Page:A History of Civilisation in Ancient India based on Sanscrit Literature Vol 1.djvu/49

 History of Ancient India is a history of thirty centuries of human culture and progress. It divides itself into several distinct periods, each of which, for length of years, will compare with the entire history of many a modern people.

Other nations claim an equal or even a higher antiquity than the Hindus. Egyptian scholars have claimed a date over four thousand years B.C. for the foundation of the first Egyptian dynasty of kings. Assyrian scholars have claimed a date over three thousand years B.C. for Saragon I., who united Sumir and Accad under the Semetic rule; and they claim a still earlier date for the native Turanian civilisation of Accad which preceded the Semetic conquest of Chaldea. The Chinese claim to have an authentic history of dynasties and facts from about 2400 B.C. For India, modern scholars have not claimed an earlier date than 2000 B.C. for the hymns of the Rig Veda, although Hindu civilisation must have been centuries or thousands of years old when these hymns were composed.

But there is a difference between the records of the Hindus and the records of other nations. The hieroglyphic records of the ancient Egyptians yield little information beyond the names of kings and pyramid-builders, and accounts of dynasties and wars. The cuneiform VOL. I.