THE EPOCHS OF INDIAN HISTORY
The history of India has been conveniently, if somewhat arbitrarily, separated into epochs by Le Bon. His classification, which is necessarily very general, and in which the epochs are very far from being clearly defined since they encroach upon one another or exist side by side, embraces the following periods:
1. The Vedic period; 2. The Brahmanical period; 3. The Buddhist period; 4. The period of the revival of Brahmanism or neo-Brahmanic; 5. The Mohammedan period; 6. The European period.
VEDIC PERIOD
The commencement of the Vedic period is about fifteen centuries earlier than our era. It is marked by the invasion of India by the Aryans.
The Vedic period is that age of Indian history which is wholly legendary. The little that we know concerning it is revealed solely by religious books, known under the name of Vedas, the most important of which, the Rig-Veda, has been called, with reason, the Bible of the Aryans of the northwest of India.
Established at first round the Himalayas, as far as the Vindhya Mountains, the primitive Aryans lived in the state of wandering pastoral tribes, and it is to be supposed that their invasion must have taken place gradually. Their most ancient books seem to have been written about fifteen centuries before our era. In that remote age they had no castes, they worshipped the forces of nature and erected neither temples nor statues; to the people on whom they descended they brought a new language and a new religion, but they did not bring them architecture. These primitive Aryan peoples knew how to write books, but they did not know how to build monuments of stone, and nothing in the most ancient of their works indicates that they built either temples or palaces.
We will not here linger over the Aryan civilisation, any more than over the Brahmanical period which terminates it. Historical documents properly so called are lacking for both. The epics which are connected with the Brahmanical period are confirmed by the stories of Megasthenes, and prove that India was then beginning to be covered with towns, temples, and palaces; but of the monuments of this period no remains whatever have come down to us.