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country now called Behar, founded there the city of Magadhá. He was himself tenth from Kuru in the Moon-dynasty. From him down to Ripunjaya, there reigned in Magadhá about twenty kings for a thousand years; then, after Ripunjaya, came five of the Pradyota-dynasty; and then Sisunaga, the first of a dynasty of ten, who, I suppose, is the king you alluded to as having a fabulous account given of his name in the Bauddha chronicles. At least the fifth of his dynasty is Bimbisara, in whose reign the great deluder, Gautama, or Sákya, was born." "But Sákya was not of Magadhá, I think, was he?" asked Blancombe. "No," replied the other, "he was son of Suddhódana, whom I, following the Vishnu Purána, call king of Ayodhya, or of whatever city may then have been the capital of that region, but whom the Bauddhas call king of Capilavastu." "This interests me exceedingly," said Blancombe, "for now, by putting things together, I think I see a glimpse of light. But first, please to finish with your list of kings." "It is prophesied in the Vishnu Purána," proceeded the other, "that after the Saisunagas will come Nanda, the son of a Sudra mother; he will bring all the earth under one umbrella.' Accordingly, the event happened so; and then after nine Nandas came the new dynasty of the Mori tribe, which the Brahman Kautilya brought about, and of which Chandragupta was the first king. His son was Vindusara, and his grandson, as probably you are aware, was Asoca." "I am much obliged to you for all this information," said Blancombe; "and I suppose this Asoca is the king whose Bauddha inscriptions were so confidently appealed to by our friend the Saugata Muni, who has now been silent so long?" "He is so," answered the other. "And pray, my friend," said Blancombe, now turning to the Saugata, "when should you, according to the most moderate chronology in any of your books, such as the Mahawansa, place either your first Council, or the death of Sákya? In what year, that is, of the Saca era?" Why," answered the other, "it was six hundred and twenty-one years before the Saca era begins, or two

thousand three hundred and ninety-seven years before the one now current; (therefore it would be 543 B. C.). You agree also in making the age of Chandragupta about five generations lower." "Yes," answered the Saugata, we make him reign from four hundred and fifty-nine to four hundred and twentyfive years before the Saca era begins." "That is not exactly what I hoped to hear," remarked Blancombe, "but it comes within a very few years, at least within few, as compared to the vast periods we have been discussing. For I no longer doubt that this Chandragupta is the same as Sandracottus, who is mentioned by more than one Greek writer as having made a treaty with Seleucus Nicator. You have often heard of Alexander, the great Yavana conqueror, who established a kingdom in Bactria, of which we have still the coins remaining, and did battle with the Indians of the Punjaub. You can readily understand how in his age history had been well fixed among the Greeks, by an inquisitive people, who learnt accuracy in the course of political rivalries, and were obliged to study it in their narratives. So we are able to fix precisely the date of Alexander's dying at Babylon as B.C. 322, and the reign of Seleucus, one of the kings among whom his empire was divided, as coming down to B. C. 310; that is, three hundred and eighty-eight years before the Saca era commences, or within thirty-seven years of the date at which you fix Chandragupta. Again, Megasthenes*, an ambassador and writer among the Yavanas, actually visited the court of Asoca, Chandragupta's grandson, and from him very many of the notions entertained in India by the later Greeks were derived. His time also corresponds sufficiently with what, from the clue you have already given me, you would naturally make the date of Asoca. This date, indeed, is partly fixed even by the inscriptions already spoken of; for they have the name of Ptolemy, and since they have also the word Magas, it is probable they mean Ptolemy Philadelphus, whose brother was so called, and his date is about three hundred * Megasthenis Indica, ed. Schwanbeck. Bonn, 1846.

ASOCA-VICRAMADITYA.

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and forty-two before the Saca era commences. So that Asoca thus becomes contemporary of Antiochus in Syria, and Ptolemy Philadelphus in Egypt. Upon this firm basis, therefore, we can proceed to argue. For the triple coincidence of the Greek accounts, which are both numerous and reputable, of the Cingalese Bauddha books, and again, of the Rock inscriptions, which, although also Bauddha, yet having been but recently decyphered, came up with all the freshness of an independent witness, is far too remarkable to have arisen, except upon the supposition of the statements being, so far as they agree, correct.

"Now let us go back to the Vishnu Purána. When would you, my friend"-here Blancombe turned to the Acharya"place the last king of Magadhá who is eminent enough to be clearly traced?" "We place him," answered the other, “three hundred and ninety-six years before Vicramáditya, the great king of Malwa." "And Vicramáditya's era begins, I think," resumed Blancombe, "one hundred and thirty-four years before the Saca era, or fifty-six before the Christian?" "Exactly so," replied the other. "Then here," said Blancombe, "we have standing-ground again. You have several dynasties, I think, between the Maurya and this last, which you call the Andhra, and the space of time required for them is probably considerable? Is it not so?" "Certainly," answered the other; "for there are ten of the Mori family, who extend over one hundred and thirty-seven years, ten of the Sunga dynasty, who reigned for one hundred and twelve years, and four Kanwa kings, whom we affirm, if you have no objection, to have reigned between them three hundred and forty-five years. Then begins the Andhra dynasty, which ends with its twenty-first king, Chandrabija, four hundred and fiftysix years from its commencement." "And after him you make three hundred and ninety-six years to Vicramáditya?" asked Blancombe. "Exactly so," replied the other. "Well," said Blancombe, "I have no objection to the kings being described as reigning, whatever number of years may really have been the fact; but these things cannot be altered at our pleasure; and

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now we are landed in an inextricable difficulty. For, not to mention that the Kanwa kings appear unusually long-lived, you have given me as the entire interval between Chandragupta and Vicrama one thousand four hundred and forty-six years; or, in other words, you make the first Maurya king one thousand five hundred and two years before the Christian era, whereas we have already seen, from the irrefragable coincidence between thoroughly independent accounts, that he really lived only three hundred and ten years before it. Here then is an error in a comparatively narrow portion of your annals, amounting to about twelve centuries. How much greater then may be the errors in those vast and indefinite periods which have been spoken of above, if we only had similar means of testing them! How do you answer this, my friend?" "I don't deny," answered the Acharya, "that you understand these things better than I do; but we have received it as I stated it."

"I say not a word against receiving ancient accounts, either upon sufficient authority, or when they are consistent with themselves," said Blancombe; "but when chronological errors of so large a range can be demonstrated in a system received as historical, it becomes no longer what accurate people understand by history. Moreover this difference of twelve centuries may lead to some important questions. For either the number given may be arbitrary, and possibly wrong, or else the last Andhra king may have been long after Vicramáditya; or again, he may really have been before Vicrama, and still the numbers be right; only in this latter case we must bring down the famous era of Vicramáditya some centuries later than you have supposed. Nor should I wonder, myself, if in reality we ought to do so. But now, just observe, what important consequences would follow. For Vicrama is your great king, under the protection of whose court at Malwa* Hindú literature attained its brightest acme, and many famous scholars flourished. Supposing then it should happen that they had appeared to invent any famous saying, * With Malwa Gesenius connects μóλußôos, the Greek for lead.

such as Christians may, perhaps, claim for the Founder of their religion, it makes a great difference whether these famous Hindús lived some half century before Christ, or an indefinite number of centuries after him. Suppose even that he lived only a century and a half later than you imagine, that difference alone opens up a vista of many possibilities. Then again, so great an error in so small a tract of time suggests the likelihood of general error on a large scale, and, in fact, throws doubt over the whole system. More particularly it should be observed, that pretensions to anything like prophecy hence suffer exceedingly. You have quoted a prophecy from the V. Purána that Nanda should bring all the earth under one umbrella.' But Megasthenes, the Yavana writer I have already quoted, relates that India contained one hundred and eighteen nations, without at all mentioning that Asoca was lord over them all; yet Asoca was probably more powerful than Nanda. Or, if we looked upward, instead of downward, the Greeks who describe Alexander's empire or that of his successors, represent the Prasii and their king as eminent, but do not at all ascribe to them an universal dominion. Hence it would seem that Nanda did not exactly bring all the earth under one umbrella; and if the passage saying so in the Purána be a prophecy, it had the misfortune not to be fulfilled; or if it be a description, in case the Purána should turn out to be of a later date, then it is not historically accurate, but sins by exaggeration. Yet, if there were nothing in Indian history more hyperbolical than this, it might be comparatively trustworthy.

"Since, however, you have mentioned the Andhra dynasty, let us attempt a kind of conjecture. We will assume that Chandragupta must have lived until B. C. 305, and may have reigned previously perhaps thirty years. We will then take all your dynasties, only we must shorten hypothetically the reigns of the four Kanwa princes." "I should have told you," Vidyáchárya here interposed, "that in the Vishnu Purána the time assigned to these is only forty-five years, though in other books of ours it