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674 POLITICAL HISTORY OF ANCIENT INDIA
Binal).
history of India, has been greatly furthered by your researches and much new light has been thrown on some of the most vexed problems of Indian Archaeology and Chronology. The indices are very copious and the study of your work is greatly facilitated by them.
PROFESSOR PELLIOT, PARIS.-Le nom de l'auteur est garant du serieux du travail.
PROFESSOR JARL CHARPENTIER, UPSALA, SWEDEN.Professor Ray Chaudhury belongs to a set of young Hindu scholars who, combining the traditional education of a Pandit with a thorough training in English, German or French Universities, have lately been carrying on deep and fruitful' researches in the various domains of Indian lore...... Even the student, who on essential points does differ widely from the opinions expressed by Professor Ray Chaudhuri, must willingly recognize his high merits as a scholar.
PROFESSOR A. SCHEPOTIEFF, UFA, RUSSIA.-For our study of the history of the Ancient Age your Political History of Ancient India is of very great importance (trans. from original).
C. E. A. W. OLDHAM (J. R. A. S., 1928, JULY) — Part I of Professor Ray Chaudhuri's work deals with the period from Pariksit to Bimbisāra. The author seeks to show, as he tells us in his preface, "that chronological relation of the national transactions before 600 B.C. is not impossible." He has laid under contribution the usual authorities, the Vedic, Puranic, Buddhist, and Jaina texts-though he does not appear to place much reliance upon the last-named (cf. pp. 6 and 72). A vast mass of records has been collated, and the evidence marshalled in a very concise and able, and in some respects original, manner. The apposite quotations from the original texts are useful. Professor Ray Chaudhuri regards Parikşit I and Parikşit II, as they are named by the late Mr. Pargiter in his Ancient Indian Historical Tradition, as being probably one and the same king, and as identifiable with the Vedic Parikşit. By "the great Janaka" he refers to the Janaka of the later Vedic texts, whose court is said to have been thronged with Brāhmaṇas, and not to the traditional first king Janaka, the eponymous founder of the Janakavamsa, or to Janaka Siradhvaja, the reputed father of Sitā. Synchronizing Gunākhya Sankhāyana with Asvalayana and the Buddha, he inclines, it seems, to place Pariksit in the ninth, and the "great Janaka'' in the seventh century B.C. though he wisely avoids coming to any positive conclusion as to these debatable dates, and points out that if the evidence of the
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