It is to the same hero that the Hindu legends attribute the expulsion of the Scythians from India. These people had penetrated to the Greeks of Bactriana two centuries before Christ, and had gradually subdued them. One of their kings, Kanishka, a convert to Buddhism, had shortly before our era founded an empire comprising Afghanistan, the Punjab, and Rajputana. We know nothing of the history of the Scythians in India, unless it be that they propagated the artistic influence of the Greeks, as we see by some statues at Muttra.
According to the inscriptions interpreted by Cunningham, we should probably include amongst the contemporaries of Vikramaditya [see footnote] the Rajah Harshavardhara, who reigned from 607-648 and of whom the Chinese pilgrim, Hwen Tsang, who visited India in 634, speaks as one of the most powerful sovereigns of the north of India. His capital was Kanauj, one of the most ancient cities of India, for a long time the seat of the Gupta dynasty, and supposed to have been one of the cradles of Aryan civilisation. Ptolemy mentions it, 140 years after Christ, under the name of Kanogiya. The kingdom of which it was the capital in the days of Hwen Tsang extended from Kashmir to Assam and from Nepal to the Nerbudda.
Kanauj lies east of Agra, a few miles from the Ganges. All the traditions agree in extolling its splendour. It filled Mahmud of Ghazni with admiration when he attacked it in 1016 A.D. Ferishta says that as he approached it, he saw “a city which raised its head as high as heaven, and which, in fortifications and architecture, could justly boast that it had no rival.”
Of this ancient capital which, if we are to believe Hwen Tsang, was three miles in length, there remains not a stone to tell its history. As in the case of many famous old capitals, the destruction of the monuments anterior to the Mohammedan invasion was so complete that, in spite of all his investigations, Cunningham could not succeed in recovering a single relic. The oldest thing which he observed at Kanauj is an inscription dating only from 1136 and consequently later than the Mohammedan invasion. All the existing monuments of this town are exclusively Mohammedan, though sometimes constructed from the débris of ancient Hindu monuments.
Kanauj is one of those great ancient capitals whose history we know only from vague traditions and a few inscriptions. To those who have seen the remains of the small number which have escaped destruction, as, for instance, Khajurao, it is impossible to ascribe the enthusiastic descriptions of the splendour of these antique cities solely to the writers’ imagination.
Kanauj, Khajurao, Mahoba, and many other famous towns of which the name and the ruins are all that now survive, were the seats of mighty empires. Of these the most celebrated were governed by kings of the Rajput race, the only one whose dynasties still exist and which has preserved, if not its independence, at least its institutions and its customs. Unfortunately, we know almost nothing of the history of the Rajputs till the time when they entered into conflict with the Mohammedans. The latter succeeded in destroying their capitals and in thrusting them back to the steep and mountainous regions of Rajputana, but they only obtained from them a purely nominal submission.
The whole of this period, which extends from the successors of Asoka to the revival of Brahmanism and even to the Mohammedan invasions, is thus almost as obscure as that which preceded it, and but for the monuments it has left us we should know practically nothing about it. Historical documents are equally lacking for the period of the revival of Brahmanism, or the neo-Brahmanical period. Coins and monuments are about the only authorities which we can consult concerning it.[d]
FOOTNOTES
[18] [“The name Vikramaditya,” says Sir W. W. Hunter in his Brief History of the Indian People, p. 81, “is a title meaning ‘A Very Sun in Prowess,’ which has been borne by several kings in Indian history. But the Vikramaditya of the first century before Christ was the greatest of them,—great alike as a defender of his country against the Scythian hordes, as a patron of men of learning, and as a good ruler of his subjects.” This will explain the confusion that has enveloped the name. See also the previous section on “Traditional Kings.”]
