Part 8 (2/2)

The site of this has not yet been discovered, the copper plates remain unread!

A find this, perchance, for the coming years! It is something to look forward to, something which may clear up many points concerning Kanishka now ”strangely open to doubt.”

The history of his successors is, likewise, doubtful. We stand, indeed, on the threshold of one of those curious intervals in Indian story, when the curtain comes down on the living picture of the stage, leaving us to wonder what the next act of the drama will be, and when it will recommence. Still more like, perhaps, is the position of the spectator to one who, on some mountain top, watches the rolling clouds sweep through the valleys below him. A stronger breath of wind, a little rift in the hurrying white vapour, and a glimpse of the life that goes on and on below the mists comes into view for a moment, and is gone the next.

So we look back towards the beginning of the third century after Christ. A glint of sunlight, a pa.s.sing peep of something recognisable, obliterated in an instant by the rolling clouds growing more and more obscure as they deepen and darken.

”Then there were in this land three kings, Hushka, Jushka, and Kanishka, who built three towns.”

So runs the Kashmir chronicle.

It reads like the beginning of a fairy tale, but nothing follows save a gold coin with the beautifully executed portrait of a striking-looking man upon it, a man with deep-set eyes and determination marked upon every feature. Beneath it, the legend of King Huwushka, or Hushka.

Another glimpse comes to us of one Vasu-deva. Does he in truth belong to the Mongolian princes, with their strange uncouth names? His is a purely Indian one, and the coins which bear his name no longer bear the Bactrian camel. The bull, too, is attendant on the Indian G.o.d Siva, complete with his noose and trident.

Had Buddhism, then, gone by the board? Who can tell. The curtain is finally rung down about the year A.D. 230 on the confused pa.s.sing of the Andhra dynasty in the south, the Kushan dynasty in the north, and does not rise again, not even for a moment, until a hundred years have pa.s.sed.

And yet, before this little book is published, the grave may have given up its dead, and out of a few dry bones, a chance coin, a half-obliterated inscription, some new personality may have arisen to live again through those long, empty years.

India is very wide, and she is very secretive. How can it be otherwise, when beyond reach of the clash and welter of kings, of courts and conquests, the great ma.s.s of the people live untouched by change, watching their crops, ploughing, sowing, reaping, ”undisturbed” (as Megasthenes pointed out with wonder), ”even when battle is raging in their neighbourhood, by any sense of danger, since the tillers of the soil are regarded by the Indians as a race sacred, inviolable.” To the world beyond such lives are a secret; they hold the unknown.

So from behind the curtain the ”Song of the Plough” rises in monotonous chant as, in the same dress, using the same implements as he uses to-day, the peasant drives his white oxen, and sings:--

”Bitter blue sky with no fleck of a cloud!

Ho! brother-ox drive the plough deep.

Sky-dappled grey like the partridge's breast!

Ho! brother-ox drive the plough straight.

Merry drops slanting from East to West!

Oh! brother-ox drive home the wain.

The G.o.ds give poor folk rain.”

THE GREAT GuPTA EMPIRE

A.D. 308 TO A.D. 450

The curtain rises again upon a wedding; the wedding of Princess k.u.mari Devi. Eight hundred years before, King Bimbi-sara of the Sesu-naga dynasty had strengthened his hold on Magadha by marrying her ancestress, a princess of that Lichchavi clan which for centuries has held strong grip on a vast tract of country spreading far into the Nepaul hills.

This kingdom of the Lichchavis had given Bimbi-sara much trouble. It was to check the inroads of the bold hill folk that he first built the watch fort of Pataliputra, the modern Patna. Of the history of the warlike clan during these long intervening years nothing is known; but they must have kept their independence, for Princess k.u.mari Devi (which, by the way, is tautological, since k.u.mari means princess, the whole name therefore standing as Princess-G.o.ddess) appears from the obscure as a person of importance, apparently an heiress. Whether she was the reigning princess history sayeth not; but it appears not unlikely that this was the case, and that at the time the Lichchavis, instead of being checked by, were in possession of, Pataliputra.

Be that as it may, the G.o.ddess-Princess chose to marry one Chandra-gupta, a mere local chief of whose father and grandfather only the names have been preserved. Possibly he was good-looking; let us hope so! From the character of his son, Samudra-gupta, it is reasonable to suppose that he rose above the common herd of princelings in both intelligence and accomplishments; though, on the other hand, these might have been derived from the princess.

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