ot associated with the era of 57 B.C., in any extant writing
known to the west that comes from before several centuries later.
Because the Brahman were a close corporation that kept the
records of history, and kept them secret; and gave out bits
when it suited them. Say that in 1400 (or whenever else it
may have been) they first allowed it to be published that
Kalidasa flourished at Vikrmaditya's court:--they may have been
consciously lying, but at least they were talking about what
they knew. They were not guessing, or using their head-gear
wrongfully, their lying was intentional, or their truth warranted
by knowledge. And no motive for lying is apparent here.--It
would be very satisfactory, of course, were a coin discovered
with King Vikrmaditya's image and superscription nicely engraved
thereon: _Vikramaditya De Gratia: Uj. Imp.; Fid. Def.; 57 B.C._
But in this wicked world you cannot have everything; you must be
thankful for what you can get.

You may remember that Han Wuti, to solve the Hun problem, sent
Chang Ch'ien out through the desert to discover the Yueh Chi'
and that Chang found them at last in Bactria, which they had
conquered from Greeks who had held it since Alexander's time. He
found them settled and with some fair degree of civilization;
spoke of Bactria under their sway as a "land of a thousand
cities";--they had learned much since they were nomads driven out
of Kansuh by the Huns. Also they were in the midst of a career
of expansion. Within thirty years of his visit to them, or by
100 B.C., they had spread their empire over eastern Persia, at
the expense of the Parthians; and thence went down into India
conquering. By 60 B.C. they held the Punjab and generally the
western parts of Hindoostan; then, since they do not seem to
have got down into the Deccan, I take it they were held up. By
whom?--Truly this is pure speculation. But the state of Malwa,
of which Ujjain was the capital, lay right in their southward
path; if held up they were, it would have been, probably, by
some king of Ujjain. Was this what happened?--that the peril of
these northern invaders roused Malwa to exert its fullest
strength; the military effort spurring up national feeling; the
national feeling, creative energies spiritual, mental and
imaginative;--until a great age in Ujjain had come into being.
It is what we often see. The menace of Spain roused England to
Elizabethanism; the Persian peril awakend Athens. So K