Page:History of Indian and Eastern Architecture Vol 1.djvu/61

 INTRODUCTION. 31 eastward, joined the crowd, and sought settlements in the more fertile countries within the Indus. The Sakas were well known to classical authors as the Sacae, or Skythians. They were pressed on at first by the Yue-chi, and became apparently most formidable during the earlier centuries of the Christian Era. Another important horde were the Ephthalites or White Huns, who came into India apparently in the 5th century, and one of whose kings, named Gollas, if we may trust Cosmas Indicopleustes, was the head of a powerful state in northern India, about the year 53O. 1 They, too, seem to have been conquered about the same time by the Hindus, and, as the 6akas, if not the Hiinas, 2 were Buddhists, it may have been their destruction that first weakened the cause of that religion, and which led to its ultimate defeat a little more than a century afterwards. During the dark age, 750 to 950, we do not know of any horde passing the Indus. The Muhammadans were probably too strong on the frontier to admit of its being done, and after that age they and they only conducted the various invasions which completely changed the face and character of northern India. For seven centuries they were continued, with only occasional interruptions, and at last resulted in placing the Muhammadan power supreme, practically, over the whole of India, but only to fall to pieces like a house of cards, before the touch of Western civilisation. All this, however, is written, and written so distinctly, in so many books, that it need not be recapitulated here. SOUTHERN INDIA. If the records of the ancient history of northern India are unsatisfactory and untrustworthy, those of the southern part of the peninsula are much more so. The Dravidians have no ancient literature like that of the Vedas. They have no traditions which point to any seat of their race out of India, or of their having migrated from any country with whose inhabitants they can claim any kindred. So far as they know, they are indigenous and aboriginal. The utmost extent to which even their traditions extend is to claim for their leading race of kings the Pandyas a descent from Arjuna, one of the heroes of 1 'Christian Topography of Cosmas,' translated by Dr. J. W. M'Crindle (Hakluyt Soc.), pp. 370-371. This Gollas seems probably the same as Mihirakula or Mihiragula. - We can hardly hope to discriminate among these foreign invaders between Hunas, Turushkas, .Sakas, Shahis, Daivaputras, etc., and may regard them together as Indo-Skythians.