[Pramāṇa](https://indike.org/pramana/) › [Studies](https://indike.org/pramana/ins) › [General history and culture](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.general) › [The Early History of India, from 600 B.C. to the Muhammadan Conquest, including the Invasion of Alexander the Great](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.general.smith-1924) › c28.140 # The Early History of India, from 600 B.C. to the Muhammadan Conquest, including the Invasion of Alexander the Great c28.140 The Early History of India, from 600 B.C. to the Muhammadan Conquest, including the Invasion of Alexander the Great c28.140 - **Language:** English ### [c28.140](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.general.smith-1924.c28.140) Nothing definite is recorded concerning the dynasties of Northern India, excluding the Panjāb, during the third century, and the early part of the fourth. The imperial city of Pātaliputra is known to have continued to be a place of importance as late as the fifth century, but there is little indication of the nature of the dynasty which ruled there during the third. Probably, for at any rate the greater portion of the period, the city was under Śaka rule. The high importance attached by the founder of the Gupta era in A.D. 320 to his alliance with a Lichchhavi princess suggests that during the third century the non-Aryan Lichchhavis of Vaisālī, who appear to have been closely related to the Tibetans, may have held Pātaliputra as tributaries or feudatories of the Kushān dynasty at Peshāwar. The only intelligible dynastic list for the period is that of the Śaka satraps of Western India, whose history will be more conveniently noticed in the next chapter in connexion with that of the Gupta emperors. The period between the extinction of the Kushān and Āndhra dynasties, about A.D. 220 or 230, and the rise of the imperial Gupta dynasty, nearly a century later, is one of the darkest in the whole range of Indian history. - [Previous: c28.139](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.general.smith-1924.c28.139) - [Next: c29.1](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.general.smith-1924.c29.1) - [Up: c28](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.general.smith-1924.c28) --- Source: [https://indike.org/pramana/ins.general.smith-1924.c28.140](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.general.smith-1924.c28.140) · Pramāṇa