ch I have assigned it, near to our own
era, and according to him, later than the Mahabharat. As for Megasthenes
it should be observed, that he did not write a history of India, much less
a literary history or anything at all resembling one, but a simple
description, in great part physical, of India: whence, from his silence on
literary matters to draw inferences regarding the history of Sanskrit
literature would be the same thing as from the silence of a geologist with
respect to the literature of a country whose valleys, mountains, and
internal structure he is exploring, to conjecture that such and such a
poem or history not mentioned by him did not exist at his time. We have
only to look at the fragments of Megasthenes collected and published by
Schwanbeck to see what was the nature and scope of his _Indica_.{~HORIZONTAL ELLIPSIS~} But only
a few fragments of Megasthenes are extant; and to pretend that they should
be argument and proof enough to judge the antiquity of a poem is to press
the laws of criticism too far. To Professor Weber's argument as to the
more or less recent age of the Ramayan from the unity of its composition,
I will make one sole reply, which is that if unity of composition were
really a proof of a more recent age, it would be necessary to reduce by a
thousand years at least the age of Homer and bring him down to the age of
Augustus and Virgil; for certainly there is much more unity of
composition, a greater accord and harmony of parts in the Iliad and the
Odyssey than in the Ramayan. But in the fine arts perfection is no proof
of a recent age: while the experience and the continuous labour of
successive ages are necessary to extend and perfect the physical or
natural sciences, art which is spontaneous in its nature can produce and
has produced in remote times works of such perfection as later ages have
not been able to equal."

INDEX OF PRINCIPAL NAMES

Abhijit, 24.

Abhikala, 176.

Abhira, 444.

Abravanti, 374.

Aditi, 31, 57, 58, 125, 201, 245, 246.

Adityas, 246, 403.

Agastya, 5, 9, 40, 132, 151, 239, 240, 242, 244, 262, 265, 280, 375, 480,
491, 500.

Agneya, 178.

Agni, 28, 74, 109, 132, 240, 243, 276.

Agnivarna, 82, 220.

Agniketu, 433 note, 459.

Ahalya, 60, 61, 62.

Ailadhana, 178.

Air, 2, 28, 203.

Airavat, 14, 110, 178, 246, 256, 267, 335, 399, 402, 415, 429, 437, 472.

Aja, 82, 220, 465.

Ajas, 270, 271.

Akampan, 265, 266, 468, 481.

Aksha, 6,