immediately after the Christian Era. No trace of this Era is found in the inscriptions of the Buddhist Period in India, or in other Buddhist .countries, — Thibet and Burma, Ceylon and Java.
There certainly seems to be some mystery about the Samvat Era, 56 B.C. It pretends to commemorate a victory of a king of whom history knows nothing; and it is an Era which does not seem to have been used in the numerous inscriptions of India for several centuries after it pretends to have been established.
Probably the true origin of the Era has been discovered by Mr. Fleet in his volume on the inscriptions of the Gupta kings. It would seem that the Era was originally an obscure Era of the Mâlava tribe, and came subsequently to be connected with the name of Vikramâditya, who in the sixth century after Christ raised the Mâlavas to the rank of the first nation in India.
We now proceed, for facility of reference, to give a table of dates for the different Epochs, premising, that the dates should be taken as only approximately correct, and that the earlier dates are supposed to be correct only within two or three centuries.
Epoch I. — VEDIC PERIOD, B.C. 2000 to 1400.
| Aryan settlement in the Indus valley . . | B.C. 2000 to 1400 |
| Composition of the Rig Veda hymns . . |
EPOCH II. — EPIC PERIOD, B.C. 1400 to 1000.
Aryan settlements in the Ganges valley . . B.C. 1400 to 1000
| Lunar Zodiac fixed. Astronomical observations | B.C. 1400 to 1200 |
| Compilation of the Vedas . . . . |
| Flourishing Period of the Kurus and the Pan- | B.C. 1400 to 1200 |
| châlas . . . . . . . . |
Kuru-Panchâla War . . . . .B.C. 1250
| Flourishing Period of the Kosalas, the Kâsis, | B.C. 1200 to 1000 |
| and the Videhas . . . . . . |
Composition of the Brâhmanas and ÂranyakasB.C. 1300 to 1100
Composition of the Upanishads . . .B.C. 1100 to 1000
