xxv
Very few verbal forms are used besides those of suck Senses as the present and the future; participles are fre-<quently met with ; the verbal forms of some roots, especially «of those belonging to the less comprehensive classes, have gone out of use and in their place we often have a noun -expressive of the special action and a verb expressive of |p .action generally; compound words are abnormally long
and tedious poetic description obscures the thread of the narrative.
The literature of the Hindus, extensive and valuable as it is, includes scarcely any work of a historical character. The genius of the Hindu nation was from its dawn opposed to chronicles. This lack of external evidence among the j| .authors of this vast literature seriously impedes historical research and chronological arrangement. Hence it is that the early history of India it still a moddle of conjectures and inferences. The earliest landmark would naturally be the age of Buddha and his reform. Here then there is the -usual uncertainty. The ground is slippery and the Bud--dhists among themselves are widely diverged in their
^ views. "Among the Northern Buddhists fourteen different
accounts are found, ranging from B. C. 2422 to B« C. 546; the eras of Southern Buddhists on the contrary must agree *with each other and all of them start from B. C, 544. This latter chronology has been recently adopted as the correct one on the ground it accords best with these conditions.1* "The next historical datum is afforded by the annals of the
p||| Maurya dynasty. Sir William Jones was the first to identi-
fy the Sandracotus of the Greek history with Chandragupta*tiring compounds, nain. This construction is facilitated by a