Abstract
Indian Chronology.—In the Indian Antiquary for February Mr. F. J. Richards outlines a scheme of periods in Indian history which was originally put forward and discussed at a meeting of the Indian Section of the Royal Anthropological Institute. The object of the scheme is to correlate the periods of the historian with the ebb and flow of culture both inside and outside India. The historic period is divided into three ‘major’ divisions: (1) The Early, 600 B.C. to A.D. 300; (2) the Medieval, A.D. 300 to A.D. 1500; and (3) Modern, A.D. 1500 to A.D. 1900. Each of these is again subdivided into three. For the early period the suggested division is (I.) 600 B.C. to 300 B.C.; (II.) 300 B.C. to 1 B.C., and (III.) 1 B.C. to A.D. 300. Of these, I., 600 B.C. to 300 B.C., roughly answers to the Hellenic period of Europe, the Achæmenid period of Persia and the close of the Chou dynasty of China. In northern India it covers the rise of Jainism and Buddhism and the consolidation in the lower Gangetic plain of the kingdom of Magadha. Foreign influence is represented by the Persian conquest of the northwest in 512 B.C. and the invasion of Alexander. From 300 B.C. to A.D. 300, roughly the period of Hellenistic Greece and imperial Rome, covers in India the Mauryan empire at its zenith under Asoka and its partition between Sungas, Andhras and Greeks from Bactria, and at a later stage Sakas and Pahlavas from Iran, and secondly the rise and decline of the Kushan empire. Southern India is obscure, but Roman traders were busy in Malabar. As regards foreign contacts, the Mauryas were in touch with Greece, and the Kushans with Rome, but the main thrust came from China. In the period A.D. 300 to A.D. 650 when in Europe imperial headquarters were transferred to Constantinople, in northern India the ‘Gupta period’ falls into two phases with the Huna invasion (480 to 528). The period 650 to 1200 covers the struggle between the Byzantine Empire and Islam, and the second great expansion of China under the T'ang dynasty and the struggle with the Tartars. In India it answers to the Rajput period, a period of conflicting States around Kanauj. The period from 1200 to 1500, the closing epoch of the Roman empire and of Mongol domination in Asia, witnesses two phases in the Delhi sultanate, but in southern India interest centres in the Chalukyas of the western Deccan.
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Research Items. Nature 125, 543–545 (1930). https://doi.org/10.1038/125543a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/125543a0