The Sakas were well known to classical authors as the Sacæ, or Scythians. They pressed on with the rest, and became apparently most formidable during the first four centuries of the Christian Era. It was apparently their defeat by the great Vicramaditya in the battle at Korûr, on the banks of the Indus, A.D. 524 or 544, that raised the popularity of that monarch to its highest pitch, and induced the Hindus at a subsequent age to institute the era known by his name 600 years before his time, and another called by his other name, Sri Harsha, 1000 years before the date of the battle of Korûr.[28]
Another important horde were the Ephthalites, or White Huns, who came into India apparently in the 4th century, and one of whose kings, if we may trust Cosmas Indicopleustes, was the head of a powerful state in northern India, about the year 535. They, too, seem to have been conquered about the same time by the Hindus, and, as both the Sakas and Hunas were undoubtedly Buddhists, it may have been their destruction that first weakened the cause of that religion, and which led to its ultimate defeat a little more than a century afterwards.
During the dark ages, 750 to 950, we do not know of any horde passing the Indus. The Mahomedans were probably too strong on the frontier to admit of its being done, and after that age they—and they only—conducted the various invasions which completely changed the face and character of northern India. For seven centuries they were continued, with only occasional interruptions, and at last resulted in placing the Mahomedan power supreme, practically, over the whole of India, but only to fall to pieces like a house of cards, before the touch of Western civilisation. All this, however, is written, and written so distinctly, in so many books, that it need not be recapitulated here.
Southern India.
If the records of the ancient history of northern India are unsatisfactory and untrustworthy, those of the southern part of the peninsula are at least ten times more so. The Dravidians have no ancient literature like that of the Vedas. They have no traditions which point to any seat of their race out of India, or of their having migrated from any country with whose inhabitants they can claim any kindred. So far as they know, they are indigenous and aboriginal. The utmost extent to which even their traditions extend is to claim for their leading race of kings—the Pandyas—a descent from Arjuna, one of the heroes of the ‘Mahabharata.’ He, it is said, when on his travels, married a princess of the land, and she gave birth to the eponymous hero of their race, and hence their name. It is true, indeed, that they produce long lists of kings, which they pretend stretch back till the times of the Pandus. These were examined by the late Professor Wilson in 1836, and he conjectured that they might extend back to the 5th or 6th century before our era.[29] But all that has since come to light has tended to show that even this may be an over-estimate of their antiquity. If, however, as Dr. Kern believes, the Choda, Pada, and Keralaputra of the second edict of Asoka do really represent the Cholas, Pandyas, Cheras, of modern times, this triarchy existed in the third century B.C.; but there are difficulties in the way of this identification which have not yet been removed. In fact, all we really do know is that, in classical times, there was a Regio Pandionis in the country afterwards known as the Pandyan kingdom of Madura, and it has been conjectured that the king who sent an embassy to Augustus in 27 B.C.[30] was not a Porus, which would indicate a northern race, but this very king of the south. Be this, however, as it may, we do know, by the frequent mention of this country by classical authors, that it was at least sufficiently civilised in the early centuries of our era to carry on a considerable amount of commerce with the western nations, and there is consequently no improbability that at least one powerful dynasty may then have been established in the south. If so, that dynasty was certainly the Pandyan. The Chola and the Chera became important states only at a much later date.
When we turn to their literature we find nothing to encourage any hope that we may penetrate further back into their history than we have hitherto been able to do. Dr. Caldwell, the best and latest authority on the subject, ascribes the oldest work in the Tamil, or any southern language, to the 8th or 9th century of our era,[31] and that even then can hardly be called native, as it undoubtedly belongs to the Jains, who are as certainly a northern sect. According to the same authority, it was superseded by a Vaishnava literature about the 12th or 13th century, and that again made way for one of Saiva tendency about the latter date. There is no trace of any Buddhist literature in the south, and nothing, consequently, that would enable us to connect the history of the south with the tolerably well-ascertained chronology of Ceylon or Northern India, nor am I aware of the existence of any ancient Buddhist monuments in the south which would help us in this difficulty.[32]
Not having passed through Bactria, or having lived in contact with any people making or using coins, the Dravidians have none of their own, and consequently that source of information is not available. Whatever hoards of ancient coins have been found in the Madras Presidency have been of purely Roman origin, brought there for the purpose of trade, and buried to protect them from spoliation.
The inscriptions, which are literally innumerable all over the Presidency, are the one source from which we can hope that new light may be thrown on the history of the country, but none of those hitherto brought to light go further back than the 5th or 6th century, and it is not clear that earlier ones may be found.[33] It is, at all events, the most hopeful field that lies open to future explorers in these dark domains. There is nothing, however, that would lead us to expect to find any Tamil or native inscription in the country extending so far back as the age of Constantine. Those on the raths at Mahavellipore, or the caves at Badami, which may be as old as the age of Justinian, are in Sanscrit, and consequently look more like an evidence of the northern races pushing southward than of the southern races extending themselves northward, or being sufficiently advanced in civilisation to erect for themselves the monuments on which these inscriptions are found.
From a study of the architecture of the south we arrive at precisely the same conclusions as to the antiquity of Dravidian civilisation that Dr. Caldwell arrived at from a study of their literature. The only important Buddhist monument yet discovered in the Presidency is that at Amravati, on the Kistnah,[34] but that is avowedly a foreign intrusion. It was a colony or settlement formed by the northern Buddhists at or near their port of departure for Java and their eastern settlements. The rock-cut temples at Mahavellipore and Badami seem to be the works of northern Hindus advancing southward in the 5th or 6th century, and engraving the evidence of their religion on the imperishable rock. So far as is yet known, no indigenous native temple has been brought to light, built by any native king, or with inscriptions in any southern tongue, whose date can be carried further back than the 8th century. From that time forward their building activity was enormous. The style culminated in the 16th and 17th centuries, to perish in the 18th, under the influence of a foreign and unsympathetic invader. It is, however, by no means impossible that future investigation may enable us to fill up a portion at least of the gap that exists between the 5th and the 8th century. There may be buildings yet undescribed which are older than any we now know. But if they do carry us back to the 5th century, which is more than can reasonably be expected, they are still seven or eight centuries behind what we know for certainty to have existed in the north. There we have buildings and caves certainly, extending back to B.C. 250, and it seems by no means impossible that with sculptures, coins, and inscriptions, and written documents, we may some day be able to bridge over the gulf that exists between the death of Buddha and the accession of the Mauryas. In other words, the materials for history in the North of India carry us back with the same relative degree of certainty for more than a thousand years beyond what those found in the south enable us to trace of her history or her arts.
When the history of the south does acquire something like consistency it takes the form of a triarchy of small states. The eldest and most important, that of Mádura—so called after Muttra on the Jumna—was also the most civilised, and continued longest as a united and independent kingdom.