

THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 14, 1871 


THE ANCIENT GEOGRAPHY OF INDIA 
The Ancient Geography of India. 1. The Buddhist 
Period, including the Campaigns of Alexander, and the 
Travels of Hwen-Thsang. By Alexander Cunningham, 
Major-General, R.E. With thirteen maps. (London : 
Triibner and Co., 1871.) 
HE principal difficulty in the study of Indian antiqui- 
ties has always been the absence of a chronological 
framework. The Indians themselves had no idea of what 
we mean by history. They possessed a vague regard 
for antiquity, but for an antiquity measured by mil- 
lions of years; while an attempt to find out whether 
a certain event had happened fifty or a hundred years 
sooner or later, seemed to possess in their eyes no 
interest whatever. The result has been that even at 
present, after Sanskrit literature has been studied for 
nearly a hundred years, we are still completely in the 
dark as to the chronology of ancient Indian history. We 
have a date here and there, as, for instance, the date of 
Buddha, the great reformer, or of Pavwini, the great gram- 
marian ; but even these are dates which rest to a certain 
extent on the good will of Sanskrit scholars, and which it 
would be difficult to defend against the attacks of uncom- 
promising sceptics. Some people still speak of the Laws 
of Manu as an ancient authority dating from the eighth 
century B.C.; others would hesitate to assign that compila- 
tion in its present form to an ante-Christian era. The 
dates of the Mahabharata and Ramayama, the two great 
epic poems, the dates again of the six systems of Hindu 
philosophy, are equally uncertain, and the Puravzas which 
were at one time quoted as co-equal with the most ancient 
literary monuments of the world, are now assigned to the 
age of Charlemagne rather than to that of Moses. 
It may easily be imagined therefore how gratefully 
Sanskrit scholars would receive any kind of authentic 
information that should enable them to draw a line some- 
where, and to vindicate for certain events and certain 
works of literature a date that could no longer be called 
in question, The contact between India and Alexander 
the Great enabled scholars to fix the date of King Aandra- 
gupta as the contemporary of Alexander, and through 
him the date of another king, Asoka, who had raised 
Buddhism to be the state religion of his realm, and had 
left besides some important inscriptions which we possess, 
and which are written in a language that is no longer 
Sanskrit. Unfortunately the Greek accounts of India 
are so meagre that they did not yield much help for 
determining the literary state of India, and it is a curious 
fact that no native writer ever mentioned the name of 
Alexander as the invader of India. 
The next contact between India and the outer world 
was through Buddhism. Buddhism was a proselytising 
religion, and even before the beginning of the Christian 
era Buddhist missionaries had reached Tibet and China 
to preach there the doctrines of Buddha. Thus it happened | 
that after Buddhism had been established in China, pil- 
grims from that country travelled to India as the Holy 
Land of their religion, and spent years in the country 
collecting relics and manuscripts, and learning the lan- 
VOL, IV, 
NATURE 



| and the banks of the Narbada. 
381 

guage in which the sacred books of Buddhism were 
written.* Some of them wrote descriptions of their 
travels in India, and the two most important of them, the 
travels of Fa-hian and Hiouen-thsang, have been pre- 
served. It is true that Fa-hian belongs to the beginning 
of the fifth century A.D., while Hiouen-thsang travelled 
through India from 629 to 645. But even such late wit- 
nesses were not to be despised, and it is well known that 
the publication of Hiouen-thsang’s travels by M. Stanislas 
Julien marked quite a new epoch in the history of Sanskrit 
scholarship. Herewas atall events evra firma where histo- 
rians might take their stand to look forward and backward. 
Cities which he had visited, buildings which he had de- 
scribed, kings whom he had seen, books which he had read, 
stood out like landmarks in the desert of Indian history; 
and though their date might hereafter have to be fixed as 
much anterior to Hiouen-thsang or Fa-hian, yet it wassome- 
thing to be convinced of their historical reality even at the 
late date of these Chinese travellers. With regard to the 
history of Sanskrit literature, the gain was less considerable 
than might have been expected, for although both Fa-hian 
and Hiouen-thsang learned Sanskrit, they learned it for 
the sake of Buddhist literature only, and cared but little 
for the ancient literature of the Brahmans. Yet from 
time to time we gain a few valuable grains. We must not 
forget that the time when the whole of Sanskrit literature 
was regarded as a forgery and the ancient language of 
India as a mere invention is not so very distant; and that 
the fact of a Chinese traveller of the seventh century giving 
a paradigm of the Sanskrit verb d/#, “to be,” would 
have been extremely useful in silencing Dugald Stewart’s 
scepticism. It is equally interesting that the Chinese 
pilgrim mentions at least one archaic form as peculiar to 
the grammar of the Veda—viz., bhavdmasz, “we are,” in- 
stead of the common éfavémas. The mention also of some 
technical grammatical terms, such as /zanta, verb, 
subanta, noun, Unddi, and possibly Wz7uk‘a, are curious 
as showing that Hiouen-thsang still learned Sanskrit 
according to the system of Pavini,and not of some later 
grammarians. 
The most important evidence, however, that could be 
gathered from the works of these Chinese pilgrims was 
geographical. M. Vivien de Saint-Martin, in France, 
and Prof. Lassen, in Germany, have fully availed them- 
selves of that evidence in their works on the Geography 
and Antiquities of India ; and General Cunningham’s new 
work on the “ Ancient Geography of India” is, in fact, 
a running commentary on the travels of these Chinese 
priests. General Cunningham’s name is well known in 
England as an indefatigable explorer of Indian antiquities, 
and he brings to his task accomplishments in which 
few scholars could excel him. We may quote his own 
words : 
“My own travels,” the General says in his Preface, 
“have been very extensive throughout the length and 
breadth of Northern India, from Peshawer and Multan, 
near the Indus, to Rangoon and Prome on the Irawadi, 
and from Kashmir and Ladak to the mouth of the Indus 
Of Southern India I have 
seen nothing, and of Western India I have seen only 
Bombay, with the celebrated caves of Elephanta and 
Kanhari. But during a long service of more than thirty 
years in India, its early history and geography have formed 
* “Buddhist Pilgrims,” in M. M.’s ‘‘Chips from a German Workshop,” 
vol. i. p. 236. 
x 
