INDIAN HISTORY IN OUTLINE
A PRELIMINARY SURVEY, COMPRISING A CURSORY VIEW OF THE SWEEP OF EVENTS AND A TABLE OF CHRONOLOGY
The important place which India holds in recent history combines with the fascination of its mysteries to give this country an interest in the eyes of the modern historian which it never held previously to the last century. Thus one finds that in the most recent German Weltgeschichte the history of ancient India is given almost as much space as is devoted to the entire history of ancient Greece or Rome. Whereas, to point a contrast, it may be noted that in the classical Weltgeschichte of Schlosser, written half a century ago, the history of India is allotted only about a dozen pages. It may fairly be held that in each of these cases there is a lack of true historical perspective, for, whereas it would be absurd to claim that India receives anything like just treatment in the condensed summary of Schlosser, it would be equally absurd to claim that the actual world-historic merit of India is at all comparable—from a European standpoint—to that of Greece or Rome. But questions of exact importance aside, the facts just cited evidence a growing realisation of the importance of the oriental branch of the great Aryan tree. They show among other things that the Western mind is being aroused from that standpoint of insular dogmatism on which it placed itself with such seeming security.
It is a hopeful sign of the times, for it suggests that the hour is near at hand when it will be generally demanded of the historian who attempts to deal with general history that he shall look out upon the world not with the eyes of a narrow European partisanship, but with true cosmopolitanism. When this is done it will become more and more evident that a great people of the Orient, who had attained the highest stage of culture, had developed an extraordinary literature, and achieved the height of an amazing practical philosophy at least half a millennium before the beginning of our era, are not to be treated with contempt because their conceptions of religion and their estimate of the right ideals of practical civilisation differ from our own. To such a clarified view the position given to the history of India in the work just referred to must manifestly tend.
It must be admitted, however, that whatever the interest attaching to Indian history, almost insuperable difficulties stand in the way of a clear interpretation of that history. The country itself is of enormous size, comprising about a million and a half of square miles, and giving residence to a population estimated at some two hundred and forty millions. This enormous population is made up of a great variety of races, the origin of which is altogether obscure. When one speaks of the history of ancient India, one practically ignores all these indigenous races, and refers merely to the invading hosts of so-called Aryans that came into the country from the northwest and finally became dominant there. How greatly these invaders were modified as a race by their contact with the native hordes of India, is evidenced in the wide gap that separates the Aryan of India to-day from the Aryan of Europe.
As to the exact time when the Aryan invasion occurred, all is obscure. Nor is anything definite known of the history of conquest, and the subsequent development of the race in India, except such merely inferential glimpses as may be gained through study of the Vedas. India was indeed known to the western world from a very early period. We have seen that the Assyrian monuments depict animals unmistakably of Indian origin, as being brought in tribute to the court of Shalmaneser II. But neither these nor any other records of the western world suffice to throw any light whatever upon the real history of India or give us any knowledge of the country beyond the mere proof that its existence was known, until so relatively late a period as the conquest of Alexander. After that time the West and the East were in closer contact.
Seleucus, a general of Alexander’s and the inheritor of the chief part of his Asiatic territories, entered into diplomatic relations with an Indian Raja, Chandragupta by name, who had driven the Macedonian garrisons from the Punjab and proved himself too formidable to be conquered. The ambassador sent by Seleucus to the court of the Raja was named Megasthenes. The Greek appears to have been greatly impressed with what he saw of Indian life, for he wrote an enthusiastic description of the manners and customs of the Indian people. This account would appear to have circulated widely in the Grecian world, and to have afforded one of the sources for the accounts of India given at a later day by Diodorus and Arrian; but, unfortunately, the original has not come down to us. Its loss was probably due, in part, at any rate, to the excellence of Arrian’s work. Arrian drew also upon the account of India written by Nearchus, the general who commanded Alexander’s fleet.
No doubt there were other writers of the time of Alexander and the immediately succeeding period who wrote on India, but if so, their works, like those of Megasthenes and Nearchus, were superseded by the famous work of Arrian, which, as has been pointed out by Professor Lefmann, was for many centuries regarded as the most authoritative book on the subject. Arrian, it will be recalled, was also the author of the most authoritative life of Alexander the Great. It is not quite clear that his Indica was originally intended as a separate production; in any event, it naturally grew out of the history of Alexander. There is no reason to suppose that Arrian had visited India, but his recognised merits as a careful historian give a high degree of reliability to his work as evidencing the best knowledge of his time. It must be understood, however, that this knowledge had referred almost exclusively to the manners and customs of India, throwing almost no light whatever on the sweep of historical events.
Turning to India itself, we find that almost no historical documents except the religious books have come down from antiquity. The one bright spot in Indian history of a relatively early period is furnished by the reign of King Asoka.[16] Asoka lived about the middle of the third century B.C. He was a great conqueror, and appears to have brought a large part of India under his sway. His famous edict was engraved on rocks and pillars throughout his domain. These edicts are chiefly concerned with the practical enforcement of the duties enjoined by the Buddhist faith.
