362 NORTH-IVESTERN PROVINCES AND OUDH. our knowledge is limited to what can be gleaned, as to their extent and the degree of civilisation attained by then, from the few monuments that survive, in the shape of tanks, forts, and sites of ruined cities, which are only now beginning to receive attention. The modern representatives of the aboriginal races, the Bhars, Cherús, Kols, Kharwárs, Suiris, etc., are still found; but they have scarcely retained even the traditions of their ancient greatness, and a few of the wealthier members seek to secure social rank by claiming an Aryan (generally Rajput) origin. Among the earliest traditions of the North - Western Provinces are those which cluster round the city of Hastinápur, on the Ganges, in Meerut District, the ancient metropolis of the Pandavas. Only a few shapeless mounds now mark the site where lived the Children of the Moon, the descendants of Bharata, whose great war is chronicled in the Hindu epic of the Mahúbhárata. The poem deals chiefly with the conflict between the five Pandavas, sons of Pandu and founders of Indraprastha (sce Delhi City), and the Kauravas, who held the older capital of Hastinapur. These events, if not absolutely mythical, may be assigned to the 15th century B.C. But the earliest empire in this portion of Upper India of which any certain monuments remain was that of Magadha, associated with the growth of Buddhism. The founder of the Buddhist creed, Sakya Muni, was born at Kápila in 598 B.C., and died at Kasia in Gorakhpur District in 543. After his death, the creed which he had preached spread rapidly over Hindustán, and became for many centuries the dominant religion of the Aryan race. When Alexander the Great invaded the Punjab in 327 B.C., he heard of the great empire of Magadha, whose capital lay at Palibothra, generally identified with the modern city of Patná in Bengal. A Nagá or serpent dynasty then ruled over Magadha, and the reigning prince at the date of Alexander's invasion bore the name of Nanda. His minister Chandra Gupta, the Sandrokottos of the Greeks, assassinated the Nágá prince and seized upon the throne for himself. Seleukos, the successor of Alexander in his easternmost dominions, marched with a large army into the Ganges basin, and endeavoured to annex the whole of the modern Provinces to his own kingdom. Chandra Gupta, however, though defeated in the pages of Hellenic chroniclers, at least succeeded in actual fact so far as to preserve his territory intact, and to receive the philosopher Megasthenes as ambassador from Seleukos at his court in Palibothra. Under his grandson Asoka (260 B.C.) the empire of Magadha reached its highest development. The whole of Hindustan and the Punjab, together with portions of the Deccan and Afghánistán, were included within its boundaries; and the pillars or rock
