[Pramāṇa](https://indike.org/pramana/) › [Studies](https://indike.org/pramana/ins) › [General history and culture](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.general) › [The Cambridge History of India, Vol. I: Ancient India](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.general.rapson-1922) › v1.c3 # The Cambridge History of India, Vol. I: Ancient India v1.c3: Preface The Cambridge History of India, Vol. I: Ancient India v1.c3 - **Language:** English ### Preface ### [v1.c3.1](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.general.rapson-1922.v1.c3.1) THE present volume deals with the history of ancient India from the earliest times to about the middle of the first century a.d.; and it attempts to represent the stage of progress which research has now reached in its task of recovering from the past the outlines of a history which, only a few years ago, was commonly supposed to be irretrievably lost. Well within the memory of contributors to this volume it was the fashion to say that there was no history of India before the Muhammadan conquests in the eleventh century a.d., and the general opinion seemed to be summed up in the dictum of the cynic who roundly asserted that all supposed dates for earlier events were like skittles—set up simply to be bowled down again. But this gibe, not quite justifiable even when it was uttered, could not be repeated at the present day. It has lost its point: it is no longer even approximately true. ### [v1.c3.2](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.general.rapson-1922.v1.c3.2) Regarded as a record of the character and achievements of great leaders of men, this history indeed is, and must always remain, sadly deficient. Of all the conquerors and administrators who appear in this volume there are two only—Alexander the Great and, in a less degree, Açoka—whose personality is at all intimately known to us; in the case of others the bare memory of some of their deeds has been preserved; the rest have become mere names to which research has given a time and a place. But the fragments of fact which have been rescued from the past are now sufficiently numerous and well established to enable us to construct a chronological and geographical framework for the political history of many of the kingdoms and empires of ancient India; and into this framework may be fitted the history of social institutions, which is reflected with unusual clearness in the ancient literatures. ### [v1.c3.3](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.general.rapson-1922.v1.c3.3) The manner in which modern scholarship has succeeded in throwing light on the dark ages of India, and in revealing order where all seemed to be chaos, is briefly indicated in the latter section of Chapter ii which deals with the sources of history. The story of rediscovery is a long record of struggles with problems which were once thought to be insoluble, and of the ultimate triumphs of patience and ingenuity. It begins in 1793, when Sir William Jones supplied ‘the sheet-anchor of Indian chronology’ ### [v1.c3.4](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.general.rapson-1922.v1.c3.4) by his identification of the Sandrocottus of Alexander's historians with the Chandragupta of Sanskrit literature; and its great epoch is ushered in by the decipherment of the long-forgotten alphabets of the ancient Indian inscriptions by James Prinsep in 1834. The first comprehensive summary of historical gains appeared in 1858, when Christian Lassen published the first volume of his \*Indische Alterthumskunde\*; and in recent years other summaries have been made by Dr Vincent Smith (\*Early History of India\*, 1st edn. 1904, 2nd edn. 1908, 3rd edn. 1914), by Dr L. D. Barnett (\*Indian Antiquities\*, 1913), and, on a smaller scale, by the editor of this volume (\*Ancient India\*, 1914). ### [v1.c3.5](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.general.rapson-1922.v1.c3.5) The \*Cambridge History of India\* marks a new departure. The literature of the subject has become so vast, and is still growing with such rapidity, that the best hope of securing a real advance in the study now lies in a division of labour among scholars who have explored at first hand the main sources of information. This volume therefore follows the plan adopted in the modern and medieval histories published by the Cambridge University Press. It is the outcome of the combination of a number of investigators with an editor whose function it has been to coordinate, so far as seemed possible or advisable, results obtained independently. That this plan is not without its disadvantages is obvious. All cooperative enterprises of the kind involve necessarily some reiteration and also some discrepancy; and the questions which an editor must decide are how far repeated discussions of the same topic contribute to a fuller knowledge or are merely redundant, and how far different opinions admit of reconciliation or should be allowed to remain as representing the actual state of a study which abounds with difficulties and obscurities. In all important cases of the occurrence of such supplementary or contradictory views in this volume cross-references are given to the passages in which they are expressed. ### [v1.c3.6](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.general.rapson-1922.v1.c3.6) The general scheme of the work may be explained in a few words. The first two chapters are introductory. In Chapter I Sir Halford Mackinder describes the India of the present day when railways and telegraph lines have taken the place of the ancient routes, and gives an account of those geographical features which have determined the course of history in past times. The chapter is founded on \*Eight Lectures on India\* prepared for the Visual Instruction Committee of the Colonial Office and published in 1910. A similar acknowledgment of indebtedness is due to the Government of India for the use which the editor has made of its official publications, especially the \*Census Reports\* of 1901 and 1911 and the \*Imperial Gazetteer of India\*, in Chapter II on peoples and languages, and the sources of history. In Chapter III Dr P. Giles reviews the evidence which Comparative Philology, aided by the ancient inscriptions of Western Asia, supplies for a knowledge of the early culture of the Āryans or ‘Wiros,’ their original habitat, and the date of the migrations which eventually led some of their tribes into India. The next five chapters are devoted to accounts of political, social, and economic conditions as represented in the earliest scriptures of the Brāhmans, Jains, and Buddhists—Chapters IV and V by Prof. A. B. Keith on the Vedas and Brāhmaṇas, Chapters VI and VII by Dr J. Charpentier and Dr T. W. Rhys Davids respectively on the earliest history of the Jains and Buddhists, and Chapter VIII by Mrs Rhys Davids on economic conditions in early Buddhist literature. The five chapters which follow extend this investigation to the Brāhman sources for the history of the post-Vedic period—Chapters IX–XII by Prof. E. Washburn Hopkins on the Sūtras, epics, and law-books, and Chapter XIII by the editor on the Purāṇas. Up to this point the evidence has been gleaned almost entirely from Indian sources and confined almost entirely to India. In the next four chapters India is viewed in relation to other countries—Chapter XIV by Prof. A. V. Williams Jackson on the ancient Persian dominions in India, Chapters XV and XVI by Mr E. R. Bevan on the invasion of Alexander the Great and the early Greek and Latin accounts of India, and Chapter XVII by Dr G. Macdonald on the Hellenic kingdoms of Syria, Bactria, and Parthia. In Chapters XVIII–XX the first great historical empire, that of the Mauryas, is described by Dr F. W. Thomas; and in Chapters XXI–XXIII the editor deals with the powers which arose on the ruins of the Maurya empire—the Indian native states, the Greek successors of Alexander the Great, and the Scythian and Parthian invaders. In Chapter XXIV Dr L. D. Barnett sums up what is known of the early history of Southern India; and in Chapter XXV he gives an analysis of the history of Ceylon which possesses a continuity in striking contrast to the fragmentary records of the kingdoms of the sub-continent. In the final Chapter XXVI Sir John Marshall describes the ancient monuments, and traces the various phases of Indian art from its beginnings to the first century A.D. ### [v1.c3.7](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.general.rapson-1922.v1.c3.7) The editor desires to thank all the contributors for the courtesy with which they have received and carried out his suggestions. He is doubly indebted to Sir John Marshall, Dr L. D. Barnett, Dr George Macdonald, Dr F. W. Thomas, and Mr E. R. Bevan for much valuable advice and for their kind help in reading the proofs of chapters other than their own. He gratefully acknowledges also the assistance which he has received from Colonel Haig and from Sir Theodore Morison, the editors in charge of the Muhammadan and British sections of the \*Cambridge History of India\* (vols. iii–iv and v–vi respectively). ### [v1.c3.8](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.general.rapson-1922.v1.c3.8) The preparation of vol. ii, which will deal with the period from the downfall of the Çaka and Pahlava empire in the middle of the first century a.d. to the Muhammadan conquests, is attended with unusual difficulties, caused partly by the vast extent and partly by the fragmentary character of the historical records; but it is at least to be hoped that its appearance may not be delayed by disasters such as that which has impeded the publication of vol. i. ### [v1.c3.9](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.general.rapson-1922.v1.c3.9) The printing of this volume began in 1913, and more than half the chapters were in type in 1914, when war made further progress impossible until the end of 1918. Since then the work has been completed, all the earlier chapters have been revised, and no effort has been spared to make the book representative of the state of early Indian historical studies at the end of 1920. ### [v1.c3.10](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.general.rapson-1922.v1.c3.10) The system of chronology, which has been adopted for the periods of Çaka and Kushāṇa rule, needs some explanation. The chronological difficulties connected with the Vikrama era of 58 b.c. and the Çaka era of 78 a.d. are well known; and it is universally admitted that the names which these eras bear were given to them at a later date, and afford no clue to their origin. The view maintained in this work is that the eras in question mark the establishment of the Çaka and Kushāṇa suzerainties. The idea of suzerainty, that is to say, supreme lordship over all the kings of a large region—'the whole earth,' as the poets call it—is deeply rooted in Indian conceptions of government; and the foundation of an era is recognised as one of the attributes of this exalted position. Now there is abundant evidence that the Çaka empire attained its height in the reign of Azes I and the Kushāṇa empire in the reign of Kanishka. It is natural to suppose therefore that such imperial eras must have been established in these reigns, and that their starting point in both cases was the accession of the suzerain. ### [v1.c3.11](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.general.rapson-1922.v1.c3.11) The story of the foundation and extension of later eras in Indian history—the Gupta era and the era of Harsha, for example—can be clearly traced. All such undoubted illustrations of the process are seen to imply the existence of certain political conditions—the relations of suzerain to feudatories, in fact. It is not necessarily, or indeed usually, the founder of a dynasty who is also the founder of an era; but it is that member of the royal house who succeeded in asserting ‘universal’ sway and in reducing his neighbours to the status of feudatories. The use of the era can be shown, in well-ascertained cases, to have spread from the suzerain to the feudatories. Is there any reason to suppose that extension in the contrary direction—from feudatory to suzerain—has ever taken place or could possibly take place? ### [v1.c3.12](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.general.rapson-1922.v1.c3.12) It has been suggested that the Vikrama era originated with the Mālavas, whose name it sometimes bears in inscriptions. They were a people, apparently of no great political importance, who can be traced in the Punjab and Rājputāna centuries before they settled in Mālwā, the tract of Central India which now bears their name; and they were almost certainly, like the other peoples of these regions, included in the Çaka empire at one period of their history. Is it conceivable that they could have initiated the Vikrama era, and that a great suzerain like Gondopharnes, who almost beyond doubt dates his Takht-i-Bahi inscription in this era, stood indebted to them for its use? The Vikrama era had undoubtedly become the traditional reckoning of the Mālavas in the fifth century a.d.; but the most obvious explanation of the fact is that they had inherited it from their former overlords. ### [v1.c3.13](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.general.rapson-1922.v1.c3.13) In the same way, the later name of the era of 78 a.d. may be due to its use for centuries by the Çaka satraps of Western India; but they can scarcely have founded this era. Their very title ‘satrap’ shows that they were originally feudatories; and they were most probably feudatories of the Kushāṇas. If so, they would use the era of their suzerains as a matter of course. ### [v1.c3.14](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.general.rapson-1922.v1.c3.14) Thus all \*a priori\* considerations favour the views which are adopted in this work in regard to the origin of these eras; and, as is pointed out on pages 581–2, the Taxila inscription of the year 136, which first suggested to Sir John Marshall the possibility of an ‘era of Azes,’ may also furnish positive evidence of their correctness. It has been necessary to deal with these chronological problems somewhat at length because of their importance. If the theories here maintained are accepted, there will be an end to the worst of the perplexities which have for so long obscured the history of N.W. India during the centuries immediately before and after the Christian era, and the dates in all the known inscriptions of the period will be determined, with the single exception of that which occurs in the Taxila copper-plate of Maues, and which, as is suggested, may be in some era which the Çakas brought with them from eastern Irān into India. ### [v1.c3.15](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.general.rapson-1922.v1.c3.15) The munificence of Sir Dorabji Tata has enabled the Syndics of the University Press to illustrate this volume more lavishly than would have been possible without such generous help. Mr G. F. Hill and Mr J. Allan of the British Museum have most kindly provided casts of the coins figured in Plates I-VIII; and Sir John Marshall has enhanced the value of his chapter on the monuments by supplying photographs, which were in many cases specially taken for the illustrations in Plates IX-XXXIV. ### [v1.c3.16](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.general.rapson-1922.v1.c3.16) The index has been made by Mr E. J. Thomas of Emmanuel College and the University Library. Modern place-names are, with very few exceptions, given as they appear in the index-volume of the \*Imperial Gazetteer of India\*. For the spelling of ancient names the system adopted by Prof. Macdonell in his \*History of Sanskrit Literature\* has been followed. This system has the double advantage of being strictly accurate and, at the same time, of offering as few difficulties as possible for readers who are not orientalists. The vowels should be pronounced as in Italian, with the exception of \*a\* which has the indefinite sound so common in English, e.g. in the word \*organ\*. The vowels \*e\* and \*o\* are always long in Sanskrit, and are therefore only marked as such in the non-Sanskritic names of Southern India, in which it is necessary to distinguish them from the corresponding short vowels. ### [v1.c3.17](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.general.rapson-1922.v1.c3.17) E. J. R. ### [v1.c3.18](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.general.rapson-1922.v1.c3.18) ST JOHN'S COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE, \*18 August 1921.\* --- Source: [https://indike.org/pramana/ins.general.rapson-1922.v1.c3](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.general.rapson-1922.v1.c3) · Pramāṇa