The contempt with which judicious historians now treat the historical fables of early society, must be indulged with caution when we explore the ancient condition of Hindustan; because the legendary tales of the Hindus have hitherto, among European inquirers, been regarded with particular respect; and because, without a knowledge of them, much of what has been written in Europe concerning the people of India, cannot be understood. It is necessary, therefore, to relate, that at the commencement of the Satya yuga, or 3,892,911 years ago, lived Satyavrata, otherwise denominated Vaivaswata, and also the seventh Manu. He had escaped with his family from an universal deluge, which had destroyed the rest of the human species. Of his descendants, were two royal branches: the one denominated the children of the sun; the other, the children of the moon. The first reigned at Ajodhya or Oudh; the second at Pratisht’hana or Vitora. These families, or dynasties, subsisted till the thousandth year of the present or Kali yuga, at which time they both became extinct; and a list of the names of the successive princes is presented in the Sanskrit books.
Satyavrata, the primitive sire, prolonged his existence and his reign through the whole period of the Satya yuga or 1,728,000 years. From this patriarchal monarch are enumerated, in the solar line of his descendants, fifty-five princes, who inherited the sovereignty till the time of Rama. Now it is agreed among all the Brahmans that Rama filled the throne of Ajodhya at the end of the Treta yuga. The reigns, therefore, of these fifty-five princes, extending from the beginning to the end of that epoch, filled 1,296,000 years, which, at a medium, is more than 23,000 years to each reign. During the next, or Dwapar yuga of 864,000 years, twenty-nine princes are enumerated, who must, at an average, have reigned each 29,793 years. From the beginning of the present, or Kali yuga to the time when the race of solar princes became extinct, are reckoned 1000 years, and thirty princes. There is a wonderful change, therefore, in the last age, in which only thirty-three years, at a medium, are assigned to a reign.
Beside the two lines of solar and lunar kings, a different race, who reigned in Magadha, or Behar, commence with the fourth age. Of these, twenty in regular descent from their ancestor Jarasandha extended to the conclusion of the first thousand years of the present yuga, and were cotemporary with the last thirty princes of the solar and lunar race. At the memorable epoch of the extinction of those branches, the house of Jarasandha also failed; for the reigning prince was slain by his prime minister, who placed his son Pradyota on the throne. Fifteen of the descendants of this usurper enjoyed the sovereignty, and reigned from the date of his accession 498 years, to the time of Nanda, the last prince of the house of Pradyota. He, after a reign of 100 years, was murdered by a Brahman, who raised to the throne a man of the Maurya race, named Chandra Gupta. This prince is reckoned, by our oriental antiquarians, the same with Sandracottus or Sandracuptos, the cotemporary of Alexander the Great. Only nine princes of his line succeeded him, and held the sceptre for 137 years. On the death of the last, his commander in chief ascended the throne, and, together with nine descendants, to whom he transmitted the sovereignty, reigned 112 years. After that period the reigning prince was killed, and succeeded by his minister Vasudeva. Of his family only four princes are enumerated; but they are said to have reigned 345 years. The throne was next usurped by a race of Sudras, the first of whom slew his master, and seized the government. Twenty-one of this race, of whom Chandrabija was the last, reigned during a space of 456 years. The conclusion of the reign of this prince corresponds therefore with the year 2648 of the Kali yuga, and with the year 446 before the birth of Christ. And with him, according to Sir William Jones, closes the authentic system of Hindu chronology.
It is a most suspicious circumstance in the pretended records of a nation, when we find positive statements for a regular and immense series of years in the remote abyss of time, but are entirely deserted by them when we descend to the ages more nearly approaching our own. Where annals are real, they become circumstantial in proportion as they are recent; where fable stands in the place of fact, the times over which the memory has any influence are rejected, and the imagination riots in those in which it is unrestrained. While we receive accounts, the most precise and confident, regarding the times of remote antiquity not a name of a prince in after ages is presented in Hindu records. A great prince named Vikramaditya, is said to have extended widely his conquests and dominion, and to have reigned at Magadha 396 years after Chandrabija. From that time even fiction is silent. We hear no more of the Hindus and their transactions, till the era of Mohammedan conquest; when the Persians alone become our instructors.
After the contempt with which the extravagant claims to antiquity of the Chaldeans and Egyptians had always been treated in Europe, the love of the marvellous is curiously illustrated by the respect which has been paid to the chronology of the Hindus. We received indeed the accounts of the Hindu chronology, not from the incredulous historians of Greece and Rome, but from men who had seen the people; whose imagination had been powerfully affected by the spectacle of a new system of manners, arts, institutions, and ideas; who naturally expected to augment the opinion of their own consequence, by the greatness of the wonders which they had been favoured to behold; and whose astonishment, admiration, and enthusiasm, for a time, successfully propagated themselves. The Hindu statements, if they have not perhaps in any instance gained a literal belief, have almost universally been regarded as very different from the fictions of an unimproved and credulous people, and entitled to a very serious and profound investigation. Yet they are not only carried to the wildest pitch of extravagance, but are utterly inconsistent both with themselves and with other established opinions of the Brahmans.
Of this a single specimen will suffice. The character which the Brahmans assign to the several yugas is a remarkable part of their system. The Satya yuga is distinguished by the epithet of golden; the Treta yuga by that of silver; the Dwapar yuga by that of copper; and the Kali yuga is denominated earthen. In these several ages the virtue, the life, and the stature of man exhibited a remarkable diversity. In the Satya yuga, the whole race were virtuous and pure; the life of man was 100,000 years, and his stature 21 cubits. In the Treta yuga one-third of mankind were corrupt; and human life was reduced to 10,000 years. One-half of the human race were depraved in the Dwapar yuga, and 1000 years bounded the period of life. In the Kali yuga, all men are corrupt, and human life is restricted to 100 years. But though in the Satya yuga men lived only 100,000 years, Satyavrata, according to chronological fiction, reigned 1,728,000 years; in the Treta yuga human life extended only to 10,000 years, yet fifty-five princes reigned, each at a medium, more than 23,000 years; in the Dwapar yuga, though the life of man was reduced to 1000 years, the duration of the reigns was even extended, for twenty-nine princes held each the sceptre in this period for 29,793 years.[b]
If we turn from such traditions as these and seek more secure records, our quest is futile. Ancient India has no history proper. Its books furnish no document on its past chronology, and its monuments cannot supply the place of books, since the oldest are scarcely three centuries anterior to our era. But for a small number of religious books, in which the historical facts are embedded under masses of legends, the past of India would be as unknown as that of that lost Atlantis, which was destroyed by a geological cataclysm and whose story is related in the ancient traditions preserved by Plato.
THE AUTHORITY OF THE VEDAS
The only ancient documents which we can consult for the purpose of recovering some trace of this vanished past, are supplied by the Vedas, religious poems written at various epochs, and the oldest of which seem to date from fifteen centuries before our era. After them, but much later, come the epic poems, known under the names of Mahabharata and Ramayana, and the religious and social code of Manu.