By this means also great prosperity crowned the whole land of Gambudvîpa. To all the men thereof were given knowledge and length of days. The laws were obeyed and religion honoured, and happiness had her abode among them.
The Saga of Ardschi-Bordschi and Vikramâditja’s Throne.
Historical Notice of Vikramâditja.
The name of Vikramâditja is a household word in the epic mythology of India; and freely it seems to have been adopted by or conferred upon those who emulated the heroic acts of some first great bearer. But as the legendary chroniclers are more occupied with extolling the merits of their favourites, than with establishing their place in the page of history, it becomes a well-nigh impossible task for the modern investigator to trace out and fix the times and seasons of all those who, either in fact or in fiction, have borne the name, or even to distinguish with certainty how many there have been, still less, what are the peculiar deeds and attributes of each.
A writer[1], who has examined painstakingly into the matter, tells us that the popular mind is only conscious of one Vikramâditja, so that without troubling itself to consider the insufficiency of one life to embrace all the aggregate of wonderful works it has to tell of him, it supposes him rather to have had a prolonged or recurring existence as marvellous in itself as the events of which it is composed. On the other hand, he found that native writers made out the number variously from four to nine, though he could not find that they determined with precision the existence of more than two. An additional difficulty arises from this, that the very distinctive super-appellations derived from their deeds by heroes bearing the name seem to have passed over to others along with the name itself; as, for instance, Gardabharâpa = “donkey-form,” given to one of them on account of his being temporarily transformed into a donkey by his father; the name of Sakjaditja is similarly given indiscriminately to others who lived at different periods, though the origin of the word can only be found in an exploit of one of them, who with the aid of Shêsa, the serpent-god, destroyed an oppressor named Sâkja[2]. While the name Vikramaâditja itself seems rather a descriptive appellation than a name, being composed of the two Sanskrit words, vikrama and âditja—the sun, or bright exposition of heroic virtue.
You may form some idea of the uncertainty thus created if you imagine the Roman historians to have been silent, and suppose, that nothing remained to us of the lives of the Emperors, for instance, but certain panegyrics of bards and traditions of the people, eked out by a little scanty assistance from inscriptions and coins, and unsystematic and untrustworthy chronicles. You may then conceive, how with no fixed dates marked out for determining the period of the reign of each, and no literary criterion to distinguish incongruities, a fertile imagination, aiming rather at exciting admiration than conveying information, could run riot with the mass of the acts and adventures, the victories and achievements of the whole number, because the names or titles of “Augustus” and “Cæsar” could be applied to many or all.
There is also the further difficulty that the heroic myths of India have travelled on from tribe to tribe, and from province to province[3], the character of the hero and his exploits incurring many transformations and fresh identifications under the process[4].