Archaeologia, ‘ancient lore,’ is the meaning of Pur[=a]na (pur[=a]na, ’old’).  The religious period represented by the extant writings of this class is that which immediately follows the completion of the epic.[1] These works, although they contain no real history, yet reflect history very plainly, and since the advent and initial progress of Puranic Hinduism, with its various cults, is contemporary with important political changes, it will be necessary briefly to consider the circumstances in which arose these new creeds, for they were destined to become in the future the controlling force in the development of Hindu religion.

In speaking of the extension of Buddhism we showed that its growth was influenced in no small degree by the fact that this caste-less and, therefore, democratic religion was adopted by post-Alexandrine rulers in the Graeco-Bactrian period.  At this time the Aryans were surrounded with foreigners and pagans.  To North and South spread savage or half Hinduized native tribes, while soldiers of Greece and Bactria encamped in the valley of the Ganges.  Barbarians had long been active in the North, and some scholars have even claimed that Buddha’s own family was of Turanian origin.  The Brahmans then as now retained their prestige only as being repositories of ancient wisdom; and outside of their own ‘holy land’ their influence was reduced to a minimum by the social and political tendencies that accompanied the growth of Buddhism.  After the fourth century B.C. the heart of India, the ‘middle district,’ between the Him[=a]laya and Vindhya mountains from Delhi to Benares,[2] was trampled upon by one Graeco-Bactrian horde after another.  The principal effect of this rude dominion was eventually to give political equality to the two great rival religions.  The Buddhist and the Brahman lived at last if not harmoniously, at least pacifically, side by side.  Members of the same reigning family would profess Buddhism or Brahmanism indifferently.  One king would sometimes patronize both religions.  And this continued to be the case till Buddhism faded out, replaced by that Hinduism which owed its origin partly to native un-Aryan influence (paganism), partly to this century-long fusion of the two state religions.

To review these events:  In the first decades of the fourth century (320 or 315-291 B.C.) Candragupta, Sandrocottos, had built up a monarchy in Beh[=a]r[3] on the ruins left by the Greek invasion, sharing his power with Seleucus in the Northwest, and had thus prepared the way for his grandson, Acoka, the great patron of Buddhism (264 or 259).  This native power fell before the hosts of Northern barbarians, which, after irruptions into India in the second century, got a permanent foothold there in the first century B.C.  These Northern barbarians (their nationality is uncertain), whose greatest king was Kanishka, 78 A.D., ruled for centuries the land they had seized; but they were vanquished at last in the sixth century,