Page:A History of Civilisation in Ancient India based on Sanscrit Literature Vol 1.djvu/58

 which we shall have something to say further on. The central literary fact of this period was the compilation of the Vedas. Tradition and the Epic itself inform us that the compiler of the Vedas was a contemporary of the war; but we may accept or reject this as we like. We will examine these two facts separately.

First, with regard to the compilation of the Vedas. Tradition has it that when the Vedas were compiled, the position of the solstitial points was observed and recorded to mark the date. The Jyotisha in which this observation is now found is a late work, not earlier than the third century before Christ, but the observation was certainly made at an ancient date, and Bentley and Archdeacon Pratt—both able mathematicians—have gone over the calculation and found that it was made in 1181 B.C.

Much has been written of late against the value of this discovery in Europe, America, and India, but we have found nothing in these discussions which goes against the genuineness of the astronomical observation. We are inclined to believe that the observation marks approximately the true date of the final compilation of the Vedas; and as the work of compilation occupied numerous teachers for generations together, we may suppose that the Vedas were compiled during the fourteenth and thirteenth centuries B.C. And this date falls within the period which we have assigned for the Second Epoch.

Next, with regard to the Kuru-Panchâla War. The annals of different kingdoms in India allude to this ancient war, and some of these annals are not unreliable. The founder of Buddhism lived in the sixth century B.C., and we learn from the annals of Magadha that thirty-five kings reigned between the Kuru-Panchâla War and the time of Buddha. Allowing twenty years to each reign, this would place the war in the thirteenth century B.C.

Again, we know from coins that Kanishka ruled in Kashmîra in the first century A.D., and his successor Abhimanyu probably reigned towards the close of that