IV (OF 6)***


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Transcriber's note:

      1. Text enclosed by underscores is in italics (_italics_).

      2. A carat character is used to denote superscription. A
         single character following the carat is superscripted
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      3. Mixed fractions in this text version are indicated with
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         text version these letters have been replaced with
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THE HISTORY OF ANTIQUITY.

From the German of

PROFESSOR MAX DUNCKER,

by

Evelyn Abbott, M.A., LL.D.,
Fellow And Tutor Of Balliol College, Oxford.

VOL. IV.







London:
Richard Bentley & Son, New Burlington Street,
Publishers in Ordinary to Her Majesty the Queen.
1880.

Bungay:
Clay and Taylor, Printers.




CONTENTS.


BOOK V.

_THE ARIANS ON THE INDUS AND THE GANGES._

  CHAPTER I.                                                      PAGE
  THE LAND AND THE PEOPLE                                            1

  CHAPTER II.
  THE ARYAS ON THE INDUS                                            27

  CHAPTER III.
  THE CONQUEST OF THE LAND OF THE GANGES                            65

  CHAPTER IV.
  THE FORMATION AND ARRANGEMENT OF THE ORDERS                      110

  CHAPTER V.
  THE OLD AND THE NEW RELIGION                                     154

  CHAPTER VI.
  THE CONSTITUTION AND LAW OF THE INDIANS                          188

  CHAPTER VII.
  THE CASTES AND THE FAMILY                                        236

  CHAPTER VIII.
  THE THEOLOGY AND PHILOSOPHY OF THE BRAHMANS                      270


BOOK VI.

_BUDDHISTS AND BRAHMANS._

  CHAPTER I.
  THE STATES ON THE GANGES IN THE SIXTH CENTURY B.C.               315

  CHAPTER II.
  BUDDHA'S LIFE AND TEACHING                                       332

  CHAPTER III.
  THE KINGDOM OF MAGADHA AND THE SETTLEMENTS IN THE SOUTH          365

  CHAPTER IV.
  THE NATIONS AND PRINCES OF THE LAND OF THE INDUS                 383

  CHAPTER V.
  THE POLITICAL AND SOCIAL LIFE OF THE INDIANS IN THE FOURTH
    CENTURY B.C.                                                   408

  CHAPTER VI.
  CHANDRAGUPTA OF MAGADHA                                          439

  CHAPTER VII.
  THE RELIGION OF THE BUDDHISTS                                    454

  CHAPTER VIII.
  THE REFORMS OF THE BRAHMANS                                      491

  CHAPTER IX.
  ACOKA OF MAGADHA                                                 521

  CHAPTER X.
  RETROSPECT                                                       544




BOOK V.

THE ARIANS ON THE INDUS AND THE GANGES.




INDIA.




CHAPTER I.

THE LAND AND THE PEOPLE.


It was not only in the lower valley of the Nile, on the banks of the
Euphrates and the Tigris, and along the coast and on the heights of
Syria that independent forms of intellectual and civic life grew up in
antiquity. By the side of the early civilisation of Egypt, and the
hardly later civilisation of that unknown people from which Elam,
Babylon, and Asshur borrowed such important factors in the development
of their own capacities; along with the civilisation of the Semites of
the East and West, who here observed the heavens, there busily explored
the shores of the sea; here erected massive buildings, and there were so
earnestly occupied with the study of their own inward nature, are found
forms of culture later in their origin, and represented by a different
family of nations. This family, the Indo-European, extends over a far
larger area than the Semitic. We find branches of it in the wide
districts to the east of the Semitic nations, on the table-land of Iran,
in the valleys of the Indus and the Ganges. Other branches we have
already encountered on the heights of Armenia, and the table-land of
Asia Minor (I. 512, 524). Others again obtained possession of the
plains above the Black Sea; others, of the peninsulas of Greece and
Italy. Nations of this stock have forced their way to the shores of the
Atlantic Ocean; we find them settled on the western coast of the Spanish
peninsula, from the mouth of the Garonne to the Channel, in Britain and
Ireland no less than in Scandinavia, on the shores of the North Sea and
the Baltic. Those branches of the family which took up their abodes the
farthest to the East exhibit the most independent and peculiar form of
civilisation.

The mutual relationship of the Arian, Greek, Italian, Letto-Sclavonian,
Germanic, and Celtic languages proves the relationship of the nations
who have spoken and still speak them; it proves that all these nations
have a common origin and descent. The words, of which the roots in these
languages exhibit complete phonetic agreement, must be considered as a
common possession, acquired before the separation; and from this we can
discover at what stage of life the nation from which these languages
derive their origin stood at the time when it was not yet divided into
these six great branches, and separated into the nations which
subsequently occupied abodes so extensive and remote from each other. We
find common terms for members of the family, for house, yard, garden,
and citadel; common words for horses, cattle, dogs, swine, sheep, goats,
mice, geese, ducks; common roots for wool, hemp or flax, corn (_i.e._
wheat, spelt, or barley), for ploughing, grinding, and weaving, for
certain metals (copper or iron), for some weapons and tools, for waggon,
boat and rudder, for the elementary numbers, and the division of the
year according to the moon.[1] Hence the stock, whose branches and
shoots have spread over the whole continent of Europe and Asia from
Ceylon to Britain and Scandinavia, cannot, even before the separation,
have been without a certain degree of civilisation. On the contrary,
this common fund of words proves that even in that early time it tilled
the field, and reared cattle; that it could build waggons and boats, and
forge weapons, and if the general name for the gods and some names of
special deities are the same in widely remote branches of this
stock,--in India, Iran, Greece, and Italy, and even on the plains of
Lithuania,--it follows that the notions which lie at the base of these
names must also be counted among the common possessions existing before
the separation.

We can hardly venture a conjecture as to the region in which the fathers
of the Indo-European nations attained to this degree of cultivation. It
must have been of such a nature as to admit of agriculture beside the
breeding of cattle. The varieties of produce mentioned and the domestic
animals point to a northern district, which, however, cannot have
reached down to the ocean, inasmuch as no common roots are in existence
to denote the sea. This proof is strengthened by the fact that in all
the branches the wolf and bear alone among beasts of prey are designated
by common roots. If we combine these considerations with the equal
extension of the tribes of this nation towards east and west, we may
assume that an elevated district in the middle of the eastern continent
was the abode of the nation while yet undivided.

The branches which occupied the table-land of Iran and the valley of the
Indus were the first to rise from the basis acquired in common to a
higher civilisation; and even they did not attain to this till long
after the time when Egypt, under the ancient kingdom of Memphis, found
herself in the possession of a many-sided culture, after Babylon had
become the centre of a different conception of life and development. The
western branches of the Indo-Europeans remained at various stages behind
their eastern fellow-tribesmen in regard to the epochs of their higher
culture. If the Greeks, who were brought into frequent contact with the
civilisation of the Semites, came next in point of time after the
eastern tribes, and the Italians next to the Greeks, it was only through
conflict and contact with the culture of Greece and Rome that the
western branches reached a higher stage, while the dwellers on the
plains of the Baltic owe their cultivation to the influences of Germanic
life. Finally, when the West European branches, the Indo-Germans, had
developed independently their capacities and their nature, when in
different phases they had received and assimilated what had been left
behind by their Greek and Roman kinsmen, and formed it into the
civilisation of the modern world, their distant navigation came into
contact with the ancient civilisation, to which their fellow-tribesmen
in the distant East had finally attained some 2000 years previously.
With wonder and astonishment the long-separated, long-estranged
relatives looked each other in the face. But even now the ancient,
deeply-rooted, and variously-developed civilisation of the eastern
branch maintains its place with tough endurance beside the mobile,
comprehensive, and restlessly-advancing civilisation of the west.

On the southern edge of the great table-land which forms the nucleus of
the districts of Asia, the range of the Himalayas rises in parallel
lines. The range runs from north-west to south-east, with a breadth of
from 200 to 250 miles, and a length of about 1750 miles. It presents the
highest elevations on the surface of the earth. Covered with boundless
fields of snow and extensive glaciers, the sharp edges and points of the
highest ridge rise gleaming into the tropic sky; no sound breaks the
deep silence of this solemn Alpine wild. To the south of these mighty
white towers, in the second range, is a multitude of summits, separated
by rugged ravines. Here also is neither moss nor herb, for this range
also rises above the limits of vegetation. Much lower down, a third
range, of which the average elevation rises to more than 12,000 feet,
displays up to the summits forests of a European kind; in the cool,
fresh air the ridges are clothed with birches, pines, and oaks. Beneath
this girdle of northern growths, on the heights which gradually sink
down from an elevation of 5000 feet, are thick forests of Indian
fig-trees of gigantic size. Under the forest there commences in the west
a hilly region, in the east a marshy district broken by lakes which the
mountain waters leave behind in the depression, and covered with
impenetrable thickets, tall jungles, and rank grass--a district
oppressive and unhealthy, inhabited by herds of elephants, crocodiles,
and large snakes.

The mighty wall of the Himalayas decides the nature and life of the
extensive land which lies before it to the south in the same way as the
peninsula of Italy lies before the European Alps. It protects hill and
plain from the raw winds which blow from the north over the table-land
of Central Asia; it checks the rain-clouds, the collected moisture of
the ocean brought up by the trade winds from the South Sea. These clouds
are compelled to pour their water into the plains at the foot of the
Himalayas, and change the glow of the sun into coolness, the parched
vegetation into fresh green. Owing to their extraordinary elevation, the
mountain masses of the Himalayas, in spite of their southern situation,
preserve such enormous fields of ice and snow that they are able to
discharge into the plains the mightiest rivers in the world. From the
central block flow the Indus, the Ganges, and the Brahmaputra, _i.e._
the son of Brahma.

Springing from fields of snow, which surround Alpine lakes, the Indus
descends from an elevated mountain plain to the south of the highest
ridge. At first the river flows in a westerly direction through a cleft
between parallel rows of mountains. In spite of the long and severe
winter of this region, mountain sheep and goats flourish here, and the
sandy soil contains gold-dust. To the south of the course of the river
we find depressions in the mountains, where the climate is happily
tempered by the nature of the sky and the elevation of the soil. The
largest of these is the valley of Cashmere, surrounded by an oval of
snowy mountains. To the west of Cashmere the Indus turns its course
suddenly to the south; it breaks through the mountain ranges which bar
its way, and from this point to the mouth accompanies the eastern <DW72>
of the table-land of Iran. As soon as the Himalayas are left behind, a
hilly land commences on the left bank, of moderate warmth and fruitful
vegetation, spreading out far to the east between the tributaries of the
stream. The river now receives the Panjab, and the valley is narrowed in
the west by the closer approach of the mountains of Iran; in the east by
a wide, waterless steppe, descending from the spurs of the Himalayas to
the sea, which affords nothing beyond a scanty maintenance for herds of
buffaloes, asses, and camels. The heat becomes greater as the land
becomes flatter, and the river more southerly in its course; in the dry
months the earth cracks and vegetation is at a standstill. Any overflow
from the river, which might give it new vigour, on the melting of the
snow in the upper mountains, is prevented for long distances by the
elevation of the banks. The Delta formed by the Indus at its mouth,
after a course of 1500 miles, contains only a few islands of good marsh
soil. The sea comes up over the flat shore for a long distance, and
higher up the arms of the river a thick growth of reeds and rushes
hinders cultivation, while the want of fresh water makes a numerous
population impossible.

Not far from the sources of the Indus, at the very nucleus of the
highest summits of the Himalayas, rise the Yamuna (Jumna) and the
Ganges. The Ganges flows out of fields of snow beneath unsurmountable
summits of more than 20,000 feet in height, and breaking through the
mountains to the south reaches the plains; here the course of the river
is turned to the east by the broad and thickly-wooded girdle of the
Vindhyas, the mountain range which rises to the south of the plains.
Enlarged by a number of tributaries from north and south, it pours from
year to year copious inundations over the low banks, and thus creates
for the plains through which it flows a fruitful soil where tropic
vegetation can flourish in the most luxuriant wildness. This is the land
of rice, of cotton, of sugar-canes, of the blue lotus, the edible
banana, the gigantic fig-tree. On the lower course of the river, where
it approaches the Brahmaputra, which also at first flows between the
parallel ranges of the Himalayas towards the east, in the same way as
the Indus flows to the west, there commences a hot, moist, and luxuriant
plain (Bengal) of enervating climate, covered with coco and arica palms,
with the tendrils of the betel, and the stalks of the cinnamon, with
endless creepers overgrowing the trunks of the trees, and ascending even
to their topmost branches. Here the river is so broad that the eye can
no longer reach from one bank to the other. In the region at the mouth,
where the Ganges unites with the Brahmaputra, and then splits into many
arms, the numerous waters create hot marshes; and here the vegetation is
so abundant, the jungles of bamboo so thick and impenetrable, that they
are abandoned to the rhinoceros, the elephant, and the tiger, whose
proper home is in these wooded morasses.

Into this wide region, which in length, from north to south, exceeds the
distance from Cape Skagen to Cape Spartivento, and in breadth, from east
to west, is about equal to the distance from Bayonne to Odessa, came a
branch of the family, whose common origin has been noticed, and their
civilisation previous to the separation of the members sketched. The
members of this branch called themselves Arya, _i.e._ the noble, or the
ruling. In the oldest existing monuments of their language and poetry
these Aryas are found invoking their gods to grant them room against the
Dasyus,[2] to make a distinction between Arya and Dasyu, to place the
Dasyus on the left hand, to turn away the arms of the Dasyus from the
Aryas, to