Page:History of India Vol 1.djvu/246

198 in animals larger than those of any other country, and produced wild trees which bore wool (cotton) from which the Indians made their clothing. He also mentions the fact, which is probably historically true, that Darius, King of Persia, subjugated a part of India, and that his ships sailed down the Indus to the sea.

And lastly, Megasthenes came to India in the fourth century before Christ, and lived in the court of Chandragupta in Pataliputra, or ancient Patna, writing an account of India which still survives in fragments preserved by subsequent authors, although his original work is lost.

We have seen that by the end of the Brahmanic and Epic Periods the whole of the valley of the Ganges and Jumna from Delhi to North Behar had been conquered, peopled, and Hinduized, and we also know that towards the close of this period Hindu settlers and colonists left the valley of the Ganges and penetrated into remote unknown lands, into Southern Behar, Malwa, the Deccan, and Gujarat. Thus these non-Aryan provinces were becoming gradually known to the Hindus, and were slowly coming under Hindu influence and power when the Epic Period closed and the Philosophic Period began.

The waves of Hindu conquests rolled onwards, and the aborigines submitted themselves to a higher civilization and a nobler creed. Rivers were crossed, forests were cleared, lands were reclaimed, wide wastes were peopled, and new countries hitherto aboriginal witnessed the rise of Hindu power and of Hindu religion.