And first to that most tantalizing of human regions, India; where you would expect something just now from the cyclic backwash.  As soon as you touch this country, in the domain of history and chronology, you are certain, as they say, to get ‘hoodooed.’  Kali-Yuga began there in 3102 B.C., and ever since that unfortunate event, not a single soul in the country seems to have had an idea of keeping track of the calendar.  So-and-so, you read, reigned.  When?—­Oh, in 1000 A.D.  Or in 213 A.D.  Or in 78 A.D.  Or in a few million B.C., or 2100 A.D.  Or he did not reign at all.  After all, what does it matter?—­this is Kali-Yuga, and nothing can go right.—­You fix your eyes on a certain spot in time, which, according to your guesses at the cycles, should be important.  Nothing doing there, as we say.  Oh no, nothing at all:  this is Kali-Yuga, and what should be doing? ....  Well, if you press the point, no doubt somebody was reigning, somewhere.—­But, pardon my insistence, if seems—.  Quite so, quite so! as I said, somebody must have been reigning.—­You scrutinze; you bring your lenses to bear; and the somebody begins to emerge.  And proves to be, say, the great Samundragupta, emperor of all India (nearly); for power and splendor, almost to be mentioned with Asoka.  And it was the Golden Age of Music, and perhaps some other things.—­Yes, certainly; the Guptas were reigning then, I forgot.  But why bother about it?  This is Kali-Yuga, and what does anything matter?—­And you come away with the impression that your non-informant could reveal enough and plenty, if he had a mind to.

Which is, indeed, probably the case.  All this nonchalant indefiniteness means nothing more, one suspects, than that the Brahmans have elected to keep the history of their country unknown to us poor Mlechhas.  Then there are Others, too:  the Guardians of Esotericism in a greater sense; who have not chosen so far that Indian history should be known.  So we can only take dim foreshadowings, and make guesses.

We saw the Maurya dynasty,—­that one seemingly firm patch to set your feet on in the whole morass of the Indian past,—­occupy the thirteen decades from 320 to 190 B.C., (or we thought we did); now the question is, from that pied-a-terre whither shall we jump?  If you could be sure that the ebb of the wave would be equal in length to its inrush,—­the night to the day:—­that the minor pralaya would be no longer or shorter than the little manvantara that preceded it—­why, then you might leap out securely for 60 B.C., with a comfortable feeling that there would be some kind of turning-point in Indian history there or thereabouts.  Sometimes things do happen so, beautifully, as if arranged by the clock.  But unfortunately, enough mischief may be done in thirteen decades to take a much longer period to disentangle; and again, it is only when you strike an average for the whole year, that you can say the nights are equal to the days.  We are trying to see through to the pattern of history; not to dogmatize on such details as we may find, nor claim on the petty strength of them to be certain of the whole.  So, our present leap (for we shall make it), while not quite in the dark, must be made in the dusk of an hour or so after sunset.  There must be an element of faith in it:  very likely we shall splash and sink gruesomely.