Page:A History of Civilisation in Ancient India based on Sanscrit Literature Vol 1.djvu/59

Rh century. The historian of Kashmîra informs us that fifty-two kings reigned for 1266 years from the time of the Kuru-Panchâla War to the time of Abhimanyu, and this would place the war in the twelfth century B.C.

We do not ask the reader to accept any of the particular dates given above. It is almost impossible to fix any precise date in the History of India before Alexander the Great visited the land; and we may well hesitate, even when astronomical calculations point to a particular year, or historical lists point to a particular century. All that we ask, and all that we are entitled to ask, is that the reader will now find it possible to accept the fact that the Vedas were finally compiled and the Kuru-Panchâla War was fought sometime about the thirteenth century or the twelfth century B.C.

And, if the Kuru-Panchâla War was fought in the thirteenth century B.C. (i.e., about a century before the Trojan War), it is impossible to fix a date later than 1400 B.C. for the commencement of the Second Epoch of which we are speaking. For at the time of the Kuru-Panchâla War, the tracts of country round modern Delhi and Kanouj were the seats of powerful nations who had developed a civilisation and literature of their own. And two centuries must be allowed between the date when the Aryans issued out of the Punjab and the date when these results had been achieved in the Gangetic valley.

To accept 1400 B.C. as the date when the Aryans issued out of the Punjab, is to confirm the dates we have given (2000 to 1400 B.C.) for the First Epoch, the Vedic Period.

Again, many of the Brâhmanas contain internal evidence that they were composed at the time or after the time of the Kurus and the Panchâlas. We may, therefore, suppose these to have been composed in the thirteenth and twelfth centuries B.C. And the Upanishads, which mark the close of Brâhmana literature, were composed