The Cambridge History of India, Vol. I: Ancient India v1.c22.67

v1.c22.67

Whether the genealogical lists of the epic may impart trustworthy information is a second question of importance. It has been answered affirmatively by Mr Pargiter in the second of his valuable papers on the epic¹, though with due conservatism in view of the contradictions in the epic itself. The later lists found in the Purāṇas may be combined with epic data to make a fairly consistent chronological table, but there remains much to be taken for granted. Although the names of kings are given, the length of their reigns must be assumed on some common basis. On the probability that the average length of a Hindu reign was fifteen years and on the assumption that unimportant kings have been omitted once in so often from some of the lists, Mr Pargiter, taking the more complete list of the Solar dynasty as his guide, finds that a period of fourteen hundred years intervened between the first king, ‘son of Manu’ (Ikshvāku) and the great war; that Rāma, the hero of the Rāmāyaṇa, lived in the fifth century before the great war of the Mahābhārata; Bharata in the eighth century, etc. The great war itself marks the beginning of the present age (Kali Yuga), ‘about 1100 B.C.’²