china's place in ancient HISTOEY : A FRAGMENT. 103 



aboriginal tribes then known as Dasyu or Dasa, wlio are 

 said to have fought against their conquerors with all the 

 obstinacy and skill of barbarians.* The Aryans then 

 established their own city of Hastinapore, and gradually 

 became masters of the district situated betAveen the Ganges 

 and the Jumna, the wars in question being snbsequently 

 celebrated in the great Hindoo epic, the Mahabarata.f 



From the same primeval Aryan stock a western ofif- 

 shoot spread to Greece, where they built Athens and Sparta, 

 and became the Greek nation ; another to Italy reared the 

 city on the Seven Hills, which grew into Imperial Eome. 

 Another colony of the same race excavated the ores of 

 prehistoric Spain; and when, long subsequent to the date 

 with which we are now concerned, we first catch a sight of 

 ancient England, we see an Aryan settlement fishing in 

 wattle canoes, working the tin mines of Cornwall, J and 

 there is every reason to believe Avorshippiiig at the shiines 

 known as Druidical deities of the Vedic age as their distant 

 cousins the Brahmins and Eajpoots of India continue to do at 

 the present day. 



Within the same period the cities of the plain were 

 destroyed§ ; Hagar and her son Ishmael|| driven out; and 

 having retired to " the desert," the youth married an Egyp- 

 tian woman, and so became progenitor of "the Arabs," 

 whom hi subsequent ages the Persians, Greeks, Romans, 

 Tartars, and Mongols vainly endeavoured to subdue. From 

 Ishmael, through the Hejazite kings of Arabia, the lineage 

 of Mahomed may, it is said, bo traced.1 According to Arab 

 legend Ishmael settled in the district of al-Hijaz, where, on 

 the site subsequently occupied by Makka (Mecca), Hagar 

 died and was buried, the Ka'bah erected by Abraham. 

 Ishmael became prince and high priest of Makka. After his 

 death, B.C. 1774, he was succeeded by his eldest son Nebat, 

 though it is through his younger brother Kedar that the 

 pedigree of ]\luhamed is traced, with what degree of truth 

 is a subject beyond the scope of these remarks. 



* Ancient India, by R. C. Dutt, j). 13. 



+ The date of the Maliabarata was about the commencement of the 

 Christian era ; that of the story itself B.C. 1400 — B.C. ICOO. 

 X^Brief History of the Indian people, Hunter, p. 52. 

 § B.C. 1897. 



II B.C. 1910 Ishmael born. 

 ir White's Universal History, p. 9 ; also Hughes's Dictionary of Islam. 



