The Early History of India, from 600 B.C. to the Muhammadan Conquest, including the Invasion of Alexander the Great c7.15

c7.15

The historian of the remote past of any nation must be content to rely much upon tradition as embodied in literature, and to acknowledge that the results of his researches when based upon traditionary materials, are inferior in certainty to those obtainable for periods of which the facts are attested by contemporary evidence. In India, with very few exceptions, contemporary evidence of any kind is not available before the time of Alexander ; but critical examination of records dated much later than the events referred to can extract from them testimony which may be regarded with a high degree of probability as traditionally transmitted from the sixth or, perhaps, the seventh century, B. C.