So there you are, my worthy Don, sitting as a Member of Committees, etc.;
and writing reports, and agitating and canvassing _in Academicis_! This
delights me: for you have it in you, and feel the same longing, which
seized me at your age—to _act_ and to exert an influence on the God-given
realities of life. It inspirits me; for you, like me, will remain what you
are—a German, and will not become a “Philister.”
I have missed _you_ here very much, even more than your answers to my
questions. No one escapes his fate: so I cannot escape the temptation to
try my method and my insight on indirect chronology. I confess that such
confusion I have not seen as that of these investigations hitherto beyond
Colebrooke and Wilson, Lassen and Duncker. Something can already be made
of Megasthenes’ accounts in connection with the Brahmanic traditions, in
the way cleared up by Lassen (in the “Journal”). I believe in the 153
kings before Sandrokottus and the 6402 years. The older tradition does not
dream of ages of the world, the historical traditions begin with the
Tretâage, and point back to the life on the Indus; the first period is
like the divine dynasties of the Egyptians. The Kaliyuga is 1354 B. C., or
1400 if you like, _but not a day older_. The so called cataclysms “after
the universe had thrice attained to freedom” (what nonsense!) are nothing
but the short interregnums of freedom obtained by the poor Indian Aryans
between the monarchies. They are 200 + 300 + 120. And I propose to you,
master of the Vedas, the riddle, how do I know that the first republican
interregnum (anarchy, to the barbarians) was 200 years long? The Indian
traditions begin therefore with 7000, and that is the time of Zaradushta.
I find _many_ reasons for adopting _your_ opinion on the origin of the
Zend books. The Zoroastrians came out of India; but tell me, do you not
consider this as a _return migration_? The schism broke out on the Indus,
or on the movement towards the Jumna and lands of the Ganges. The dull,
intolerable Zend books may be as late as they will, but they contain in
the Vendidad, Fargard I., an (interpolated) record of the oldest movements
of our cousins, which reach back further than anything Semitic.
About Uttara-Kuru and the like, you also leave me in the lurch; and so I
was obliged to see what Ptolemy and Co., and the books know and mention
about them. It seems then to me impossible to deny that the Ὀττοροκοροι is
the same, and points out the most eastern land of the old north, now in or
near Shen-si, the first home of the Chinese; to me the _eastern_ boundary
of _Paradise_. But how remarkable, not so much that the Aryans, faithful
people, have not forgotten their original home, but that the name should
be _Sanskrit_! Therefore Sanskrit in Paradise, in 10,000 or 9000. Explain
this to me, my dear friend. But first send me, within half an hour of
receiving these lines, in case you have them, as they assume here,
Lassen’s maps of India (mounted), belonging to my copy of the book, and
just now very necessary to me. You can have them again in July on the
Righi. Madame Schwabe is gone to console that high-minded afflicted
Cobden, or rather his wife, on the death of his _only_ son, whom we have
buried here. She passes next Sunday through London, on her return to her
children, and will call at Ernst’s. Send the maps to him with a couple of
lines. If you have anything else new, send it also. I have read with great
interest your clever and attractive chapter on the history of the Indian
Hellenic mind, called mythology. Does John Bull take it in? With not less
pleasure your instructive essay on “Burning and other Funereal
Ceremonies.” How noble is all that is really old among the Aryans! Weber
sent me the “Mâlavikâ,” a miserable thing, harem stories,—I hope by a
dissolute fellow of the tenth century, and surely not by the author of
“Sakuntala.” For your just, but sharply expressed and _nobly_ suppressed
essay against ——, a thousand thanks. I have to-day received the last sheet
of “Egypt,” Book IV., and the last but one of Book V. (a), and the second
of Book V. (b). These three volumes will appear on the 1st of June. The
second half of Book V. (b) (Illustrations, Chronological Tables, and
Index) I furnish subsequently for Easter, 1857, in order to have the last
word against my critics.
Meanwhile farewell.
[71.]
CHARLOTTENBERG, _Wednesday, April 23, 1856_.
It would be a great pleasure to you, my dear friend, if you could see the
enthusiasm of my reawakened love for India, which possessed me in the
years 1811-14, and which now daily overpowers me. But it is well that you
are not here, for I dare not follow the notes of the siren till I have
finished the “Signs of the Times,” and have the first volume of my five
books of the “Bible” before me. I see clearly, from my point of view, that
when one has the right frame, the _real facts_ of the Indian life can be
dug out from the exuberant wealth of poetry as surely as your Eros and the
Charites, and the deepest thoughts from their ritual and mythology. True
Germans and Anglo-Saxons are these Indian worthies. How grateful I am to
Lassen for his conscientious investigations; also to Duncker for his
representation of the history, made with the insight of a true historian.
But all this can aid me but little. I can nowhere find the materials for
_filling up my frame-work_; or, in case this frame-work should not itself
be accurate, for destroying it and my whole chapter. Naturally all are
ignorant of the time which precedes the great fable,—namely, the time of
the Vedas.
And so I turn to you, with a request and adjuration which you cannot set
aside. I give you my frame-work, the _chronological canon_, as it has been
shaped by me. It is clear that we cannot depend on anything that stands in
the noble Mahâbhârata and the sentimental Râmâyana, as to kings and lines
of kings, unless it is confirmed by the Vedas; but they generally say the
very opposite. All corruptions of history by our schoolmen and priests are
but as child’s play compared to the systematic falsifying and destruction
of all history by the Brahmans. Three things are possible; (1) you may
find my frame-work _wrong_ because facts are against it; (2) you may find
it _useless_ because facts are missing; or (3) you may find the plan
correct, and discover facts to support and further it. I hope for the
last; but _every_ truth is a gain. My scheme is this: The poets of the
Veda have no chronological reckoning, the epic poets a false one. There
remain the Greeks. To understand the narrative of Megasthenes, one must
first restore the corrupted passages, which Lassen unfortunately has so
entirely misunderstood.
Arr. Ind. ix., in Didot’s “Geographi,” i. p. 320: Ἀπὸ μὲν δὴ Διονύσου
(Svayambhû) βασιλέας ἠρίθμεον Ἰνδοὶ ἐς Σανδράκοττον τρεῖς καὶ πεντήκοντα
καὶ ἑκατὸν, ἔτεα δὲ δύο καὶ τεσσαρακόσια (instead of πεντήκοντα) καὶ
ἑξακισχίλια (6402, according to Pliny’s text, confirmed by all MSS., and
by Solinus Polyhist. 59; of Arrian we have but copies of one _codex_, and
the _lacuna_ is the same in all).
Ἐν δὲ τούτοισι τρὶς ΙΣΤΑΝΑΙ (instead of τὸ πᾶν εἰς, Arr. writes only ἐς)
ἐλευθερίην (ἱστάναι is Herodotean for καθιστάναι, as every rational prose
writer would have put).
ΤΗΝ ΜΕΝ ΕΣ ΔΙΑΚΟΣΙΑ.
τὴν δὲ καὶ ἐς τριακόσια,
τὴν δὲ εἴκοσί τε ἐτέων καὶ ἑκατόν.
The restoration is certain, because the omission is explained through the
ὁμοιοτέλευτον, and gives a meaning to the καὶ. The sense is made
indubitable by Diodorus’ rhetorical rendering of the same text of
Megasthenes, ii. 38: τὸ δὲ τελευταῖον, πολλαῖς γενεαῖς ὕστερον
καταλυθείσης τῆς ἡγεμονίας δημοκρατηθῆναι τὰς πόλεις; cf. 39, ὕστερον δὲ
πολλοῖς ἔτεσι τὰς πόλεις δημοκρατηθῆναι.
From this it follows that the monarchy was thrice interrupted by
democratic governments, and that there were _four_ periods. This is the
Indian tradition. But the whole was conceived as one history, doubtless
with a prehistoric ideal beginning, like our Manus and Tuiskon. Therefore,
no cosmic _periods_ (Brahmanical imposture), but four _generations_ of
Aryan history in India.
The Kaliyuga is a new world, just as much as Teutonic Christendom, but no
more. The Indians will probably have commenced it A. D. 410, as friend
Kingsley too (in his “Hypatia”). Where is the starting-point? I hold to
1015 years as the chronological computation up to the time of the Nandas.
For the Nandas, I hold to the 22 years.
If they say that Kâlâṣoka and his ten sons reigned 22 years; and Nanda,
nine brothers in succession, 22 years; the 22 years is not wrong, either
here or there, but the 22 is correct and the ten kingly personages also,
for aught I care: but the _names_ are altered (and really to do away with
the plebeian Nanda), therefore it is neither 44, nor 88, nor 100 (which is
nothing), but
22
——
From Parikshit to the 1037
year before Sandrakottus
Sandrak’s first year 312 317
(?), 317 (?), 320 (?). I
have no opinion on the
point, therefore take the
middle number _about_
——
Beginning of the fourth 1354 B. C.
period
Interregnum, popular 120
government
——
End of the third period 1475