Page:Political History of Ancient India, from the accession of Parikshit to the extinction of the Gupta dynasty.pdf/19

Rh of the Chhāndogya Upanishad, pp. 23-24), Professor Macdonell (History of Sanskrit Literature, pp. 189, 202-203, 226) and others.

II. The second class comprises Brāhmaṇical works to which no definite date can be assigned, but large portions of which, in the opinion of competent crities, belong to the post-Bimbisārian period. To this class belong the Rāmāyaṇa, the Mahābhārata and the Purāṇas. ‘The present Rāmāyaṇa not only mentions Buddha Tathāgata (II. 109. 34), but distinctly refers to the struggles of the Hindus with mixed hordes of Yavanas and Śakas, भकान् यवनमित्रितान् (I. 54. 21). In the Kishkindhyā Kāṇḍa (IV. 43. 11-12), Sugrîva places the country of the Yavanas and the cities of the Śakas between the country of the Kurus and the Madras, and the Himālayas. This shows that the Græco-Scythians at that time occupied parts of the Pañjāb.

As regards the present Mahābhārata, Hopkins says (Great Epic of India, pp. 391-393), “Buddhist supremacy already decadent is implied by passages which allude contemptuously to the eḍūkas or Buddhistic monuments as having ousted the temples of the gods. Thus in III. 190. 65 ‘They will revere eḍūkas, they will neglect the gods’ ; ib. 67 ‘the earth shall he piled with eḍūkas, not adorned with godhouses.’ With such expressions may he compared the thoroughly Buddhistie epithet, Cāturmahārājika in XII. 339. 40 and Buddhistic philosophy as expounded in the sane book.”

“The Greeks are described as a western people and their overthrow is alluded to ............ The Romans, Romakas, are mentioned but once, in a formal list of all possible peoples II. 51.17, and stand thus in marked contrast to the Greeks and Persians, Pahlavas, who are mentioned very often ............ The distinct prophecy that ‘Scythians, Greeks and Bactrians will rule unrighteously