Attached to it was a goodly park,
in which were tame peacocks and pheasants.
in which were tame peacocks and pheasants.
Cambridge History of India - v1
Nearchus never saw a live tiger, only a tiger's
skin? ; Megasthenes heard that there were tigers twice the size of lions, and
he knew of one in captivity which, while held by four men, fastened the
claws of his free hindleg upon a mule and mastered it. The Greeks heard
too of the wild sheep and goats of the hills®, and of the rhinoceros, though
the account given of it (taken probably from Megasthenes) can certainly
not be based upon actual observation10.
Of the domestic animals the Greeks have most to say about the
Indian dogs. There was that fierce breed, of which king Saubhūti had
given Alexander an exhibition, the dogs which would not relax their bite
1 Ael. Nat. Anim. XVI, 21.
2 Strabo XV, C. 699.
3 Megasth. Frag. 14=Plin. Nat. Hist. VIII $ 36.
4 Onesier. Frag. 7=Strabo XV, C. 698.
5 Nearchus, Frag. 15=Strabo XV, C. 706
6 Magasth. Frags. 10 and 12= Strabo XV, C. 703 ; Aelian, Nat. Anim. XVI, 41.
? Nearchus, Frag. 12=Arr. Ind. 15.
8 Megasth. Frag. 10=Strabo XV, C. 703.
9 Megasth. Frag. 13=Aelian, Nat. Anim. XVI, 20.
10 Megasth. Frag. 13=Strabo XV, C. 710 ; Aelian, loc. cit.
>
## p. 366 (#404) ############################################
366
[CH.
IVDIA IN GREEK AVD LATIV LITERATURE
upon a lion, although their legs were sawn off! . It was this breed, or
a similar one, which the Greeks understood from the Indians to be a cross
between dogs and tigers" !
When we turn to the Greeks' account of indian humanity, we find
them noting that they were a tall people -'tall and slender,' says Arrian",
‘lightly-built to a degree far beyond any other people. On the other
hand Diodorus, following perhaps some other source, describes them as
eminently tall and massive'. In the south of India complexions approxi-
mate to the Ethiopian and in the north to the Egyptian. But in features
there is not any marked difference, and no Indian people has woolly
hair, like the negro races, ‘owing to the dampness of the Indian climate's.
It is curious that there should have been discussion among the Greeks
whether the darkness of skin was due to the action of the sun or
to a property in the water of the African and Indian rivers. The
Indians, or some races among them, were believed by the Greeks, in
striking contrast with the truth, to be singularly free from diseases and
long-lived? The people of Sind, Onesieritus said, sometimes reached 130
years. The intellectual powers which they displayed in the arts and crafts
were attributed, like their health and longevity, to the purity of the
air and the rarified quality of water', but their health was also attributed
to the simplicity of their diet and their abstinence from wine10.
In what they say of the earlier history of India, the Greeks were con.
cerned to fit in what their Indian informants told them with their own
mythology and historical tradition. In their view of the past of India the
two outstanding events were the invasions of the country by Dionysus and
by Heracles respectively. Greek mythology told of the wine-god Dionysus
as some one who had led about Asia a wandering army of revellers,
garlanded with vine and ivy, to the accompaniment of drums and cymbals,
and in India the religious processions in honour of Çiva, the royal pro-
gresses with drum and cymbals, especially characteristic of certain tribesll,
seem to have struck them as Bacchic in character. Evidently Çivå was
1 Megasth. Frag. 10=Strabo XV, C. 700 ; Ael. Nat. Anim, IV, 19.
2 Plin. N. H. VIII, § 148 ; Ael. Nat. Anim. VIII, 1.
3 Ind. 17.
4 II, 36.
5 Strabo XV, C. 690.
6 Strabo XV, C. 695.
? Nearchus, Frag. 14=Arr. Ind. 15, 10.
8 Onesier. Frag. 20=Strabo XV, C. 701.
9 udwo Astrtou EPSOTITOV, Diod. II, 36, 1.
10 Nearchus, Frag. 15=Strabo XV, C. 706.
11 The name of the people is given by Strabo as the Sydrakai (Strabo XV,C. 687).
From C. 701 we gather that these are identical with the Oxydrakai on the Beās (Vipācā)
The Oxydrakai were a people of the plains where the vine does not grow. On th3.
strength of Strabo's assertion that the vine grew among the Sydrakai, to shift the
Oxydrakai to the bills, as Dr Vincent Smith does (J. R. A. S. October, 1903), is a ques-
tionable expedient.
## p. 367 (#405) ############################################
XVI]
SOCIAL DIVISIONS
367
India's memory of the conquering god, and these usages had been learnt
from him ages ago.
Heracles the Greeks seemed to themselves to discover in Krishna.
It was an accidental variation that the Greek legend represented him
as having been born in Thebes and the Indians claimed him as sprung from
the Indian earth. This Heracles,' according to Megasthenes, 'was especially
worshipped by the Suraseni, an Indian people (the Çūrasenas), where there
are two great cities, Methora (Mathurā, Muttra) and Clisobora (Krishna-
pura), and a navigable river, the Jobanes (Jumna), flows through their
country. The garb worn by this Heracles was the same as that of the
Theban Heracles, as the Indians themselves narrate ; a great number
of male children were born to him in India (for this Heracles also married
many women) and one only daughter. Her name was Pandaea, and the
country where she was born and which Heracles gave her to rule is called
Pandaea after her (the Pāņdya kingdom in South India). She had by her
father's gift five hundred elephants, four thousand horsemen, and 130,000
foot-soldiers. . . And the Indians tell a story that when Heracles knew his end
was near, and had no one worthy to whom he might give his daughter ini
marriage, he wedded her himself, though she was then only seven years old,
so that a line of Indian kings might be left of their issue. Heracles
therefore bestowed on her miraculous maturity, and from this act it comes
that all the race over whom Pandaea ruled, has this characteristic by grace
of Heracles? Our Greek author tells the story with some disgust and
observes impatiently that, if Heracles could do as much as this, he might
presumably have prolonged his own life a little. All this mythology, we may
notice, the more critical Greeks, such as Eratosthenes and Strabo, were as
prompt as any modern European rationalist to regard as unhistorical”.
Megasthenes was given at the court of Pātaliputra a list of the kings
who had preceded Chandragupta on the throne, 153 in number, covering
by their reigns a period of over 6000 years. The line began with the most
Bacchic' of the companions of Dionysus, Spatembas, left behind as king of
the land, when Dionysus retired.
The most interesting part of Megasthenes' account is that relating
to contemporary India, so far as he could learn about it at Pāțaliputra.
His description of the seven 'tribes' or classes into which the whole
people was divided is well known. These, as Dr Vincent Smith has urged',
have little to do with the four regular castes of Hinduism. Megasthenes
may have got his number seven from some Indian informant, or he
may have simply ascertained the fact that the people was divided into
functional castes which did not intermarry, and then have made his
1 Megasth. Frag. 23=Arr. Ind. 7 f.
2 Strabo XV, C. 686 f.
3 Megasth. Frag. 24. 4 Caste in India (East and West, 1913, pp. 552-63).
a
## p. 368 (#406) ############################################
368
[ch.
INDIA IN GREEK AND LATIN LITERATURE
own list of various occupations as they presented themselves to his eye.
The confusion which he makes between Brāhmans and Sannyāsis - to
both the Greek terms philosophoi or sophistai, 'wise men,' were indiscri- .
minately applied-and his separation of the Brāhmans into different castes,
according as their employment might be priestly or administrative or
political, make it difficult to suppose that he was reproducing what any
Indian had told him. But this seven classes may truly reflect the various
activities which a Greek resident at Pāšalip'ıra could see going on round
about him in the third century B. C.
The first class of Megasthenes consisted of 'philosophers,' under
which term, as has just been said, Brāhmans and ascetics were confused,
It was numerically the smallest class, but the highest in honour, immune
from labour and taxation. Its only business was to perform public sacrifice,
to direct the sacrifice of private individuals, and to divine. On the New
Year all the philosophers assembled at the king's doors and made
predictions with a view to guiding agriculture or politics. If any one's
prophecy was falsified by the event, he had to keep silence for the rest
of his life. These wise men pass their days naked, exposed in winter
to the cold and in summer to the sun, in the fields and the swamps and
under enormous trees. . . . . . They eat the fruits of the earth and the bark of
the trees, which is no less agreeable to the taste and no less nourishing
than dates. The second class cɔnsisted of the cultivators, and included the
majority of the Indian people. They never took any part in war, their
whole business being to cultivate the soil and pay taxes, to the kings or to
the free cities, as the case might be. Wars rolled past them. At the
very time when a battle was going on, the neighbouring cultivators might
be seen quietly pursuing their work of ploughing or digging, unmolested
All the land belonged to the king, and the cultivators paid one fourh
of the produce in addition to rent. The third class Megasthenes described
as herdsmen and hunters. They lived a nomad life in the jungle; and
on the hills, but brought a certain proportion of their cattle to the cities
as tribute. They also received in return for their services a grant of corn
from the king. It is easy to recognise in the description low-caste people,
who in ancient Pāšaliputra, as in a modern Indian city, were to be seen
performing certain services to the civilized community. The fourth class
consisted of the traders, artisans, and boatmen. They paid a tax on
the produce of their industry, except those who manufactured implements
of war and built ships. These, on the other hand, received a subsidy from
the royal exchequer. The fifth class was that of the fighters, the most
numerous class after the cultivators. They performed no work in the
1 Megasth. Frags. 35 and 36=Arr. Ind. 11f. ; Strabo XV, C. 703 V. inf. , Chapter
XIX.
## p. 369 (#407) ############################################
xvi]
PĀT ALI PUTRA
369
community except that of fighting. Members of the other classes supplied
them with weapons and waited upon them and kept their horses and
elephants. They received regular pay even in time of peace, so that when
not fighting they could live in a life of ease and maintain numbers of
dependents. The sixth and seventh classes of Megasthenes cannot have
formed castes in any sense. The sixth consists of thie government secret
inspectors, whose business it was to report to the king, or among the free
tribes, to the headmen, what went on among the people, and the seventh of
those constituting the council of the king or the tribal authorities. 'In
numbers this class is a small one, but it is distinguished for wisdom and
probity. For which reason there are chosen from among it the magistrates,
the chiefs of districts, the deputy governors, the keepers of the treasury.
the army superintendents, the admirals, the high stewards, and the over-
seers of agriculture. ' When Megasthenes, in talking about the fixity of
these classes, stated that the only exception to the law which forbade a
man changing his class was that any one might become a 'wise man', he
was saying something which was true only if by 'wise man' we understand
an ascetic, not a Brāhman. A sense of the difference between Brāhmans
living in the world and ascetics is implied in the statement of Nearchus
that Indian 'sophists' were divided into Brāhmans, who followed the king
as councillors, and the men who 'studied Nature'2.
We may see something of the aspect of the country, as Megasthenes
travelled through it, from his description of the towns built high above the
level floods. ‘All their towns which are down beside the rivers or the sea
are made of wood ; for towns built of brick’ (i. e. sun-dried mud bricks)
‘would never hold out for any length of time with the rains on the one
hand, and, on the other, the rivers which rise above their banks and spread
a sheet of water over the plains. But the towns which are built on elevated
places out of reach, these are made of brick and clay3. ' Of Pāțaliputra
itself Megasthenes left a summary description. Built at the confluence of
the Ganges and the Son, it formed an oblong, 80 stades by 15 stades (9}
miles by 1 m. 1270 yds. ) surrounded by a wooden palisade, with loop-
holes for the archers to shoot through, and outside the palisade a ditch,
30 cubits (about 60 feet) deep by 6 plethra (200 yards) wide, which served
both for defence and as a public sewer. Along the palisade were towers at
intervals, 570 in all, and 64 gates“. FIe also described the palace of the
great Indian king, no less sumptuous and magnificent than the palaces of
Susa and Ecbatana.
Attached to it was a goodly park,
in which were tame peacocks and pheasants. . . There were shadygroves and trees set in
clumps and branches woven together by some special cunning of horticulture. And the
1 Frag. 35=Arr. Ind. 12, 9. 2 Nearchus, Frag. 7=Strabo XV, C. 716.
3 Megasth. Frag. 26=Arr. Ind. 10. 4 Megasth. Frag . 25=Strabo XV, C. 702.
## p. 370 (#408) ############################################
370
[CH.
INDIA IN GREEK AND LATIN LITERATURE
more impressive thing about the beauty of that climate is that the trees themselves
are of the sort that are always green ; they never grow old and never shed their leaves.
Some of them are native, and some are brought from other lands with great care, and
these adorn the place and give it glory-only not the olive ; the olive does not grow
of itself in India, and, if it is transported there, it dies. Birds are there, free and un-
confined ; they come of their own accord and have their nests and roosting-places in
the branches, both birds of other kinds and parrots which are kept there and flock in
bevies about the king, . . . In this royal pleasance there are lovely tanks may by hand of
men, with fishes in them very large and gentle, and nobody made catch them except
the sons of thë king, when they are yet children. In this water, as tranquil and as
safe as any can be, they fish and play and learn to swim all at the sam
ime timel.
Megasthenes noted down a variety of points which struck
him in the manners and customs of the people. A noble simplicity seemed
to him the predominant characteristicº. Nearchus seems to have described
the dress of the people in the Indus region. They wore clothes of cotton,
and this linen from the trees is of a more shining white than any other linen, unless it
be that the people themselves being dark make the linen appear all the whiter. They have
a tunic of tree-linen down to the middle of their shins, and two other pieces of stuff,
one thrown about their shoulders and one twisted round their heads. And the Indians
wear ear. rings of ivory, those that are very well-off. . . Also they dye their beards diffe.
rent colours, some so as to make them appear as white as white may be, and some
dyeing them blue black; others make them crimson, and others purple, and others
green. In the summer they protect themselves with umbrellas, those of the Indians
that is to say, who are not too low to be considered. They wear shoes of white leather
very elaborately worked ; and the soles of the shoes are variegated, and high-heeled
so as to make the wearer seem taller3.
Megasthenes observed at Pāțaliputra that in dress the Indians, for
all their general simplicity, indulged a love of richness and bright colours,
wearing ornaments of gold and gems and flowered muslins, with umbrellas
carried after them.
Nearchus described their guise in war. The foot-soldiers carried a
bow as long as the body. To shoot, they rested one end of it on the ground
and set their left foot against it. They had to draw the string far back,
since the arrows in use were six feet long. In their left hands they carried
long narrow shields of raw hide, nearly co-extensive with the body. Some
had javelins instead of bows. All carried long two-handed swords with a
broad blade. The horsemen had two javelins and a shield smaller than the
foot soldiers".
Their diet was distinguished from the Greek by the absence of wine,
which they drank only in religious ceremonies; but rice-beer was generally
1 Aelian, Nat. Anim. XIII, 18.
2 Megasth. Frag. 27=Strabo XV, C. 709.
3 Nearchus, Frags. 9 and 10= Arr. Ind. 16.
4 Megasth. Frag. 27=Strabo XV, C, 709.
5 Nearchus, Frag. 7=Arr. Ind. 16 ; Strabo XV, C, 716,
.
## p. 371 (#409) ############################################
XVI]
LAWS AND CUSTOMS
371
drunk. Their staple food was pulpy rice (öpvča podrá). Each man took
his food by himself when be felt inclined ; for they had no fixed times for
common meals'. When a man would sup, a table was placed beside him
and a gold dish set upon it, in which first was put the rice, boiled after the
manner of the Greek chondros ( gruel ), and then on the top of it seasoned
meats, done up in the Indian way? . Their system of gymnastic exercise
differed from that of the Greeks : it consisted principally of massage, and
they used smooth rollers of ebony for shaping their bodies.
Megasthenes, ignorant as he was of Indian languages, could say little.
of the literature and thought of the country. He only observed the much
greater part played by oral tradition and memory, as compared with written
documents, than was the case in the Greek world, though he cannot have
asserted that writing was unknown, as Strabo would seem to imply-since in
one passage he refers to written inscriptions". In the sphere of morals it is
interesting to notice that the salient characteristic of the Indian people
seemed to this early European observer to be a high level of veraeity and
honesty. Any Indian has never been convicted of lying', he wrote in one
passage, and in another pointed to the rarity of law-suits as evidence of
their frank dealing. They are not litigious. Witnesses and seals are
unnecessary when a man makes a deposit ; he acts in trust. Their houses
are usually unguarded'. During the time that Megasthenes was on
Chandragupta's camp, out of a multitude of 400,000 men there were no
convictions for thefts of any sums exceeding 200 drachmas ( about £8). In
Sind, Onesicritus said, no legal action could be taken, except for murder
and assault. "We cannot help being murdered or assaulted, whereas it is
our fault if we give our confidence and are swindled. We ought to be
more circumspect at the outset and not fill the city with litigation. '
The laws, Nearchus said, were preserved by oral tradition, not in
books' - a statement only relatively true. According to Megasthenes many
of them were sufficiently severe. A man convicted of giving false witness
suffered mutilation. In the case of bodily harm being inflicted, not only
was the principle of an eye for an eye observed, but the hand was cut off
as well. To cause a craftsman the loss of his eye or hand was an offence
punished by death. 10
1 Megasth. Frag. 27=Strabo XV, C. 709.
2 Megasth. Frag. 28=Athenaeus IV, 153 D.
3 Frag. 27.
4 Megasth. Frags. 26, 27=Arr. Ind. 10; Strabo XV, C. 709; cf. Rhys Davids,
Buddhist India, p. 109 f.
5 For the use of writing at this period see Chapter XIX.
Megasth. Frag. 35=Arr. Ind. 12, 5. Cf, Max Müller, India, what can it teach
us ? pp. 34 f.
7 Megasth. Frag. 27=Strabo XV, C. 709.
8 Strabo XV, C. 702.
9 Nearchus, Frag. 7=Strabo XV, C. 716.
10 Megasth. Frag. 27=Strabo XV, C. 710,
6
## p. 372 (#410) ############################################
372
[CH.
INDIA IN GREEK AND LATIN LITERATURE
The cultivation of lands by a whole kinship working in association
was noted by Nearchus. Each individual at the ingathering took as much
.
as was calculated to support him for a year, and the remainder of the
common stock was destroyed, so as not to encourage idleness? .
The customs would naturally differ considerably from one region to
another in India, then as row. Among the Kshatriyas of the Punjab
(Cathaeans) and their neighbours of the principality of Saubhūti (the region
of Gurdāspur and Amritsar ? ), according to Onesicritus, personal beauty
was held in such estimation that kings were chosen for this quality, and a
child two months after birth, if it did not reach a certain standard of
comeliness, was exposed. The dyeing of beards which Nearchus described
in the passage already quoted was especially a custom in this part? .
Of the marriage system in India Megasthenes only understood that
it was polygamous, and that brides were purchased from their parents for
a yoke of oxen'. He seems also to have asserted that, where conjugal
infidelity in a wife was due to a husband's omission to exercise vigorous
control, it was condoned by public opinion' At Takshaçilā, according to
Aristobulus, a man unable to get his daughter married on account of
poverty would sell her in the market-place”. Nearchus stated that among
certian Indian peoples a girl was put up as the prize of victory in a boxing
match ; the victor obtained her without paying a price. The custom by
which the virtuous wife (suttee, sati) was burnt with her husband's body on
the funeral pyre naturally struck the Greeks. Onesicritus spoke of it as
specially a custom of the Kshatriyas (Cathaeans)? Aristobulus was told
that the widow sometimes followed her husband to the pyre of her own de-
sire, and that those who refused to do so lived under general contempts. In
the year 316 F. C. the leader of an Indian contingent which had gone
to fight under Eumenes in Iran was killed in battle. He had with him his
two wives. There was immediately a con petition between them as to which
was to be the sati. The question was brought before the Macedonian and
Greek generals, and they decided in favour of the younger, the elder being
with child. At this the elder woman
1 Nearchus, Frag. 7=Strabo XV, C. 716.
2 Onesicr. Frag. 18=Strabo XV, C. 699. Cf. Diod. XVII, 91.
3 Cf. Chapter X, p. 209.
4 The sentence is somewhat obscure- ει δε μη σωφρουειυ αυαγκασαλευ,
El
To pueuel Etectl, Megasth. Frag. 27=Strabo XV, C. 709.
5 Aristob. Frag. 34= Strabo IV, C. 714.
6 Nearch. Frag. 7=Strabo XV, C. 716. This may refer to the Kshatriya institu-
tion svayamvara or ‘self-choice. ' A princess chose her husband from among the assem.
bled suitors of her on free will or as the result of a contest in the use of war-like arms.
7 Strabo XV, C. 700.
8 Aristob. Frag. 34=Strabo XV, C. 714
1
## p. 373 (#411) ############################################
XVI]
THE KING
373
а
went away lamenting, with the band about her head rent, and tearing her hair as if
tidings of some great disaster has been brought her; and the other departed, exultant at
her victory, to the pyre crowned with fillets by the worden who belonged to her and deck-
ed out splendidly as for a wedding. She was escorted by her kinsfolk who chanted a
song in praise of her virtue. When she came near to the pyre, she took off her adornments
and distributed them to her familiars and friends, leaving a memorial of herself, as it were,
to those who had loved her. Her adornments consisted of a multitude of rings on her
hands set with precious gems of diverse colours, about her head golden stars not a few,
variegated with different sorts of stones, and about her neck a multitude of necklaces,
each a little larger than the one above it. 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? .
skin? ; Megasthenes heard that there were tigers twice the size of lions, and
he knew of one in captivity which, while held by four men, fastened the
claws of his free hindleg upon a mule and mastered it. The Greeks heard
too of the wild sheep and goats of the hills®, and of the rhinoceros, though
the account given of it (taken probably from Megasthenes) can certainly
not be based upon actual observation10.
Of the domestic animals the Greeks have most to say about the
Indian dogs. There was that fierce breed, of which king Saubhūti had
given Alexander an exhibition, the dogs which would not relax their bite
1 Ael. Nat. Anim. XVI, 21.
2 Strabo XV, C. 699.
3 Megasth. Frag. 14=Plin. Nat. Hist. VIII $ 36.
4 Onesier. Frag. 7=Strabo XV, C. 698.
5 Nearchus, Frag. 15=Strabo XV, C. 706
6 Magasth. Frags. 10 and 12= Strabo XV, C. 703 ; Aelian, Nat. Anim. XVI, 41.
? Nearchus, Frag. 12=Arr. Ind. 15.
8 Megasth. Frag. 10=Strabo XV, C. 703.
9 Megasth. Frag. 13=Aelian, Nat. Anim. XVI, 20.
10 Megasth. Frag. 13=Strabo XV, C. 710 ; Aelian, loc. cit.
>
## p. 366 (#404) ############################################
366
[CH.
IVDIA IN GREEK AVD LATIV LITERATURE
upon a lion, although their legs were sawn off! . It was this breed, or
a similar one, which the Greeks understood from the Indians to be a cross
between dogs and tigers" !
When we turn to the Greeks' account of indian humanity, we find
them noting that they were a tall people -'tall and slender,' says Arrian",
‘lightly-built to a degree far beyond any other people. On the other
hand Diodorus, following perhaps some other source, describes them as
eminently tall and massive'. In the south of India complexions approxi-
mate to the Ethiopian and in the north to the Egyptian. But in features
there is not any marked difference, and no Indian people has woolly
hair, like the negro races, ‘owing to the dampness of the Indian climate's.
It is curious that there should have been discussion among the Greeks
whether the darkness of skin was due to the action of the sun or
to a property in the water of the African and Indian rivers. The
Indians, or some races among them, were believed by the Greeks, in
striking contrast with the truth, to be singularly free from diseases and
long-lived? The people of Sind, Onesieritus said, sometimes reached 130
years. The intellectual powers which they displayed in the arts and crafts
were attributed, like their health and longevity, to the purity of the
air and the rarified quality of water', but their health was also attributed
to the simplicity of their diet and their abstinence from wine10.
In what they say of the earlier history of India, the Greeks were con.
cerned to fit in what their Indian informants told them with their own
mythology and historical tradition. In their view of the past of India the
two outstanding events were the invasions of the country by Dionysus and
by Heracles respectively. Greek mythology told of the wine-god Dionysus
as some one who had led about Asia a wandering army of revellers,
garlanded with vine and ivy, to the accompaniment of drums and cymbals,
and in India the religious processions in honour of Çiva, the royal pro-
gresses with drum and cymbals, especially characteristic of certain tribesll,
seem to have struck them as Bacchic in character. Evidently Çivå was
1 Megasth. Frag. 10=Strabo XV, C. 700 ; Ael. Nat. Anim, IV, 19.
2 Plin. N. H. VIII, § 148 ; Ael. Nat. Anim. VIII, 1.
3 Ind. 17.
4 II, 36.
5 Strabo XV, C. 690.
6 Strabo XV, C. 695.
? Nearchus, Frag. 14=Arr. Ind. 15, 10.
8 Onesier. Frag. 20=Strabo XV, C. 701.
9 udwo Astrtou EPSOTITOV, Diod. II, 36, 1.
10 Nearchus, Frag. 15=Strabo XV, C. 706.
11 The name of the people is given by Strabo as the Sydrakai (Strabo XV,C. 687).
From C. 701 we gather that these are identical with the Oxydrakai on the Beās (Vipācā)
The Oxydrakai were a people of the plains where the vine does not grow. On th3.
strength of Strabo's assertion that the vine grew among the Sydrakai, to shift the
Oxydrakai to the bills, as Dr Vincent Smith does (J. R. A. S. October, 1903), is a ques-
tionable expedient.
## p. 367 (#405) ############################################
XVI]
SOCIAL DIVISIONS
367
India's memory of the conquering god, and these usages had been learnt
from him ages ago.
Heracles the Greeks seemed to themselves to discover in Krishna.
It was an accidental variation that the Greek legend represented him
as having been born in Thebes and the Indians claimed him as sprung from
the Indian earth. This Heracles,' according to Megasthenes, 'was especially
worshipped by the Suraseni, an Indian people (the Çūrasenas), where there
are two great cities, Methora (Mathurā, Muttra) and Clisobora (Krishna-
pura), and a navigable river, the Jobanes (Jumna), flows through their
country. The garb worn by this Heracles was the same as that of the
Theban Heracles, as the Indians themselves narrate ; a great number
of male children were born to him in India (for this Heracles also married
many women) and one only daughter. Her name was Pandaea, and the
country where she was born and which Heracles gave her to rule is called
Pandaea after her (the Pāņdya kingdom in South India). She had by her
father's gift five hundred elephants, four thousand horsemen, and 130,000
foot-soldiers. . . And the Indians tell a story that when Heracles knew his end
was near, and had no one worthy to whom he might give his daughter ini
marriage, he wedded her himself, though she was then only seven years old,
so that a line of Indian kings might be left of their issue. Heracles
therefore bestowed on her miraculous maturity, and from this act it comes
that all the race over whom Pandaea ruled, has this characteristic by grace
of Heracles? Our Greek author tells the story with some disgust and
observes impatiently that, if Heracles could do as much as this, he might
presumably have prolonged his own life a little. All this mythology, we may
notice, the more critical Greeks, such as Eratosthenes and Strabo, were as
prompt as any modern European rationalist to regard as unhistorical”.
Megasthenes was given at the court of Pātaliputra a list of the kings
who had preceded Chandragupta on the throne, 153 in number, covering
by their reigns a period of over 6000 years. The line began with the most
Bacchic' of the companions of Dionysus, Spatembas, left behind as king of
the land, when Dionysus retired.
The most interesting part of Megasthenes' account is that relating
to contemporary India, so far as he could learn about it at Pāțaliputra.
His description of the seven 'tribes' or classes into which the whole
people was divided is well known. These, as Dr Vincent Smith has urged',
have little to do with the four regular castes of Hinduism. Megasthenes
may have got his number seven from some Indian informant, or he
may have simply ascertained the fact that the people was divided into
functional castes which did not intermarry, and then have made his
1 Megasth. Frag. 23=Arr. Ind. 7 f.
2 Strabo XV, C. 686 f.
3 Megasth. Frag. 24. 4 Caste in India (East and West, 1913, pp. 552-63).
a
## p. 368 (#406) ############################################
368
[ch.
INDIA IN GREEK AND LATIN LITERATURE
own list of various occupations as they presented themselves to his eye.
The confusion which he makes between Brāhmans and Sannyāsis - to
both the Greek terms philosophoi or sophistai, 'wise men,' were indiscri- .
minately applied-and his separation of the Brāhmans into different castes,
according as their employment might be priestly or administrative or
political, make it difficult to suppose that he was reproducing what any
Indian had told him. But this seven classes may truly reflect the various
activities which a Greek resident at Pāšalip'ıra could see going on round
about him in the third century B. C.
The first class of Megasthenes consisted of 'philosophers,' under
which term, as has just been said, Brāhmans and ascetics were confused,
It was numerically the smallest class, but the highest in honour, immune
from labour and taxation. Its only business was to perform public sacrifice,
to direct the sacrifice of private individuals, and to divine. On the New
Year all the philosophers assembled at the king's doors and made
predictions with a view to guiding agriculture or politics. If any one's
prophecy was falsified by the event, he had to keep silence for the rest
of his life. These wise men pass their days naked, exposed in winter
to the cold and in summer to the sun, in the fields and the swamps and
under enormous trees. . . . . . They eat the fruits of the earth and the bark of
the trees, which is no less agreeable to the taste and no less nourishing
than dates. The second class cɔnsisted of the cultivators, and included the
majority of the Indian people. They never took any part in war, their
whole business being to cultivate the soil and pay taxes, to the kings or to
the free cities, as the case might be. Wars rolled past them. At the
very time when a battle was going on, the neighbouring cultivators might
be seen quietly pursuing their work of ploughing or digging, unmolested
All the land belonged to the king, and the cultivators paid one fourh
of the produce in addition to rent. The third class Megasthenes described
as herdsmen and hunters. They lived a nomad life in the jungle; and
on the hills, but brought a certain proportion of their cattle to the cities
as tribute. They also received in return for their services a grant of corn
from the king. It is easy to recognise in the description low-caste people,
who in ancient Pāšaliputra, as in a modern Indian city, were to be seen
performing certain services to the civilized community. The fourth class
consisted of the traders, artisans, and boatmen. They paid a tax on
the produce of their industry, except those who manufactured implements
of war and built ships. These, on the other hand, received a subsidy from
the royal exchequer. The fifth class was that of the fighters, the most
numerous class after the cultivators. They performed no work in the
1 Megasth. Frags. 35 and 36=Arr. Ind. 11f. ; Strabo XV, C. 703 V. inf. , Chapter
XIX.
## p. 369 (#407) ############################################
xvi]
PĀT ALI PUTRA
369
community except that of fighting. Members of the other classes supplied
them with weapons and waited upon them and kept their horses and
elephants. They received regular pay even in time of peace, so that when
not fighting they could live in a life of ease and maintain numbers of
dependents. The sixth and seventh classes of Megasthenes cannot have
formed castes in any sense. The sixth consists of thie government secret
inspectors, whose business it was to report to the king, or among the free
tribes, to the headmen, what went on among the people, and the seventh of
those constituting the council of the king or the tribal authorities. 'In
numbers this class is a small one, but it is distinguished for wisdom and
probity. For which reason there are chosen from among it the magistrates,
the chiefs of districts, the deputy governors, the keepers of the treasury.
the army superintendents, the admirals, the high stewards, and the over-
seers of agriculture. ' When Megasthenes, in talking about the fixity of
these classes, stated that the only exception to the law which forbade a
man changing his class was that any one might become a 'wise man', he
was saying something which was true only if by 'wise man' we understand
an ascetic, not a Brāhman. A sense of the difference between Brāhmans
living in the world and ascetics is implied in the statement of Nearchus
that Indian 'sophists' were divided into Brāhmans, who followed the king
as councillors, and the men who 'studied Nature'2.
We may see something of the aspect of the country, as Megasthenes
travelled through it, from his description of the towns built high above the
level floods. ‘All their towns which are down beside the rivers or the sea
are made of wood ; for towns built of brick’ (i. e. sun-dried mud bricks)
‘would never hold out for any length of time with the rains on the one
hand, and, on the other, the rivers which rise above their banks and spread
a sheet of water over the plains. But the towns which are built on elevated
places out of reach, these are made of brick and clay3. ' Of Pāțaliputra
itself Megasthenes left a summary description. Built at the confluence of
the Ganges and the Son, it formed an oblong, 80 stades by 15 stades (9}
miles by 1 m. 1270 yds. ) surrounded by a wooden palisade, with loop-
holes for the archers to shoot through, and outside the palisade a ditch,
30 cubits (about 60 feet) deep by 6 plethra (200 yards) wide, which served
both for defence and as a public sewer. Along the palisade were towers at
intervals, 570 in all, and 64 gates“. FIe also described the palace of the
great Indian king, no less sumptuous and magnificent than the palaces of
Susa and Ecbatana.
Attached to it was a goodly park,
in which were tame peacocks and pheasants. . . There were shadygroves and trees set in
clumps and branches woven together by some special cunning of horticulture. And the
1 Frag. 35=Arr. Ind. 12, 9. 2 Nearchus, Frag. 7=Strabo XV, C. 716.
3 Megasth. Frag. 26=Arr. Ind. 10. 4 Megasth. Frag . 25=Strabo XV, C. 702.
## p. 370 (#408) ############################################
370
[CH.
INDIA IN GREEK AND LATIN LITERATURE
more impressive thing about the beauty of that climate is that the trees themselves
are of the sort that are always green ; they never grow old and never shed their leaves.
Some of them are native, and some are brought from other lands with great care, and
these adorn the place and give it glory-only not the olive ; the olive does not grow
of itself in India, and, if it is transported there, it dies. Birds are there, free and un-
confined ; they come of their own accord and have their nests and roosting-places in
the branches, both birds of other kinds and parrots which are kept there and flock in
bevies about the king, . . . In this royal pleasance there are lovely tanks may by hand of
men, with fishes in them very large and gentle, and nobody made catch them except
the sons of thë king, when they are yet children. In this water, as tranquil and as
safe as any can be, they fish and play and learn to swim all at the sam
ime timel.
Megasthenes noted down a variety of points which struck
him in the manners and customs of the people. A noble simplicity seemed
to him the predominant characteristicº. Nearchus seems to have described
the dress of the people in the Indus region. They wore clothes of cotton,
and this linen from the trees is of a more shining white than any other linen, unless it
be that the people themselves being dark make the linen appear all the whiter. They have
a tunic of tree-linen down to the middle of their shins, and two other pieces of stuff,
one thrown about their shoulders and one twisted round their heads. And the Indians
wear ear. rings of ivory, those that are very well-off. . . Also they dye their beards diffe.
rent colours, some so as to make them appear as white as white may be, and some
dyeing them blue black; others make them crimson, and others purple, and others
green. In the summer they protect themselves with umbrellas, those of the Indians
that is to say, who are not too low to be considered. They wear shoes of white leather
very elaborately worked ; and the soles of the shoes are variegated, and high-heeled
so as to make the wearer seem taller3.
Megasthenes observed at Pāțaliputra that in dress the Indians, for
all their general simplicity, indulged a love of richness and bright colours,
wearing ornaments of gold and gems and flowered muslins, with umbrellas
carried after them.
Nearchus described their guise in war. The foot-soldiers carried a
bow as long as the body. To shoot, they rested one end of it on the ground
and set their left foot against it. They had to draw the string far back,
since the arrows in use were six feet long. In their left hands they carried
long narrow shields of raw hide, nearly co-extensive with the body. Some
had javelins instead of bows. All carried long two-handed swords with a
broad blade. The horsemen had two javelins and a shield smaller than the
foot soldiers".
Their diet was distinguished from the Greek by the absence of wine,
which they drank only in religious ceremonies; but rice-beer was generally
1 Aelian, Nat. Anim. XIII, 18.
2 Megasth. Frag. 27=Strabo XV, C. 709.
3 Nearchus, Frags. 9 and 10= Arr. Ind. 16.
4 Megasth. Frag. 27=Strabo XV, C, 709.
5 Nearchus, Frag. 7=Arr. Ind. 16 ; Strabo XV, C, 716,
.
## p. 371 (#409) ############################################
XVI]
LAWS AND CUSTOMS
371
drunk. Their staple food was pulpy rice (öpvča podrá). Each man took
his food by himself when be felt inclined ; for they had no fixed times for
common meals'. When a man would sup, a table was placed beside him
and a gold dish set upon it, in which first was put the rice, boiled after the
manner of the Greek chondros ( gruel ), and then on the top of it seasoned
meats, done up in the Indian way? . Their system of gymnastic exercise
differed from that of the Greeks : it consisted principally of massage, and
they used smooth rollers of ebony for shaping their bodies.
Megasthenes, ignorant as he was of Indian languages, could say little.
of the literature and thought of the country. He only observed the much
greater part played by oral tradition and memory, as compared with written
documents, than was the case in the Greek world, though he cannot have
asserted that writing was unknown, as Strabo would seem to imply-since in
one passage he refers to written inscriptions". In the sphere of morals it is
interesting to notice that the salient characteristic of the Indian people
seemed to this early European observer to be a high level of veraeity and
honesty. Any Indian has never been convicted of lying', he wrote in one
passage, and in another pointed to the rarity of law-suits as evidence of
their frank dealing. They are not litigious. Witnesses and seals are
unnecessary when a man makes a deposit ; he acts in trust. Their houses
are usually unguarded'. During the time that Megasthenes was on
Chandragupta's camp, out of a multitude of 400,000 men there were no
convictions for thefts of any sums exceeding 200 drachmas ( about £8). In
Sind, Onesicritus said, no legal action could be taken, except for murder
and assault. "We cannot help being murdered or assaulted, whereas it is
our fault if we give our confidence and are swindled. We ought to be
more circumspect at the outset and not fill the city with litigation. '
The laws, Nearchus said, were preserved by oral tradition, not in
books' - a statement only relatively true. According to Megasthenes many
of them were sufficiently severe. A man convicted of giving false witness
suffered mutilation. In the case of bodily harm being inflicted, not only
was the principle of an eye for an eye observed, but the hand was cut off
as well. To cause a craftsman the loss of his eye or hand was an offence
punished by death. 10
1 Megasth. Frag. 27=Strabo XV, C. 709.
2 Megasth. Frag. 28=Athenaeus IV, 153 D.
3 Frag. 27.
4 Megasth. Frags. 26, 27=Arr. Ind. 10; Strabo XV, C. 709; cf. Rhys Davids,
Buddhist India, p. 109 f.
5 For the use of writing at this period see Chapter XIX.
Megasth. Frag. 35=Arr. Ind. 12, 5. Cf, Max Müller, India, what can it teach
us ? pp. 34 f.
7 Megasth. Frag. 27=Strabo XV, C. 709.
8 Strabo XV, C. 702.
9 Nearchus, Frag. 7=Strabo XV, C. 716.
10 Megasth. Frag. 27=Strabo XV, C. 710,
6
## p. 372 (#410) ############################################
372
[CH.
INDIA IN GREEK AND LATIN LITERATURE
The cultivation of lands by a whole kinship working in association
was noted by Nearchus. Each individual at the ingathering took as much
.
as was calculated to support him for a year, and the remainder of the
common stock was destroyed, so as not to encourage idleness? .
The customs would naturally differ considerably from one region to
another in India, then as row. Among the Kshatriyas of the Punjab
(Cathaeans) and their neighbours of the principality of Saubhūti (the region
of Gurdāspur and Amritsar ? ), according to Onesicritus, personal beauty
was held in such estimation that kings were chosen for this quality, and a
child two months after birth, if it did not reach a certain standard of
comeliness, was exposed. The dyeing of beards which Nearchus described
in the passage already quoted was especially a custom in this part? .
Of the marriage system in India Megasthenes only understood that
it was polygamous, and that brides were purchased from their parents for
a yoke of oxen'. He seems also to have asserted that, where conjugal
infidelity in a wife was due to a husband's omission to exercise vigorous
control, it was condoned by public opinion' At Takshaçilā, according to
Aristobulus, a man unable to get his daughter married on account of
poverty would sell her in the market-place”. Nearchus stated that among
certian Indian peoples a girl was put up as the prize of victory in a boxing
match ; the victor obtained her without paying a price. The custom by
which the virtuous wife (suttee, sati) was burnt with her husband's body on
the funeral pyre naturally struck the Greeks. Onesicritus spoke of it as
specially a custom of the Kshatriyas (Cathaeans)? Aristobulus was told
that the widow sometimes followed her husband to the pyre of her own de-
sire, and that those who refused to do so lived under general contempts. In
the year 316 F. C. the leader of an Indian contingent which had gone
to fight under Eumenes in Iran was killed in battle. He had with him his
two wives. There was immediately a con petition between them as to which
was to be the sati. The question was brought before the Macedonian and
Greek generals, and they decided in favour of the younger, the elder being
with child. At this the elder woman
1 Nearchus, Frag. 7=Strabo XV, C. 716.
2 Onesicr. Frag. 18=Strabo XV, C. 699. Cf. Diod. XVII, 91.
3 Cf. Chapter X, p. 209.
4 The sentence is somewhat obscure- ει δε μη σωφρουειυ αυαγκασαλευ,
El
To pueuel Etectl, Megasth. Frag. 27=Strabo XV, C. 709.
5 Aristob. Frag. 34= Strabo IV, C. 714.
6 Nearch. Frag. 7=Strabo XV, C. 716. This may refer to the Kshatriya institu-
tion svayamvara or ‘self-choice. ' A princess chose her husband from among the assem.
bled suitors of her on free will or as the result of a contest in the use of war-like arms.
7 Strabo XV, C. 700.
8 Aristob. Frag. 34=Strabo XV, C. 714
1
## p. 373 (#411) ############################################
XVI]
THE KING
373
а
went away lamenting, with the band about her head rent, and tearing her hair as if
tidings of some great disaster has been brought her; and the other departed, exultant at
her victory, to the pyre crowned with fillets by the worden who belonged to her and deck-
ed out splendidly as for a wedding. She was escorted by her kinsfolk who chanted a
song in praise of her virtue. When she came near to the pyre, she took off her adornments
and distributed them to her familiars and friends, leaving a memorial of herself, as it were,
to those who had loved her. Her adornments consisted of a multitude of rings on her
hands set with precious gems of diverse colours, about her head golden stars not a few,
variegated with different sorts of stones, and about her neck a multitude of necklaces,
each a little larger than the one above it. 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? .
