The absence of any historical record is the more striking, because India possesses a written literature equal to, if not surpassing in variety and extent, that possessed by any other nation, before the invention, or at least before the adoption and use, of printing. The Vedas themselves, with their Upanishads and Brahmanas, and the commentaries on them, form a literature in themselves of vast extent, and some parts of which are as old, possibly older, than any written works that are now known to exist; and the Puranas, though comparatively modern, make up a body of doctrine mixed with mythology and tradition such as few nations can boast of. Besides this, however, are two great epics, surpassing in extent, if not in merit, those of any ancient nation, and a drama of great beauty, written at periods extending through a long series of years. In addition to those we have treatises on law, on grammar, on astronomy, on metaphysics and mathematics, on almost every branch of mental science--a literature extending in fact to some 10,000 or 11,000 works, but in all this not one book that can be called historical. No man in India, so far as is known, ever thought of recording the events of his own life or of repeating the previous experience of others, and it was only at some time subsequent to the Christian Era that they ever thought of establishing eras from which to date deeds or events. All this is the more curious because in Ceylon we have, in the ‘Mahawanso,’ and other books of a like nature, a consecutive history of that island, with dates which may be depended upon within very narrow limits of error, for periods extending from B.C. 250 to the present time. At the other extremity of India, we have also in the Raja Tarangini of Kashmir, a work which Professor Wilson characterised as “the only Sanscrit composition yet discovered to which the title of History can with any propriety be applied.”[5] As we at present, however, possess it, it hardly helps us to any historical data earlier than the Christian Era, and even after that its dates for some centuries are by no means fixed and certain.