Page:History of Indian and Eastern Architecture Vol 1.djvu/39

 INTRODUCTION. 9 outline of the course of events from the 3rd century B.C. 1 This is more especially the case for the Dekhan and the north of India ; in the Tamil country so much has not yet been done, but this is more because there have been fewer labourers in the field than from want of materials. There are literally thousands of inscriptions in the south which have not been copied, and of those that have been collected only a portion have yet been translated ; but they are such as to give us assurance that, when the requisite amount of labour is bestowed upon them, we shall be able to fix the chronology of the kings of the south with a degree of certainty sufficient for all ordinary purposes. 2 It is a far more difficult task to ascertain whether we shall ever recover the History of India before the time of the advent of Buddha. Here we certainly will find no coins or inscriptions to guide us, and no buildings to illustrate the arts, or to mark the position of cities, while all ethnographic traces have become so blurred, if not obliterated, that they serve us little as guides through the labyrinth. Yet on the other hand there is so much literature such as it is bearing on the subject, that we cannot but hope that, when a sufficient amount of learning is brought to bear upon it, the leading features of the history of even that period may be recovered. In order, however, to render it available, it will not require industry so much as a severe spirit of criticism to winnow the few grains of useful truth out of the mass of worthless chaff this literature contains. But it does not seem too much to expect even this, from the severely critical spirit of the age. Meanwhile, the main facts of the case seem to be nearly as follows, in so far as it is necessary to state them, in order to make what follows intelligible. ARYANS. At some very remote period in the world's history the Aryas or Aryans 3 a people speaking an early form of Sanskrit 1 The chronological results have been systematically arranged in that useful handbook. Duff's 'Chronology of India' (London, 1899). 2 Almost the only person who had done anything in this direction till forty years ago was the late Sir Walter Elliot. Since 1872 the labours of Drs. Fleet, Biihler, Kielhorn, R. G. Bhandarkar and others have thrown a flood of light on the history of southern as well as northern India ; and within the last twenty years Dr. Hultzsch's work among the Tamil inscriptions of Madras has yielded very important chronological and historical information for the south of the penin- sula. The Mysore Government has also issued the great ' Epigraphia Carnatica,' under the direction of Mr. Lewis Rice. 3 We have the word in the ' Aria ' and ' Ariana ' of the Greek writers, applied to the country lying to the north-east of Persia adjoining Baktriana. The early Zoroastrians called their country ' Airy- anavaej6' the Afya. home, and in the Behistun inscriptions it is styled ' Ariya.' See Lassen, ' Indische Alterthumskunde,' Bd. i. Ss. 5ff.