[36]. The historians sanction the propriety of these changes, in their remarks, that the deposed were “deficient in [capacity for] the cares and duties of government.”
[37]. Rajagriha, or Rajmahal, capital of Magadhades, or Bihar. [In Patna district, IGI, xxi. 72.]
[38]. Figuratively, the country of the ‘head of the Snakes’; Nag, Tak, or Takshak, being synonymous: and which I conclude to be the abode of the ancient Scythic Tachari of Strabo, the Tak-i-uks of the Chinese, the Tajiks of the present day of Turkistan. This race appears to be the same with that of the Turushka (of the Puranas), who ruled on the Arvarma (the Araxes), in Sakadwipa, or Scythia. [This is a confused reference to the Saisunāga dynasty, which took its name from its founder, Sisunāga, and comprised roughly the present Patna and Gaya districts, its capital being Rājagriha; the modern Rājgīr-Sisunāga means ‘a young elephant,’ and has no connexion with Sheshnāg, the serpent king (Vishnu Purana, 466 f.; Smith, EHI, 31).]
[39]. [Chandragupta Maurya was certainly not a “Takshak”: he was probably “an illegitimate scion of the Nanda family” (Smith, EHI, 42).]
[40]. Mr. Bentley (‘On the Hindu System of Astronomy,’ As. Res. vol. viii. pp. 236-7) states that the astronomer, Brahmagupta, flourished about A.D. 527, or of Vikrama 583, shortly preceding the reign of Susarman; that he was the founder of the system called the Kalpa of Brahma, on which the present Hindu chronology is founded, and to which Mr. Bentley says their historical data was transferred. This would strengthen my calculations; but the weight of Mr. Bentley’s authority has been much weakened by his unwarrantable attack on Mr. Colebrooke, whose extent of knowledge is of double value from his entire aversion to hypothesis. [The Sunga dynasty, founded by Pushyamitra, about 185 B.C., lasted till about 73 B.C., when the tenth king, Devabhūti, was slain by his Brāhman minister, Vasudeva, who founded the Kānva dynasty. He was followed by three kings, and the dynasty lasted only forty-five years, the last member of it being slain, about 28 B.C., by a king of the Andhra or Sātāvahana dynasty, then reigning in the Deccan. For the scanty details see Smith, EHI, 198 ff.]
[41]. 987 years before Christ.
[42]. For these and the following dates I am indebted to Goguet’s chronological tables in his Origin of Laws.
[43]. [It is not clear to whom the author refers: Chāmunda Chāvada (A.D. 880-908): or Chāmunda Chaulukya (A.D. 997-1010), (BG, i. Part i. 154, 162).]
[44]. [The evidence quoted in this chapter by which the author endeavours to frame a chronology for this early period, is untrustworthy. Mr. Pargiter tentatively dates the great Bhārata battle about 1000 B.C., but the evidence is very uncertain (JRAS, January 1910, p. 56; April 1914, p. 294).]