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28 HISTORY OF INDIAN ARCHITECTURE. there will be great difficulty in restoring that period to any- thing like completeness. But for the thousand years that elapsed between "the revenge of Chanakya" and the fall of Valabhi the materials are ample, and when sufficient industry is applied to their elucidation there is little doubt that the whole may be made clear and intelligible. It does not fall within the scope of this work to attempt such a task ; but it is necessary to endeavour to make its outlines clear, as, with- out this being done, what follows will be utterly unintelligible ; while, at the same time, one of the principal objects of this work is to point out how the architecture, which is one important branch of the evidence and the best aid we can have to the teaching of history, may be brought to bear on the subject. No direct evidence, however, derived only from events that occurred in India itself, would suffice to make the phenomena of her history clear, without taking into account the successive migrations of tribes and peoples who, in all ages, so far as we know, poured across the Indus from the westward to occupy her fertile plains. As mentioned above, the great master fact that explains almost all we know of the ancient history of India is our know- ledge that two thousand years or more before the birth of Christ a Sanskrit-speaking nation migrated from the valleys of the Oxus and Jaxartes. They crossed the Indus in such numbers as to impress their civilisation and their language on the whole of the north of India, and this to such an extent as practically to obliterate, as far as history is concerned, the original inhabitants of the valley of the Ganges, whoever they may have been. At the time when this migration took place the power and civilisation of Central Asia were concentrated on the lower Euphrates, and the Babylonian empire never seems to have extended across the Karmanian desert to the eastward. The road, consequently, between Baktria and India was open, and nations might pass and re-pass between the two countries without fear of interruption from any other people. If any of the ancient dynasties of Babylonia extended their power towards the East, it was along the coast of Gedrosia, and not in a north-easterly direction. It is, indeed, by no means improbable, as hinted above, that the origin of the Dravidians may be found among some of the Turanian peoples who occupied southern and eastern Persia in ancient times, and who may, either by sea or land, have passed to the western shores of India. Till, however, further information is available, this is mere speculation, though probably in the direction in which truth may hereafter be found. When the seat of power was moved northward to Nineveh,