Page:Political History of Ancient India, from the accession of Parikshit to the extinction of the Gupta dynasty.pdf/7



The object of the following pages is to sketch the political history of Ancient India from the accession of Parikshit to the extinction of the Gupta Dynasty. The idea of the work suggested itself many years ago from observing a tendency in some of the current books to dismiss the history of the period from the Bhārata war to the rise of Buddhism as incapable of arrangement in definite chronological order. The author’s aim has been to present materials for an authentic chronological history of Ancient India, including the neglected Post-Bhārata period, but excluding the Epoch of the Kanauj Empires which properly falls within the domain of the historian of Mediæval India.

The volume now offered to the public consists of two parts. In the first part an attempt has been made to furnish, from a comparison of the Vedic, Epic, Purāṇic, Jaina, Buddhist and secular Brāhmaṇical literature, such a narrative of the political vicissitudes of the Post-Pārikshita-pre-Bimbisārian period as may not be less intelligible to the reader than Dr. Smith’s account of the transactions of the Post-Bimbisārian age. It has also heen thought expedient to append, towards the end of this part, a short chapter on kingship in the Brahmana-Jātaka period. The purpose of the second part is to provide a history of the period from Bimbisāra to the Guptas which will be, to a certain extent, more up to date, if less voluminous, than the classic work of Dr. Smith.

The greater part of the volume now published was written some years ago, and the author has not had