Book Title: Alphabet Key To History Of Mankind
Author(s): David Diringer
Publisher: Hutchinsons Scientific and Technical Publications
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INDIAN BRANCH
333
"(coin) of King Dharmapala." A few other short inscriptions, two seals of Nadaya (Namdaya) and Agapalasa (Amgapalassa), a few Persian sigloi in Brahmi script, and perhaps the inscription of Mahasthan (Fig. 155, 3), may be attributed to the same period. More important are the Asoka inscriptions (see below), belonging to the middle of the third century B.C.
(7) According to great authorities on the subject, such as Sir George Dunbar, J. Kennedy, Professor Rhys Davids, V. E. Smith, and others, the period 800-600 B.C. in India shows a remarkable advance in industrial life; a host of trades have been developed, from jewellers, usurers and weavers to sellers of dried fish, professional acrobats, astrologers and barbers; astronomy had made considerable progress. This period coincided with the development of maritime commerce. "Sea-going merchants, availing themselves of the monsoons, were in the habit, at the beginning of the seventh (and perhaps at the end of the eighth) century B.C., of trading from ports on the south-west coast of India... to Babylon, then a great mercantile emporium"; "it is highly probable that there was such trade much before that time." It is generally agreed that the development of commerce favoured the diffusion of a knowledge of writing.
I do not think that much can be concluded for the subject we are here treating, from the fact of the ancient trade relations between India, including Dravidian India, with the western Semitic world in the times of Solomon (tenth century B.C.), as suggested by the presence in early Hebrew and other Semitic languages, of some Indo-Aryan and Dravidian loan-words, such as kinnor, "guitar" (from Indian kinnari?), 'almuggim (algummim), "sandals," qophim, "monkeys," tukkiyim, "peafowls," sappir, "sapphire," and a few other words. (See J. Kennedy, The Early Commerce of Babylon with India, "JOURN. OF THE ROY. ASIAT. Soc.", 1898, pp. 241 sq.; H. G. Rawlinson, Intercourse between India and the Western World, Cambridge University Press, 1916 (2nd. ed., 1926); W. Baumgartner, Was wir heute von der hebræischen Sprache und ihrer Geschichte wissen, "ANTHROPOS," 1940-1941, p. 612, n. 104, with copious bibliography).
(8) Very little is known about the early Aryan history of India. The fantastic theories such as that of Mr. Tilak who attributed the earliest hymns of the Vedic literature to about 7000 B.C., or that of Mr. Shankar Balakrishna Dikshit who attributed certain Brahmanas to 3800 B.C., cannot be taken seriously. The immigration of Aryan tribes into India, is now attributed to the second half of the second millennium B.C., and the entire Vedic literature the sacred scriptures of the ancient Indiansis attributed to the same period continuing into the early part of the first millennium B.C., but they do not contribute much to the historical knowledge of ancient India.
Somewhere in the seventh century B.C.-no data exist for accurate chronology-we find ourselves upon somewhat firmer ground. The whole of India was becoming organized. Besides progress in commerce, it was
