Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 12.djvu/813

789 HISTORY.] INDIA 789 whom a steed captured in hostile forays had so frequently to be traced from camp to camp, and surrendered or fought for at last.&quot; l An effort has been made to trace Buddha himself to a Scythic origin. He belonged to a royal stock of Sakyas ; and the Chinese records supply an intermediate link between his birthplace in Bengal and the supposed home of his race in Central Asia. It is inferred from them that a branch of the Scythian hordes who overran western Asia about 625 B.C. made its way to Patala on the Indus, the site selected by Alexander in 325 B.C. for his head quarters in that delta, and still the capital of Sind under the name of Hyderabad. One portion of these Patala Scythians went westwards by the Persian Gulf to Assyria ; another section eventually moved north-east into the Gangetic valley, and became the Sakyas of Kapilavastu, among whom Buddha was born. 2 His dying command, that lie should be buried according to the old custom of his race, and a mound erected over his remains, is opposed to the Indo- Aryan form of obsequies by cremation ; but it is essentially in accord with the Scythian mode of disposing of the dead. In the topes or funeral mounds of Buddhism is seen a reproduction of the royal Scythian tombs of which Herodotus speaks. 3 It is therefore argued that the Christian fathers trace back, by no accident, the Manichean doctrine to one &quot; Scythianus,&quot; whosfe disciple Terebinthus took the name of Buddha. 4 oy- Whatever may be the value of this conjecture, the iian influence of the Scythian dynasties in northern India is an ynas- historical fact. The northern or Tibetan form of Buddhism, GS ... represented by Kanishka and his council in 40 A.D., made its way down to the plains of Hindustan, and during the next six centuries competed with the earlier Buddhism of Asoka. The Chinese pilgrim in 629-645 A.D. found both the northern or Scythic and the southern forms of Buddhism in full vigour in India. He spent fourteen months at Cliina-pati, the town where Kanishka had kept his Chinese hostages in the Punjab ; and he records the debates between the northern and southern sects of Buddhists in Oudh, Behar, Kathiawar, and at other places. The Scythic influence in India was a dynastic as well as a religious one. Theevidenceof coins and the names of Indian tribes of reign ing families, such as the Sakas, Huns, and Nagas, point to Scythian settlements as far south as the Central Provinces. 5 Many scholars believe that the Scythians poured down upon India in such masses as to supplant the previous population. The Jits or Jats, 6 who form nearly one-half of the inhabitants of the Punjab, are identified with the Getie ; their great subdivision the Dhe, with the Dah?e, cythian whom Strabo places on the shores of the Caspian. This view has received the support of most eminent investigators, ilt3&amp;gt; from Professor H. H. Wilson to General Cunningham, the director-general of the archaeological survey. 7 The existing division between the Eastern Jats and the Dhe has, indeed, been traced back to tho contiguity of the Massa-getse or Great Gctre 8 and the Dahae, who dwelt by 1 Report cf Archaeological Survey of Western India, pp. 37, 38, 1876. But see, in opposition to Mr Thomas s view, M. Senart in the French Journ. Asiatiquc, 1875, p. 126. 2 Catena of the Buddhist Scriptures fvom the Chinese, by S. Beal, pp. 126-130 (Triibner, 1871). 3 Herod, iv. 71, 72, 217. &quot; I believe,&quot; says the greatest living authority on Indo-Chinese Buddhism, &quot;the legend of Sakya was perverted into this history of Scythianus.&quot; S. Beal, Catena, &quot;ut supra, p. 129, footnote. 5 Muir s Sanskrit Texts, chap. v. vol. i, 1868 ; C. Grant s Gazetteer of the Central Provinces, Ixx. &c., Nagpur, 1870; Reports of the Archaolorjical Survey of India aiul of Western India; Professor H. II. Wilson (and Dr F. Hall), Vishnu Purdna, ii. 134. 6 The word occurs as Jats and Jats, but the identity of the two forms has been established by reference to the Ain-i-Akbari. Some are Hindus, others Mahometans. 7 See, among other places, partiv. of his A rehwological Report, p. 19. 8 Massa means &quot;great&quot; in Pehlevi. the side of each other in Central Asia, and who may have advanced together during the great Scythian movement towards India on the decline of the Bactrian empire. Without pressing such identifications too closely in the service of particular theories, the weight of authority is in favour of a Scythian origin for this most numerous and most industrious section of the population of the Punjab. 9 A similar descent has been assigned to certain of the Rajput tribes. Colonel Tod, still the standard historian of Raj as than, strongly insisted on this point. Some relation ship between the Jats and the Rajputs, although obscure, is acknowledged ; and, although the fits connubii no longer exists between them, an inscription shows that they intermarried in the 5th century A.D. 10 Professor Cowell, indeed, regarded the arguments for the Scythic descent of the Rajputs as inconclusive. 11 But the whole evidence now collected was not before him ; and authorities of great weight have deduced alike from local investigation 12 and from Sanskrit literature 13 a Scythic origin for the Jats, and for some at least of the Rajput tribes. We shall see that the Scythian hordes also supplied certain of the Non- Aryan or so-called aboriginal races of India. The Scythic settlement was not effected without a struggle. As Chandra Gupta advanced from the Gangetic valley, and rolled back the tide of Grseco-Bactrian conquest (circa 312-306 B.C.), so the Indian heroes of the first century before and after Christ are native princes who stemmed the torrent of Scythian invasion. Vikramaditya, king of Ujjain. Expul won his paramount place in Indian story by driving out s i n the invaders. An era, the Samvat, beginning in 57 B.C. ^?~ was founded in honour of his achievements. Its date 14 seems at variance with his legendary victories over the Scythian Kanishka in the first century after Christ ; 15 but his very name suffices to commemorate his struggle against the northern hordes as Vikraniciditya Sakari, or the enemy of the Scythians. His reign forms the Augustan era of Sanskrit literature ; and tradition has ascribed the highest efforts of the Indian intellect during many centuries to the poets and philosophers, or nine gems, of his court. As Chandra Gupta, who freed India from the Greeks, is celebrated in the drama Mudrd-rdk&kasa, so Yikramaditya, the vanquisher of the Scythians, forms the central royal personage of the Hindu stage. Vikramaditya s achievements, however, formed no final deliverance, but merely an episode in a long struggle between the Indian dynasties and new races from the north. Another popular era, the SaTca (literally the 9 It should be mentioned, however, that Dr Trumpp believes them to be of Aryan origin (Zcitsch. d. Deutsch. Morg. Gesellsch., xv. p. 690). See Mr J. Beames s admirable edition of Sir Henry Elliot s Glossary of the Races of the North- Western Provinces, vol. i. pp. 103-137 (ed. 1869). 10 Inscription discovered in Kotnh state ; No. 1 of Inscription Ap pendix to Colonel Tod s Annals and Antiquities of Rdjdsthdn, vol. i. p. 701, note 3 (Madras reprint, 1873). 11 Appendix to Elphinstpne s Hist. Ind., pp. 250 seq. (ed. 1866). 12 Tod s Rdjdsthdn, pp. 52, 483, 500, &c., vol. i. (Madras reprint, 1873). 13 Dr Fitz-Edward Hall s edition of Professor H. H. Wilson s Vishnu Purdna, vol. ii. p. 134. The Hiinas, according to Wilson, were &quot;the White Huns, who were established in the Punjab and along the Indus, as we know from Arrian, Strabo, and Ptolemy, confirmed by recent discoveries of their coins and by inscriptions. &quot; &quot;I am not prepared,&quot; says Dr Fitz-Edward Hall, &quot; to deny that the ancient Hindus when they spoke of the Hiinas included the Huns. In the Middle Ages, however, it is certain that a wee called Huna was understood by the learned of India to form a division of the Kshattriyas.&quot; Professor Dowson s Diet. Hind. Mythology, &c., p. 122. 14 Samvatsara, &quot;the year.&quot; The uncertainty which surrounds even this long accepted finger-post in Indian chronology may be seen from Dr J. Fergusson s paper &quot;On the Saka and Samvat and Gupta Eras,&quot; Journal fioy. As. Soc., new series, vol. xii., especially p. 172. 15 The llushka, Jushka, and Kanishka family of the Raja Tarangini, or chronicles of Kashmir, are proved by inscriptions to belong to the 4th century of the Seleucidan era, or the 1st century A.D.