DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.2371#0025
4 INTEODUCTIOX.
great Mauryan dynasty which they found, or which they placed, on
the throne of central India had passed away, her history relapsed,
as before, into the same confused, undated, record of faineant kings,
which continued almost down to the Moslem conquest, a tangle and
perplexity to all investigators. It is only in rare instances that the
problems it presents admit of a certain solution, while the records
of the past, as they existed at the time when the Greeks visited the
country, were, as may well be supposed, even more shadowy than
they became in subsequent ages.
It is so strange that a country so early and so extensively civilised
as India was, should have no written chronicles, that the causes
that led to this strange omission deserve more attention than has
hitherto been bestowed on the subject by the learned in Europe.
The fact is the more remarkable, as Egypt on the one hand and China
on the other, were among the most careful of all nations in recording
dates and chronicling the actions of their earlier kings, and they did
this notwithstanding all the difficulties of their hieroglyphic or
symbolic writing, while India seems to have possessed an alphabet
from an early date, which ought to have rendered her records easy
to keep and still more easy to preserve. There seems in fact to
be no intelligible cause why the annals of ancient India should
not be as complete and satisfactory as those of any other country
in a similar state of civilisation, unless it lies in the poetic tem-
perament of its inhabitants, and the strange though picturesque
variety of the races who dwell within her boundaries, but whose
manifold differences seem at all times to have been fatal to that
unity which alone can produce greatness or stability among nations.
All this is the more strange, for, looked at on the map, India
appears one of the most homogeneous and perfectly defined coun-
tries in the world. On the east, the ocean and impenetrable jungles
shut her out from direct contact with the limitrophe nations on
that side, while in the north the Himalayas forms a practically
impassible barrier against the inhabitants of the Thibetan plains.
On the west the ocean and the valley of the Indus equally mark the
physical features which isolate the continent of India, and mark
her out as a separate self-contained country. Within these boun-
daries there are no great barriers, no physical features, that divide
the land into separate well defined provinces, in which we might
expect different races to be segregated under different forms of
great Mauryan dynasty which they found, or which they placed, on
the throne of central India had passed away, her history relapsed,
as before, into the same confused, undated, record of faineant kings,
which continued almost down to the Moslem conquest, a tangle and
perplexity to all investigators. It is only in rare instances that the
problems it presents admit of a certain solution, while the records
of the past, as they existed at the time when the Greeks visited the
country, were, as may well be supposed, even more shadowy than
they became in subsequent ages.
It is so strange that a country so early and so extensively civilised
as India was, should have no written chronicles, that the causes
that led to this strange omission deserve more attention than has
hitherto been bestowed on the subject by the learned in Europe.
The fact is the more remarkable, as Egypt on the one hand and China
on the other, were among the most careful of all nations in recording
dates and chronicling the actions of their earlier kings, and they did
this notwithstanding all the difficulties of their hieroglyphic or
symbolic writing, while India seems to have possessed an alphabet
from an early date, which ought to have rendered her records easy
to keep and still more easy to preserve. There seems in fact to
be no intelligible cause why the annals of ancient India should
not be as complete and satisfactory as those of any other country
in a similar state of civilisation, unless it lies in the poetic tem-
perament of its inhabitants, and the strange though picturesque
variety of the races who dwell within her boundaries, but whose
manifold differences seem at all times to have been fatal to that
unity which alone can produce greatness or stability among nations.
All this is the more strange, for, looked at on the map, India
appears one of the most homogeneous and perfectly defined coun-
tries in the world. On the east, the ocean and impenetrable jungles
shut her out from direct contact with the limitrophe nations on
that side, while in the north the Himalayas forms a practically
impassible barrier against the inhabitants of the Thibetan plains.
On the west the ocean and the valley of the Indus equally mark the
physical features which isolate the continent of India, and mark
her out as a separate self-contained country. Within these boun-
daries there are no great barriers, no physical features, that divide
the land into separate well defined provinces, in which we might
expect different races to be segregated under different forms of