Page:History of India Vol 2.djvu/34

12 back to the middle of the fourth century A. D., and the Matsya is probably intermediate in date between it and the Vishnu. The principal Puranas seem to have been edited in their present form before 500 A. D.



Modern European writers have been inclined to disparage unduly the authority of the Puranic lists, but closer study finds in them much genuine and valuable historical tradition. For instance, the Vishnu Purana gives the outline of the history of the Maurya dynasty with a near approach to accuracy, and the Radcliffe manuscript of the Matsya is equally trustworthy for Andhra history. Proof of the surprising extent to which coins and inscriptions confirm the Matsya list of the Andhra kings has recently been published.

The earliest foreign notice of India is that in the inscriptions of the Persian king Darius, son of Hystaspes, at Persepolis and Naksh-i-Bustam, the latter of which may be referred to the year 486 Herodotus, who wrote late in the fifth century, contributes valuable information concerning the relation between India and the Persian empire, which supplements the less detailed statements of the inscriptions. The fragments of the works of Ktesias of Knidos, who was physician to Artaxerxes Mnemon in 401, and amused himself by