258 COMPARATIVE CHRONOLOGY. earliest date at which any of your fraternity of nations can make good a place on the stage of history. "Can any reason be shewn why the history of the Aryan race in India should be supposed to begin earlier? We have seen that your received chronology is of too arbitrary and legendary a kind to be such a reason alone; and such probabilities as we could extract out of the number of generations, would lead us to place the great conqueror Ráma about the same time as Chedorlaomer and Abraham in Syria, the shepherd kings in Egypt, the supposed Medes in Babylon, and the Hia dynasty in China. "There would be at least a certain air of congruity in our conjectures about your history with what we know elsewhere. For if the Aryan race really radiated, as many learned men believe, from the regions of Iran eastward and westward, there is a general probability that the date of their Indian conquests might be not very remote from that of their establishments elsewhere. The same sort of probability rather confirms our conjecture that the Great War (Mahábhárata) should be placed about 1200 B. C. For there are many points of sympathy, if not of contact, between the histories of India and Greece, sufficient, at least, to suggest the experiment of comparing their chronologies together tentatively, without confounding points essentially unlike. I need not repeat here, what Sir William Jones and others have said, perhaps too sanguinely, on the resemblance between mythological stories in the two countries*; but when I read what is fabled about Púrúravas, the son of Ilá, having to choose between Wisdom, Wealth, and Desire, and being per *Subsequent in time to this Dialogue is Professor Max Müller's Essay on Indian and Hellenic Mythology. Wonderful as is the union in it of depth and beauty, does it not ignore too much the heroic element in legend? Ought not too Sanscrit to be made so very much the elder sister, as to be almost a mothertongue to Greek? The immediate subject did not call for exposition of the radical affinity between the Semitic and Aryan languages, as shewn in words by Gesenius, and in forms (truly, I believe,) by Ewald. But there is yet room for an analytical comparison of Hebrew with Sanscrit on the one side, and with some African tongues on the other. GREEK ANALOGIES. 259 secuted by the two whom he rejected, I cannot help being reminded of the fatal choice of Paris the Ilian shepherd. Then I notice too, that Sákya in India precedes somewhat the movement of Pythagoras and the life of Socrates in Greece. Again, the most brilliant period of Hindú literature is placed by yourselves as somewhat subsequent to the conquests of Alexander, which must have given some kind of impulse; and perhaps something might be said about the same Saracen power, which in its inheritors overthrew the Byzantine empire, having extended itself, with another wave of its tide, over India. It would not, therefore, seem unnatural, if your Great War between the sons of Pándu and Kuru should be connected with that which the Yavana legends described as having been waged against Troy; whether the two events really happened in stages of society nearly corresponding; or whether one was moulded by poets out of dim echoes which had reached them through traditions of the other; or whether both may have been once parables of something different, but translated by legend into actual wars. In any case, it is to me rather satisfactory than otherwise, that as Greek chronologers placed the Trojan war about the twelfth century before Christ, so we have been led by purely Hindú authorities, though treating them in our own way, to place the events of the Mahábhárata about the same period. "If now I were to make any use of that grand period of four millions three hundred and twenty thousand years, which is assigned to the aggregate of the Four Ages, it would be only to ask, whether by striking off the last three cyphers, we might not reduce it to a figure, which your earliest chronographers may have intended to denote their conception of the utmost duration of Hindú history down to the period at which they first began systematically to review it, or perhaps to the era of Vicramaditya. But the want of a fixed date as a terminus at the lower end of such a speculation forbids me to dwell on so mere a possibility. But I trust you will allow that there is great reason for reducing Hindú chronology in general 260 HISTORICAL SCEPTICISM. to narrower limits than those in which you have represented it." Here Wolff, at whose long silence I had begun to wonder, interposed with some remarks. "It appears to me," he said, "that you have been far too liberal in your concessions. For when once you had shewn the unhistorical character of the Hindú pretensions to records, you had no right afterwards to build upon them, as if they contained something solid. The demolition of part destroys the whole. Or, even if the later genealogies, such as those of Magadhá, should have some truth, this proves nothing for the far earlier stages of tradition. We may grant Queen Victoria's British pedigree as likely up to Owen Tudor, without condescending to reason upon it farther up to King Arthur, or to some remote Cadwaladr. Again, I cannot help noticing, that this Vicramáditya, who is to pass for the Augustus of India, is not even mentioned in the Vishnu Purána. What becomes, then, of his brilliant court, and of the antiquity of the Hindú drama? This is not a light question. For in what language, or even with what alphabet, I beg to ask, were either the dramatic plays, or much more those portions of the literature, for which so far higher an antiquity is claimed, originally written? The common alphabet is the Devanagari. Some say this is developed out of old Pali alphabets. It seems to me a debased Greek *. But it is confessedly modern. I should like to see copies of those which were before it, and to know on what principle they were deciphered. It is only the other day that the ingenious Prinsep deciphered certain inscriptions called ancient. They were as recent as Asoca's time, or two hundred and fifty-nine years before the Christian era. Who would answer for alphabets claiming to be fifteen centuries older. The first thing certain in the history of India, even if I grant the certainty of that, is the rise of Buddhism. What is the language of this religion and its most characteristic literature? *The fact of Sanscrit letters opening towards the left, though read towards the right, suggests the question of a possibly Semitic origin. HISTORICAL SCEPTICISM. 261 Not Sanscrit, such as is called pure, but Pali; and Pali calls itself the root (mula), or the oldest Hindú tongue. I have yet to see evidence proving that it is not so. All the earlier Brahmanic period and literature may be either imagination or imposture. What external history attests any Brahmans earlier than the sixth century before Christ? Even if Megasthenes, from whom our best Greek accounts flow, were as early, his descriptions of certain philosophers* appear to comprehend rival ascetics, some Brahmanical, and some Jains or Bauddhas, whom he calls by almost the Hindú word Sramanas; but this does not imply organised caste on the one side; and therefore it need not on the other. Was caste even in the time of Alexander known? Arrian says that all Indians were free. Diodorus of Sicily thought the same. These are unbribed witnesses, living, one in the first, the other in the second century of our era. Could they have heard of Sudras and Chándálas? Or, if I grant that the division of classes, μépŋ, mentioned by Strabo†, (pp. 703 -708 C,) means castes, and not mere occupations, how little will this go towards building up the vast antiquity of the Brahmanical system! If I maintain, as a probable hypothesis, that Buddhism is the oldest religion, and that its books contain the oldest religion of India, who can prove the contrary? The Pali language would be in my favour. For certainly it is ruder, and more likely to have grown into the Sanscrit, than out of it. Then what is the hair, or complexion, with which Buddha is represented in his images? Clearly dark, or negro; and this is more nearly the characteristic of the older races of India, than of the immigrant Aryas. We know that afterwards, say about A. D. 700, the poor Bauddhas were expelled. Nothing could be easier than for Cumárila Bhatta and his associates then to get up a representation of an earlier præ-Buddhist period. A large part of Sanscrit literature falls in very well with such a supposition. Its advocates boast of its many stages and periods, which * Frag. 41, 42, 43, ed. Schw. + Strabo, Lib. xv. pp. 703-708, 0. Schwanbeck's Megasthenes, p. 41. 262 FOREIGN INFLUENCES. they say require a development of centuries. But here are a thousand years and upwards from the eighth century to our own time. Considering the fervor of the Indian imagination, and the rapid transitions which religions and politics have run through, how many stages of letters does not this admit of? Many of the Puránas are undoubtedly very modern. They mention not only Mahometans, but other events or names within six or eight centuries from our own date. Even the Jesuit Missionary Robertus de Nobilibus*, in the sixteenth century, invented one which passed current for a time. This shews the vagueness of tests of Sanscrit antiquity. You have yourself shewn how variously the date of Vicramaditya may be placed. Why should he not have preceded Mahmud of Ghazni by a hundred years, instead of by a thousand? If, again, we turn from literature, which may be modern, to the more fixed testimonies of inscriptions and temples, where is anything of this kind belonging to that supposed period of early Brahmanism? All the earliest instances I am aware of are Buddhistt. Such a hard fact is worth a thousand theories, not to say frauds. For if the literature and creed of the Brahmans had been as old as is pretended, we should have had ancient inscriptions and temples belonging to them. Just as very ignorant Europeans fancy the Taj Mahal at Agra is characteristic of the Hindú architecture, whereas it was built for the Emperor Shah Jehan, by a Frenchman, about 1650, so may others in a somewhat obscurer region trace to early Brahmans what may really come of Greek or Roman influence. You must, at least, allow it to be remarkable, that the Hindú drama, and the supposed brilliancy of the court of Malwa, come out, on your own shewing, almost contemporary with the Augustan age at Rome, and considerably posterior to contact with the Greeks under Alexander. The age of the Ptolemies was the most likely * Asiatic Researches, Vol. XIV. Calcutta Review, Oct. 1844. Grant's Bampton Lectures. Maurice's Preface to Lect. Ep. Hebrews. Dr Mill, Christa Sangita. + Colonel Sykes, Journal R. As. S. No. XII. London, 1841. Foe Koue Ki, par M. A. Rémusat, Paris, 1836. Ferguson on Indian Temples, in Journal R.A.S. |