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THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY
[ NOVEMBER, 1926
contemporary with four important historical events : Third Burmese War (1885-1889). Such ignorance the foundation of Jainism and of Buddhism, the has no doubt occurred elsewhoro. advent of Darius and his Persians on the Indian With the departure of Alexander and the end frontiers, and the voyage of Skylax of Karyanda of the Nandas we come to the end of a definite from the Indus to the Red Sea. The first two period in Indian history, into the difficult chronology vastly affected Indian thought and the last two of which the book goes in the most careful manner, connected India with the West-a fact which one and I observe that it fixes the date of the death of cannot forget in considering things Indian. After Buddha at 543 D.C., after a close summary of the the Saisun âgas came the Nandas, who lasted till
various attributions, and holds that the death of 320 B.. The end of the Saisunagas came from
Mahåvira (of the Jains), which is generally fixed in causes natural to a dynasty which had become 527 3.C., is still merely a "traditional date." weak, and the whole record of the Nandas is garbled, These statements are worth observing. which is due no doubi, &s Dr. Vincent Smith sur- We have now reached the Mauryan Empire mises, to its being the work of Brahman Monks tell. founded by the great Chandragupta Maurya se ing the story of kings, who were of a belief foreign the first of its kind in India. Of Chandragupta a to their own-perhaps that of the Jains. Their short, but good, account is given, and much is said greatness would render it unlikely that they were
about his government from the accounts of his the depraved creatures they are represented to
Minister, Vishnugupta Chånakya, alias Kautilya, and have been. Towards their end another great event the Greek physician-onvoy Megasthenes. Chandra. happened in India :-the arrival of Alexander the gupta was so great a man that we are indeed fortunate Great in 326 B.C.
in having two such good accounts of him and his
government, and also in having scholars who have Two chapters are devoted to the doings of Alex. so patiently hunted hp and given the modern world ander, including a wonderful account of his victory all that they contain. In this volume will be found a over Poros, because, as the author remarks, it is "a painstaking sumnukty of their contents, bejnging subject, which, so far as I know, has not been treated vividly before us the mode of government and the in any modern book." No one will quarrel with extent of the civilisation then enjoyed. The only Dr. Vincent Smith as to the length of his treatment, point on which I would like to break a lance with but I am not quite prepared to endorse his state. | Dr. Vincent Smith here is as to what he calls "the ment that Alexander's campaign was in actual absence of Hellenic influence." He states that effect, no more than a brilliant raid on a gigantic neither Alexander nor Seleukos Nikator, with both Boale, which left upon India no mark save the of whom Chandragupta came in contact, nor oro horrid scars of bloody war." It seems to me, dus. presumes any other Hellenised ruler or people on the pite all that is said in this work on pp. 251-256, to North-Western Frontiers, had any effect on him and be unlikely that "India remained unchanged," luis Indian administration, civil or military. No though no Indian refers to it. If Indian writers doubt there is no allusion to Hellenic influence in could distort the history of the Nandas, who were
Indian writings, but it seems almost impossible to obviously great kings, they were equally capable
believe that so all-pervading a man as Alexander of ingoring the foreigner Alexander. His influence
was unable to affect Chandragupta, while it is quite in the East appears to me to have been too great to
possible to believe that whatever he and his officers have been reduced to nothing in India. However, learnt and copied may have been so assimilated that in Dr. Vincent Smith's view, western influence did the origin of the ideas became lost. Perhaps in not have effect till the days of the Kushans some future editions the point of Hellenism in India may four centuries later, which relegates it to the days
be gone into more deeply. The story of the end of of Imperial Rome. Nevertheless, the ignoring and
Chandragupta as a Jain ascetic is most interestingly distorting of inconvenient or humiliating history by
told in a brief paragraph. Oriental writers is a point worthy of serious consi. Chandragupta was succeeded by his sou Binduderation. Dr. Vincent Smith himself remarks on sära alias Amitraghata, the Slayer of Foes, about the absence of reference in Hindu books to the sack
whom not much is known, though he, too, must of Somnath by Mahmud of Ghazni in the eleventh have been a great monarch, extending his dominions oentury A.D., and the present writer in the Second and carrying on his father's communications with Afghan War (1878-1881) found Afghans and Path- the Greeks. Here we are favoured with two very ana wno were entirely ignorant of the British pro- valuable appendices on the extent of the cession of ceedings as to the Bal& Hissår at Kabul in the First Ariana by Seleukos Nikator and on the Arthasastra of Afghan War, not forty years earlier. At Canton in Chanakya. Of Asoka, Bindusara's famous son, much 1898 be found educated Southern Chinese not only has been written and it must here suffice to say ignorant but sceptical of the facts of the then that the book goes with the greatest care into all the .qwie rodent Japanese War in Northern China. information regarding the reign of this all-important
The fame ignorance of recent history in Lower Emperor, weighing the evidence carefully and ata. Burma was visible in Upper Burina during the ting, where thought necessary, Dr. Vincent Smith's
