Political History of Ancient India, from the Accession of Parikshit to the Extinction of the Gupta Dynasty c30.19

c30.19

**C. E. A. W. Oldham (J. R. A. S., 1928, July)**—Part I of Professor Ray Chaudhuri's work deals with the period from Parikṣit to Bimbisāra. The author seeks to show, as he tells us in his preface, "that chronological relation of the national transactions before 600 B.C. is not impossible." He has laid under contribution the usual authorities, the Vedic, Puranic, Buddhist, and Jaina texts—though he does not appear to place much reliance upon the last-named (*cf.* pp. 6 and 72). A vast mass of records has been collated, and the evidence marshalled in a very concise and able, and in some respects original, manner. The apposite quotations from the original texts are useful. Professor Ray Chaudhuri regards Parikṣit I and Parikṣit II, as they are named by the late Mr. Pargiter in his *Ancient Indian Historical Tradition*, as being probably one and the same king, and as identifiable with the Vedic Parikṣit. By "the great Janaka" he refers to the Janaka of the later Vedic texts, whose court is said to have been thronged with Brāhmaṇas, and not to the traditional first king Janaka, the eponymous founder of the Janakavaṁśa, or to Janaka Sīradhvaja, the reputed father of Sītā. Synchronizing Guṇākhya Śāṅkhāyana with Āśvalāyana and the Buddha, he inclines, it seems, to place Parikṣit in the ninth, and the "great Janaka" in the seventh century B.C. though he wisely avoids coming to any positive conclusion as to these debatable dates, and points out that if the evidence of the Purāṇas were accepted we would have to place them some five centuries earlier. If it could be established that Parikṣit came into power at the beginning of the ninth century, or the end of the tenth, this would help to corroborate the approximate chronology suggested by Mr. Pargiter, having regard also to the synchronism between Senājit Bārhadratha and Adhisīmakṛṣṇa. But until more convincing evidence is discovered most scholars will probably agree in the verdict of Vincent Smith that nothing approaching exact chornology is yet available for periods anterior to about 650 B.C.