The Early History of India narrates the history of India beginning from 600 B.C. to the Muhammadan conquest including the invasion of Alexander the Great. It aims to present the story of ancient India, so far as practicable, in the form of a connected narrative, based upon the most authentic evidence available; to relate facts, however established, with impartiality; and to discuss the problems of history in a judicial spirit. An attempt to present in narrative form the history of the ancient dominant dynasties of Northern India is, therefore, the primary purpose of this work. The story of the great Southern kingdoms, being known too imperfectly to permit of treatment on the same scale, necessarily occupies less space; while the annals of the innumerable minor states in every part of the country seldom offer matter of sufficient general interest to warrant narration in detail. In the fourteenth chapter, the reader will find a condensed account of the more salient events in the story of the principal mediaeval kingdoms of the North; and the two succeeding chapters are devoted to an outline of the fortunes of the kingdoms of the Deccan tableland and the Peninsula, so far as they are known, from the earliest times to the Muhammadan invasion at the beginning of the fourteenth century. The time dealt with is that extending from the commencement of the historical period in 650 or 600 B.C. to the Muhammadan conquest, which may be dated in round numbers as having occurred in 1200 A.D. in the North, and a century later in the South. The earliest political event in India to which an approximately correct data can be assigned is the establishment of the Saisunaga dynasty of Magadha about 600 B.C.