history upon the more primitive indigenous populations already in
possession. Its early history has only now begun to emerge from the
twilight of myths and legends, and cannot even now be traced with any
assurance of accuracy nearly as far back as that of other parts of the
world which preceded or gave birth to our own much more recent
civilisation. The pyramids of Ghizeh and Sakkara and the monumental
temples of Thebes bore ample witness to the greatness of Egyptian
civilisation long before the interpretation of her hieroglyphics enabled
us to determine its antiquity, and the discovery of its abundant art
treasures revealed the high degree of culture to which it reached.
Excavations in the valley of the Tigris and Euphrates have yielded an
almost equally valuable harvest in regard to Babylonian and Assyrian
civilisation, and Cnossus has told us its scarcely less wonderful story.
Yet the long line of Pharaohs was coming to an end and Egypt was losing
the national independence which she has never once recovered; Nineveh
had fallen and Jerusalem was destroyed; Greece and even Rome had already
started on their great creative careers before any approximately correct
date can be assigned to the stages through which Indian civilisation had
passed. India only becomes historical with the establishment of the
Sasunaga dynasty in the Gangetic kingdom of Magadha, which centred in
what is now Behar, about the year 600 B.C.

As to the state of India before that date, no sort of material evidence
has survived, or at any rate has yet been brought to light--no
monuments, no inscriptions, very little pottery even, in fact very few
traces of the handicraft of man; nor any contemporary records of
undoubted authenticity. Fortunately the darkness which would have been
otherwise Cimmerian is illuminated, though with a partial and often
uncertain light, by the wonderful body of sacred literature which has
been handed down to our own times in the Vedas and Brahmanas and