya Bhatta, I was permitted by that gentleman, with the liberality I have had former occasion to acknowledge, to have a transcript made; and the third manuscript, containing the same three works, I have already stated I procured by accidental purchase. Neither of the three comprises the work of Jona Raja, and but one of them, the transcript of Mr. Colebrooke's manuscript, has the third Tarang or section of CALHANA's history. The three manuscripts are all very inaccurate; so far so indeed, that a close translation of them, if desirable, would be impracticable. The leading points, however, may be depended upon, agreeing not only in the different copies, but with the circumstances narrated in the Compendium of Abulfazl, and in the Mohammedan or Persian histories which I have been able to procure.

The Persian works which I have consulted are the following: the Nawa-dir-ul Akhhar, the work of Refiuddin Mohammed, the Wakiat-i-Cashmir by Mohammed Azim, the Tarikh Cashmir of Narayan Cul, and the Goheri Alem Tohfet us shahi, by Badia ud-din. The first of these authors has the advantage of being a Cashmirian by birth, although descended of a Ballch family. He alludes to the work of Calhana Pandit, which he avows his purpose of correcting where at variance with the true faith; and it must be acknowledged, that he has altered without remorse, although it may be questioned, whether he has corrected. His chief disagreements are those of omission however, as in the Hindu portion of his history, he occasionally passes over whole dynasties, and connects the disjuncta membra of his original, with very little regard to accuracy of time or descent. The date of his work is 1133 of the Hijra, in the reign of Mohammed Shah.

The Wakiat-i-Cashmir contains a much fuller account of the Province, and is a closer approximation to the Hindu original. The History follows the order of the Sanscrit work very regularly, but the work is not confined to the History of Cashmir, two of the three portions into which it is divided being appropriated to the description of the country, its natural and artificial curiosities, and the religious and literary characters it has given birth to since the establishment of Islam. Mohammed Azim, the author, calls himself the son of Kheir-uz-zeman Khan, and writes in the year of the Hijra 1140: living therefore, as well as Rafi-ad-din, in the Reign of Mohammed Shah. The same reign produced the third work, which is professedly a translation of the Raja Taringinii. It has all the usual defects of oriental translation, and follows the original with a whimsical interchange of fidelity and variation; some passages, especially those of a legendary character, being minutely given, whilst others of more historical importance are imperfectly rendered or altogether omitted. The author, Narayan Cul, was a Hindu Brahman, and a native of Cashmir.

The last work enumerated is of very modern date, having been written in the time of the last Shah Alem: the author Bedia-ud-din was the son of Mohammed Azim, the author of the Wakiat, whose omissions he purposes to supply, from authorities peculiarly his own, and of which he had subsequently become possessed. He particularly specifies the Nur Namah, an ancient history of Cashmir, written by Sheikh Nur-ad-din Wali in the Cashmirian language, and rendered into Persian by Moulavi Ahmed Almeh, in the reign of Zein ul ab-ad-din. A copy of this the author had procured from one of the descendants of the last independent princes of Cashmir, who were settled as private individuals in Akberabad or Agra; and it is to be presumed that to this work Bedia-ud-din owes the extraordinary additions which he has made occasionally to the labours of his predecessors, and their common original. None of the works above particularised, offer much valuable illustration of the Sanscrit original history; nor do they furnish any additions of historical importance. As well as the summary of Abulfazl however they are very useful in corroborating or explaining many parts of the Sanscrit text, whilst they do comprise a few additional circumstances, which are curious at least in their origin and character, although very questionable in point of probability or truth. The chief value of these works, however, is the notice they take, of the comparatively modern condition of many towns and temples, the foundation of which is commemorated by the Hindu writers, and the existence of which at all, cannot perhaps now be verified, except upon the testimony of these Mohammedan authors; the short interval that has elapsed since their days, having been sufficient to sweep away the vestiges of antiquity, which in their time continued to bear witness to the public spirit, and munificence, of the Hindu Sovereigns of Cashmir.

In the utter darkness which envelopes the history of India previous to the Musselman invasion, the appearance of such a record as that furnished us by the Cashmirian writers acquires an importance, not otherwise derived from the value of the record itself, nor the character of the transactions it commemorates, Its being the sole luminary, however, of the gloomy interval alluded to, renders us naturally curious to follow the track it singly serves to light, and the history of Cashmir, has accordingly attracted the attention of those best competent to have prosecuted the investigation. I have already stated it to be one of the Desiderata of Sir Wm. Jones; and at the time that Mr. Colebrooke announced the discovery of the manuscript, he also declared his intention of giving to the public an account of its contents. The execution of his purpose has probably been impeded by other more important labours, and the too contracted term of Sir Wm. Jones's splendid career, disappointed his hope of performing this, and greater undertakings. A more satisfactory account of the contents of the Raja Taringini than that furnished by Abulfazl is therefore still a desideratum, and in the little probability that now exists of the task being undertaken by living talent more adequate to its accomplishment, I have been induced to prepare, from it chiefly, the following sketch of the Hindu history of Cashmir.

The want of a copy of the connecting series of Jon a Raja, and the occupation of the works of Sri Vara and Punya BHATTA by Musselman transactions, will prevent me, at present at least, from extending the limits of my essay, beyond those of Calhana Pandit, or following any other Hindu guide. His work as a historical composition is clear and consistent, and contains fewer extravagancies than most of the works to which the name of History has been assigned, by the unphilosophical and credulous natives of the East. Like the mass of the Hindu compositions on all subjects, it is written in verse, and as a poem, it contains many passages of merit, both in sentiment and style. The summary of its contents given by Abulfazl is too concise to be of much service, and in the transformation of names occasioned by the difficulty of expressing the Nagari alphabet in Persian characters, excites not unfrequently a doubt, whether the persons named were possessed of Hindu appellations. Farther, it is in many places inaccurate, and it does not therefore preclude a necessity, for some such fuller account of the Raja Taringini and its contents, as is attempted in the essay now submitted to the Society, and which, whilst it follows the order and authority of Calhana Pandit, proposes to comprehend such occasional illustration of his history of Cashmir, as may be derived from the Mohammedan writers above mentioned, or from classical authorities, or more modern investigation.

AN ESSAY ON THE HINDU HISTORY OP CASHMIR.

THE Hindu History of Cashmir commences with the statement, that the beautiful valley forming that kingdom was originally a vast Lake, called Satisaras* [[x], a virtuous woman, and [x], a Lake; the original does not give the etymology, but Abulfazl makes it the Lake of Uma, the wife of Mahadeo, one of whose names, it is true, is Sati in the character of a virtuous spouse. [x] Wak. C. so Abulfazl, Gladwin's translation, ii. 169. Bernier says, les Histoires des anciens rois de Cachemire, veulent que tout ce pays n 'ait ete autrefois qu'un grand Lac [Google translate: the stories of the ancient kings of Cashmere, want this whole country to have once been nothing but a great lake.]. And, according to Forster, the Legends of the country assert that Solomon visited the valley, and finding it covered, except one eminence, with a noxious water, which had no outlet, he opened a passage in the mountains, and gave to Cashmir its beautiful plains. From the general concurrence of the Persian writers, with the account of the Hindu historians, must be excepted Bedia ud-din: he begins with the creation, and brings Adam from Serandip, where all Musselman authorities place him after the fall, to Cashmir. The sovereignty of Cashmir continued in the Line of Seth for 1110 years, when the Hindus conquered the Province under Harinand Raja, and his family ruled it till the period of the deluge. After the flood, Cashmir was peopled by a tribe from Turkestan. The inhabitants were taught the worship of one God, by Moses, who died there, and whose tomb or place of sepulture is still to be seen in Cashmir. The relapse of the Cashmirians into the Hindu idolatry was punished by the local inundation of the province, and the solitary supremacy of the Afrit, Jaladeo, as described in the Wakiat-i-Cashmir. See Appendix No. I. These details are sufficient to give an idea of Bedia ud-din's, or probably of the Sheikh Nur-ad-dins, historical merits.] and this assertion has not only been copied by the Mohammedan writers, but it agrees with the local traditions of the Country, and as far as probability is regarded, has received the sanction of that able geographer Major Rennel.* ["So far am I from doubting the tradition respecting the existence of the Lake that covered Cashmir, that appearances alone would serve to convince me without either the tradition or the history." — Memoir of a Map of Hindoostan, 107.]

The draining of the water from the valley is ascribed, by the Hindu Historians to the Saint Casyapa, the son of Marichi, the son of Brahma, the Cashef or Kasheb of the Mohammedans, according to some of whom, he was not the Hindu Seer, but a Deo or Genie, the servant of Suliman, by whose orders he effected the desiccation of Cashmir. The method of doing this was opening a passage through the mountain at Baramouleh,† [The Wakiat-i-Cashmir has another legend relative to the opening on this occasion of the Baramouleh pass, which is ascribed to Vishnu: the story is not worth quoting, except as a curious specimen of a Mohammedan disposition to enlarge upon Hindu fable: not a syllable of the legend is to be found in the Raja Taringini. See Appendix, No. 1.] by which the water passed off; but the Hindu accounts do not specify the channel by which Casyapa originally drained the Valley. As however it is not improbable that the Valley was really submerged, it is equally possible, as Bernier supposes,‡ ["Pour moi Je ne voudrois nier que toute cette terre neut autrefois ete couverte d' eaux: on le ditbien de la Thessalie, et de quelques autrespays, mais J' ai de la peine a croire que cette ouverture soit 1' ouvrage d'un homme parceque la montagne est tres large et tres haute. Jecroirois plutot que quelque grand teemblement de terre, comme ces lieux y sontassez sujets, auroit fait ouvrir quelque caverne souterraine, ou la montagne se seroit enfoncee." [Google translate: "As for me, I would not deny that all this land was once covered with water: says well of Thessaly, and of some other countries, but I find it hard to believe that this opening is the work of a man because the mountain is very wide and very high. I believe rather than some large earthen building, such as these places are quite subject to, would have to open some subterranean cave, where the mountain would have sunk."] — Voyage de Kachemire. The remark made by Bernier continues applicable to the neighbouring and analogous districts; during the labours of Capt. Hodgson in Gerwhal, in 1817, he noticed forty shocks.] that some natural convulsion rent the confining mountainous barrier, and opened to the waters, an outlet to the plains of the Punjab.

The district thus recovered by Casyapa, was also it is said peopled by him, with the assistance of the superior deities, whom he brought from heaven for that purpose, at the beginning of the seventh or present Manwantara. We must of course subject Cashmir to the same periods of destruction and renovation, as the other parts of the universe, if we wish to reconcile this date with the usual chronology, but as this is not very indispensable, it has been overlooked by the original authority. We also have nothing in the Sanscrit text here, respecting the colony of Brahmins, whom Abulfazl says, he introduced into the province, and from which it might be inferred that he then introduced the Brahmanical religion, an event that probably occurred, as we shall see, at a subsequent period; the worship in Cashmir, being in the mean time apparently that of the Nagas or snake Gods;* [See Appendix, No. 2.] a superstition of very obvious occurrence, amongst the rude inhabitants of a country, recently recovered from the waters, and consequently abounding with the venomous reptiles common to slimy and marshy places.† [With respect to the Leader of the colony, Dr. Hamilton correctly observes, much confusion prevails, arising probably from different persons being designated by the name Casyapa. He has endeavoured to distinguish three of the names. 1st. "Casyapa Muni son of Marichi; 2nd. Kasyapa married to the daughter of Dacsha, also named Tarkshya, who led a colony of civilized people into Cashmir. And 3d. Kasyapa married to the daughters of Vaiswanara, grandson of the preceding." — Genealogies of the Hindus. There is reason to fear however that this distinction can scarcely be made out on original authority. Dr. Hamilton's chronology would rather confirm the assertion of the text that it was the son of Marichi who colonised Cashmir, for he places this sage in the 20th century before the Christian Aera, and it appears not unlikely that Cashmir was colonised about that period.]

Prom the period of the first settlement of Cashmir to the reign of Gonerda, the first prince whose name has been recorded, the country was governed by a succession of 52 kings of the Caurava family, whose reigns formed a period of 1266 years;‡ [So also the Ayin Acberi: the author of the Wakiat Cashmir cites Hindu authority, for a Series of 55 Princes and a period of 1919 years. ] these princes were not worthy of record, says our Hindu author, on account of their disregard of the precepts of the Vedas, and their impure and vicious lives; and he assigns a better reason for their being forgotten, did they ever indeed exist, in this expression, [x] which we may employ Horace to translate, Illacrymabiles urgeutur ignotique longa nocte, carent quia vate sacro. [Google translate: Unlamentable and strangers are hard pressed after a long night, because they lack the sacred bard.]

The blank thus left in the history by the Hindu writer, is partly filled up by Mohammedan authority, and we may therefore here desert our usual guide, to contemplate the series of monarchs, derived from another source. According to Bedia ad-din, after the settlement of the country by Suliman, he left the sovereignty to his cousin, Isaun, who reigned over Cashmir twenty-five years, and was succeeded by his son.

2. Cassalgham, who fixed his capital at Islamabad and reigned nineteen years.

3. MAHERKAZ his son succeeded and reigned thirty years; being childless, he adopted for his son and successor.

4. Bandu or Pandu-khan. The birth of this prince was miraculously effected, his mother becoming pregnant from bathing in a reservoir or tank: his death was equally marvellous, as upon batling himself in the same reservoir, he dissolved, and returned to the element whence he sprang: he is said to have had a most numerous offspring, and to have seen in his life time, no fewer than fifteen thousand descendants: these were the Pandavas, afterwards so celebrated in Indian History.

We may here pause to notice the concurrence of this account, with that which we have already extracted from Hindu authority, of the subjection of Cashmir to a long series of Caurava princes, as these are in the estimation of the Hindus, the offspring of a common ancestor, and virtually the same with the Pandava race. This position of the family in the north west of India, is referred to in many works, and the chief scene of their early exploits is the Punjab, and its vicinity; and these traditions therefore although much embarrassed by uncertainty and fiction, seem to support the idea that this part of India was the native seat of the Pandavas. Besides the positive assertions to this effect in the history of Cashmir, I find, that in an unfinished manuscript essay by Colonel Wilford, and liberally put into my hands by that eminent scholar, he has also particularised Cashmir as the birth place of the Pandavas upon Hindu authority, and we find in classical authors* [Appendix, No. 3.] the realm or city of Panda, or of the Pandavas, in a similar direction, although not precisely the same position: at the same time, it is true, that Curu the progenitor of the Caurava and Pandava races is placed by the Pauranic writers in a more central part of India, and made king of Hastinapur: the five suppositious sons of Pandu were however according to the same authorities actually born in the Himalaya mountains,* [[x] Mahabharat Adi Parva (2. 64.) "Thus the five God-given sons of Pandu grew up in the holy mountain of Himavat, endowed with divine force, with the strength, the gait and prowess of lions, expert archers, lovely as the moon, and graced with every auspicious mark, renowned through the World, and honouring the race of Curu." In the first or Anucramanic portion of the Mahabharat a curious passage occurs relative to the spurious descent of the Pandavas, for when the boys are brought to Hastinapur by the Rishis, their preceptors, some of the citizens say, they cannot be the sons of Pandu, for he has long been dead; [x], the passage is not the less remarkable from its being singular, that is to say, it is not adverted to in the subsequent part of the poem which details the event at length. The Anucramanica is a summary of the whole work, and not impossibly the original, the bulk of the poem being merely a repetition and expansion of the brief narration, which it contains.] whither Pandu with his wife Cunti had accompanied the Rishis, and where the Gods descended to rear posterity for the prince: there can be little doubt therefore, that either the original Caurava family, or a very important branch of it, came from the northwest and mountainous parts of India. † [As one additional argument, the complexion of Pandu may be mentioned; it is said in the Mahabharat that he was named Pandu, pale, from the paleness of his colour. Vyasa says to the younger widow of his late brother [x], Maha, Ad. P.]

To return however to the series of princes enumerated by Bedia Ad-din; we have:

5. Ladi-Khan, son of Pandu-Khan.

6. Ledder-Khan, his son.

7. Sunder-Khan in whose reign the idolatry of the Hindu worship again made its appearance: the prince was slain in endeavouring to obstruct its progress, and was succeeded by

8. Cunder-Khan his son, who reigned thirty-five years.

9. Sunder-Khan, the second. Idolatry was now the national religion, and the king- erected a temple to Sadasiva.

10. TUNDU-KHAN.

11. Beddu-Khan, who reigned 115 years.

15. Mahand-Khan.

13. DURBINASH-KHAN.

14. Deosir-Khan.

15. Tehab-Khan. This prince was attacked and slain by his neighbour and relation, the king of Cabul, who seized upon the throne of Cashmir, and reigned under the name of

16. Calju-Khan; after a reign of seven years he was driven out by his Pandava relatives, who raised to the throne

17. Surkhab-Khan; his reign lasted 191 years.

18. Shermabaram-Khan.

19. Naureng-Khan; this prince was a great conqueror and extended his dominions to the kingdom of China.

20. Barigh-Khan.

21. Gawasheh-Khan.

22. Pandu-Khan the second; he recovered the provinces that had been subject to the crown of Cashmir, and which extended to the shores of the Indian sea.

23. Haris-Khan; his reign lasted 23 years.

24. Sanzil-Khan.

25. Akber-Khan.

26. Jaber-Khan.

27. Nauder-Khan, he introduced the worship of fire.

28. Sanker-Khan, who was attacked and slain by Barra-Raj, a neighbouring chief who headed the Cashmirian nobles driven into rebellion by the tyranny of their king.

The six sons of Sanker-Khan succeeded in due order to their father's sovereignty, and also to his fate. Their accession and deaths were the work of a few hours, whence originated the proverb, said to be still current in Cashmir;

[x]

"One Caldron, on one fire, saw seven kings before the flesh was boiled;"

a proverb, which though not of literal, has been in a general sense, of not inappropriate application, to events of eastern history, of a more authentic character, than the one to which its origin is here ascribed.

29. Bacra-Raj then took possession of Cashmlr, and bequeathed it to his descendants: their names are however unknown, and a blank interval precedes the succession of Augnand the first monarch, with whom all the authorities are agreed to commence, what may be regarded, as the dawn of legitimate historical record.

The list above inserted, although of an obviously fabulous construction, still contains matter to excite curiosity, and awaken some speculation as to the possibility of any part of it being true; it seems very probable that it originates with tradition, and is not altogether unfounded, although no doubt much disfigured, and most probably misplaced: the title of Khan attached to the names, few of which too appear to be Hindu, indicates a race of Tartar princes, and we shall have occasion to notice the presence of Tartar rulers in Cashmir, accompanied with something like chasms in the history, which Bedia ad-din's catalogue would enable us to fill, conveniently enough: if we might conjecture from the names of several princes on the west of India, the invasion of Alexander was the period of Tartar rule in this direction, as Oxycanus and Musicanus might easily be resolved into Tartar appellations with the designation Khan attached:* [I am not disposed to attach any importance to etymological conjectures in general, and merely adduce such analogies, as possible identifications in the absence of better guides; at the same time I am very much disposed to think with the learned Dr. Vincent, that "most, if not all of the Indian names, which occur in classical authors, are capable of being traced to native appellations, existing at this day among the Hindoos, at least, if not the Moguls." (Voyage of Nearchus, 129.) Lieut. Pottinger finds a similarity between Musicanus and Mop-Sehwan, the names of two contiguous districts in Sind, and usually connected in utterance. They lie exactly, where we are told, the Greeks found that chief's territories. Travels in Biloochistan.] it may be resting too much on conjecture only, however, to give a period of existence to what are perhaps after all but phantoms, and we must remain satisfied with the possibility, that they were real personages, who ruled Cashmir as foreigners, and that as foreigners, they were extruded from the Hindu annals, and were preserved only by undefined traditions, which have been embodied into the Mohammedan history of Sheik Nuraddin with little regard to chronology, or truth.

As the first named sovereign of the Hindu history of Cashmir, succeeded to the princes who had governed the country for nearly thirteen centuries, there should have been little or no chronological difficulty about the period of his accession: the introduction of Manwantaras and Calpas, has however obscured a system, otherwise clear at least, if not unexceptionable, and has left it doubtful, whether these princes, as well as the first settlement of the country, come within the limits of the Cali-age, and consequently at what date in that age, Gonerda, the Augnand* [In Nagari [x], or in some copies [x], Gonerda or Gonanda; the Persian is [x], Augnand and the author of the Wakiati Cashmir as well as Bedia-AD-DIN leave no doubt of the intention of the Musselman writers as they detail the letters of this and other names, in the manner, common in Arabic and Persian Lexicons.] of the Mohammedan writers, was king of Cashmir: there are other chronological points, connected with his history, that have received the notice of the Hindu historian.

The passage of the original is however here not very distinct, and refers evidently to computations of an uncommon character. Gonerda as appears from the transactions of his reign, was contemporary with Crishna and Yudhishthir, who according to the generally received notions, lived at the end of the Dwapar age: this however the author observes is irreconcileable with the series of Gonerda's successors, which agrees better with the opinion, that places the existence of the Caurava and Pandava princes about the middle of the seventh century of the Cali Yug; a computation it may be remarked which is at variance with Gonerda's succeeding to the throne, after that had been occupied for 1266 years, unless some of those years be carried into the preceding age: it is of very little use however to attempt to reconcile these discrepancies, as the different statements are all probably equally incorrect; and it is only of importance to observe, the disagreement between this author and the popular belief, as to the age of Yudhishthir and Crishna, and the reduction of the antiquity usually assigned to them, which is thus derivable from Hindu authority: any other conclusions, we shall be better prepared to make when we have gone through the different dynasties of princes, and the events recorded to have happened during their reigns.* [Appendix No. 4.] If we may trust the Hindu historian, Gonerda the first was a relation of Jarasandha, king of Magadha, to whose assistance he led an army from Cashmir: the confederates were opposed to Crishna, in the province of Mathura, and were defeated in an engagement upon the banks of the Yamuna by that chief, and his brother Balarama, by whose hands Gonerda was slain, whilst attempting to rally his flying troops:† [Appendix No. 5.]  the prince was succeeded by his son Damodara who in his impatience to revenge his father's death, attacked a party of the friends of Crishna on, their return from a marriage in Gandhar on the Indus;‡ [Appendix No. 6.]  the bride was killed in the affray; but the rage of the bridegroom and his friends was irresistible, and the followers of the prince were defeated, and himself slain; the whole transaction being such as was probably of not unfrequent occurrence, in the history of these mountainous regions, in a state of society much more advanced, than that of which it is narrated. Damodara left his wife Yasovati pregnant, and ill able to resist the victorious Yadava. Crishna however sent Brahmans to appease her anxiety, and establish her in the kingdom, silencing the remonstrances of his friends by this quotation from the Puranas [x], "Cashmir is as Parvati,§ [This appears to be a pun, Parvati meaning both mountainous and the wife of Siva.] and the king is a portion of Hara: if even vicious therefore, he is not to be disrespected by the sage who hopes for heaven."

In due time Yasovati was delivered of a son, who was immediately anointed king|| [There is no other word that can be used to express the Abhishec, considered an essential part of the ceremony of coronation; the word means in fact sprinkling, and implies in these cases, the sprinkling of the king with water from some sacred stream, as the Ganges, &c.] the minister of his father conducting the affairs of the state during his minority: he was named Gonerda* [Abulfazl has Bala; the designation of the infant monarch, or Bala, a child, having been mistaken for his own appellation.] after his grand-father: his tender years prevented him from taking any part in the war that continued during his youth, to rage between the Caurava and Pandava families.

A dark period follows the reign of this prince, and the chasm is filled by a nameless troop of thirty-five kings, who deviating from the precepts of the Vedas were consequently immersed in the waters of oblivion:† [According to Bedia-ad-din they were all of the Pandava race.] to them succeeded a monarch of some celebrity, Lava, the Loo or Looloo of the Mohammedan historians, of whom the only action recorded is the foundation of the city Lolora‡ [Perhaps the Durroo or Lurroo of Forster, ii. 5.], a city which, according to the extravagant accounts of all parties, contained originally an incredible number of stone edifices,§ [Abulfazl has 80 Crore; the original, one Crore minus 16 Lacs or 84,00,000: both Refiuddeen and Mahommed Azim say, that Looloo or Lolot was a populous place in the Pergannah of Camraj, or the western division of Cashmir. Ayeen Acberi, ii. 162.] and which in modern times, continued to be a celebrated and populous Tappa or village. Lava is also said to have been a benefactor of the Brahmanical tribe.

Cusesaya, || [Kishn. Abulfazl, &c.] the son of Lava, succeeded his father, whom he resembled in conferring endowments of land upon the Brahmanical priesthood.** [The term used on these occasions is Agrahara, which imports a portion of land, or a village, given to the Brahmans, with or without a temple or dwelling.] He was followed in habits and sovereignty by his son Khagendra,†† [Khagunder. Abulfazl.] of whom it is recorded that he constructed the towns Khagi and Ehanmusha.‡ ‡ [Cacapur and Gowmoha in the time of the Mohammedan writers.]  Surendra,§§ [Serendair. Abulfazl.] the son of this prince succeeded him, and was actively employed in founding towns and building temples and palaces: one city of his construction was Suraca situated near the Darada country, or at the foot of the mountains.

According to the Mohammedan writers, this prince had a daughter named Catapan Bhanu of great beauty and accomplishments; the reputation of which induced Bahman, the son Isfendiar, who afterwards governed Persia under the name of Ardisheer Dirazdest, to solicit and obtain the princess in marriage. It does not appear from what source they have derived this story, as it is not found in the Hindu records, nor in the hstorical romance of Firdausi, unless we suppose it to have originated in the adventures of Gushtasp, the grandfather of Bahman, who whilst in exile in the west married Kattyoon, the daughter of the Emperor of Room. ( Malcolm's Persia 56.) Had there been any foundation for the tradition, it might have been of some chronological utility, but it is probably either an idle invention, or it is a misrepresentation of the fables which relate to the adventures of Behram Gor, who according to Firdausi, visited India, and there married Sipanud the daughter of Shancal king of Canouj.* [Or rather of the whole tract of country from Canouj to Khorasan, according to the Persian poet. Thus Bahram, he says, sends an embassy to Shancal, who is sovereign of India from the river of Canouj to the borders of Sind [x], the king in his reply tells him, that the region he rules is full of mountains and streams, and extends from Canouj to Iran in one direction, and in the other from Siclab (Sclavonia or Tartary) to China. [x]. The Shancal here mentioned is probably the Shincal of Meerkhond and Ferishta; they have however added to his history, and have made him contemporary with Afrasiab. The union noticed in the text terminated according to Bedia-ad-din unhappily, and Behman was murdered by the attendants of the princess at her instigation, in resentment of his contemptuous mention of her father; and he did not perish, he observes, as said by other reports, of the bite of a snake.]

As Surendra however had no son, he was succeeded by a prince of another family named Godhara;* [Gowdher, Ayin Acberi.] whose successors Suverna, Janaca and Sachinara† [Suren, Jenek and Seijuner. Ibid.] followed him in regular descent, and continued to build cities, and construct and endow temples for the advantage of the Brahmans, and chiefly it would seem for the worship of Siva. Janaca the second of these princes is said by Bedia-ad-din to have sent one of his sons into Persia, with a hostile force during the reign of Homai: the invader however was repelled and slain by the Persians under Darab, the son of Bahman.

The last of these princes being childless, the crown of Cashmir reverted to the family of its former rulers, and devolved on Asoca who was descended from the paternal great uncle of Khagendra. This prince, it is said in the Ayin Acberi, abolished the Brahmanical rites, and substituted those of Jina: from the original however it appears, that he by no means attempted the former of these heinous acts, and that on the contrary, he was a pious worshipper of Siva, an ancient temple of whom in the character of Vijayesa‡ [There are a Vijayesa and Vijaya cshetra at Benares. The Vijaya Linga adjourned, or in other words, his worship was brought, according to the Casi C'hand from Cashmir. Sec. 69. [x]] he repaired. With respect to the second charge, there is better foundation for it, although it appears that this prince did not introduce, but invented or originated the Jina Sasana.§ [Bedia-ad din says, the new faith was brought from Ajem, in which case it must have been, the worship of fire that was introduced, a circumstance of no unlikely occurrence, but which at this period of our history is utterly irreconcilable with the chronology of the original, as if it took place after Darab the son of Homai — it very little preceded Alexander's invasion of India — but we have not yet come to the second Gonerda, who lived, agreeably to the assertion of Calhana pandit, 1182 B.C.— It must not be forgotten that these Persian transactions are taken from the Mohammedan writers, and are not hinted at in the Raja Taringini.] He is said to have founded a city called Srinagar, a different place however from the present capital, which is attributed to a much later monarch.|| [Rafi-ad-deen calls it Babara; the Wahiat-i-Cashmir and Narayan Cul call it Sir, and the latter states that it was in Miraj, or the eastern division of Cashmir, and that traces of its site were visible in his time.] In the reign of Asoca, Cashmir was overrun by the Mlechhas, for whose expulsion the king obtained from Siva a pious and valiant son, as a reward for the austerities he had practised.* [The faith of Asoca is a matter of very little moment, as the prince himself is possibly an ideal personage: as however the comparative antiquity of the Bauddha and Brahmanical creeds in Cashmir has been supposed to be affected by it, and the events subsequently recorded, it may be adviseable to give the passages of the original, which shew that Asoca was a worshipper of Siva: it is not improbable however, if we are to attach credit to any part of this portion of the Cashmirian history, that he permitted heretical, possibly Bauddha doctrines, to be introduced into the kingdom during his reign from his Tartar neighbours. [x] "Then the prince Asoca, the lover of truth, obtained the earth; who sinning in subdued affections, produced the Jina Sasana." This may mean possibly something very different from the received idea, and may imply his neglect of affairs of state through excess of devotion, and his consequently omitting to prevent the intrusion of a foreign power, rather than a foreign faith, into the kingdom, the expulsion of which was the object of his son's birth. [x] "The country being overspread with Mlechhas, the king for their expulsion obtained from Bhutesa (Siva as the Lord of the elements) pleased with his Tapas, an excellent son." — Dr. Buchanan has made a strange misquotation from Abulfazl; (A.R. vi. 165.) He calls Asoca Raja Jennet, and says he established in his reign the Brahmany rites, instead of abolished them as it occurs in the Ayin Acberi; an error which justly drew down the angry censures of the Oriental Critics in the Edinburgh Review for October, 1802, and the Asiatic Annual Register of the same year; the Mlechhas might have been Scythians or Tartars. See the observations on the Tartar princes.]

Jaloca, the son and successor of Asoca, was a prince of great prowess: he overcame the assertors of the Bauddha heresies, and quickly expelled the Mlechhas from the country, thence named Ujjhita dimba: he then carried his victorious arms to foreign regions, and amongst others to the North of Persia, which he subjugated in the reign of Darab,† [Bedia-ad-din.] and then proceeding  in an opposite direction he subdued the country of Canouj.

The conquest of Canyacubja by this prince, is connected with an event not improbable in itself, and which possibly marks the introduction of the Brahmanical creed, in its more perfect form, into this kingdom. Jaloca is said to have adopted thence the distinction of casts, and the practices which were at that time established in the neighbouring districts: he also introduced into the Government the forms and offices elsewhere prevalent, and first assigned titles and duties to the following seven officers of state, the Dhermadhyacsha, the justiciary, or chancellor; Dhana-adhyacsha, treasurer; Cosha-adhyacsha, master of the military stores; Chamupati, commander in chief; Duta, messenger or ambassador; Purodha, the royal chaplain or almoner, and the Daivajnya or chief astrologer. The eighteen offices, and their duties, were also defined by this prince, who appears to have been the first of the Cashmir kings who introduced religion and government into that kingdom. He is said to have particularly worshipped Siva as Mandesa in consequence of having had read to him the Nandipurana by one of Vyasa's scholars: he also erected temples to the same deity as Jyeshta Rudra. This prince was possessed of supernatural powers, and several marvellous stories are narrated of him, which we need not pause to extract: he was also a prince of a generous disposition, and a rigid observer of his word: although devoted to Siva, he forbore in the latter part of his reign from molesting the followers of the Bauddha schism, and even bestowed on them some endowments as the Vihar* [Vihar is a common Sanscrit word usually employed to designate a Bauddha temple as well as an establishment or College of Bauddha priests. It seems to have been also used by the old Persians in a similar sense, and to have been applied to their fire temples. See Ouseley's Persia 126, and note. In the work before us, it has frequently an extended meaning, and also signifies a Royal pleasure house or garden.] called Crityasrama, in honor of one of their female divinities, or spirits named Crityadevi, by whom he had been addressed as a Bodhisatwa himself,. †[The divinity who appeared to the prince to intercede for the Bauddhists explains the term Bodhisatwa; [x] 'Those who are Bodhisatwas trusting to the one great refuge, are desirous of the destruction of darkness; they proceed in the universe of the Lord, from the Lord of the universe, and are not wroth sinfully at the distresses inflicted on animal nature unpervaded by waking truth, but alleviate them by patience. Those who seek to understand themselves, they are strenuous in bearing all." A Bodhisatwa is therefore nothing but a man of patience and piety, and may be regarded as a living type, and figuratively as a lineal descendant of Buddha: his origin from the Lord of the universe (Locanath, an epithet of Buddha) in this passage, may be so intended: at the same time it appears that Bodhisatwa is sometimes considered literally as the son of Buddha; On verra dans la suite de cet ouvrage que Phou sa ou Boudhisatoua, les fils de Bouddha, &c. (Google translate: We will see in the rest of this work that Phou sa or Boudhisatoua, the sons of Buddha) Mons. Rrmusat, on the polyglot Chinese vocabulary. Mines de l'orient vol. iv. 198, note. The continuation he refers to has not yet been received. The term, as a generic appellation of a living Buddha, is common in all Bauddha countries: one of the Bourkhans of the Calmucks is named Khomschin Bodi-Sada (Pallas. Fr. Trans. Oct. ii. 222.) An Indian teacher of Bouddhism, who was invited into Tibet, is named Pothi satho (Giorgi. 240), and according to Loubere one of the names of Sommono Codom (Samana Gotama) amongst the Siamese, is Pouti Sat, or Seigneur Pouti. (Vie de Thevetat.)] After a long and glorious reign, he went on a pilgrimage to Chiramochana Tirtha, where after worshipping Jyeshta Rudra, the prince and his queen were both identified with that deity.

The successor of this celebrated monarch was Damodara, of whose descent various opinions were entertained; some deducing him from Asoca and others considering him as sprung from a different family: he was a devout worshipper of Siva: this prince constructed several stone bridges and causeways, the remains of which were visible in modern times; and there were also two remarkable places, which in the time of Mohammed Azim were connected with the legendary history of this prince; the one a set of small irregular springs, and the other a spot of uneven and marshy ground near the city.

On one occasion as Damodara was proceeding to perform his customary ablutions in the Vitasta, he was importuned for food by some hungry Brahmans; he deferred complying with their solicitations till he had bathed in the river, then at some distance: to shorten the interval they proposed to bring the river to him, and immediately the water of the Vitasta bubbled up from different places near them, forming the springs that are still to be seen; the king was unmoved by this miracle, and being still determined to bathe in the genuine stream, the Brahmans denounced a curse upon him, and transformed him into a snake, in which shape he haunts the ground near the Capital, and is often to be seen: this spot is called Damodar-uder according to the Musselman accounts.* [I understand from some natives of Cashmir that this superstition still exists, and that Damodara, transformed to a serpent, still haunts a lake about seven cos from the Capital, and is still occasionally visible: no doubt, in that form.]

Damodara was succeeded by three princes who divided the country, and severally founded capital cities named after themselves. These princes were called Hushca, Jushca, and Canishca,† [Beyshek, Reshek, Kinshek. Abulfazl. Brothers according to the same authority, but not so termed in the original.] and these appellations are strongly corroborative of an assertion of our author, that they were of Turushca, that is, of Turc or Tartar extraction: they are considered as synchronous, but may possibly be all that are preserved of some series of Tartar princes, who, it is very likely, at various periods, established themselves in Cashmir. The chief event recorded of their reign is the foundation of the three several capitals, named after themselves,‡ [Hushcapur, said by the modern writers to be the modern Shecroh in the Pergannah of Lar, and a town of some extent: Jushcapur and Canishcapur are identified with Dahimpur and Cansapur, two inconsiderable villages in the time of Mohammed Shah.] but another and more important consequence of their Sovereignty is said to have been the almost entire change of the national faith, and the nearly exclusive prevalence of the doctrines of the Bauddhas under a Bodhisatwa or hierarch named Nagarjuna. The period at which this took place is said to have been 150 years before the death of Sucaysinha.§ [Appendix, No. VII.] The presence of the Turushca princes in Cashmir, we may observe, is in harmony with Tartar traditions; according to these, Oghuz their patriarch is represented to have subdued that country, and introduced the religion of Japhet there, so long back as 2800 years before the Christian aera.|| [Oghuz conquit ainsi toute la Bukharie, Balkh, Khor, Kaboul, Ghazna et le Kaschmir ou il y avoit un prince fort puissant nomine Jagma. Des Guignes Tome prem. Partie seconde p. 10. [Google translate: Oghuz thus conquered all of Bukharia, Balkh, Khor, Kabul, Ghazna and Kashmir or there was a very powerful prince named Jagma. Des Guignes Tome prem. Second part p. 10.] We cannot find in the text any name resembling the Jagma of the Tartar tradition, but it is apparently a Hindu appellative, and the omission of its original is easily accounted for; we have an evident chasm in the history here, and the accession or expulsion of the Turushca princes is equally unexplained.] A second Scythian irruption and subjugation of India, bordering on the Sind is also said to have occurred about the middle of the 7th century before Christ:* [Maurice's Ancient History of India, ii. 224; according to Blair, B.C. 624 in the reign of Cyaxares or Kaikaoos. A subsequent irruption took place in the reign of Darius Hystaspes, if he be, as he probably is, the same with Gushtasp: this last was of a decidedly religious character. Malcolm's Persia, i. 62.] neither of these dates will correspond precisely with that of the reigns above described, but they are all perhaps equally of little value, and only corroborate the general fact, that at some remote period the Tartars or Scythians did govern Cashmir, and render it probable, that they first gave the sanction of authority to their national religion, or that of Buddha, in India.

The Tartar princes were succeeded by Abhimanyu, a monarch evidently of a Hindu appellation, and a follower of the orthodox faith, which he reestablished in Cashmir. The chief instrument in this reform was Chandra, a Brahmin celebrated as the author of a grammar, and a teacher of the Mahabhashya.†[The name of Chandra occurs amongst the eight ancient Grammarians of the Hindus. Colebrooke on the Sanscrit and Pracrit Languages, A.R. vii. 204 and 5.] In consequence of the disuse of the prescribed institutes, the abolition of every form of sacrifice, and a departure from the lessons of the Nila Purana‡ [The Purana of the Naga or Serpent god, named Nila.] the Nagas were particularly incensed, and visited the offences of the people with severe and unseasonable storms of rain and snow, in which those especially perished who had adopted the Bauddha heresy:§ [Appendix, No. VIII.] in this situation of the kingdom, Chandra, descended it is said from Casyapa, addressed his prayers to Maheswara as Nila Naga, the tutelary deity of the country, and obtained from him a termination of what our author calls, the double plague of Cashmir, the severity of the seasons, and the predominance of the Bauddhas.

[admin]

Part 2 of 7

The reign of Abhimanyu closes the first series of princes, and introduces us to a period in which the author of the Raja Taringini affects greater precision than before, and specifies the term of each prince's reign: it is evident however that the reigns of the earliest sovereigns are much too protracted, and they must be considerably reduced to be brought within the limits of probability: the object of the author is evidently to reconcile the details with the gross amount of years, which he has stated to extend, from the first prince of the new series, the third Gonerda, to 1070 of Saca, and which he has made 2330: how far this postulate is correct we are not yet prepared to determine; and must refer its discussion to the close of the history, when we shall have the whole subject before us: in the mean time the chronology of our author may be admitted, and the dates of the various reigns assigned to them on the principles of his computation; commencing accordingly with the year before Christ 1182 corresponding with 2330 years before Saca 1070 or A.D. 1148.

Gonerda* [According to Bedia-ad-din he was not born but elevated to the throne; how, is not mentioned; the same authority makes him subdue, by means of his general Nand Ram, the whole of Hindustan as far as the Nermada.] the third, succeeded Abhimanyu, and prosecuted the reform which that prince had commenced; the ancient ritual agreeably to the Nila precepts, was restored, and the worship of the Nagas and the offering of sacrifices re-established: by acts of this description, the fame of monarchs is perpetuated, and this prince gave the same lustre to his family, as Raghava diffused upon the race of Raghu. He reigned 35 years.

Gonerda was succeeded by several princes of whom we have only recorded the dry list of names, and the duration of their reigns. These were:

Vibhishana, who reigned 53 years; Indrajita, 35 years and 6 months; Havana, 30 years; Vibhishana 2d, 35 years and 6 months;

Making an aggregate of 154 years. Of RAVANA, it is said, that he extended the worship of Siva as the Linga Vateswara, and of the second Vibhishana that he was both a Patron and Cultivator of the art of Music; the Mohammedan writers say, that in their days Tiranehs ascribed to this prince were current in Cashmir.* [Bedia-ad-din here inserts another prince Inderayan, who was a magician and tyrant, and therefore put to death by his brother Cailas Sinh.]

Nara† [Written Booz by the Mohammedan writers.] the son of Vibhishana succeeded his father; this prince began his reign virtuously, but one of his wives having been seduced from her fidelity by a Bauddha ascetic, the king committed a thousand Vihars to the flames, and gave the lands attached to them to the Brahmans; the only measure, which seems to authorise the account of Abulfazl, that in this reign the Brahmans got the better of the followers of Buddha, and burnt down their temples: in fact, however this prince seems to have been as little disposed to regard one sect as the other with complacency, and finally fell a victim, it is said, to the resentment of one of the orthodox priesthood.

The legend which introduces this catastrophe is not without poetical merit, although too purely poetical to be here transcribed at length. A Brahman had become the son-in-law of Susravas, the Naga, whose palace was in a lake, near the borders of the Vitasta, and in a city founded by Nara near that river. The wife of the Brahman, Chandrabaha, residing there with her husband, attracted the illicit affection of the King, and having resisted all his solicitations, obliged him at length to attempt to carry her off by force; the attempt failed; the Brahman invoked the aid of his father-in-law, who rising from the lake in wrath, excited a violent storm which destroyed the guilty monarch and his people. The sister of the snake God aided him in his attack upon the city with a shower of large stones brought from the Ramanya mountain, the cavities whence they were taken are still, says our author, to be seen. The Naga, a little ashamed of his cruelty, deserted the country, taking with him his son-in-law and his daughter; the waters of the lake he formerly inhabited, he changed to the whiteness of milk, as may be seen at the Amareswara yatra; this lake is sometimes called Jamatrisar: the story is recalled to the minds of men, when they visit Upachacra Dhara.* [Chacder near Mabrah, according to the author of the Wakiat-i-Cashmir: Narayana Cul says, there are two fountains, one of the snake and the other of his son-in-law, on the borders of Dutchenpara, and their united water runs to Laider. Abulfazl speaks of a rivulet with a bed of white clay in this situation (Ayin Acberi, ii. 133). The origin of this and similar fables is very obvious: they are invented to account for the various phenomena, especially with regard to lakes and springs, with which Cashmir so plentifully abounds. Abulfazl has a long list of the Ajaibwa Gharaib of this district, and is far from having exhausted the subject, if we may depend upon other authorities. We know less of Cashmir from European enquiry than of almost any other district in the East: it would no doubt amply reward more minute investigation.] We may observe however that the destruction of the city, and death of this prince, are ascribed by Bedia-ad-din to a popular tumult, excited by the conduct which is here stated to have produced the catastrophe.

Nara was succeeded by his son Siddha, who had escaped the late calamity by having been sent with his nurse to Vijayacshetra some time before. He collected the dispersed and frightened people, and restored prosperity to the kingdom: he reigned sixty years.

We have again a barren series of successive princes, whose names and reigns alone are recorded:—

King / Years / Months

Utpalacsha, who reigned / 30 / 6
Hiranyacsha, / 37 / 7
Hiranyacula, / 60 / 0
Vamacula, / 60 / 0

The last of these was succeeded by his son Mihira Cula, [B.C. 765 or 310] † [These names are strangely transformed in the Ayin Acberi to Adutbulabeh; Hernya; Herenkul; Ebeshek, and Mirkhul. The first prince appears to be intended by the name of Puschcaracsha, which means the same thing, 'the lotus-eyed,' who is mentioned in the Mudra Racshasa, as the king of Cashmir, who was one of the princes confederated against Chandragupta or Sandrocottus. The second of the series Hiranyacsha is the hero of a marvellous story in the Vrihat Catha, which leads to his marriage with a Vidhyadhari, a Hindu goddess of an inferior order. The prince is called in the Vrihat Catha, the son of Canacha: in other respects there is no question of the identity.] a prince of violent and cruel propensities; the kingdom upon his accession was crowded with Mlechhas, although whether as attached to the king, or as enemies, does not appear. The violent disposition of this monarch led him to an attack upon Lanca. The cloth of Sinhala was stamped with a golden foot as the seal of its prince; the wife of Mihiracula wearing a jacket of Sinhala cloth, the impression of the seal came off upon her bosom, and the king happening to observe it, was filled with unappeasable indignation, at the idea of the foot of a stranger being impressed upon the bosom of his wife. To revenge the fancied insult, he led his army to Lanca, deposed the king, and placed another on the throne, stipulating that the Sinhali cloths called Yamushadeva should in future bear his own seal, a golden sun. On his way back to Cashmir, he subdued the sovereigns of Chola, Carnata, Lata, and other monarchs of the Decshin. Arrived in Cashmir, he founded the temple of Mihireswara in the capital, and built the city Mihirapur in the district of Holora, in which the Gandhar* [The Mahabharat mentions the Brahmans of this country as of an inferior tribe, as is noticed in Appendix, No. VI.] Brahmans, a low race, and therefore the more highly esteemed by this iniquitous monarch, were permitted to seize upon the endowments of the more respectable orders of the priesthood. According to Mahommed Azim, he also constructed in the purgunah of Ouder the Chandracul canal, which existed in that writer's time.

Two instances of this monarch's ferocious disposition are recorded by the original authority, and have both been transcribed with some alteration by Abulfazl and the other Mohammedan authors: on the return of Mihiracula to his own kingdom, one of his elephants fell, whilst proceeding along a narrow defile, and was crushed to pieces by the fall: the cries of the dying animal were music to the ears of the prince, and so delighted was he with the sound, that he ordered 100 elephants to be precipitated in a similar manner, that his entertainment might be protracted; according to Abulfazl the pass was thence called Hasti Wuttar; Hasti signifying an elephant and Wuttar meaning injury; the latter part of which etymology is scarcely of Sanscrit origin: besides which, that author is a little at variance with himself, as he had previously separated the two words, and told us that they were different portions of the Bember road, through both of which an army might pass. The other anecdote has been supposed to account for the title by which this prince was known of Tricotiha, the slayer of three millions: amongst the ruins of Narapur, destroyed as we have seen in the reign of Nara by the Naga Susravas, some Khasa tribes had taken up their abode: to drive them from the prohibited residence, a large stone fell into the bed of the Chandracula river, and completely obstructed the current: the prince was instructed in a dream that its removal could only be effected by a female of unsullied virtue, and he accordingly commanded women of respectable birth and station, to perform the task: their efforts were unavailing: women of the first families and supposed irreproachable conduct, attempted in vain to remove the stone, and its removal was at last effected by a female of a low class, the wife of a potter: the king incensed by this divine proof of the corrupt lives of the female part of his subjects, ordered them to be put to death, together with their husbands, children, and brothers, as implicated in their disgrace.* [The point of this story is the same as of that related of Pheron by Herodotus, ii. 111. and Ancient Universal History, i. 294.]

111. Now after Sesostris had brought his life to an end, his son Pheros, they told me, received in succession the kingdom, and he made no warlike expedition, and moreover it chanced to him to become blind by reason of the following accident:—when the river had come down in flood rising to a height of eighteen cubits, higher than ever before that time, and had gone over the fields, a wind fell upon it and the river became agitated by waves: and this king (they say) moved by presumptuous folly took a spear and cast it into the midst of the eddies of the stream; and immediately upon this he had a disease of the eyes and was by it made blind. For ten years then he was blind, and in the eleventh year there came to him an oracle from the city of Buto saying that the time of his punishment had expired, and that he should see again if he washed his eyes with the water of a woman who had accompanied with her own husband only and had not knowledge of other men: and first he made trial of his own wife, and then, as he continued blind, he went on to try all the women in turn; and when he had at last regained his sight he gathered together all the women of whom he had made trial, excepting her by whose means he had regained his sight, to one city which now is named Erythrabolos, and having gathered them to this he consumed them all by fire, as well as the city itself; but as for her by whose means he had regained his sight, he had her himself to wife. Then after he had escaped the malady of his eyes he dedicated offerings at each one of the temples which were of renown, and especially (to mention only that which is most worthy of mention) he dedicated at the temple of the Sun works which are worth seeing, namely two obelisks of stone, each of a single block, measuring in length a hundred cubits each one and in breadth eight cubits.

-- The History of Herodotus, by Herodotus, Translated into English by G. C. Macaulay, 1890

The Buddhist and Hindu sources present different versions of how Chandragupta met Chanakya. Broadly, they mention young Chandragupta creating a mock game of a royal court that he and his cowherd friends played near Vinjha forest. Chanakya saw him give orders to the others, bought him from the hunter, and adopted Chandragupta. Chanakya taught and admitted him in Taxila to study the Vedas, military arts, law, and other sastras.

-- Chandragupta Maurya, by Wikipedia

***

114. And when the boy was ten years old, it happened with regard to him as follows, and this made him known. He was playing in the village in which were stalls for oxen, he was playing there, I say, with other boys of his age in the road. And the boys in their play chose as their king this one who was called the son of the herdsman: and he set some of them to build palaces and others to be spearmen of his guard, and one of them no doubt he appointed to be the eye of the king, and to one he gave the office of bearing the messages, appointing a work for each one severally. Now one of these boys who was playing with the rest, the son of Artembares a man of repute among the Medes, did not do that which Cyrus appointed him to do; therefore Cyrus bade the other boys seize him hand and foot, and when they obeyed his command he dealt with the boy very roughly, scourging him. But he, so soon as he was let go, being made much more angry because he considered that he had been treated with indignity, went down to the city and complained to his father of the treatment which he had met with from Cyrus, calling him not Cyrus, for this was not yet his name, but the son of the herdsman of Astyages. And Artembares in the anger of the moment went at once to Astyages, taking the boy with him, and he declared that he had suffered things that were unfitting and said: "O king, by thy slave, the son of a herdsman, we have been thus outraged," showing him the shoulders of his son.

115. And Astyages having heard and seen this, wishing to punish the boy to avenge the honour of Artembares, sent for both the herdsman and his son. And when both were present, Astyages looked at Cyrus and said: "Didst thou dare, being the son of so mean a father as this, to treat with such unseemly insult the son of this man who is first in my favour?" And he replied thus: "Master, I did so to him with right. For the boys of the village, of whom he also was one, in their play set me up as king over them, for I appeared to them most fitted for this place. Now the other boys did what I commanded them, but this one disobeyed and paid no regard, until at last he received the punishment due. If therefore for this I am worthy to suffer any evil, here I stand before thee."

116. While the boy thus spoke, there came upon Astyages a sense of recognition of him and the lineaments of his face seemed to him to resemble his own, and his answer appeared to be somewhat over free for his station, while the time of the laying forth seemed to agree with the age of the boy. Being struck with amazement by these things, for a time he was speechless; and having at length with difficulty recovered himself, he said, desiring to dismiss Artembares, in order that he might get the herdsman by himself alone and examine him: "Artembares, I will so order these things that thou and thy son shall have no cause to find fault"; and so he dismissed Artembares, and the servants upon the command of Astyages led Cyrus within. And when the herdsman was left alone with the king, Astyages being alone with him asked whence he had received the boy, and who it was who had delivered the boy to him. And the herdsman said that he was his own son, and that the mother was living with him still as his wife. But Astyages said that he was not well advised in desiring to be brought to extreme necessity, and as he said this he made a sign to the spearmen of his guard to seize him. So he, as he was being led away to the torture, 126 then declared the story as it really was; and beginning from the beginning he went through the whole, telling the truth about it, and finally ended with entreaties, asking that he would grant him pardon.

117. So when the herdsman had made known the truth, Astyages now cared less about him, but with Harpagos he was very greatly displeased and bade his spearmen summon him. And when Harpagos came, Astyages asked him thus: "By what death, Harpagos, didst thou destroy the child whom I delivered to thee, born of my daughter?" and Harpagos, seeing that the herdsman was in the king's palace, turned not to any false way of speech, lest he should be convicted and found out, but said as follows: "O king, so soon as I received the child, I took counsel and considered how I should do according to thy mind, and how without offence to thy command I might not be guilty of murder against thy daughter and against thyself. I did therefore thus:—I called this herdsman and delivered the child to him, saying first that thou wert he who bade him slay it—and in this at least I did not lie, for thou didst so command. I delivered it, I say, to this man commanding him to place it upon a desolate mountain, and to stay by it and watch it until it should die, threatening him with all kinds of punishment if he should fail to accomplish this. And when he had done that which was ordered and the child was dead, I sent the most trusted of my eunuchs and through them I saw and buried the child. Thus, O king, it happened about this matter, and the child had this death which I say."

118. So Harpagos declared the truth, and Astyages concealed the anger which he kept against him for that which had come to pass, and first he related the matter over again to Harpagos according as he had been told it by the herdsman, and afterwards, when it had been thus repeated by him, he ended by saying that the child was alive and that that which had come to pass was well, "for," continued he, "I was greatly troubled by that which had been done to this child, and I thought it no light thing that I had been made at variance with my daughter. Therefore consider that this is a happy change of fortune, and first send thy son to be with the boy who is newly come, and then, seeing that I intend to make a sacrifice of thanksgiving for the preservation of the boy to those gods to whom that honour belongs, be here thyself to dine with me."

119. When Harpagos heard this, he did reverence and thought it a great matter that his offence had turned out for his profit and moreover that he had been invited to dinner with happy augury; and so he went to his house. And having entered it straightway, he sent forth his son, for he had one only son of about thirteen years old, bidding him go to the palace of Astyages and do whatsoever the king should command; and he himself being overjoyed told his wife that which had befallen him. But Astyages, when the son of Harpagos arrived, cut his throat and divided him limb from limb, and having roasted some pieces of the flesh and boiled others he caused them to be dressed for eating and kept them ready. And when the time arrived for dinner and the other guests were present and also Harpagos, then before the other guests and before Astyages himself were placed tables covered with flesh of sheep; but before Harpagos was placed the flesh of his own son, all but the head and the hands and the feet, and these were laid aside covered up in a basket. Then when it seemed that Harpagos was satisfied with food, Astyages asked him whether he had been pleased with the banquet; and when Harpagos said that he had been very greatly pleased, they who had been commanded to do this brought to him the head of his son covered up, together with the hands and the feet; and standing near they bade Harpagos uncover and take of them that which he desired. So when Harpagos obeyed and uncovered, he saw the remains of his son; and seeing them he was not overcome with amazement but contained himself: and Astyages asked him whether he perceived of what animal he had been eating the flesh: and he said that he perceived, and that whatsoever the king might do was well pleasing to him. Thus having made answer and taking up the parts of the flesh which still remained he went to his house; and after that, I suppose, he would gather all the parts together and bury them.

120. On Harpagos Astyages laid this penalty; and about Cyrus he took thought, and summoned the same men of the Magians who had given judgment about his dream in the manner which has been said: and when they came, Astyages asked how they had given judgment about his vision; and they spoke according to the same manner, saying that the child must have become king if he had lived on and had not died before. He made answer to them thus: "The child is alive and not dead: and while he was dwelling in the country, the boys of the village appointed him king; and he performed completely all those things which they do who are really kings; for he exercised rule, appointed to their places spearmen of the guard and doorkeepers and bearers of messages and all else. Now therefore, to what does it seem to you that these things tend?" The Magians said: "If the child is still alive and became king without any arrangement, be thou confident concerning him and have good courage, for he shall not be ruler again the second time; since some even of our oracles have had but small results, and that at least which has to do with dreams comes often in the end to a feeble accomplishment."

-- The History of Herodotus, by Herodotus, Translated into English by G. C. Macaulay, 1890

The blood shed by the commands of this sanguinary sovereign, was expiated by his death: suffering under a painful disease and awakened to some sense of his past cruelty, he determined to put a voluntary term to his existence and end his days upon the funeral pile. He found it impossible, however, to meet with persons qualified to conduct the ceremonies of his cremation, as his kingdom was crowded with the impure tribes of Daradas,† [A.R. vi. 417. Daward, the mountainous range north west of Cashmir, and the present residence of the Durds.] Bhoteas and Mlechhas. Revoking therefore his grants to the Gandhara Brahmans, he invited those of Aryadesa, on whom he bestowed a thousand Agraharas in Vijayeswara. The pile was constructed of military weapons, and the king having seated himself on the summit, the fire was applied, and quickly put a period to his sufferings and his crimes. The duration of his reign is said to have been 70 years.

Vaca* [Beck. Ayin Acberi.] the son of Mihira Cula succeeded his father: he founded the city Lavanotsa on the banks of Vacavati river: he was prevailed upon to assist a Yogiswari at a rite, which enabled her to traverse the air at a spot where the impression of her knees is still visible on a rock.† [At Beren or Meren according to Narayan Cul, who adds that she killed the king: the subsequent allusion is not further explained by Calhana Pundit.] He was accompanied by a hundred of his descendants, and the legend of Satacapalesa and the Matrichacra stone is still commemorated at Khira Matha or Khira College: Vaca reigned 63 years and 13 days. The names and reigns of his immediate successors are all that has been recorded of them:

King / Years

Cshitinanda, ruled / 30 years.
Vasunanda, / 52 years and 2 months.
Bara, / 60 years.
Acsha‡ [Kutnund. Vistnund. Nir. Aj. Ayin Acberi.] / 60 years.

A Cama Sastra is ascribed to the second of these princes. Acsha was succeeded by his son Gopaditya,§ [Kulvarit. — Ibid.] a prince of eminent piety, whose virtue brought back the Satya or golden age: he enforced a strict observance of the ritual and distinctions of cast, removed those Brahmans who had adopted impure practices from their endowments, and invited others from distant countries to replace them, and finally he forbad the killing of any animal except for the purpose of sacrifice. According to the Mohammedan authorities, he built a temple, or the mound near the capital of Cashmir, called the Takht Suliman:|| [Bedia-ad-din notices a tradition that the tomb in this building was said to enshrine the remains of a christian apostle.] it was destroyed with other places of Hindu worship by Secander,¶ [This is from Refiaddin, but Narayan Cul asserts that it was still standing in his time. Forster does not notice any ruins or buildings on this spot, but we have mention made of them by Bernier. A 'l opposite de cette montagne il en paorit une aussi avec une petite mosquee avec unjardin et un tres ancien batiment qui marque avoir ete un temple d' Idoles, quoiqon l' appelle Tact Souleman, Le trone de Souleman ii. 274. (Google translate: Opposite this mountain there is also one with a small mosque with a garden and a very old building which shows that it was a temple of Idols, although calls it Tact Souleman, The Throne of Souleman ii. 274.)] one of the first Mohammedan kings of Cashmir, and who, on account of the bigoted assiduity with which he demolished the vestiges of Hindu superstition, is constantly alluded to by the title But Skeken, the idol breaker, Gopaditya, after a reign of 60 years, was succeeded by his son Gokerna,* [Kurren. — Ay. Ac.] of whom it is merely stated that he erected a temple to Gokerneswara.† [The lord of Gokerna, being in fact a LINGA, as whenever that emblem of Siva is set up, it receives the appellation of ISWARA compounded with some word expressive of the divine attributes, as Visweswara, the Lord of all; of the locality of its site, as Gangeswara, Cedareswara, &c. or of the person by whom it is erected, as in the text.]

Narendraditya,‡ [Nurundrawut. — Ay. Ac.] his son, succeeded him, after a reign of 57 years: he reigned 31 years and a few months, and left the crown to his son Yudhishthira§ [Jewdishter. — Ibid.] surnamed the blind, from the smallness of his eyes.

The commencement of this monarch's reign was influenced by the same attention to virtue and propriety, as had governed the conduct of his pious predecessors.[B.C. 216 or 40] As fortune had however decreed that he should be the last of his dynasty, he gradually ceased to regard the lessons of prudence and piety, and addicted himself to sensual pleasures and disgraceful society: he was constantly inebriated with wine: his companions were harlots and buffoons, and he treated with levity and scorn the admonition of his counsellors: the administration of affairs was neglected: the chief nobles defied the royal authority, and foreign princes encroached upon the confines of the kingdom. To prevent the ruin of the state, and to revenge upon the prince the insults they had received or prevent those which they anticipated, the ministers approached the palace with a numerous and well appointed force: as resistance was hopeless, the king precipitately fled from Srinagar, and secreted himself in the woods and mountains with his women and a few followers, doomed now to exchange luxury for privation, the downy couch for the sharp rock, and the harmony of minstrels for the wild dashing of cascades, or the wilder horns of the mountaineers: he at last found a refuge in the courts of some compassionate princes, where, according to general belief he died in exile; according to other accounts, he engaged in unsuccessful attempts to recover his kingdom, in one of which he was taken prisoner by the nobles and thrown into captivity, from which he was released only by his death. The term of his reign was 48 years.

The successor of Yudhishthir was Pratapaditya,* [Pertaubdut. — Ay. Ac.] who was invited from another country: he was a kinsman of the king Vicramaditya; a different monarch, says our author, from the Sacari Vicramaditya, although sometimes identified erroneously with that prince:† [Notwithstanding our author's assertion, it seems probable that the identification is right. Narayan Cul and Bedia-ad-din state that Pratapaditya was related to Vicramaditya, the celebrated prince of Malwa: we shall have occasion to advert hereafter to this subject more fully.] he was a virtuous monarch and enjoyed a prosperous reign of 32 years, leaving his crown to his son,

Jalaucas,‡ [Juggook. — Ay. Ac.] who also reigned 32 years, and was succeeded by his son,

Tunjina,§ [Bunjir. — Ay. Ac.] who with his queen Vacpushta, erected the temple of Tungeswara, and founded the city Haravasantica, in a district watered by the Satahrada, and Payovaha like the bow of Indra, and its string.¶ [The first is the Setlej, the second must be the Beyah, to which the name in the text sufficiently approaches.] In their time existed Chandaca a portion of Dwaipayana, whose Natya is well known.

In the reign of this prince an unseasonable fall of snow in the month Bhadra destroyed the crops, and caused a famine, in which great numbers of people perished: such was the general distress, that all the ties of society were dissolved, and all the duties of life disregarded: modesty and pride, family honor, and public respect were all forgotten; the love of parent and child, of husband and wife, no longer prevailed: every individual sought alone for self-preservation, and although reduced to bones and tendons, the famished skeletons fought with fury for the carcases of the dead.

The king exerted himself to relieve the distresses of his subjects, and exhausted his own treasures, as well as those of his ministers, in procuring supplies of grain: the jewels of his court and queen were appropriated to the same purpose, but the famine still continuing, the monarch, despairing of relieving his afflicted people, and unable to witness their sufferings, determined to put a period to his existence by committing his body to the flames: from this purpose he was dissuaded by his queen, and once more addressing their earnest supplications to the gods, they obtained by their divine interposition, a miraculous shower of pigeons, who fell dead in the streets of the capital everyday for a considerable period, and furnished the inhabitants with food until the products of the earth once more supplied them with subsistence. This prince died after a reign of 36 years: his wife accompanied him on the funeral pile at a place thence called Vacpushtatavi, and to which it was customary, in our author's time, for persons to bring the dead bodies of those husbands to be burnt, whose wives had the virtue to emulate the example of this pious princess.

As the pure piety of this couple did not permit their having posterity, a prince of another family ascended the throne: he was named Vijaya,* [Bejeery. — Abulfazl.] and built the temple of Vijayeswara in the capital. He reigned 8 years, and was succeeded by his son.

JAYENDRA,† [Chunder.—Ibid.] who was distinguished by the length of his arms, his hands touching his knees: this prince was fortunate at first in a minister of great integrity and talent, named Sandhimati, but influenced by the advice of those who envied the minister's superiority, the king conceived an aversion for him, and dismissed him from his employments: the poverty to which he was thus reduced served only to heighten his reputation: he devoted all his thoughts to religion, but a report, of heavenly origin, soon prevailed, that he was yet destined to wear a crown: when the report reached the king, his fears were excited, and seizing the person of Sandhimati he threw him into prison, and kept him several years in close confinement; at the expiration of that term, the king, feeling his end approach, was determined before his death to frustrate the decrees of fate, and to carry with him into a future state the spirit of his obnoxious minister; accordingly, on the same night on which the monarch's body was burnt, the executioners put Sandhimati to death upon a stake.* [[x]. "Sandhimati being elevated by the savage executioners on the Sula was killed." He was perhaps impaled. Major Wilford however considers the instrument to be a cross. — See A.R. x. But the punishment of impaling has always prevailed in the east: accounts of it in Ceylon, Java, the Burman Empire, &c. are numerous and authentic.] Jayendra reigned 37 years.

When Isana, the Guru of Sandhimati, heard of his death, he repaired to the place of execution, to recover the body, and secure for it funeral rites. On taking the body from the stake, and fastening the feet and head together, in order to remove the corpse more commodiously, he was struck by an inscription on the forehead, which his knowledge enabled him to decypher; it was to this effect, "a life of poverty, ten years' imprisonment, death on a stake, and accession to a throne;" predictions of which three had come to pass, and the fourth was yet to be fulfilled. For the accomplishment of the splendid part of our hero's fate, the Brahman performed those rites which compel the attendance of the ministers of Siva, the Yoginis; who accordingly appeared, and restored animation to the lifeless body of Sandhimati, whom they endowed with singular beauty and supernatural powers, and hailed as future king by the title of Arya Raja.† [Ariraj. — Abulfazl.] The news of this miraculous restoration spread through the kingdom, and all classes of people, impelled by resistless destiny, hastened to salute him as king: they led him in triumph to the capital, and he commenced his pious reign.

Whoever might have been the person, thus made the subject of miraculous tradition, it appears from our author's account, supported by him by reference to local corroboration, that he was an active promoter of the worship of Siva as the Linga, with the usual accompaniments of the Trident and the Bull. Many temples of this description, continued at a long subsequent period, to be ascribed to this reign, and particularly one called Sahasralingam, from its containing a thousand Lingas, constructed of stone, the remains of which were visible in the time of Calhana Pandit.

After reigning 47 years, Arya, the pious monarch, whose court was like the palace of Maheswara, where the articles of fashionable dress were ashes of burnt cowdung, rosaries of the Eleocarpus, and matted locks of hair, and the favorites and companions of the prince were mendicants and ascetics, grew weary of the cares of state, and determined to retire into the seclusion, better suited to his apparently fanatical propensities: having found that a descendant of Yudhishthir still lived, he recommended the youth as his successor, and delivering the government into the hands of the nobles, he divested himself of his royal ornaments, and with no other garment than the Dhoti, bare-footed, and without his turban, carrying with him the Archalinga* [The Jungum profess the exclusive worship of Siva, and an appropriate emblem of that deity, in its most obscene form, inclosed in a diminutive silver or copper shrine or temple, is suspended from the neck of every votary as a sort of personal god. — Wilks's Mysore, i. 501. This is probably the Archalingam of our original, archa meaning worship. The introduction of this sect into the Decshin in the eleventh century must have been long subsequent to its establishment in the north of India, by any calculation that may be adopted.] and observing a strict silence, he came out from the city, followed by an immense concourse of people: at the end of about two miles, he sat down under a tree, and addressed his followers, whom he prevailed upon to disperse: he then resumed his route to the Tirtha of Nandisa or Nandicshetra, where he ended his days in ascetic mortification, and the assiduous worship of the god whom the three worlds obey.

Meghavahana,† [Megdahen. — Abulfazl.]  who was invited to succeed to the throne of his ancestors, was the third in descent from Yudhishthir, being his great grandson: his father had found an asylum at the court of Gopaditya, king of Gandhar, whose assistance had restored him to some degree of opulence and consequence: his son Meghavahana was thence enabled to present himself amongst the candidates for the hand of the princess of Pragjyotish or Asam, and to obtain her election. ‡ [According to Bedia-ad-din the lady was the princess of Khota.] With his wife, and a suitable dower, he had rejoined his father, when the Nobles of Cashmir sent a deputation to solicit and accompany his return to that kingdom, to which he immediately hastened, and of which he assumed the sovereignty.

Meghavahana, although a worshipper of the orthodox divinities, was inclined to adopt the Bauddha doctrine: he encouraged the professors of that heresy to settle in his dominions, and particularly prohibited the destruction of animal life, granting from the public revenue a maintenance to such individuals as followed the business of hunters or butchers, whom his enactments deprived of their accustomed means of support.

Although thus careful of brute existence, he seems to have been less scrupulous about human life; being a warlike and victorious sovereign, and engaging in remote and hostile expeditions he is said to have led his armies  to the sea shore, and by the aid of Varuna, who opened a dry path through the waters for his army, to have crossed over to Lanca or Ceylon, where he ascended, with his troops, the Gem-enshrining peak of the mountain Rohana.* [Adams peak the Rahu ([x]) and Rahun ([x]) of the Mohammedans, according to whom also it contained mines of precious gems. Rohana implies the act or instrument of ascending as steps, a ladder, &c. and may refer to the rude steps and links of iron chain work, described by Valentyn, and more recently by Mr. Percival, and Sir William Ouseley, i. 59.] Whilst encamped on the mountain, the king of the island, the Racshasa Vibhishana,† [After the defeat and death of RAVANA, Rama conferred the sovereignty of Lanca upon Ravana's younger brother VIBHISHANA, who is generally supposed to be still the monarch of Lanca.]  came voluntarily, and submitted to his invader, in consequence of which he was confirmed in his sovereignty, on condition of his no longer permitting in his island the expenditure of animal life,‡ [In other words, he introduced or enforced the Bauddha faith. Whatever credit it may be thought, that these Cashmirian tales of a conquest of Ceylon by one of their kings deserve, they are curiously connected with the Sinhalese traditions of foreign invasion, and consequent introduction of the Bauddha faith. Vijaya Raja, the first monarch of that island, and who introduced the present religion, invaded it, it is said either 534 years before Christ, or A.D. 77 or 106 or 350. A.R. vii. 51 and 421. Molony and Joinville's accounts of Ceylon. Discordancies that admit perhaps of some explanation, the first referring to the period at which Gautama the founder of the Bauddha faith existed, and the others to the date of its introduction in the Island, an event to which foreign conquest was chiefly conducive.] Meghavahana then returned to Cashmir, where the memory of his transmarine expedition, says our Sanscrit guide, is still preserved on the banners, which on particular occasions, are carried before the kings of Cashmir.

The son of the last prince, Sreshtasena,* [Sereshsain. — Abulfazl.] also called Pravarasena, succeeded his father: the Hindu record only commemorates his founding a temple of Pravaresa; but Bedia-ad-din makes considerable additions to his history: according to him, this prince established his mother on the vacant throne of Khota, and extended his own authority to Khatai, Chin and Machin. He reigned 30 years, and left his kingdom to his two sons HIRANYA† [Heren. — Ibid.] and Toramana; the former holding the superior station of the Samrajya, and the latter that of the Yauvarajya, or being respectively Emperor and Caesar, a division of power of considerable antiquity amongst the Hindus, and one which, with them, as well as with the Latin, Greek, or German princes, was often a source of public contention: it proved to be so in the instance before us; the latter having proceeded to strike coins‡ [Dinars: the word is Sanscrit, and although generally signifying a certain weight of gold, also means as above, a gold coin perhaps of the weight of 32 rettis or about 40 grains. The Dinar must have been common in Persia and Syria at the time of the Arabic invasion, as the Arabs to whom an original coinage, was then unknown, adopted both it and the Dirhem or Drachma. According to the Ayin Acberi, the Dinar weighs one miscal, and is equal to 1 and 3-7th of a Dirhem, which weighs from 10 to 5 miscals, or, at 7-1/2, the average giving a proportion of gold and silver, as 1 to 10. According to Ferishta the Dinar was worth 2 Rupees, which will give us about the same proportion. There is an evident etymological affinity between the Dinar of the Hindus and the Denarius of the Romans: the latter, though originally a silver coin, was also of gold, and the author of the Periplus named Adrian's, states, that Denarii, both gold and silver, were amongst the articles exported from Europe and carried to Barygaza or Baroach; the Sanscrit, Dinar, may therefore be derived from the Roman coin.]  in his own name, the elder brother took offence at the measure, and deposed the Yuvaraja, and kept him in close confinement. The wife of Toramana, who was pregnant at the time, effected her escape, and found shelter and privacy in a potter's cottage, where she was delivered of a son: the boy was brought up by the potter as his own, but his high birth betrayed itself, and he was a prince in all his sports and amongst his play-fellows; his juvenile imperiousness having caught the attention of Jayendra, his maternal uncle, then searching for his sister, led to their discovery, and that nobleman privately took home his sister and her son. In the mean time Toramana died in captivity; on which event the princess, to divert her grief, went, accompanied by her son upon a pilgrimage to the south: during her absence the king died, after a reign of thirty years and two months. He left no posterity, and the claims of his nephew being unknown, the throne of Cashmir was vacant, and continued so for a short period.

The ruler of Ujayini at that time was Sriman Hersha Vicramaditya, who after expelling the Mlechchhas, and destroying the Sacas, had established his power and influence throughout India.* [Who was this prince? As the enemy of the Sacas, and also from our author's chronology, he is synchronous with Salivahana, with whom indeed, notwithstanding a difference in date of 135 years, all the Hindu accounts represent him to have been engaged in hostility. We have had a Vicramaditya before him in this history, not the Sacari as expressly remarked by the historian, and therefore we cannot doubt our author's meaning, although we may question his chronological correctness, as I shall hereafter endeavour to shew: it is singular that in a very long eulogium on this prince, which I have not thought it necessary to translate, the author never alludes to Salivahana, nor to any of the literary ornaments usually assigned to Vicrama's court. The name Hersha appears to bear some affinity to Hersha Megha (A.R. ix. 175) father of the Vicrama of the fifth century, in which indeed he may not very improbably be placed. We must however leave these points for the present, as we are not yet prepared for their due discussion. The Mohammedan writers are of no assistance here, as they repeat the name of Bicramajit without any comment on its again occurring.] In his train was a Brahman named Matrigupta, to whom he was much attached: upon hearing of the vacant situation of the Cashmir throne, and the indecision of the nobles with regard to a successor, he sent the Brahman to them, with a letter from himself, recommending him to their election: they complied with the recommendations of a sovereign, whose commands they felt themselves unable to resist, and crowned MATRIGUPTA † [Mater kunt. — Abulfazl.] as their king.

The reign of the Brahman was of limited duration: the death of his powerful protector exposed him to the disaffection of his chief subjects, and to the arms of the lawful heir Pravara Sena, who with a small but resolute band of friends, was approaching Cashmir: he seems to have surprized the Brahman by an unexpected attack upon his camp, or at least to have encountered him upon a journey when unprepared for a contest and although no serious engagement ensued, the issue was Matrigupta's abdication of the throne and his departure to Benares, where he passed the rest of his life in religious duties: he reigned four years and nine mouths.

Pravarasena,* [Pirwirsein. — Abulfazl.] [A.D. 123-476] so named after his grandfather, to whose dominion he had succeeded, was an active and enterprising prince: he invaded the kingdoms of the south, and turned his arms against the son and successor of Vicramaditya, named Pratapa Sila or Siladitya,† [I have not been able yet to trace this son of VICRAMA in any other works with much success. Col. Wilford informs me that in the Cshetra Samasa it is stated that Vicramaditya had a son named Natha Sila whom he is disposed to regard as the grandson of Vicrama, and the son of this Siladitya. A Jain work of some celebrity, the Satrunjaya Mahatmya, is said to have been written by order of Siladitya, king of Surat: the author Dhaneswara Suri, according to a marginal note in the copy I consulted, and which agrees with the traditionary opinion of the Jains, wrote his work in the Samvat year 477. The same work cites a prophetic annunciation, that the famous Vicramaditya would appear after 466 years of his era had elapsed (A.R. ix. 142), which scarcely agrees with the date assigned for the work, as, if Siladitya, the son of Vicramaditya, succeeded his father, it allows but ten years for the reign of the latter. We must revert to this hereafter.] whom he drove from his capital, and took prisoner. He seems to have been contented with this expression of his resentment, and not only to have spared the life of the prince, but put him again in possession of his hereditary kingdom, carrying off however the throne of the Apsarasas, which he transferred to his own capital.‡ [The famous throne supported by thirty-two female images, animated ones, if we are to believe the legend. Accounts agree of its being lost after Vicrama's death, although it is generally thought to have been found again by Bhoja. We have no further notice of it in our history. Bedia-ad-din carries PRAVARA SENA to Bengal also, where he subdues Behar Sinh, ruler of Dhacca, and gives the Government to Palas Sinh, son of Siladitya, a son of the author's, making apparently the words Palas and Dhac, implying the same thing, a sort of tree.] After his return he determined to found a city which should be the capital of his kingdom, and he accordingly constructed the city of Srinagar* ["The city, which in the ancient annals of India was known by the name of Serinaghar, but now by that of the province at large, extends about three miles on each side of the river Jelum, over which are four or five wooden bridges." — Forster ii. 9.] on the banks of the Vitasta, and embellished it with many palaces and temples; he also threw a bridge across the river. His being the founder of this city is confirmed by the Mohammedan writers, although, as one of them observes, it has undergone many vicissitudes since the period of its foundation. Pravara Sena reigned 63 years.

The successors of this prince were his son Yudhishthir, who reigned thirty-nine years and three months, and his son Narendraditya, or Lacshmana,† [Jewdishter. Lekhmen. Zebadut. — Abulfazl.] who ruled thirteen years; he was succeeded by his younger brother, to whose reign the extravagant period of 300 years is assigned; an extravagance the more remarkable, as it is without a parallel in our author's chronology,‡ [Unlike the early periods of the Persian Chronicles, in which such a term is far from uncommon.] and which must therefore have been suggested, either by a necessity for filling up some dark chasm in the annals of Cashmir, or to compensate for an error in the dates of the preceding monarchs, who may have been placed two or three centuries too soon: both causes may perhaps have united for this extraordinary departure from those bounds of possibility, which in all other reigns have been preserved.

The length of Ranaditya's reign is not the only marvel attached to that prince; he had been in fact, in his former life, a man of dissipated habits, but at last, by his devotion to Bhramaravasini, a form of Durga, obtained, as a reward, his resuscitation in a royal race, and the goddess herself as a consort, incarnate as Ranarambha, the daughter of RATISENA, king of Chola.§ [The traditions of the South intimate occasional connexions of a like character between the Chola and Cashmir princes. One of the former entitled in one account Sasi Sechara and in another, Rajadi Raja Chola was married, it is said, to a daughter of the King of Cashmir.] The divine nature of his queen was the immediate cause of the king's protracted reign, as she conferred upon him the Patala Siddha Mantra, by which he was enabled to extend his life as long as he pleased. At last, however, satiated with this world, he entered the cave of Namuchi, in the bed of the Chandrabhaga river, through which he passed to Patala, and acquired a kingdom in the infernal regions: his wife, regarded rather inconsistently as a Sacti of Vishnu, went upon her husband's death to Swetadwipa. The claims of the next monarch to the throne of Cashmir are not stated by our original, and the enumeration of his genealogical progenitors warrants a suggestion that he might have not been the immediate successor of Ranaditya [A.D. 537-568]; he was the son of Vicrameswara the son of Vicramacranta Viswa, and is named himself Vicramaditya, a strange series of appellations, and a further proof of some unaccountable blank in the Cashmirian records: Vicramaditya reigned 42 years, and was succeeded by his younger brother Baladitya. [A.D. 579-592] * [Beckermadut. — Baladut. — Abulfazl. The Mohammedan writers agree with the text except Bedia-ad-bin: he assigns a life of 165 years to this monarch, and a reign of no more than 40 years: he places also the 30th year of his reign as contemporary with the first of the Hijra, and describes his sending an ambassador to Mohammed.]

Baladitva was a prince of a warlike character, and erected his pillars† [Jayastambha, the Pillars of Sesac and the Trophies of the Greeks and Romans: that it was the custom of Hindu princes to erect these pillars is established by concurrent testimonies, and it is probable that it is to this practice we are to ascribe the origin of several solitary stone columns still met with in India, as the Lat of Firoz-shah, the Cuttab minor, the pillar at Allahabad, and those in Tirhut, and other places: in general however they were constructed, like the wooden trophies of the Greeks, of less durable materials, and as observed by Plutarch, "Time has gradually effaced these memorials of national hostility."] of victory on the shores of the eastern sea:‡ [I am especially afraid of my manuscript here: it is alone, in this section of the history, and is very inaccurate. It is said that this prince conquered Bancala or Bengal, a very uncommon name, however, in Hindu books of any period, Gaur or Banga being the usual term.] one result of his victorious excursions was his compelling the subjugated monarchs to beautify Cashmir, and to construct temples and edifices for the accommodation of such of their subjects, as might visit that kingdom.* [Consistently with the former chronology Bedia-ad-din makes this prince contemporary with Yezdejird, from whom he wrested the north eastern districts of Persia, but he confounds Baladitya with Pratapaditya here, and passes over the intermediate monarch altogether.]

It was foretold to this prince by an astrologer, that he should be the last of the race of Gonerda, and his only daughter should transfer the kingdom to a different dynasty of princes.† [We have seen however the crown repeatedly pass into different families, and therefore our author nods; unless indeed he considered the princes so described, as members, not of a different race, but of other branches of the Gonerdiya stock.] The monarch was not well pleased with this prediction, and resolved to prevent its fulfilment, by refusing to grant his daughter in marriage at all: his precautions were unavailing: a descendant of Carcota Naga and protege of the monarch, succeeded in obtaining privately the affections and person of the princess, and the assistance of the chief officers of state secured his accession to the throne, upon the death of the king, which happened shortly afterwards.