Others again there are of a higher and finer sort, though
even these will allow themselves to make use of popular ideas about hell, of those
ideas at any rate which seem to make for godliness and purity of life.
even these will allow themselves to make use of popular ideas about hell, of those
ideas at any rate which seem to make for godliness and purity of life.
Cambridge History of India - v1
In conclusion, she said farewell to her familiars
and was helped by her brother onto the pyre, and there to the admiration of the crowd
which had gathered together for the spectacle she ended her life in heroic fashion. Before
the pyre was kindled, the whole army in battle array marched round it thrice. She mean.
while lay down beside her husband, and as the fire seized her no sound of wtakess escaped
her lips. The spectators were moved, some to pity and some to exuberant praise. But
some of the Greeks present found fault with such customs as savage and inhumanel.
The Greeks, we find, had a theory to account for the custom, whether of
their own invention or suggested to them by Indian informants we cannot
say. The theory was that once upon a time wives had been so apt to get
rid of their husbands by poison that the law had to be introduced which
compelled a widow to be burnt with her dead husband? .
As to the disposal of the dead, the absence of funeral display and of
imposing monuments seemed strange to the Greeks. The virtus of the
dead-so they understood the Indians to say, were sufficient monument
and the songs which were sung over them. When the Greeks tell us that
the dead were exposed to vultures, we can only understand it of certain
people near the frontier who had influenced by the customs of Irān“.
The assertion of the Greeks that slavery was unknown in India-or,
according to Onesicritus, was unknown in the kingdom of Musicanus
(Upper Sind). - is curious. That slavery was a regular institution in India
is certain. Indian slavery must have looked so different to a Greek
observer from the slavery he knew at home that de did not recognise it
for what it was.
As to the government, the king himself is, of course, the prominent
figure. He took the field with his army in war : in peace his publio
appearances were of three kinds. In the first place, he spent a considerable
part of the day in hearing the cases brought to him for judgment. Even at
his hour for undergoing the massage with ebony rollers he did not retire, but
went on listening to the pleadings whilst four masseurs plied their art upon
1 Diod. XIX, 34. This description contains many resemblances to the account
of the Sati in the Harshacharita of Bāņa (trans. Cowell and Thomas, pp. 150 f. )
2 Strabo XV, C. 700; Diod. XIX, 33.
3 Megasth. Frags. 26, 27=Arr. Ind. 10 ; Strabo XV, C. 710.
4 Aristobulus seems to have attributed the custom to Takshaçilā, Frag. 34-
Strabo XV, C. 714.
Megasth. Frags. 26, 27; Onesic. Frag. 20=Arr. Ind. 10; Strabo XV, C. 710.
## p. 374 (#412) ############################################
374
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INDIA IN GREEK AND LATIN LITERATURE
him. In the second place, he came forth to perform sacrifice, and in the
third place to go a-hunting. His going forth to the chase was like the
processions of Dionysus. The road of the royal cortege was roped off from
common spectators. There was the king surrounded by a crowd of his
women, theniselves carrying weapons, in chariots, on horses, on el phants,
the body-guard enclosing them all in a larger circle, and a band with drums
and bells going on in front. Sometimes the king shot from a platform de-
fended by a stockade, sometimes from the back of an elephant. Within
the doors of the place, the king's person was tended by the women of his
zenana, bought for a price from their fathers. But he was not beyond
the reach of danger. A stern custom ordained that should he become in-
toxicated, any of his women who killed him should receive special kon-
our. And even though he remained sober, he had, like the late Sultan
Abdul Hamid, to be continually changing the place where he lay at night,
in order to evade conspirators.
Nearches (? ) had already noted that Indian kings were not saluted,
as Persian kings were, by postration, but by the persons approaching
them raising their hands -- the Greek attitude in prayer? . A great cccasion
at court, according to one source before Strabo, was when the king
washed his hair. Everyone then tried to outdo his fellows by the magnifi-
cence of his presents? Clitarchus- a questionable authority-described
the pageantry of a court festival -- the elephants be dizened with gold and
silver chariots drawn by horses, and ox-waggons, the army in full array
the display of previous vessels of gold and silver, many of them studded with
gems. Co'lections of animals of all kinds were also a great feature, panthers
and lions. There were great waggons carrying whole trees to which a variety
of birds bright in plumage or lovely in song were attached'. Animals, ac-
cording to another source, were a useful form of offering to bring to the
king. "The Indians do not think lightly of any animal, tame or wild. ' And
the king apparently accepted all kinds, not rare ones only, but cranes and
geese and ducks and pigeons. Or one might bring wild ones, deer and
antelopes or rhinoceroses”. On one great annual festival amusement took
the form of butting matches between rams or wild bulls or rhinoceroses,
or fights between elephants. Races provoked great excitement. They
usually took place between chariots to each of which one horse between
two oxen was harnessed. There was very heavy betting on these ccca-
sions, in which the king himself and his nobles led the way. And their
example was followed on a humbler scale by the crowd of spectators". The
1 Megasth. Frag, 17=Strabo XV, C, 710.
2 Strabo XV, C. 717.
3 Strabo XV, C. 718.
4 Clitarch. Frag. 17=Strabo XV, C. 718.
5 Aelian, Nat. Anim. XII, 25; compare the list of presents sent to the king in
the Harshncharita (trans Cowell and Thomas, pp. 213-5).
Aelian, Nat. Anim. XV, 15. 7 Aelian, Nat. Anim. XV, 24,
3
## p. 375 (#413) ############################################
XVI]
OFFICIALS
375
king-jf Megasthenes is the source, we may understand Chandragupta --
had a guard of twenty-four elephants. When he went forth to do justice,
the first elephant was trained to do obeisance. At a word from the
driver and a touch with the goad, it gave some military salute as the king
passed".
The predecessors of Chandragupta, whose line he supplanted, had
borne, Megasthenes said, beside their personal names, the royal name
Pataliputra, and Chandragupta had assumed it also when he seized the
throne.
The account which Megasthenes gave of the various officials points to
a highly organised bureaucracy. They were, he said, of three kinds : (1)
Agronomio[surely à ypououou should be read for a'yopavouo. ), district officials;
(2) astynomoi, town officials ; and (3) members of the War Office. The
duties of the first kind were to supervise (1) irrigation and land-measure-
ment, (2) hunting, (3) the various industries connected with agriculture,
forestry, work in timber, metal-foundries, and mines, and they had (4) to
maintain the roads and see that at every ten stadia ( the sixth part of a
yojana? ) there was a milestone, indicating the distancest (this is the passage
which proves that Megasthenes did not mean to assert a general ignorance
of the art of writing in India). The second kind, the town officials, were
divided into six Boards of Five. Their respective functions were (1) super-
vision of factories, (2) care of strangers, including control of the inns, pro-
vision of assistants, taking charge of sick persons, burying the dead, (3)
the registration of births and deaths, (4) the control of the market, inspec-
tion of weights and measures, (5) the inspection of manufactured goods,
provision for their sale with accurate distinction of new and second-hand
articles, (6) collection of the tax of 10 per cent, charged on sales. The six
Boards acting together exercised a general superintendence over public
works, prices, harbours, and temples. The third kind of officials consti-
tuted the War Office, and were also divided into six Boards of Five. The
departments of the six were (1) the admiralty, (2) transport and commis-
sariat, (3) the infantry, (4) the cavalry, (5) the chariots, (6) the elephants.
Connected with the army were the royal stables for horses and elephants,
and the royal arsenal. A soldier's weapons and horse were not his own
property, but the king's and they went back to the arsenal and the royal
stables at the conclusion of a campaign'.
As to industries, it is curious that these early European observers
should tax Indians with being backward in the scientific development of
the resources of their country. They had for instance, good mines of gold and
1 Aelian, Nat. Anim. XIII, 22. Cf. Chapter XIX.
2 Megasth. Frag. 25= Strabo XV, C. 702.
3 Rhys Davids, Buddhist India, p. 265
4 Cf. Strabo XV, C. 689.
5 Megasth. Frag. 36A=Strabo XV, C. 707.
a
## p. 376 (#414) ############################################
376
[CH.
INDIA IN GREEK AND LATIN LITERATURE
silver, yet the Indians, inexperienced in the arts of mining and smelting,
do not even know their own resources, but set about the business in too
primitive a way'l. They do not pursue accurate knowledge in any line,
except that of medicire ; in the case of some arts, it is even accounted
vicious to carry their study far, the art of war, for instance? . ' On the other
hand, Nearchus spoke of the cleverness of the Indian craftsmen. They saw
sponges used for the first time by the Macedonians and immediately
manufactured imitations of them with fine thread and wool, dyeing them to
look the same. Other Greek articles, such as the scrapers and oil-fiasks
used by athletes they quickly learnt to make. For writing letters, they used
some species of fine tissue closely woven. They also used only cast bronze,
but not hammered, so that their vessels broke like earthenware, if they fells.
About the Indian ‘philosophers' Megasthenes had a good deal to say.
They might be divided on
one principle according as they dwelt in
the mountains and worshipped Dionysus (Çiva) or in the plains and
worshipped Heracles (Kțishņa), but the more significant division was that
into Brāhmans, and 'Sarmanes. '
The Brāhmans have the greatest prestige, since they have a m ra consistent
dogmatic system. As soon as th y are conceived in the wo nb, min of learning take
charge of them. These go to the mother and ostensibly sing a charm te ding to make
the birth happy for mother and child, but in reality convey certain virtuo is counsels
and suggestions; the women who listen most willingly are held to be the most fortunate
in child-bearing. After birth, the boys pass from one set of teachers to another ia
succession, the standard of teachers rising with the age of the boy. The philosophers
spend their days in a grove near the city, under the cover of an enclosure of due size, on
bed of leaves and skins, living sparely, practising celibacy and abstinence from flesh.
food, listening to grave discourse, and adinitting such others to the discussion as may
wish to take part. He who listens is forbidden to speak, or even to clear his throat or
spit, on pain of being ejected from the company that very day, as incontinent. When
each Biābman has lived in this fashion thirty-seven years, he departs to his own pro.
perty, and lives now in greater freedom and luxury, wearing muslin robes and some de-
cent ornaments of gold on his hands and ears, eating flesh, so long as it is not the flesh
of di mestic animals, but abstaining from pungent and highly-seasoned food. They marry
as many wives as possible, to secure good progeny; for the large number of wives,
the larger number of good childern is likely to be ; and since they have no slaves,
they depend all the more upon the ministrations of their childern, as the nearest subs-
titute. The Bıābrans do not admit their wives to their philosophy; if the wives are
wanton, they might divulge mysteries to the profane; if they are good, they might leave
their husbands, since no one who has learnt to look with contempt upon pleasure and
pain, upon life and death, will care to be under another's control. The chief subject
on which the Brālmans talk is death ; for this present life, they hold, is like the sea.
son passed in the womb, and death for those who have cultivated philosophy is the
birth into the real, the happy life. For this reason they follow an extensive dis-
cipline to make them ready for death. None of the accidents, they say, which befall
1 Strabo XV, C. 700.
2 Strabo XV, C. 701.
3 Nearchus, Frag. 7=Strabo XV, c. 716.
4 Megasth. Frag. 40=Strabo XV, c. 711 f.
## p. 377 (#415) ############################################
XVI
PHILOSOPHERS: SARMANES
377
9
men are good or evil. If they were, one would not see the same things causing grief
to some and joy to others-men's notions being indeed like dreams-and the same
men grieved by something which at another moment they will turn and welcome. Their
teaching about Nature is in parts naive ; for they are more admirable in what they
do than in what they say, and the theoretic proofs on which they base their teaching
are mostly fable. In many points however their teaching agrees with that of the
Greeks—for instance, that the world has a beginning and an eid in time, and that its
shape is spherical, that the Deity, who is its Governor and Maker, interpenet rates
the whole ; that the first principles of the universe are different, but that, water is the
principle from the order of the world has come to be ; that, besides the four elements,
there is a fifth substance, of which the heavens and the stars are madel; that the earth
is established at the centre of the universe. About ganeration and the soul their
teaching shows parallels to the Greek doctrines, and on many other matters. Like
Plato too, they interweave fablos, about the immortality of the soul and the judgments
inflicted in the other world and so on.
Such is the account of the Brāhmans which Strabo extracted from
Megasthenes. It does not completely agree either with the picture drawn in
Indian literary sources or with present-day practice. Its discrepancies may
be in part due to the misunderstandings of a foreigner ; in part they
may reflect local varieties of practice in the fourth century B. C. It will
always be interesting as recording the impression of ancient India upon a
Greek mind. The account which Megasthenes gave of the other kind
of philosophers, the 'Sarmanes,' is more problematic. Their name seems
certainly to represent the Sanskrit cramaņa, a term which was commonly
applied to Buddhist ascetics. It has therefore been thought that we
have in the Sarmanes of Megasthenes the first mention of Buddhists
by a Western writer. In the description however there is nothing dis-
tinctively Buddhist, and the term çramana is used in Indian literature
of non-Buddhist ascetics. If therefore the people to whom Megasthenes
heard the term applied were Buddhists, he must have known so little
about them that he could only describe them by features which were
equally found in various sorts of Hindu holy men. His description applies
to Brāhman ascetics rather than to Buddhists.
As to the Sarmanes the most highly-honoured are called 'Forest-dwellers'2.
They live in the forests on leaves and wild fruits, and wear clothes made of the bark
of the trees, abstaining from cohabitation and wine. The kings call them to their side,
sending messengers to enquire of them about the causes of events, and use their media.
tion in worshipping and supplicating the gods. After the Forest dwellers, the orders of
Sarmanes second in honour is the medical-philosophers, as it were, on the special
subject of Man. These live sparely, not in the open air indeed, but on rice and
meal, which every one of whom they beg and who shows them hospitality gives
them. They know how by their simples to make marriages fertile and how to procure
male children or female children, as may be desired. Their treatment is mainly by diet
and not by medicines. And of medicines they attach greater value to those applied exter-
1 This is the ākāçı, or all-pervading element, of ancient Indian philosophy. It
may be compared with the ether of modern physical science.
a Literally , vanavāsins or vāna prasthas, i. e. Brahmāns in the third stage of the
religious life.
## p. 378 (#416) ############################################
378
[ch.
INDIA IN GREEK AND LATIN LITERATURE
nally than to drugs. Other remedies, they are liable to do more harm than
good. These too, like the Brāhians, train themselves to endurance, both active and
passive, so much so that they will maintain one posture without moving for the whole
day. Ocher orders of Sarmanes are diviners and masters of incantations and those
who are versed in the lore and the ritual concerning the dead, and go through the
villages and towns, begging.
Others again there are of a higher and finer sort, though
even these will allow themselves to make use of popular ideas about hell, of those
ideas at any rate which seem to make for godliness and purity of life. In the case of
some Sarmanes, women also are permitted to share in the philosophic life, on the con-
dition of observing sexual continence like the men.
The fact that women were allowed to associate themselves with the
men as ascetics was also noted by Nearchus'. Suicide, Megasthenes said,
was not a universal obligation for 'wise men': it was considered however
rather a gallant thing [του' και δ'ε πο! ου'υτας τουο υεαυ. koυ's kρίνεσθαι] and the
more painful the manner of death, the greater the admiration earned”.
Aristobulus in his book gave further details about the holy men
whom the Greeks had come upon at Takshaçilā. He described two, one
.
of whom had a shaven head and the other long hair ; each was followed
by a number of disciples. All the time that they spent in the market place
men came to them for counsels, and they had a right to take without
payment any of the wares exposed for sale. When they approached a
man, he would pour sesame oil over them ‘so that it ran down even from
their eyes. They made cakes for themselves from the honey and sesame
brought to the market. When they had been induced to come to
Alexander's table, they retired afterwards to a place apart where the elder
lay on his back, exposed to sun and rain, and the younger stood on his
right and left leg alternately for a whole day, holding up a staff some
six feet long in both his hands. The elder seems to have been identical
with the ascetic who afterwards followed Alexander out of India and
whom the Greeks called Kalanos".
In one passage' Strabo gives an account of the 'philosophers' drawn
from some other source than Megasthenes. According to this source, the
wise men were divided into Brāhmans and a class, described as 'argument-
ative and captious,' who laugh at the Brāhmans as charlatans and senseless
because the Brāhmans pursue the study of Nature and of the stars. The
name given in our texts to this anti-Brāhman class is Pramnai. This should
not be emended to Sramnai, as was once done, on the supposition that it
1 Nearchus, Frag. 7=Strabo XV, C. 716. The practice is forbidden in the
Arihacăstra, 19 (p. 48).
2 Megasth. Frag. 42=Strabo XV, C. 718.
3 Aristob. Frag. 34=Strabo XV, C. 714. See Chapter XV, p. 322.
4 XV, C. 719.
## p. 379 (#417) ############################################
XVI]
PHILOSOPHERS : SARMANES
379
represented cramana'. The people intended are undoubtedly the prāmāņikas,
the followers of the various philosophical systems, each of which has its
own view as to what constitutes prāmāņa, a 'means of right knowledge. '
These philosophers are, as a rule, orthodox Brāhmans, but they view with
contempt those Brāhmans who put their trust in Vedic ceremonies". The
Brāhmans themselves are divided by this source into (1) those who live in
the mountains, (2) the naked ones, and (3) those who live in the world.
The Mountain-dwellers dress in deer-skins and carry wallets full of roots
and simples, making pretence to some art of healing by means of hocus-
pocus and charms. The Naked Ones live, as their name imports, without
clothes, in the open air for the most part, practising endurance up to the
age of thirty-seven. Women may live with them, bound to continence.
These are the class most reverenced by the people. The third sort of
Brāhmans, those who live in the world, are to be found in the towns or
villages, dressed in robes of fine white linen, with the skins of deer or of
gazelles hung from their shoulders. They wear beards and long hair which
is twisted
up and covered by a turban. It seems clear that those who are
here described as the Mountain-dwellers correspond most nearly to the
Sarmanes of Megasthenes.
Of the gods worshipped by the Indians the Greeks learnt little. One
writer cited by Strabo (Clitarchus ? ) had asserted that they worshipped
Zeus Ombrios (Zeus of the Rain Storms), the river Ganges, and local
daemons'. As we have seen, Çiva and Krishna are to be discerned through
the Greek names Dionysus and Heracles in some of the statements of our
One member of Alexander's suite, his chief usher (e'ourreas'us),
Chares of Mytilene, is quoted as saying the Indians worshipped a god
Soroadeios, whose name being interpreted meant ‘maker of wine'. It is
recognised that the Indian name which Chares heard was Sūrya deva 'Sun-
god. Some ill-educated interpreter must have been misled by the
'
resemblance of sūrya 'sun' to surā-wine'.
The name 'Indians' was extended in its largest acceptance to cover
the barbarous tribes of mountain or jungle on the confines (f Brāhman
civilisation. In noting down what seemed to them odd points in the
physical characteristics or customs of these tribes the Greeks were moved
by an interest which is the germ of the modern science of anthropology.
Megasthenes noted that in the Hindu Kush the bodies of the dead were
eaten by their relations, as Herodotus had already stated of some aborigi-
nal people.
sources.
>
1 M. Crindle, Ancient India, p. 76. 2 See Rapson, Ancient Indiā, pp. 58. 61.
3 Strabo XV, C. 718. The god Indra seems to be identified with Zeus.
4 Athenaeus I, 27 D.
5 Megasth. Frag, 27=Strabo XV, C, 710.
>
## p. 380 (#418) ############################################
380
[CH.
INDIA IN GREEK AND LATIN LITERATURE
Even Megasthenes depended, of course, mainly upon his Indian
informants for knowledge of the peoples on the borders of the Indian
world, and he therefore repeated the fables as to the monstrous races
with one leg, with ears reaching to their feet and so on, which had long
been current in India and had already been communicated to the Greeks by
Scylax and Hecataeus and Ctesias. One would however like to know the
fact which lies behind his story that members of one tribe, living near the
sources of the Ganges, had been brought to the camp of Chandragupta-
'men of gentler manners - but without a mouth! They lived on th efumes
of roast meat and the smell of fruits and flowers. And since nostrils with
them took the place of mouths, they suffered terribly from evil odours, and
it was difficult to keep them alive, especially in a camp? ! ' Does the notice
reflect some sect who, like the Jains, abstained from all animal food and
kept their mouths covered lest they should breathe in minute insects ?
Of the south of India, Europe up to the Christian era knew little
more than a few names brought by merchantmen. So little was the
division of India into two worlds by the Vindhya realised that Strabo could
suppose all Indian rivers to take their rise in the Himalayas? . It was
chiefly as the country from which pearls came that the Greeks knew
Southern India. Pearls came from the coasts of the Pāņdya kingdom cor-
responding roughly with the modern districts of Madura and Tinnevelly,
and Megasthenes had heard, as we know, of Pandaea the daughter of
Heracles (Krishņa) who had become queen of a great kingdom in the south.
With her he also connected the pearl. Heracles, according to the legend
told him, wandering over the earth, had found this thing of beauty in the
sea, made, it might seem, for a woman's adornment. Wherefore from all
the sea pearls were brought together to the Indian coast for his daughter to
wear. The origin of the word which the Greek used for pearl, margarites,
is unknown.
Some confused knowledge on how pearls were procured had come to
the Greek writers through the traders' stories. They knew that they grew
in oysters. Two of the companions of Alexander, Androsthenes of Thasos,
who had gone in the fleet with Nearchus and wrote a book called
Ilavandous t'r,8 ’Iud:krs, and the chief usher Chares, had already some
information as to the varieties of pearls and the chief fisheries. The
oysters, Megasthenes understood, were caught in nets ; they went in shoals,
each shoal with a king of its own, like swarms of bees, and to capture the
king was to capture the shoal. The oysters, when caught, were put in jars,
1 Megasth. Frag. 30=Strabo XV, C. 711 ; Plin. Nat. Hist. VII, § 25. An
explanation of the legend is proposed by the Rev. H. Hosten, The Mouthless Indians of
Megasthenes, in the J. A. S. B. , 1912, pp. 291-301.
? XV, C. 690.
Athenaeus III, 93 A. D.
.
## p. 381 (#419) ############################################
XVI)
SOUTHERN INDIA
381
9
>
and as their flesh rotted the pearl was left disengaged at the bottom'. The
name of the extreme southern point of the peninsula had also travelled
the Greeks before the time of Strabo. He knew it as the country of the
ÇÕliaci”; this was derived from the name in local speech, Köri. The
legend, when it made a woman the sovereign of the south, was probably
reflecting the system of mother-right which has to some extent obtained
there even to the present day. Some of the physical characteristics of the
people of the south were known by report -- that they were darker in com-
plexion, for instance, than the Indians of the north. The facts of early
maturity and of the general shortness of life were also known. In the
legend narrated by Megasthenese, as we saw, the precocious maturity which
Heracles had bestowed upon his daughter by a miracle continued to be a
characteristic of the women of her kingdom. They were marriageable, and
could bear children, Megasthenes said, at seven years old. This exaggera-
tion was presumably due to the real fact of child-marriage. As to the
general length of life, forty years was the maximum-again a fact, the
relative shortness of life, exaggerated3.
In the book of Onesicritus occurred the first mention by a European
writer of Ceylon. He heard of it under' a name which the Greek represents
as Taprobane. It lay, of course, far outside the horizon of the Greeks, but
Onesicritus must have met people on the Indus who knew of the Southern
island by the report of merchants, or had perhaps fared thither themselves
along the coast of Malabar, and spoke of Tāpraparņi and of its elephants,
bigger and more terrible in war than those which the Greeks had seen in
India. Taprobane was seven days' journey according to the sources
followed by Eratosthenes, from the southernmost part of India (the Coliaci
= Cape Köri). The strait separating Ceylon from India is only forty miles
across, but it may have been true in practice that from the port whence
the merchants put out to go to Ceylon and the port where they landed was a
voyage of seven days. Onesicrituse put it at 20 days; we cannot say now
what fact underlay the misapprehension. When he said that the ‘size of
Taprobane was 5000 stadia the ambiguity of the statement already provoked
complaint in antiquity.
For many centuries the India known to the West was India as
portrayed by the historians of Alexander's expedition and by Megasthenes.
Although from the third century onwards there was a certain amount of
intercourse between the Mediterranean world and India, although Greek
kings ruled in the Punjab and Alexander's colonies were still represented
1 Megasth. Frag. 22=Arr. Ind. 8 ; Plin. Nat. Hist. IX, $ 111.
2 XV, C. 689.
3 Megasth. Frag. 23=Arr. Ind. 9.
4 Frag. 13=Strabo XV, C. 691 ; Frag. 22=Plin. Hist. Nat. VI, § 81.
5 Strabo XV, C. 690.
6 Onesier. Frag. 13=Strabo XV, C. 691.
2
-
## p. 382 (#420) ############################################
382
[Ch.
INDIA IN GREEK AND LATIN LITERATURE
by little bodies of men Greek in speech, although there must occasionally
have been seafaring men in the Greek ports who had seen the coasts of
India, or merchants who had made their way over the Hindu Kush, the
Greek and Latin learned world was content to go on transcribing the
books written generations before. These had become classical and shut
out further reference to reality. The original books themselves perished,
but their statements continued to be copied from writer to writer. Some
of the later Greek and Latin works which treated of India are known to us
to-day only by their titles or by a few fragments--the works of Apollodorus
of Arteinita (latter half of second century or first century B. C. ), the works of
the great geographer Eratosthenes (276-195 B. c. ) and of the voluminous
compiler, Alexander Polyhistor (105 till after 40 B. C. ). But a great deal of
the original books is incorporated in writings which we do still possess,
especially in the geographical work of Strabo (about 63 B. C. -19 A. D. ), the
historical work of Diodorus (in Egypt about 60 B. C. , still alive 36 B. c. ), the
encyclopaedic work of Pliny (published about 75 A. D. ). the tract of Arrian
about India (middle of socond century A. D. ), and the zoological work of
Aelian (end of second century A. D. ). Even Pliny had probably never had the
work of Megasthenes in his hands, but drew from it only at second or third
hand through Seneca and Varro. In the third century A. D. , when Philo.
stratus in his romance brings Apollonius of Tyana to India, it is still out
of the old traditional materials that what purports to be local colour all
comes.
So far as the stock of knowledge handed down from the third century
B. C. was increased at all during the following three centuries, it can
only have been from the source of information just indicated, the source
which might have been turned to so much richer account, had the curse of
literary convention not rested upon classical culture - the first-hand practical
knowledge possessed by Greek merchantmen who crossed the Indian
Strabo had sufficient freedom of mind to take some notice of
the Indian trade in his own day. From him we gather that, although
a considerable amount of Indian merchandise had flowed into Europe
by way of the Red Sea and Alexandria, when the Ptolemies ruled in Egypt
very few Greek ships had gone further than South Arabia. Goods had been
carried from India to South Arabia in Indian or Arabian bottoms. By the
time however that Strabo was in Egypt (25 B. C. ) a direct trade between
Egypt and India had come into existence, and he was told that 120 vessels
were sailing to India that season from Myos Hormos, the Egyptian
port on the Red Sea. A few Greek merchantmen, but very few, sailed
round the south of India to the mouth of the Ganges. The vessels
that went to India apparently made the journey by coasting along Arabia,
1 Strabo II, C. 118.
and was helped by her brother onto the pyre, and there to the admiration of the crowd
which had gathered together for the spectacle she ended her life in heroic fashion. Before
the pyre was kindled, the whole army in battle array marched round it thrice. She mean.
while lay down beside her husband, and as the fire seized her no sound of wtakess escaped
her lips. The spectators were moved, some to pity and some to exuberant praise. But
some of the Greeks present found fault with such customs as savage and inhumanel.
The Greeks, we find, had a theory to account for the custom, whether of
their own invention or suggested to them by Indian informants we cannot
say. The theory was that once upon a time wives had been so apt to get
rid of their husbands by poison that the law had to be introduced which
compelled a widow to be burnt with her dead husband? .
As to the disposal of the dead, the absence of funeral display and of
imposing monuments seemed strange to the Greeks. The virtus of the
dead-so they understood the Indians to say, were sufficient monument
and the songs which were sung over them. When the Greeks tell us that
the dead were exposed to vultures, we can only understand it of certain
people near the frontier who had influenced by the customs of Irān“.
The assertion of the Greeks that slavery was unknown in India-or,
according to Onesicritus, was unknown in the kingdom of Musicanus
(Upper Sind). - is curious. That slavery was a regular institution in India
is certain. Indian slavery must have looked so different to a Greek
observer from the slavery he knew at home that de did not recognise it
for what it was.
As to the government, the king himself is, of course, the prominent
figure. He took the field with his army in war : in peace his publio
appearances were of three kinds. In the first place, he spent a considerable
part of the day in hearing the cases brought to him for judgment. Even at
his hour for undergoing the massage with ebony rollers he did not retire, but
went on listening to the pleadings whilst four masseurs plied their art upon
1 Diod. XIX, 34. This description contains many resemblances to the account
of the Sati in the Harshacharita of Bāņa (trans. Cowell and Thomas, pp. 150 f. )
2 Strabo XV, C. 700; Diod. XIX, 33.
3 Megasth. Frags. 26, 27=Arr. Ind. 10 ; Strabo XV, C. 710.
4 Aristobulus seems to have attributed the custom to Takshaçilā, Frag. 34-
Strabo XV, C. 714.
Megasth. Frags. 26, 27; Onesic. Frag. 20=Arr. Ind. 10; Strabo XV, C. 710.
## p. 374 (#412) ############################################
374
[CH,
INDIA IN GREEK AND LATIN LITERATURE
him. In the second place, he came forth to perform sacrifice, and in the
third place to go a-hunting. His going forth to the chase was like the
processions of Dionysus. The road of the royal cortege was roped off from
common spectators. There was the king surrounded by a crowd of his
women, theniselves carrying weapons, in chariots, on horses, on el phants,
the body-guard enclosing them all in a larger circle, and a band with drums
and bells going on in front. Sometimes the king shot from a platform de-
fended by a stockade, sometimes from the back of an elephant. Within
the doors of the place, the king's person was tended by the women of his
zenana, bought for a price from their fathers. But he was not beyond
the reach of danger. A stern custom ordained that should he become in-
toxicated, any of his women who killed him should receive special kon-
our. And even though he remained sober, he had, like the late Sultan
Abdul Hamid, to be continually changing the place where he lay at night,
in order to evade conspirators.
Nearches (? ) had already noted that Indian kings were not saluted,
as Persian kings were, by postration, but by the persons approaching
them raising their hands -- the Greek attitude in prayer? . A great cccasion
at court, according to one source before Strabo, was when the king
washed his hair. Everyone then tried to outdo his fellows by the magnifi-
cence of his presents? Clitarchus- a questionable authority-described
the pageantry of a court festival -- the elephants be dizened with gold and
silver chariots drawn by horses, and ox-waggons, the army in full array
the display of previous vessels of gold and silver, many of them studded with
gems. Co'lections of animals of all kinds were also a great feature, panthers
and lions. There were great waggons carrying whole trees to which a variety
of birds bright in plumage or lovely in song were attached'. Animals, ac-
cording to another source, were a useful form of offering to bring to the
king. "The Indians do not think lightly of any animal, tame or wild. ' And
the king apparently accepted all kinds, not rare ones only, but cranes and
geese and ducks and pigeons. Or one might bring wild ones, deer and
antelopes or rhinoceroses”. On one great annual festival amusement took
the form of butting matches between rams or wild bulls or rhinoceroses,
or fights between elephants. Races provoked great excitement. They
usually took place between chariots to each of which one horse between
two oxen was harnessed. There was very heavy betting on these ccca-
sions, in which the king himself and his nobles led the way. And their
example was followed on a humbler scale by the crowd of spectators". The
1 Megasth. Frag, 17=Strabo XV, C, 710.
2 Strabo XV, C. 717.
3 Strabo XV, C. 718.
4 Clitarch. Frag. 17=Strabo XV, C. 718.
5 Aelian, Nat. Anim. XII, 25; compare the list of presents sent to the king in
the Harshncharita (trans Cowell and Thomas, pp. 213-5).
Aelian, Nat. Anim. XV, 15. 7 Aelian, Nat. Anim. XV, 24,
3
## p. 375 (#413) ############################################
XVI]
OFFICIALS
375
king-jf Megasthenes is the source, we may understand Chandragupta --
had a guard of twenty-four elephants. When he went forth to do justice,
the first elephant was trained to do obeisance. At a word from the
driver and a touch with the goad, it gave some military salute as the king
passed".
The predecessors of Chandragupta, whose line he supplanted, had
borne, Megasthenes said, beside their personal names, the royal name
Pataliputra, and Chandragupta had assumed it also when he seized the
throne.
The account which Megasthenes gave of the various officials points to
a highly organised bureaucracy. They were, he said, of three kinds : (1)
Agronomio[surely à ypououou should be read for a'yopavouo. ), district officials;
(2) astynomoi, town officials ; and (3) members of the War Office. The
duties of the first kind were to supervise (1) irrigation and land-measure-
ment, (2) hunting, (3) the various industries connected with agriculture,
forestry, work in timber, metal-foundries, and mines, and they had (4) to
maintain the roads and see that at every ten stadia ( the sixth part of a
yojana? ) there was a milestone, indicating the distancest (this is the passage
which proves that Megasthenes did not mean to assert a general ignorance
of the art of writing in India). The second kind, the town officials, were
divided into six Boards of Five. Their respective functions were (1) super-
vision of factories, (2) care of strangers, including control of the inns, pro-
vision of assistants, taking charge of sick persons, burying the dead, (3)
the registration of births and deaths, (4) the control of the market, inspec-
tion of weights and measures, (5) the inspection of manufactured goods,
provision for their sale with accurate distinction of new and second-hand
articles, (6) collection of the tax of 10 per cent, charged on sales. The six
Boards acting together exercised a general superintendence over public
works, prices, harbours, and temples. The third kind of officials consti-
tuted the War Office, and were also divided into six Boards of Five. The
departments of the six were (1) the admiralty, (2) transport and commis-
sariat, (3) the infantry, (4) the cavalry, (5) the chariots, (6) the elephants.
Connected with the army were the royal stables for horses and elephants,
and the royal arsenal. A soldier's weapons and horse were not his own
property, but the king's and they went back to the arsenal and the royal
stables at the conclusion of a campaign'.
As to industries, it is curious that these early European observers
should tax Indians with being backward in the scientific development of
the resources of their country. They had for instance, good mines of gold and
1 Aelian, Nat. Anim. XIII, 22. Cf. Chapter XIX.
2 Megasth. Frag. 25= Strabo XV, C. 702.
3 Rhys Davids, Buddhist India, p. 265
4 Cf. Strabo XV, C. 689.
5 Megasth. Frag. 36A=Strabo XV, C. 707.
a
## p. 376 (#414) ############################################
376
[CH.
INDIA IN GREEK AND LATIN LITERATURE
silver, yet the Indians, inexperienced in the arts of mining and smelting,
do not even know their own resources, but set about the business in too
primitive a way'l. They do not pursue accurate knowledge in any line,
except that of medicire ; in the case of some arts, it is even accounted
vicious to carry their study far, the art of war, for instance? . ' On the other
hand, Nearchus spoke of the cleverness of the Indian craftsmen. They saw
sponges used for the first time by the Macedonians and immediately
manufactured imitations of them with fine thread and wool, dyeing them to
look the same. Other Greek articles, such as the scrapers and oil-fiasks
used by athletes they quickly learnt to make. For writing letters, they used
some species of fine tissue closely woven. They also used only cast bronze,
but not hammered, so that their vessels broke like earthenware, if they fells.
About the Indian ‘philosophers' Megasthenes had a good deal to say.
They might be divided on
one principle according as they dwelt in
the mountains and worshipped Dionysus (Çiva) or in the plains and
worshipped Heracles (Kțishņa), but the more significant division was that
into Brāhmans, and 'Sarmanes. '
The Brāhmans have the greatest prestige, since they have a m ra consistent
dogmatic system. As soon as th y are conceived in the wo nb, min of learning take
charge of them. These go to the mother and ostensibly sing a charm te ding to make
the birth happy for mother and child, but in reality convey certain virtuo is counsels
and suggestions; the women who listen most willingly are held to be the most fortunate
in child-bearing. After birth, the boys pass from one set of teachers to another ia
succession, the standard of teachers rising with the age of the boy. The philosophers
spend their days in a grove near the city, under the cover of an enclosure of due size, on
bed of leaves and skins, living sparely, practising celibacy and abstinence from flesh.
food, listening to grave discourse, and adinitting such others to the discussion as may
wish to take part. He who listens is forbidden to speak, or even to clear his throat or
spit, on pain of being ejected from the company that very day, as incontinent. When
each Biābman has lived in this fashion thirty-seven years, he departs to his own pro.
perty, and lives now in greater freedom and luxury, wearing muslin robes and some de-
cent ornaments of gold on his hands and ears, eating flesh, so long as it is not the flesh
of di mestic animals, but abstaining from pungent and highly-seasoned food. They marry
as many wives as possible, to secure good progeny; for the large number of wives,
the larger number of good childern is likely to be ; and since they have no slaves,
they depend all the more upon the ministrations of their childern, as the nearest subs-
titute. The Bıābrans do not admit their wives to their philosophy; if the wives are
wanton, they might divulge mysteries to the profane; if they are good, they might leave
their husbands, since no one who has learnt to look with contempt upon pleasure and
pain, upon life and death, will care to be under another's control. The chief subject
on which the Brālmans talk is death ; for this present life, they hold, is like the sea.
son passed in the womb, and death for those who have cultivated philosophy is the
birth into the real, the happy life. For this reason they follow an extensive dis-
cipline to make them ready for death. None of the accidents, they say, which befall
1 Strabo XV, C. 700.
2 Strabo XV, C. 701.
3 Nearchus, Frag. 7=Strabo XV, c. 716.
4 Megasth. Frag. 40=Strabo XV, c. 711 f.
## p. 377 (#415) ############################################
XVI
PHILOSOPHERS: SARMANES
377
9
men are good or evil. If they were, one would not see the same things causing grief
to some and joy to others-men's notions being indeed like dreams-and the same
men grieved by something which at another moment they will turn and welcome. Their
teaching about Nature is in parts naive ; for they are more admirable in what they
do than in what they say, and the theoretic proofs on which they base their teaching
are mostly fable. In many points however their teaching agrees with that of the
Greeks—for instance, that the world has a beginning and an eid in time, and that its
shape is spherical, that the Deity, who is its Governor and Maker, interpenet rates
the whole ; that the first principles of the universe are different, but that, water is the
principle from the order of the world has come to be ; that, besides the four elements,
there is a fifth substance, of which the heavens and the stars are madel; that the earth
is established at the centre of the universe. About ganeration and the soul their
teaching shows parallels to the Greek doctrines, and on many other matters. Like
Plato too, they interweave fablos, about the immortality of the soul and the judgments
inflicted in the other world and so on.
Such is the account of the Brāhmans which Strabo extracted from
Megasthenes. It does not completely agree either with the picture drawn in
Indian literary sources or with present-day practice. Its discrepancies may
be in part due to the misunderstandings of a foreigner ; in part they
may reflect local varieties of practice in the fourth century B. C. It will
always be interesting as recording the impression of ancient India upon a
Greek mind. The account which Megasthenes gave of the other kind
of philosophers, the 'Sarmanes,' is more problematic. Their name seems
certainly to represent the Sanskrit cramaņa, a term which was commonly
applied to Buddhist ascetics. It has therefore been thought that we
have in the Sarmanes of Megasthenes the first mention of Buddhists
by a Western writer. In the description however there is nothing dis-
tinctively Buddhist, and the term çramana is used in Indian literature
of non-Buddhist ascetics. If therefore the people to whom Megasthenes
heard the term applied were Buddhists, he must have known so little
about them that he could only describe them by features which were
equally found in various sorts of Hindu holy men. His description applies
to Brāhman ascetics rather than to Buddhists.
As to the Sarmanes the most highly-honoured are called 'Forest-dwellers'2.
They live in the forests on leaves and wild fruits, and wear clothes made of the bark
of the trees, abstaining from cohabitation and wine. The kings call them to their side,
sending messengers to enquire of them about the causes of events, and use their media.
tion in worshipping and supplicating the gods. After the Forest dwellers, the orders of
Sarmanes second in honour is the medical-philosophers, as it were, on the special
subject of Man. These live sparely, not in the open air indeed, but on rice and
meal, which every one of whom they beg and who shows them hospitality gives
them. They know how by their simples to make marriages fertile and how to procure
male children or female children, as may be desired. Their treatment is mainly by diet
and not by medicines. And of medicines they attach greater value to those applied exter-
1 This is the ākāçı, or all-pervading element, of ancient Indian philosophy. It
may be compared with the ether of modern physical science.
a Literally , vanavāsins or vāna prasthas, i. e. Brahmāns in the third stage of the
religious life.
## p. 378 (#416) ############################################
378
[ch.
INDIA IN GREEK AND LATIN LITERATURE
nally than to drugs. Other remedies, they are liable to do more harm than
good. These too, like the Brāhians, train themselves to endurance, both active and
passive, so much so that they will maintain one posture without moving for the whole
day. Ocher orders of Sarmanes are diviners and masters of incantations and those
who are versed in the lore and the ritual concerning the dead, and go through the
villages and towns, begging.
Others again there are of a higher and finer sort, though
even these will allow themselves to make use of popular ideas about hell, of those
ideas at any rate which seem to make for godliness and purity of life. In the case of
some Sarmanes, women also are permitted to share in the philosophic life, on the con-
dition of observing sexual continence like the men.
The fact that women were allowed to associate themselves with the
men as ascetics was also noted by Nearchus'. Suicide, Megasthenes said,
was not a universal obligation for 'wise men': it was considered however
rather a gallant thing [του' και δ'ε πο! ου'υτας τουο υεαυ. koυ's kρίνεσθαι] and the
more painful the manner of death, the greater the admiration earned”.
Aristobulus in his book gave further details about the holy men
whom the Greeks had come upon at Takshaçilā. He described two, one
.
of whom had a shaven head and the other long hair ; each was followed
by a number of disciples. All the time that they spent in the market place
men came to them for counsels, and they had a right to take without
payment any of the wares exposed for sale. When they approached a
man, he would pour sesame oil over them ‘so that it ran down even from
their eyes. They made cakes for themselves from the honey and sesame
brought to the market. When they had been induced to come to
Alexander's table, they retired afterwards to a place apart where the elder
lay on his back, exposed to sun and rain, and the younger stood on his
right and left leg alternately for a whole day, holding up a staff some
six feet long in both his hands. The elder seems to have been identical
with the ascetic who afterwards followed Alexander out of India and
whom the Greeks called Kalanos".
In one passage' Strabo gives an account of the 'philosophers' drawn
from some other source than Megasthenes. According to this source, the
wise men were divided into Brāhmans and a class, described as 'argument-
ative and captious,' who laugh at the Brāhmans as charlatans and senseless
because the Brāhmans pursue the study of Nature and of the stars. The
name given in our texts to this anti-Brāhman class is Pramnai. This should
not be emended to Sramnai, as was once done, on the supposition that it
1 Nearchus, Frag. 7=Strabo XV, C. 716. The practice is forbidden in the
Arihacăstra, 19 (p. 48).
2 Megasth. Frag. 42=Strabo XV, C. 718.
3 Aristob. Frag. 34=Strabo XV, C. 714. See Chapter XV, p. 322.
4 XV, C. 719.
## p. 379 (#417) ############################################
XVI]
PHILOSOPHERS : SARMANES
379
represented cramana'. The people intended are undoubtedly the prāmāņikas,
the followers of the various philosophical systems, each of which has its
own view as to what constitutes prāmāņa, a 'means of right knowledge. '
These philosophers are, as a rule, orthodox Brāhmans, but they view with
contempt those Brāhmans who put their trust in Vedic ceremonies". The
Brāhmans themselves are divided by this source into (1) those who live in
the mountains, (2) the naked ones, and (3) those who live in the world.
The Mountain-dwellers dress in deer-skins and carry wallets full of roots
and simples, making pretence to some art of healing by means of hocus-
pocus and charms. The Naked Ones live, as their name imports, without
clothes, in the open air for the most part, practising endurance up to the
age of thirty-seven. Women may live with them, bound to continence.
These are the class most reverenced by the people. The third sort of
Brāhmans, those who live in the world, are to be found in the towns or
villages, dressed in robes of fine white linen, with the skins of deer or of
gazelles hung from their shoulders. They wear beards and long hair which
is twisted
up and covered by a turban. It seems clear that those who are
here described as the Mountain-dwellers correspond most nearly to the
Sarmanes of Megasthenes.
Of the gods worshipped by the Indians the Greeks learnt little. One
writer cited by Strabo (Clitarchus ? ) had asserted that they worshipped
Zeus Ombrios (Zeus of the Rain Storms), the river Ganges, and local
daemons'. As we have seen, Çiva and Krishna are to be discerned through
the Greek names Dionysus and Heracles in some of the statements of our
One member of Alexander's suite, his chief usher (e'ourreas'us),
Chares of Mytilene, is quoted as saying the Indians worshipped a god
Soroadeios, whose name being interpreted meant ‘maker of wine'. It is
recognised that the Indian name which Chares heard was Sūrya deva 'Sun-
god. Some ill-educated interpreter must have been misled by the
'
resemblance of sūrya 'sun' to surā-wine'.
The name 'Indians' was extended in its largest acceptance to cover
the barbarous tribes of mountain or jungle on the confines (f Brāhman
civilisation. In noting down what seemed to them odd points in the
physical characteristics or customs of these tribes the Greeks were moved
by an interest which is the germ of the modern science of anthropology.
Megasthenes noted that in the Hindu Kush the bodies of the dead were
eaten by their relations, as Herodotus had already stated of some aborigi-
nal people.
sources.
>
1 M. Crindle, Ancient India, p. 76. 2 See Rapson, Ancient Indiā, pp. 58. 61.
3 Strabo XV, C. 718. The god Indra seems to be identified with Zeus.
4 Athenaeus I, 27 D.
5 Megasth. Frag, 27=Strabo XV, C, 710.
>
## p. 380 (#418) ############################################
380
[CH.
INDIA IN GREEK AND LATIN LITERATURE
Even Megasthenes depended, of course, mainly upon his Indian
informants for knowledge of the peoples on the borders of the Indian
world, and he therefore repeated the fables as to the monstrous races
with one leg, with ears reaching to their feet and so on, which had long
been current in India and had already been communicated to the Greeks by
Scylax and Hecataeus and Ctesias. One would however like to know the
fact which lies behind his story that members of one tribe, living near the
sources of the Ganges, had been brought to the camp of Chandragupta-
'men of gentler manners - but without a mouth! They lived on th efumes
of roast meat and the smell of fruits and flowers. And since nostrils with
them took the place of mouths, they suffered terribly from evil odours, and
it was difficult to keep them alive, especially in a camp? ! ' Does the notice
reflect some sect who, like the Jains, abstained from all animal food and
kept their mouths covered lest they should breathe in minute insects ?
Of the south of India, Europe up to the Christian era knew little
more than a few names brought by merchantmen. So little was the
division of India into two worlds by the Vindhya realised that Strabo could
suppose all Indian rivers to take their rise in the Himalayas? . It was
chiefly as the country from which pearls came that the Greeks knew
Southern India. Pearls came from the coasts of the Pāņdya kingdom cor-
responding roughly with the modern districts of Madura and Tinnevelly,
and Megasthenes had heard, as we know, of Pandaea the daughter of
Heracles (Krishņa) who had become queen of a great kingdom in the south.
With her he also connected the pearl. Heracles, according to the legend
told him, wandering over the earth, had found this thing of beauty in the
sea, made, it might seem, for a woman's adornment. Wherefore from all
the sea pearls were brought together to the Indian coast for his daughter to
wear. The origin of the word which the Greek used for pearl, margarites,
is unknown.
Some confused knowledge on how pearls were procured had come to
the Greek writers through the traders' stories. They knew that they grew
in oysters. Two of the companions of Alexander, Androsthenes of Thasos,
who had gone in the fleet with Nearchus and wrote a book called
Ilavandous t'r,8 ’Iud:krs, and the chief usher Chares, had already some
information as to the varieties of pearls and the chief fisheries. The
oysters, Megasthenes understood, were caught in nets ; they went in shoals,
each shoal with a king of its own, like swarms of bees, and to capture the
king was to capture the shoal. The oysters, when caught, were put in jars,
1 Megasth. Frag. 30=Strabo XV, C. 711 ; Plin. Nat. Hist. VII, § 25. An
explanation of the legend is proposed by the Rev. H. Hosten, The Mouthless Indians of
Megasthenes, in the J. A. S. B. , 1912, pp. 291-301.
? XV, C. 690.
Athenaeus III, 93 A. D.
.
## p. 381 (#419) ############################################
XVI)
SOUTHERN INDIA
381
9
>
and as their flesh rotted the pearl was left disengaged at the bottom'. The
name of the extreme southern point of the peninsula had also travelled
the Greeks before the time of Strabo. He knew it as the country of the
ÇÕliaci”; this was derived from the name in local speech, Köri. The
legend, when it made a woman the sovereign of the south, was probably
reflecting the system of mother-right which has to some extent obtained
there even to the present day. Some of the physical characteristics of the
people of the south were known by report -- that they were darker in com-
plexion, for instance, than the Indians of the north. The facts of early
maturity and of the general shortness of life were also known. In the
legend narrated by Megasthenese, as we saw, the precocious maturity which
Heracles had bestowed upon his daughter by a miracle continued to be a
characteristic of the women of her kingdom. They were marriageable, and
could bear children, Megasthenes said, at seven years old. This exaggera-
tion was presumably due to the real fact of child-marriage. As to the
general length of life, forty years was the maximum-again a fact, the
relative shortness of life, exaggerated3.
In the book of Onesicritus occurred the first mention by a European
writer of Ceylon. He heard of it under' a name which the Greek represents
as Taprobane. It lay, of course, far outside the horizon of the Greeks, but
Onesicritus must have met people on the Indus who knew of the Southern
island by the report of merchants, or had perhaps fared thither themselves
along the coast of Malabar, and spoke of Tāpraparņi and of its elephants,
bigger and more terrible in war than those which the Greeks had seen in
India. Taprobane was seven days' journey according to the sources
followed by Eratosthenes, from the southernmost part of India (the Coliaci
= Cape Köri). The strait separating Ceylon from India is only forty miles
across, but it may have been true in practice that from the port whence
the merchants put out to go to Ceylon and the port where they landed was a
voyage of seven days. Onesicrituse put it at 20 days; we cannot say now
what fact underlay the misapprehension. When he said that the ‘size of
Taprobane was 5000 stadia the ambiguity of the statement already provoked
complaint in antiquity.
For many centuries the India known to the West was India as
portrayed by the historians of Alexander's expedition and by Megasthenes.
Although from the third century onwards there was a certain amount of
intercourse between the Mediterranean world and India, although Greek
kings ruled in the Punjab and Alexander's colonies were still represented
1 Megasth. Frag. 22=Arr. Ind. 8 ; Plin. Nat. Hist. IX, $ 111.
2 XV, C. 689.
3 Megasth. Frag. 23=Arr. Ind. 9.
4 Frag. 13=Strabo XV, C. 691 ; Frag. 22=Plin. Hist. Nat. VI, § 81.
5 Strabo XV, C. 690.
6 Onesier. Frag. 13=Strabo XV, C. 691.
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382
[Ch.
INDIA IN GREEK AND LATIN LITERATURE
by little bodies of men Greek in speech, although there must occasionally
have been seafaring men in the Greek ports who had seen the coasts of
India, or merchants who had made their way over the Hindu Kush, the
Greek and Latin learned world was content to go on transcribing the
books written generations before. These had become classical and shut
out further reference to reality. The original books themselves perished,
but their statements continued to be copied from writer to writer. Some
of the later Greek and Latin works which treated of India are known to us
to-day only by their titles or by a few fragments--the works of Apollodorus
of Arteinita (latter half of second century or first century B. C. ), the works of
the great geographer Eratosthenes (276-195 B. c. ) and of the voluminous
compiler, Alexander Polyhistor (105 till after 40 B. C. ). But a great deal of
the original books is incorporated in writings which we do still possess,
especially in the geographical work of Strabo (about 63 B. C. -19 A. D. ), the
historical work of Diodorus (in Egypt about 60 B. C. , still alive 36 B. c. ), the
encyclopaedic work of Pliny (published about 75 A. D. ). the tract of Arrian
about India (middle of socond century A. D. ), and the zoological work of
Aelian (end of second century A. D. ). Even Pliny had probably never had the
work of Megasthenes in his hands, but drew from it only at second or third
hand through Seneca and Varro. In the third century A. D. , when Philo.
stratus in his romance brings Apollonius of Tyana to India, it is still out
of the old traditional materials that what purports to be local colour all
comes.
So far as the stock of knowledge handed down from the third century
B. C. was increased at all during the following three centuries, it can
only have been from the source of information just indicated, the source
which might have been turned to so much richer account, had the curse of
literary convention not rested upon classical culture - the first-hand practical
knowledge possessed by Greek merchantmen who crossed the Indian
Strabo had sufficient freedom of mind to take some notice of
the Indian trade in his own day. From him we gather that, although
a considerable amount of Indian merchandise had flowed into Europe
by way of the Red Sea and Alexandria, when the Ptolemies ruled in Egypt
very few Greek ships had gone further than South Arabia. Goods had been
carried from India to South Arabia in Indian or Arabian bottoms. By the
time however that Strabo was in Egypt (25 B. C. ) a direct trade between
Egypt and India had come into existence, and he was told that 120 vessels
were sailing to India that season from Myos Hormos, the Egyptian
port on the Red Sea. A few Greek merchantmen, but very few, sailed
round the south of India to the mouth of the Ganges. The vessels
that went to India apparently made the journey by coasting along Arabia,
1 Strabo II, C. 118.
