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is called, or Rajarishi Janaka. These two great sons of India are Mahā Vīra Vardhamāna, the founder of the religion of the Jīna, and Gautama Sākyamuni, the Buddha. The new teachings of the latter, and the appeal they made to the people have long been recognized as the potent cause of the development of the languages of the people. This influence from the distant north found ready response even in the distant south, with which communication appears to have been maintained by way of the sea, while yet the Danḍakāranya had not been penetrated by a great highway, the Dakshiṇāpatha. In another way the advent of the Buddha has also been of advantage to students of history. His religion it was that took India from her blissful isolation, and led her to take her place among the world Powers, but this was not as yet.

With the advent of Buddhism comes into prominence the kingdom of Magadha, perhaps semi-Aryan, as it was in the borderland of Āryāvarta. The capitals of this kingdom appear to have been Rājagriha, Kaikeyi's father's kingdom, and Vaiśāli, also spoken of in the Rāmāyana. Bimbisara of the Śaiśunaga dynasty and his patricide son Ajātaśatru were contemporaries of the Buddha. Before the Buddha attained nirvāna, Buddhism had obtained a great hold upon the people of India, and Buddhist monks and nuns had gone about carrying the Buddhist gospel.

This age when two religious reformers flourished, and in which the foundation of the greatness of the kingdom of Magadha was laid is remarkable in many ways. This is the age in which an Indian contingent fought in the battles of Thermopylae and Plataea in Greece, 'in cotton clothes, cane bows, and iron-tipped arrows'. This was possible because of the twentieth satrapy on the west bank of the Indus, formed by the adventurous skill of the Carian admiral of Darius Hystaspes, by name Skylax. The date of the navigation of the Indus