Well, here goes then!  From 190 B.C. thirteen decades forward to 60 B.C., and,—­squish!  But, courage! throw out your arm and clutch—­at this trailing root, 57 B. C., here within easy reach; and haul yourself out.  So; and see, now you are standing on something.  What it is, Dios lo sabe! But there is an Indian era that begins in 57 B.C.; for a long time, dates were counted from that year.  That era rises in undefined legendary splendor, and peters out ineffectually you don’t just know where.  There is nothing to go upon but legends, with never a coin nor monument found to back them;—­never mind; dates you count eras from are generally those in which important cycles begin.  The legends relate to Vikramaditya king of Ujjain,—­which kingdom is towards the western side of the peninsula, and about where Hindoostan and the Deccan join.  He is the Arthur-Charlemain of India, the Golden Monarch of Romance.  In the lakes of his palace gardens the very swans sang his praises daily—­

     “Glory be to Vikramajeet
     Who always gives us pearls to eat”;

and when he died, the four pillars that supported his throne rose up, and wandered away through the fields and jungle disconsolate:  they would not support the dignity of any lesser man.* Such tales are told about him by every Indian mother to her children at this present day, and have been, presumably, any time these last two thousand years.

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* India through the Ages, by Mrs. Flora Annie Steel.
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Of his real existence Historical Research cannot satisfy itself at all;—­or it half guesses it may have discovered his probable original wandering in disguise through the centuries of a thousand years or so later.  But you must expect that sort of thing in India.

At his court, says tradition, lived the “Nine Gems of Literature,” —­chief among them the poet-dramatist Kalidasa; whom Historical Research (western) rather infers lived at several widely separated epochs much nearer our own day.  Well; for the time being let us leave Historical Research (western) to stew in its own (largely poisonous) juices, and see how it likes it,—­and say that there are good cyclic chances of something large here, in the half-cycle between the Ages of Han Wuti and Augustus.

We may note that things Indian must be dealt with differently from things elsewhere.  You take, for example, the old story about the Moslem conquerors of Egypt burning the Alexandrian Library.  The fact that this is mentioned for the first time by a Christian who lived six hundred years after the supposed event, while we have many histories written during those six hundred years which say nothing about it at all,—­is evidence amounting to proof that it never happened; especially when you take into account the known fact that the Alexandrian Library had already been thoroughly burnt several times.  But you can derive no such negativing certainty,