t his death, however, the
regal authority was surrendered to the legitimate king, who in his
turn reinstated _S_iladitya, the successor of Vikrama, on the throne.
This king also called an assembly of divines, and the Buddhists were
restored to their former position. As they seem to have constituted
the principal men of learning, I am disposed to believe that they were
the actual restorers of the golden period to India. The "Nine Gems,"
Professor Mueller is very confident, belong to this period. He declares
that the philosophical Sutras have no ascertained date prior to 300
A.D.

According to him, we need not refer many famous authors to a period
anterior to the fifth century. Kalidasa, from being the contemporary
of Augustus, becomes the contemporary of Justinian, and the very books
which were most admired by Sanskrit students as specimens of ancient
Indian poetry and wisdom find their rightful place in the period of
literary renaissance, coinciding with an age of renewed literary
activity in Persia, soon to be followed there, as later in India, by
the great Mohammedan conquests. It appears to me that he is altogether
too iconoclastic. It is more than probable that the apparent lateness
of date is due to the destruction of books when the Buddhists were
driven out of India. It would be as logical, it seems to me, to assign
a post-Christian date to the _Vendidad_ and _Yasna_ because they had
been lost and were collected anew under the auspices of a Sassanid
king. We are told in the second book of the Maccabees that Antiochus
Epiphanes burned the Hebrew Scriptures, and that Judas Makkabaeus made
a new collection; yet nobody pretends that they ought to be assigned
to the second century B.C. In fact, we must in due sincerity give some
room to faith.

Astronomy was also studied. Aryabhatta the elder had described the
earth as making a revolution which produced the daily rising and
setting of the sun. Professor Mueller thinks he had no predecessors.
Varahamihira wrote during the reign of Vikramaditya, and employs the
Yuga in opposition to the Saka era. It is apparent, however, that the
Greek zodiac was employed. Badaraya_n_a describes the pictorial
representations of the Twelve Signs and their relation to the body of
Brahman or the Creator:

"The Ram is the head; the face of the Creator is the Bull; the breast
would be the Man-pair; the heart, the Crab; the Lion, the stomach; the
Maid, the hip; the Balance-bearer, the bell