Page:Political History of Ancient India, from the accession of Parikshit to the extinction of the Gupta dynasty.pdf/18

ii scholars like Oldenberg, Macdonell, Keith, Rhys Davids, Pargiter, Bhandarkar and others. But the attempt to give a connected history from Parikshit to Bimbisāra is, believe, made for the first fime in the following pages.

No inscription or coin has unfortunately been discovered which can be referred, with any amount of certainty, to the pre-Bimbisārian period. Our chief reliance must therefore be placed upon literary evidence. Unfortunately this evidence is purely Indian, and is not supplemented by those foreign aotices which have done more than any archeological discovery to render possible the remarkable resuscitation of the history of the post-Bimbisārian period.

Indian literature useful for the purpose of the historian of the post-Pārikshita-pre-Bimbisārian age may be divided into five classes, viz. :—

I. Brāhmaṇical literature of the post-Pārikshita-pre-Bimbisārian period. This class of literature naturally contributes the most valuable information regarding the history of the earliest dynasties and comprises:

(a) The last book of the Atharva Veda.

(b) The Aitareya, Śatapatha, Taittirīya and other ancient Brāhmaṇas.

(c) The Bṛihadāraṇyaka, Chhāndogya and other classical Upanishads.

That these works belong to the post-Pārikshita period is proved by repeated references to Pārikshit, to his son Janamejaya, and to Janaka of Videha at whose court the fate of the Pārikshitas was made the subject of a philosophical discussion. That these works are pre-Buddhistic and, therefore, pre-Bimbisārian has been proved by competent critics like Dr. Rājendralāl Mitra (Translation