53... Uhe bes een Samvatsara end the Founding 
of the Kushan Kingdo 
By Tuos. W. Kinasmitx, Honorary y Member and Vice-President, 
Chin a Br., R.A.S. 
. Inno respect is the distinction between the dreamy and 
metaphysical Indian and his compeer and neighbour the matter 
of fact inhabitant of China more clearly indicated than in the 
occurrences of each year have been handed down to a 
of written speech. or to this, like many other nations in a 
similar stage of Ripe the more striking events in the national 
history had been mmitted for record to the national bards 
attached to the onits of the various petty princes, who then 
constituted the hegemony of the Cheos ; and it is characteristic 
of that race that notwithstanding profound changes in conditions 
and language, many of these ancient ballads are still preserved ,— 
an imperfect state, it is true,—yet so as to be not altogether 
unintelligible to the modern investigator. 
2. It is quite true that in China, as in many other nations, 
of the men who preceded the Cheos in the possession of the land, 
we have absolutely no record ; but here the seeming exception 
is the strongest proof of the rule, for the original dwellers in the 
land which is now China, were of far different race from those 
least, a very similar immigration had taken place at a period but 
a few centuries earlier, and although the immigrants. in a manner 
not unlike what occurred in China, had taken full possession 
of the land, and were racially closely akin, from the very begin- 
ning their methods radically differed in their conceptions as to 
the utility of records of the past. Both, it is true, began with 
