10 Historical Remarks [Jan. 



Magadha or Befiar, where one Visva-sphatika (or Visva-sphurji, of 

 the old race of Magadha sovereigns) had extirpated the existing race 

 of Xattriyas, and set up other low castes, together with Brahmans, in 

 their stead ; as I read in two MSS. copies* of the Vishnu-Purana, the 

 words of which are 



tit* xr^fT^wt ^rr^fnr4t *nra*rm*nnrr ir^rnf ?nr*rr Trm^ 



" In the country of Magadha, one named Visva-sphatika shall form 

 and set up in the kingdom other castes, the Kaivarttas, Yadus, Pulin- 

 das, and Brahmans : and thus having abolished all the races of Xattri- 

 yas, shall the nine Nagas, and in Padmdvati, Kdnti-puri, Mathurd, and 

 on the Ganges from Praydga, shall the Magadhas and the Guptas 

 rule over the people belonging to Magadha." 



All these new sets of kings, with the Naishadhas in Calinga, &c. and 

 the more barbarous races elsewhere, are represented in the Purana 

 as ferocious, rapacious and tyrannical men, of little knowledge and no 

 principle, whose rise and progress and fall are to be equally sudden 

 and extraordinary, short-lived, and only nominal observers of religion. 

 The people under their sway, and through the contact of foreign 

 races, will gradually fall into that neglect of caste and other religious 

 observances, that reference of all things to worldly riches and conse- 

 quent impiety and unrighteousness, that will prepare the way for 

 the tenth and last incarnation of Vishnu as Kalki' to restore all 

 things. Thus, soon after the account of their Guptas, close the 

 prophetic announcements of Parasara to Maitreya of what was 

 to befal the world after him, and with them the 4th Book of the 

 Vishnu-Purana. 



It is true, that according to the chronology of the Purana, as set 

 down minutely in that chapter, we should have the commence- 



* The valuable English abstract and partial translation of this Purana (as of 

 the others) deposited in the Asiatic Society's Library by Professor H. H. Wil- 

 son, — is silent on the latter point, the association of the Guptas with Maga- 

 dhas, and their dominion in Behar : relating their possession of those four cities 

 in the Doab, Padmdvati, Kdnti-puri, Mathurd, and Praydga, as altogether uncon. 

 nected with the affairs of Magadha, and the extirpation of the Xattriyas from 

 that country, with which they are distinctly blended in the Sanscrit passage 

 as given above. 



For the further testimony of the Srimad-Bhagavata, see Note C. 



