SOME POSSIBLE EPOCHS IN SANSKRIT LITERATURE


Han Chaoti died in 63 B.C.; his successor is described as a
"boor of low tastes";--from that time the great Han impetus goes
slowing down and quieting. China was recuperating after Han
Wuti's flare of splendor; we may leave her to recuperate, and
look meanwhile elsewhere.

And first to that most tantalizing of human regions, India;
where you would expect something just now from the cyclic
backwash. As soon as you touch this country, in the domain of
history and chronology, you are certain, as they say, to get
'hoodooed.' Kali-Yuga began there in 3102 B.C., and ever since
that unfortunate event, not a single soul in the country seems to
have had an idea of keeping track of the calendar. So-and-so,
you read, reigned. When?--Oh, in 1000 A.D. Or in 213 A.D. Or
in 78 A.D. Or in a few million B.C., or 2100 A.D. Or he did
not reign at all. After all, what does it matter?--this is
Kali-Yuga, and nothing can go right.--You fix your eyes on a
certain spot in time, which, according to your guesses at
the cycles, should be important. Nothing doing there, as
we say. Oh no, nothing at all: this is Kali-Yuga, and what
should be doing? .... Well, if you press the point, no doubt
somebody was reigning, somewhere.--But, pardon my insistence,
if seems--. Quite so, quite so! as I said, somebody must
have been reigning.--You scrutinze; you bring your lenses
to bear; and the somebody begins to emerge. And proves
to be, say, the great Samundragupta, emperor of all India
(nearly); for power and splendor, almost to be mentioned
with Asoka. And it was the Golden Age of Music, and perhaps
some other things.--Yes, certainly; the Guptas were reigning
then, I forgot. But why bother about it? This is Kali-Yuga,
and what does anything matter?--And you come away with the
impression that your non-informant could reveal enough and
plenty, if he had a mind to.

Which is, indeed, probably the case. All this nonchalant
indefiniteness means nothing more, one suspects, than that the
Brahmans have elected to keep the history of their country
unknown to us poor Mlechhas. Then there are Others, too: the
Guardians of Esotericism in a greater sense; who have not chosen
so far that Indian history should be known. So we can only take
dim foreshadowings, and make guesses.

We saw the Maurya dynasty,--that one seemingly firm patch to set
your feet on in the whole morass of the Indian past,--occupy the
thirteen decades from 320 to 190 B.C., (or we thought we did);
now the question is, from that _pied-a-terre_ whither shall we
jump? If you could be sure that the ebb of the wave would be
equal in length to its inrush,--the night to the day:--that the
minor pralaya would be no longer or shorter than the little
manvantara that preceded it--why, then you might leap out
securely for 60 B.C., with a comfortable feeling that there would
be some kind of turning-point in Indian history there or
thereabouts. Sometimes things do happen so, beautifully, as if
arranged by the clock. But unfortunately, enough mischief may be
done in thirteen decades to take a much longer period to
disentangle; and again, it is only when you strike an average
for the whole year, that you can say the nights are equal to the
days. We are trying to see through to the pattern of history;
not to dogmatize on such details as we may find, nor claim on the
petty strength of them to be certain of the whole. So, our
present leap (for we shall make it), while not quite in the dark,
must be made in the dusk of an hour or so after sunset. There
must be an element of faith in it: very likely we shall splash
and sink gruesomely.

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