Page:Footfalls of Indian History.djvu/25

8 the capital to Gour, on the destruction of Pataliputra, and the immense cultural potentiality of the Bengali people — that the suggestion cannot fail to form a dominant note in subsequent research. Such research must for some time be of a deeply inductive character. That is to say, it will proceed by the accumulation of particulars. This process is the ideal of modern science, and it may be said that so arduous and so against the natural appetite of the human mind is it, that few there be that attain unto it. Yet as an ideal its greatness is unquestionable. Conclusions reached by careful gathering of facts without bias towards one or reaction against another theory are incontrovertible. For this reason anyone who can bring forward one fact out of the far past, however private or circumscribed may seem its significance, so long as it is unknown and certain, is doing a service to historians. For progress must for some time depend upon this accumulation. We must investigate the elements in order to come at true concept^ of the whole.

When we have reached a new fact, the next effort should be to relate it to known central events. We know for instance that capitals changed in Bengal from Pataliputra to Gour, and from Gour to Vikrampur. These transitions could not take place without immense social consequences. The ruins of Behar mark the long struggle of Bengal against invasion. This fact belongs to her military history. But another