The Chronology of India, from the Earliest Times to the Beginning of the Sixteenth Century c5.3

c5.3

As is well known, the literature of the Hindus, extensive and valuable as it is, contains scarcely any works of a historical character. For a trustworthy chronology of India we are, therefore, mainly dependent on the testimony of coins and inscriptions. Where these fail us, as in the early history of the country, we are thrown back on conjectures and inferences which are always liable to be modified or upset by future discovery. To Sir William Jones we owe the identification of the Sandrokottos or Sandrokoptos of the Greek writers with Chandragupta, the founder of the Maurya dynasty, whose date, B.C. 315, affords a starting-point from which, with the aid of Singhalese and other Buddhist records eked out by Pauranic tradition, it is possible to reconstruct with some degree of success an outline of the history of Upper India between the sixth and third centuries B.C. For the long period lying between Aśoka and the Muhammadan invasions under Maḥmūd of Ghaznī, our information is drawn almost entirely from coins and inscriptions, supplemented occasionally by the notices of contemporary writers, native and foreign. In some cases, notably in those of Kashmir and Gujarāt, we find trustworthy materials for a definite chronology in the records of the native chroniclers.