History of Dharmashastra (Ancient and Mediaeval Religious and Civil Law in India) v4.c63.t2.750

v4.c63.t2.750

The information derived from the fragments of the work of Megasthenes on India are supposed to shed some light on this vexed problem. In one fragment (p. 115 of ‘Ancient India as described by Megasthenes &c.’) occurs the passage: ‘From him (i. e. Bacchus) to Alexander the Great 6451 years are reckoned with three months additional, the calculation being made by counting the kings that reigned in the intermediate period to the number of 153’. An extract from Pliny makes out the number of kings to be 154. As against this we have the statement in the ‘Indika’ of Arrian (2nd century A. D., translated by McCrindle, p. 203): ‘From the time of Dionysos to Sandrakottus, the Indians counted 153 kings and a period of 6042 years, but among these a republic was thrice established ...... another to 300 years and another to 120 years. The Indians also tell us that Dionysos was earlier than Heracles by fifteen generations and that except him no one made a hostile invasion of India’. This passage is of very great importance for one reason, viz. that it proves that in the 4th century B. C. there was a persistent Indian tradition which carried back Indian civilization and ordered government to 6000 years before the 4th century B. C. But there is great doubt as to what Megasthenes actually wrote and there is some divergence as to the number of years and kings also. Besides, this has no direct bearing on the date of the Mahābhārata war or the beginning of Kaliyuga, unless Heracles is taken to be Hari-Kṛṣṇa, as some scholars¹⁷⁶⁵ do. The account of Heracles (pp. 201-203 of McCrindle’s work) agrees in some respects with the legends about Kṛṣṇa viz. that he was honoured by the Sourasenoi (Śūrasenas), an Indian tribe who possess two large cities Methora (*Muthurā*) and Cleisobora and that Heracles had many wives; but then there are other anecdotes about Heracles which do not at all agree viz. his having a daughter Pandaia with whom when she was only seven Heracles had intercourse for raising a mighty race. Here there is some confusion with the Pāṇḍavas and Kuntī or with the Pandyan kingdom in the South. Moreover, 6000 years for 153 or 154 kings is rather a very long period. It cannot be said that a king is only a unit of time in these computations (40 years on an average), since such Purāṇas as the Vāyu and the Matsya expressly mention the number of years that each dynasty held sway, the number of kings belonging to each dynasty and the lengths of the reigns of several kings. It is no doubt true that the details of the names of the several kings, the number of kings and the duration of their reigns do not always tally. It appears that the Purāṇas that contain historical material were recast at different times, e. g. the Vāyupurāṇa (99. 383) refers to the Guptas while the Matsyapurāṇa is silent about them. The extant Purāṇas cannot be supposed to have given imaginary details about historical dynasties, but they must have had before them older records or traditions. The Purāṇas do not appear to have invented names of new kings or given imaginary lengths of reigns. The authors surely knew that the total of the several dynasties between Parīkṣit and Nanda did not square with the total of the lengths of the reigns of the several individual kings. But they gave both these without trying to solve the discrepancies as they wanted to record all the traditions they had got before them. The Purāṇas have a claim on our attention, but in the present state of our knowledge they cannot unfortunately form the basis of any certain or connected history and chronology of ancient times.