The Cambridge History of India, Vol. I: Ancient India v1.c19.s1.8

v1.c19.s1.8

In previous chapters of this volume will be found the story, drawn from the Brāhman literature, of the gradual establishment in Northern India of the Āryan supremacy. For the period just before the rise of Buddhism (say the seventh century B.C.) this literature tells us very little about political movements. The Buddhist books also are devoted to ideas rather than to historical events, and pass over, as of no value to their main objects, the dates and doings and dynastic vicissitudes of the kinglets before their own time. The fact that they do so is historically important; and we should do wrong in ignoring, in a history of India, the history of the ideas held by the Indian peoples. But the fact remains. It is only quite incidentally that we can gather, from stories, anecdotes, or legends in these books, any information that can be called political. Of that referring to the pre-Buddhist period the most important is perhaps the list of the Sixteen Great Powers, or the Sixteen Great Nations, found in several places in the early books³. It is a mere mnemonic list and runs as follows: