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Frieze from a Buddhist Stupa
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION
THE researches of a multitude of scholars working in various fields have disclosed an unexpected wealth of materials for the reconstruction of ancient Indian history, and the necessary preliminary studies of a technical kind have been carried so far that the moment seems to have arrived for taking stock of the accumulated stores of knowledge. It now appears to be practicable to exhibit the results of antiquarian studies in the shape of a "connected relation" not less intelligible to the ordinary educated reader than Elphinstone's narrative of the transactions of the Mohammedan period.
The first attempt to present such a narrative of the leading events in Indian political history for eighteen centuries is made in this book, which is designedly confined almost exclusively to the relation of political vicissitudes. A sound framework of dynastic annals must be provided before the story of Indian literature and art can be told aright. Although literary and artistic
