of agriculture and a degree of civilization. By a close consideration of the data given we might succeed in approximately determining the time of the Arian immigration to India, for Dionysus is represented as the leader of that immigration into India, of people of the same identical Turanic stock as in the main were already in occupation of the country. Dionysus, according to Diodorus, died in India after he had reigned 52 years; which term is allowed by the same author to his colleague and successor Spatembas. Dionysus is the celebrated God Bacchus; whether Spatembas was afterwards understood as a God does not appear; but if their term of reign was meant to symbolize the Zodiac or course of the sun, then we may suppose the number of weeks in the year was signified by fifty-two.

Spatembas was succeeded by his son, Budyas, who reigned twenty-two years; and he by Kradeuas.

Fifteen generations after Dionysus reigned Hercules (Krishna): Diodorus represents him as having built several cities, one of which was Palibothra. He had many sons, to each of whom he left a kingdom, as well as one to his daughter, Pandara.

Some modern interpreters understand Dionysos as the elder Manu, the Primeval Man, son of the Sun (Vivasvat). He appears to hold a somewhat similar position in the primeval history of India as does Gemshid (Jima) among the Iranians. According to Arrian no date of reign is given to him in Megasthenes. Doubtless the latter understood him as a God, to a ruler of which character the Indians allowed 1000 years of reign.

If Dionysus is the elder Manu, Spatembas would reasonably be understood as the Younger Manu (Svayambhuva, the self-existent) who is regarded by the Indians as the progenitor of all their kings. In Budyas, i.e., Buddha (Mercury, son of the moon) husband of Ilâ (Earth) who was daughter of Spatembas, we possibly have another reign of a God represented. His name signifies the "awakened." It has been suggested that the 22 years of reign ascribed to him may be through mistake for 28, the four weeks of the phases of the moon.

The races of the Moon are supposed by the Sanskrit lists to be derived from him (Kandravausa); and from this race are descended the kings of Magadha (Palibothra, Pataliputra, above Patna on the Ganges). According to the Book of Manu, on the other hand, the race of the Sun is descended from Manu. In Megasthenes' epito

mists the two races appear somewhat mixed up. It appears that the race of the Moon were not content to give precedence to that of the Sun, the Kings of Oude (Ayodhya).

The name of the successor of Budyas is more properly read Purûrava than as the Greeks have it Kradeuas. It is likely Megasthenes read it Prareuas, which would have given rise to the latter form. Pururava means "the glorious: " He appears in the Veda as a mythical personage, the husband of Urvasi, a celestial water mymph (Apsaras or Apsara, i.e., Undine). He is represented in the epics as a great conqueror and powerful ruler, who, however, perished, as a result of his own presumption. The system of castes. (from Varna, color, perhaps from the castes being distinguished by differently colored garments) originated with him. Before his time the Arian people were undivided and only one God, Narâyana, (Egyptian Naharaina, Rivers?) was worshiped. At the confluence of the Jumna and Ganges, namely, Allahabad, was his royal residence. All this is supposed to be the tradition of the learned men at the court of Sandrokottus.

The ruler in the fifteenth succession was Krishna, whom the Greeks call the Indian Hercules, and who was especially worshiped in the country of the Surasêns. He is the king in the land of the Prasians (the Easterns) having his royal residence at Mathura, Weber thinks that the notion of his posterity being descended from him and his own late-born daughter Pandaea is but a misunderstanding of the old myth of the creation of the world in connection with a female. The probable historical sense of it, as it appears also in the Pragâpati, is that the renowned race of Pandava, with. whose downfall the third era concluded, or perhaps the princely house of Pandiva (Pandya) whose residence was Madura (later Mathura), in the Southern country of the Ganges, were descended from Krishna's daughter. Sir Wm. Jones (Works, vol. IV. 209) says the Sacred books expressly place an Avatâra between the first and second eras. This impersonation, which does not exist in the Vedas is Krishna. It is probable, also, that Rama, the third divine hero, the extirpator of the royal races, is introduced between the second and third eras. This position of Rama is discovered by Lassen from the tradition to have been quite ancient.

Megasthenes, then, represents his first era as of fifteen or sixteen generations, having a God as the founder and a God as the destroyer of the dynasty.

Now, the Arian tradition represents not Krishna as succeeding to Purûrava, of the race of the moon, but Ayus, whose son, Nahusha (the man, human?), is represented as being under the ban on account of his overbearing character. Upon the death of his grandson, the much esteemed Yayâti, the partition of the world takes place. To his youngest son, Puru, he left his kingdom and to his other four sons he distributed the rest of the earth. In this matter his sons were treated like the three sons of Ferêdun, who, when the partition of the earth took place among them, as according to Firdusi, the youngest, Iredsh, obtains Iran, the home country; and the other two, Selm and Tur, obtain the western and eastern countries respectively, the latter having for his share Turkestan and Tshin (China). This, in the mind of some, would indicate not only the settlement of China and Mandchuria, but the western countries of Europe also by the Iranians. The four other sons of Yayâti are named in order: Yadu, the father of Yadava, people of the south; Turvasu, the father of lawless races, with whom some of the books connect the Yâvana; Druhyn, the ancestor of the inhabitants of the deserts by the sea, who had no kings; Anu, the patriarch of the northern people.

These four primeval names occur in the hymns of the Rigveda in the same order. Max Muller suggested that Turvasu might contain the tribal name of Turan and Turk. In the battle song of the Rigveda, Turvasa is the leader of the races who are the enemies of Indra; and in the Zend books the Turanians are styled Firdusi's Tûirya, i.e., the foes of Firdusi, king of the Iranians. The southeast of India doubtless pertained to this race, being inhabited from the Vindya mountains by Turanian races.

But to Anu the dominion of the north is given. It is thought the Bactrians are meant or the Assyrians, and it is a remarkable coincidence that the name of the ancestor of the Assyrian kings was Anu, which was also the name of a god of the Assyrians.

But, according to the Indian tradition, the patriarch, Yayati, reigned a thousand years. He is supposed to represent the interval between the era of the primeval or mythical world and the beginnings of history proper, or it might mean a transition from one mythic period to another, the name meaning "advancement,” "progress." If the period of fourteen or sixteen rulers, over which we have passed, represent the first period, then it ended with

a kingdom in the Punjab, of which only very vague reminiscences have been preserved, and then ensues a democracy after it for 200 years, as according to Megasthenes.

The Sarasvati Kingdoms begin our second era, whose great heroes are the Bharata; and the Ramâyana is the epic re presentation of it and its violent end. To this era ensues a democracy of 300 years.

In the third era, the Pankâla (the five races), the conquerors of the Bharatidae struggle with the Kuru and the latter again with the Pandava, after whose war of extermination the last era en

sues.

As, according to Megasthenes, the first era closes with KrishnaHercules, so apparently does the second with Rama; and as the Ramayana is the epode of this second period, so is the Mahabharata of the third. The mutual contentions of the princes themselves here bring about their own downfall.

According to our application there should 120 years intervene between the third and fourth eras; but in some of the Parsee books there appears here again the mythical period of 1000 years, which simply means that the duration of the interval could not, at the time of the making of the list, be exactly determined.

Our assumption, then, of the Cosmic eras being representations, in some sort, of dynastic periods, and the intervening periods representing governments of the people, it is plain that down to the end of the third era, what information we have concerning those dynasties is rather of a shadowy character and without a chronology.

In regard to the chronological starting point of the Fourth Period it was found the Brahmimical starting point of 3102 B. C. was in error more than 1000 years in the time of Alexander. The only certain point in regard to it is that Kandragupta (the Sandrakottus of Megasthenes) ascended the throne of Palibothra, in the kingdom of Magadha, between 320 and 312, probably 315 B. C.

Kandragupta overthrew the house of the Nanda, a royal house, indeed, respecting which the Brahminical traditions are very confused and contradictory. In a chronological point of view the notices of the earlier dynasties of the kingdom of Magadha are unchronological. The following is a shadowing forth of this

Fourth Period, in regard to the supposed dynasties and their periods, as according to Lassen (i. 501, Purana list):

66

Supposing the accession of Kandragupta to be... 315 B. C.

Then the beginning of the Kali or Fourth Period is.....

.1913 years B. C.

CONCERNING THE AGE OF Buddha.

The chronology of Buddha is recognized as the first resting place in the Indian history after we go back of Alexander. Lassen has proved that the only tradition worthy of notice in the chronology of Buddha is that of the Cingalese. (Lassen ii, 51-61). According to it in the year 543 B. C. Buddha escaped from the limitations of earthly existence, having then arrived at self-annihilation (Nirvâna).

The Buddhistic list of kings is that of the house of Magadha, which was then seated to the south of Pataliputra, in Ragagriha, so called after an ancient city of that name in the Upper Punjanb. The house of Samudradatta from Mithila (Vidêha) consisting of 25 kings, of whom the last was called Dipankara, reigned there in the first instance. To this succeeded the house of Bhattiya, called also Mahapadma, abounding in stones," which was the Brahminical epithet of the house of the Nanda kings, the sons of Mahanandi and a Sudra. But as Bhattiya lost his independence the dynasty commences with his son Bimbasira, who reigned 52 years and was succeeded by his son Agatasatru, who reigned 32 years. The seventh king after Bimbasira was Sisunaga, who reigned 18 and was succeeded by Kalasoka, for 28 years, whose son Bhadrasêna, with 22 years for himself and his nine brothers, was the immediate predecessor of Nanda.