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CHAPTER XVI
KANISHKA
DROM the death of Asoka onwards to the time T of the Guptas, the history of India is, at present, in a state of the utmost confusion and darkness. The Jain and Buddhist literature of this period is still, almost entirely, buried in manuscript. From time to time a ray of light, now in one part of what had been the great Magadha empire, now in another, illumines the darkness. The labours of numismatists and epigraphists have been directed to the reconstruction, from such isolated data as the the coins and inscriptions give us, of a continuous chronology and of a connected history. The progress of this work, especially in the past few years, has been great. But the field is so vast, the data are so sporadic, doubt as to the eras used is so persistent an obstacle, that the difficulty of this reconstruction is immense.
One or two of the ancient sites have been partially excavated; but archæological exploration has been almost confined, as yet, in India, to what can be found on the surface. There was a widely diffused
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Shree Sudharmaswami Gyanbhandar-Umara, Surat
www.umaragyanbhandar.com
