The Historians' History of the World 02

Besides these monuments, of which the oldest date from scarcely three centuries before our era, there are subterranean temples, statues, coins, which combine to throw some light on the history of each of the regions where they came into existence. It is only the remains of buildings and statues that have revealed to us the profound influence of the Greeks in certain countries several centuries after first Alexander, and then all the Greeks, had been expelled from India. Similarly it is the bas-reliefs of the temples which can alone tell us of the history of the origin and transformations of the beliefs which succeeded one another in ancient India.d

The Indians had learnt the art of writing, and if the Brahmans still handed down the traditions of their schools by word of mouth, they nevertheless did not hesitate to record donations and transfers in legible characters on stone as was done by others. Within the last few years search and investigation directed to these records have brought a great deal to light, cleared up much obscurity, securely established what was doubtful, and passed judgment on what was false; legends from older and versions of later times, have in various instances had their authenticity and truth put to the test. But these investigations are really only beginning.

Ancient Indian Bas-relief of Men and Animals

It has now been decided on the authority of coins and inscriptions that Kanishka or Kanerki was succeeded by one Huvishka or Hoverki (Doerki), and the latter had as a contemporary or co-ruler (Bazodeo or Vasudeva). The dates of the inscriptions of Mathura confirm this last relation. But Vasudeva, “having the Vasu as gods,” points by this name, so renowned in legend, to a Brahmanical belief in the gods. His Okro coins, similar to some which were already in existence in Kanerki’s day, and bearing the image of the triple, three-headed or six-armed Okra deity, strongly remind us of the images of that Trinity, the world-creating, world-preserving, and world-destroying god,—Brahma, Vishnu, Siva,—the so-called Trimurti in the rock temples of Ellora and Elephanta. The Turushka king who, rightly or wrongly, appears according to this to have followed Bazodeo, already exhibits in the images on his coins the type of the Sassanid rule.

At the close of a century the Scythian power in India was broken and gradually thrust back to the territory whence it came, beyond the northern mountain-peaks and, in India itself, to the west and south of the Punjab as far as Guzerat. But the after effects of that power and of the century-long invasion still continued. A Scythian population, united with the aboriginal hill peoples who had been thrust back at an earlier period, remained, and in great part still remains, in those regions. The Jats and the wandering tribes of Sikhs which belong to them are believed to be of non-Aryan origin, and in religion, language, and customs differ from the Brahmans and are opposed to them. The Rajput families of the “king’s sons,” who afterwards founded independent kingdoms in the south, are also considered to be foreign importations into the caste system and as the successors to the Scythian power. The route of these migrations and conquests from the north to the southwest is marked by ruins, and it was on the sites of such ruins that the later Saracens erected their citadels, palaces, and mosques. These too are now nothing but magnificent remains. But we can here treat of older conditions alone, and of those only in brief.

LEGENDS OF THE EARLY HEROES

Legends have arisen concerning the immigration of Saka princes to Surashtra or Guzerat, and stories of an alleged liberation from foreign rule. A celebrated hero of such legends is Vikramaditya, a king of Ujjain in Malwa, and another, with whose birth the Saka era was connected, is Salivahana, the opponent of the first, who is not less renowned than he in legend, and defeated him in the struggle. But though legend has so much to say of these two, history has little or nothing to tell us of them.

On the western side of the Girnar rock near Junagarh, whose eastern side bears Asoka’s inscriptions, and on whose northern side is engraved that of one Skanda Gupta, we may read that of one Rudra Dama. It tells of the buildings erected by this king, or great satrap, for the protection of the country against the destructive power of the waters of the river Palasini, and another inscription, which extols his name in the midst of those of four others, his predecessors and successors, is found on a pillar at Jasdan in Kathiawar or Surashtra, a part of the present Guzerat. The names of the others are—on the one side of his, Chashtana and Jaya Dama—and on the other side Rudra Sinha and Rudra Sena, and the inscription belongs to the year 127 of the era of these princes.