The Dynastic History of Northern India (Early Mediaeval Period) v1.c10.2

v1.c10.2

The problems confronting us in regard to the rise and growth of the power of the Vedic Āryans are not less obscure. After a discussion extending over a period of about a hundred years we are still in the region of conjecture as to their original habitat and the date of their first arrival in India. The discovery of the names of Ṛgvedic gods in the Boghaz-köi inscriptions in Cappadocia, dated in about 1400 B.C., and of Āryan names in the inscriptions of Mesopotamia of about the same period, must have an important bearing on these questions. But though this may be accepted as “specific evidence for the supposition that by the fifteenth century B.C. tribes of Āryan stock held, or exercised influence over, a wide area, extending from northern Asia Minor over north-west Babylonia to Media,” the further assumption of Dr. Giles that “even then, or soon after, the Āryans pushed their way still eastwards” till they reached India is obviously open to some doubt. Jacobi and Pargiter, for instance, have formed quite different conclusions on the same data. Without agreeing with all that these scholars have urged, we may point out that nothing conclusive can be urged against their view that the Boghaz-köi inscription may be an evidence of an overflow of races of Āryan stock from India. Not only is the date of the first arrival of the Āryans in India uncertain, but anything of the nature of the accepted chronology for the whole period down to about 600 B.C. is practically non-existent. It is true that the epic and *pauranic* literatures claim to give us the history of this period. Thorough analysis of this tradition by Pargiter and a number of Indian scholars has shown that these should not be hastily rejected as mere ‘bardic tales.’ But the scheme of chronology proposed by them on the basis of this tradition¹ has not yet been thoroughly discussed and tested so that it can be safely adopted in any survey of Indian history. For practical purposes the approximate dates of the