Vikramâditya oscillated between all parties. Having quarrelled with the King of Ka_s_mira and Manorhita, the great Buddhist teacher at the convent near Peshawer, he called an assembly of Sâstrikas and _S_ramanas, at which the latter were denounced. He also placed Matrigupta (Kalidasa?) over that country. At his death, however, the regal authority was surrendered to the legitimate king, who in his turn reinstated _S_îlâditya, 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 Müller is very confident, belong to this period. He declares that the philosophical Sûtras 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 Makkabæus 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. Âryabhatta the elder had described the earth as making a revolution which produced the daily rising and setting of the sun. Professor Müller thinks he had no predecessors. Varâhamihira wrote during the reign of Vikramâditya, and employs the Yuga in opposition to the Saka era. It is apparent, however, that the Greek zodiac was employed. Bâdarâya_n_a describes the pictorial representations of the Twelve Signs and their relation to the body of Brahman or the Creator: