The Cambridge History of India, Vol. I: Ancient India v1.c19.s8: Chandagutta

The Cambridge History of India, Vol. I: Ancient India v1.c19.s8

Language: English

Chandagutta

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When the curtain rises again we have before us a picture blurred and indistinct in detail, but in its main features made more or less intelligible by what has been set out above.

India, as shown in the authorities there quoted, appeared as a number of kingdoms and republics with a constant tendency towards amalgamation. This process had proceeded further in Kosala than elsewhere; that great kingdom being by far the most important state in Northern India, and very nearly if not quite as large as modern France. It occupied the very centre of the territories mentioned in those authorities; it had its capital near the borders of what is now Nepāl; and it included all the previous states or duchies between the Himālayas on the north and the Ganges on the west and south. The original nucleus of this great kingdom was the territory now the seat of the Gurkhas, and these Kosalans were almost certainly, in the main at least, of Āryan race. For the heads of houses among them (the *gahapatis*) are called *rājāno*, the same as the clansmen (the *kula-puttā*) in the free republics. Of the surrounding kingdoms Magadha, though much smaller, was the most progressive. It had just absorbed Aṅga, and at the last moment we saw it attacking, and with success, the powerful Vajjian confederation. The rise of this new star in the extreme South-East was the most interesting factor in the older picture.

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The new picture as shown in the Ceylon chronicles and in the classical authors (especially those based on the statements in the *Indika* of Megasthenes) show us Magadha triumphant. All the kingdoms, duchies, and clans have lost their independence. Even the great Kosalan dominion has been absorbed. And for the first time in the history there is one paramount authority from Bengal to Afghānistān, and from the Himālayas down to the Vindhya range.

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We shall probably never know how these great changes, and especially the fall of Kosala, were brought about. And we have no information as to the degree in which the various local authorities retained any shadow of power. Were the taxes fixed by the central power and collected by its own officers? Or were the local rates maintained and collected by a local authority? If the latter, were the actual sums received paid over to the central office at Pāṭaliputta, or was a yearly tribute fixed by the paramount power? On these and similar questions we are still quite in the dark. But our two sets of authorities, which are quite independent of one another, agree in the little they do tell us.

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Unfortunately each set is open to very serious objections. The Chronicles are quite good as chronicles go, and we have them not only complete but well edited and translated. But of course we cannot expect from documents written fifteen hundred years or more ago, any of that historical criticism that we are only just beginning to use in the West. They are written throughout for edification, and in the Mahāvaṁsa sometimes also for amusement; they are in verse, and are not infrequently nearer to poetry than history; and though based on a continuous tradition, that tradition is now lost. On the other hand, the work of Megasthenes, written during the life-time of Chandagutta, is itself lost. What we have are fragments preserved more or less accurately, and with the best intentions, by later Latin and Greek authors. Where what is evidently intended as a quotation from the same passage in Megasthenes is found in more than one of these later authors the presentations of it do not, in several cases, agree. This throws doubt on the correctness of those quotations which, being found in one author only, cannot be so tested. A number of the quotations contain statements that, as they stand, are glaringly absurd—stories of gold-digging ants, men with ears large enough to sleep in, men without mouths, and so on. Strabo therefore calls Megasthenes mendacious. But surely such stories (and other things) only show that Megasthenes was just as ignorant of the modern rules of historical evidence as the Chroniclers were, and for the same reason. Strabo's idea of criticism is no better than that of those who ignore the Chroniclers on the ground that they are mendacious. As will be seen in Chapter XVI which deals more fully with the Greek and Latin writers on Ancient India, it is more probable that in these fairy-tales of his Megasthenes, like Herodotus before him, had either accepted in good faith stories which were current in the India of his day, or had merely misunderstood some Indian expression.