Page:History of India Vol 2.djvu/26

4 imperfectly, the ideal expressed in the words of Goethe:—

"The historian's duty is to separate the true from the false, the certain from the uncertain, and the doubtful from that which cannot be accepted.... Every investigator must before all things look upon himself as one who is summoned to serve on a jury. He has only to consider how far the statement of the case is complete and clearly set forth by the evidence. Then he draws his conclusion and gives his vote, whether it be that his opinion coincides with that of the foreman or not."

The application of these principles necessarily involves the wholesale rejection of mere legend as distinguished from tradition, and the omission of many picturesque anecdotes, mostly folk-lore, which have clustered round the names of the mighty men of old in India.

The historian of the remote past of any nation must be content to rely much upon tradition as embodied in literature, and to acknowledge that the results of his researches, when based upon traditionary materials, are inferior in certainty to those obtainable for periods of which the facts are attested by contemporary evidence. In India, with very few exceptions, contemporary evidence of any kind is not available before the time of Alexander; but critical examination of records dated much later than the events referred to can extract from them testimony which may be regarded with a high degree of probability as