Page:Sagas from the Far East; or, Kalmouk and Mongolian traditionary tales.djvu/256

232 You may then conceive, how with no fixed dates marked out for determining the period of the reign of each, and no literary criterion to distinguish incongruities, a fertile imagination, aiming rather at exciting admiration than conveying information, could run riot with the mass of the acts and adventures, the victories and achievements of the whole number, because the names or titles of "Augustus" and "Cæsar" could be applied to many or all.

There is also the further difficulty that the heroic myths of India have travelled on from tribe to tribe, and from province to province, the character of the hero and his exploits incurring many transformations and fresh identifications under the process.

Not to go into the elaborate discussion which the intricate study of the Indian dynasties has called forth, it may suffice in this place to observe that, in the absence of more regular records, the greatest aid we have in arriving at some fixed knowledge of the events of a remote age in India is derived from inscriptions and coins. And, as a specimen of the thought and care that has been brought to bear on the matter, to specify the interesting circumstance connected with this particular instance, that the nearest approach to a satisfactory determination of the date of the chief bearer of the name of Vikramâditja that is likely to be attained has been arrived at from the observation of the influence of Greek art on the execution of certain of the