Vol. Nak, No. 11.] The Vikramaditya Samvatsara. 723 
[N.S.] 
from old Indian myths, marked by a great accretion of apocryphal 
literature, and the € age generally being uncritical, the result was 
the growth 0 of an imaginary history of an *‘ early ’’ China, al- 
together as untrustworthy as the Brahmanical tales of the corres- 
ponding ages in India. 
6. In India from the mass of fable floating in the popular 
‘eileen: historians, from the time of the revival of letters 
under the later Caliphs, have sought to make out with more or 
all accounts are mere deductions from myth, generally distorted 
through Brahmanic or Buddhist influences, and so far affording 
no foundation for chronology, or historical sequence. Even 
after Alexander’s time, unless we are in a position to correlate 
occurrences with events elsewhere, or with the evidence of an- 
cient inscriptions or legends on coin ns, Indian story affords no. 
basis for history, and in the papas tales which 1 pass current as 
such we constantly come across repetitions and exaggerations 
Ww sti throw a pall of utter uncertainty over the whole. 
me event in Indian history, for the date of which we 
e, rere entirely dependent on outer sources, forms an 
in . 
rpetual wars between the ‘‘ Successors,’’ and Seleucus I was 
given a breathing space, we find him on the borders of India 
seeking to resume the conquests of Alexander. Here, then, 
he met the youth Chandra Gupta, or as the Greeks called him 
Sandrocottus, who had now grown to be the most powerful 
monarch in India, with a realm extending from the Ganges into 
Afghanistan. He also learned that beyond paparagh still, nomin- 
ally at least, a dependence, the whole of Eastern Asia was in a 
ferment, with new kings and new empires mee Ns for suprem- 
acy. Warned these accounts, and convinced of the im- 
possibility i epaetiag the achievements of Alexander, and 
recalled by news of renewed disturbances at home, he in the 
nee of 302-301 made a friendly — with Chandra Gupta, 
surrendering all claims on Indian territory, and receiving in 
exchange five hundred elephants,—which done he returned to 
his western dominions 
e realm thus founded by Chandra Gupta had a long 
and prosperous career. — his grandson Acoka, still more 
celebrated than his grandsire, it reached its greatest development, 
and his conversion to the faith of Buddha forms one of the most 
noteworthy incidents in the long history of the East. The treaty 
of 301 enables us to fix these events with almost absolute 
