CHAPTER X
THE EPIC AGE—THE RAMAYANA
The tide of Aryan conquests rolled onward. When the country between the Jumna and the Ganges had been completely conquered, peopled, and Hinduized, new bands of adventurous settlers crossed the Ganges and marched further eastward to found new colonies and new Hindu kingdoms. Stream after stream was crossed, forest after forest was explored and cleared, region after region was slowly conquered, peopled, and Hinduized in this onward march towards the unknown east. The history of the long struggles and the gradual development of the Hindu power in these regions has been lost to us; and we only see, in the literature which has been preserved, the establishment of powerful and civilized Hindu kingdoms east of the Ganges—the kingdom of the Kosalas in the country now known as Oudh, that of the Videhas in North Behar, and that of the Kasis round the modern Benares.
Some recollection of the eastern march of the Videhas has been preserved in a stray passage in the first book of the Satapatha Brahmana.
