When set against our knowledge of contemporary Greece and Rome, the whole of Parthian history may be termed a “Dark Age”. Even so, within the four centuries of Arsacid domination, the accidents of discovery and the efforts of scholarship have illuminated some periods more than others. Of the latter, one, running between the death of Mithradates II in about 88 B.C. and the accession of Orodes II some thirty years later, has proved peculiarly impenetrable.

It is a well-known fact that the discovery of the sea route to India and the ensuing scarcity of spices and other Indian products on the markets of Alexandria and Damascus resulted in their prices rising steeply. Judging from Venetian sources, the change in the condition of the Levantine trade was considered catastrophic. On the other hand, some scholars have already drawn attention to the fact that pepper prices fell considerably on European markets in the period preceding the expedition of Vasco da Gama, and especially in the second quarter of the 15th century. It is probable, a priori, that this was caused by a downward trend of prices in the Near East. But other factors, such as the level of demand in European countries and the conditions of trade (communications with the Near East, direct or indirect trade), could also have influenced the course of spice prices in Europe. In order to explain the tremendous impact of the rise of spice prices at the beginning of the 16th century, I have suggested, in my Histoire des prix et des salaires, the probability of a fall of prices in the Near Eastern emporia in the pre-Vasco period. In a paper published a few years later I tried to substantiate this conjecture by additional materials and, further, by the supposition that it was accompanied by a great increase in the volume of the Levantine trade, and also a general price-decline in the Near East at the end of the Middle Ages.

During the 1850's a prolonged encounter took place in the city of Agra between a Muslim ‘ālim, Maulānā Raḥmat Alläh Kairānawī, and a German evangelical missionary, the Reverend K. G. Pfander. The early Mughal emperors had developed Agra as the capital of their expanding empire, and even after the transfer of the court in 1648 to nearby Delhi, the city had retained some importance as a centre of Muslim culture and learning. But the period of the decline of the Mughal fortunes in the 18th century culminated in the capture of Agra in 1803 by the forces of the East India Company, and the next half-century saw the transformation of the city into a key administrative centre in the expansion of British control over north India. In 1836 Agra was made the headquarters of a new unit of administration—the North-Western Provinces. Hence the phase of active religious encounter which began shortly after that date should be examined in terms of the impact which British rule, Western culture, and the Christian religion had effected on the people of the province since its annexation. Indeed in the eyes of missionary as well as ‘ālim, the generating force behind the new confrontation was a fear that the beginning of Christian preaching activity in Agra was a threat to the hold of Islam on the uneducated Muslims of the city and the surrounding region.

It is a well-known fact that the Purāṇas have traced all the earliest Indo-Aryan dynasties from Manu Vaivasvata. One of the sons of Manu Vaivasvata was Ikṣvāku who is said to have founded a dynasty which ruled at Ayodhyā, while a son of his named Nimi is said to have founded the kingdom of Videha. The location by the Purāṇas of the earliest Aryan dynasties as far east as Kosala and Videha, however, goes totally against the evidence of the Ṛgveda and the later Vedic literature, according to which the Aryans were originally settled in the country called Saptasindhu and only later moved towards the east, the south, and the west. It was this serious conflict between the evidence of the Purāṇas and the Vedic literature which led Rapson to declare that it seems impossible to bring the Purāṇic genealogies into any satisfactory relation with the Vedic literature.

Much has been written and said about determinism in Indian philosophy and religion, but not enough heed seems to have been paid to many statements and theories advanced by the Indian literati in their attempt to offset the enthralment of man by the automaticism involved in such deterministic doctrines as those of karman and the ensuing saṁsāra.