The Historians' History of the World 02

During the reign of a nephew of the last named, another Dhruvasena (632-640), the Chinese pilgrim Hwen Tsang came to India (627-645) and to the Valabhi kingdom in the west. His account of his journey has an astonishing amount to say of the riches of the country, of its numerous inhabitants, of the many cloisters with thousands of monks,—some of them Buddhist but he also speaks of others, and mentions Jain monks whom he had seen,—and of the numbers of columns and the magnificent stupas, etc. The kings of that time, one traveller reports, are Xatriya, all relations of the king Siladitya of Malwa; the son-in-law of the reigning king Siladitya at Kanyakubja (Kanauj) is called T’u-lu-p’o-po-tu (Dhruvabhata). And here our pilgrim incidentally describes that ruler as pious, wise, and virtuous and as so open-handed that he redeemed his charitable gifts at double their value. He speaks with all reverence and respect of this prince, to whose brilliant court he went by invitation.c

The relations of the Indian dynasties to the successive hordes of Scythians who poured down on northern India, are obscure. There is abundant evidence of a long-continued struggle but the attempt to assign dates to its chief episodes has not yet reached results which can be accepted as final. Two Vikramaditya Sakaris, or vanquishers of the Scythians, are required for the purposes of chronology. The truth seems to be that, during the first six centuries of the Christian era, the fortunes of the Scythian or Tatar races rose and fell from time to time in northern India. They more than once sustained great defeats; and they more than once overthrew the native dynasties.e

The latest authorities are now agreed that the great and victorious king Vikramaditya who, as Lefmann says, “together with his battle of Korur has hitherto wandered incessantly like a wavering and restless shadow” from 57 B.C. to 560 A.D., may now be definitely assigned to a reign dating from 510 to 560 A.D. in which time, at Korur, he annihilated the Scythian army.a

BRAHMANIC LEARNING

Down to the time of Buddha and beyond, the Brahman schools were still in course of completing and elaborating their sacred knowledge (Veda), the triple science. Their later Upanishads worked up to the Vedanta, “an end or conclusion” of the Veda. Undoubtedly the Brahmans also learnt with and from their opponents. Their systems of mental investigation (nyaya, mimamsa) and pious exercises (yoga) can witness to this if to nothing else. And as the sons of Sakya taught in the language of the people and as Asoka had his admonitions engraved on stone tablets, so Brahmans had long before this begun to exhibit the laws and art of their sacred language side by side with logic and grammar.

Scholasticism, speculative inquiry, the narrow or strict sciences, in general, have in all ages shown themselves opposed and inimical to free artistic creation. This the Brahmans also demonstrated. For centuries they produced no really new poetic work. With care and diligence, unsurpassed elsewhere, they preserved and kept together the inheritance and possessions of antiquity, and imitated them on the same lines but produced nothing new. They needed to pass through the period of foreign dominion in order to receive a new impulse.

Then came the comparatively brief but brilliant period of the Guptas’ rule, under which the coins are first inscribed in Sanskrit. To this period belongs much that was formerly regarded as ancient and even primitive, and was probably really new, but built up on an ancient foundation. A single, but eloquent example, is the collection of the laws of Manu in the form in which it has come down to us. A great deal might be said on this subject. Here we will only remark that at this time the Brahmanical spirit received a fresh impulse and flourished anew.

At the court of King Vikramaditya of Ujjain were nine who are mentioned as the pearls of his age and dominion. An old and famous verse celebrates their names. Amongst them were Dhanvantari, the great physician and healer, Amarasinha, the renowned philologist and lexicographer, Varahamihira, the astronomer and architect, and some add Kalidasa, the poet of the Sakuntala.

It was shortly after the peace of Mangalore in 1783, that Sir William Jones became Judge of the Supreme Court in Bengal and first president of the Asiatic Society in Calcutta. In the “edifying letters” of the French Jesuits he had read that there were many books in the north of India which were called Natak, and of which the Brahmans said that they contained a great deal of ancient history without any admixture of fable. He became eager to gain possession of these books in order that he might make himself acquainted with them either by means of translations, if such existed, or by himself learning their language; but he had no sooner come to an understanding with the Brahmans than he learnt from them that the statements were like many others made in those letters.