Page:The history of caste in India.pdf/55

 Smith. The history of the northern as well as the southern divisions of India for one century is almost unknown, The country appears to have been given to anarchy in the third century.

More information than this can hardly be given about the Magadha empire, and it is to be greatly regretted, because this empire was the most important part of India from the standpoint of the growth of dharma, in which we are specially interested. "For while in the western part of India, the coins have preserved the names of the king's, in Magadha the people continued to use the coinage bearing only private mark or marks of the individual or the guild that issued them. None of the ancient sites there, Sávatthi or Vesāli or Mithila, Pataliputra or Räjagaha, have been excavated, and thirdly the literature of Magadha mostly Jain or later Buddhist lies also still buried in the MSS."

During the same period the province of Punjab by no means enjoyed any peace. Magadha was undergoing a change of dynasties and was suffering from the attack and rule of another power at home, but the Punjab was suffering from foreign invasion.

Seleukos Nikator, the great general of Alexander, who had become the emperor of a large part of Western Asia after the conqueror's death, was also dead. While Antiochus his grandson, a worthless man, was occupy-