Contingents
from the Greek cities of
Asia Minor served in the same armies with levies from the banks of
the Indus.
Asia Minor served in the same armies with levies from the banks of
the Indus.
Cambridge History of India - v1
This was the satrapy held by Oxyartes,
Alexander's father-in-law. There was finally a fifth district in somewhat
looser connexion with the Empire, Abhisāra in Kashmir, whose ruler, as we
' have seen, had been enabled by Macedonian influence to establish his
authority over the smaller rājas in his neighbourhood.
The European rule was supported by an army of occupation. Its
numbers are not told us, but it included Macedonians and Greek mercen-
aries. Besides these Philip had at his disposal a considerable body of
Thracians. The commander of this corps was a Macedonian destined to
play a conspicuous part in the near future, Eudamus the son of Crateuas,
a native of the region south of the Ostrovo Lake, and brother of one of the
Seven who constituted the king's special body-guarda.
The army of occupation was, no doubt, in large part distributed
through the new cities, which were intended in Alexander's design, not only
to give the European root in the country, but to quicken India through
Greek intelligence and enterprise to new developments of commercial
activity and material splendour. There these little bodies of Europeans
remained, when Alexander was gone, enclosed within their fresh-built walls,
subject, it would seem, to Macedonian satraps but not to the native
princes', urged by the king's command to build docks and quays and
reproduce the life of Greek cities upon the rivers of India.
We know, of course, that Alexander's dream came to nothing. The
European in India faded away. But it is a mistake when we judge the
dream by its actual result. For the experiment was never really tried ; it
was frustrated at its inception by an event which no one could have
foreseen, - Alexander's premature death, without an adequate heir, less than
two years after he quitted India. The realisation of the dream all depended
upon the Empire's holding together for a century or two. Flad Alexander
lived to a normal age, there is no reason why it should not have done so.
As it was, the rapidly constructed fabric, its cement still soft, fell quickly
to pieces. If a military occupation of eight years or so left no permanent
trace upon the north-west of India, we can hardly infer from that the
essential unreceptiveness of India for Hellenism. Had the occupation been
prolonged for a series of generations, the result might have been very
different. The idea, ineradicable from modern journalism, that 'the East'
(whatever that vague term may denote) is by its nature impervious to the
1 Plut. Alex. 60.
2 Arr. VI, 15, 2; 28, 4; Curt. X, 1, 21 ; Diod. XIX, 14,1.
3 In colonias in Indis conditas Pithon Agenoris filius mittitur,' Justin XIII, 4,
21, quoted by Niese (p. 504).
## p. 345 (#383) ############################################
xv]
CONSEQUENCE OF THE INVASION
345
>
rationalistic culture of ancient Greece and modern Europe is not supported
by the facts, either by what happened in ancient Syria, or what happened
in the Muhammadan kingdoms of the Middle Ages, or by what is happen-
ing to-day in India, China and Japan. When the rest of the East, after the
passage of phalanx and legion, 'plunged in thought again,' it was thought
profoundly modified by the Greek schoolmaster who followed in the
soldier's train. In India Hellenic rationalism? would have come into
contact with more elaborate homegrown systems of imaginative thought
or intuition than the nearer East afforded. What would have happened we
cannot say ; but that the contact would have left either unaffected is
highly improbable.
The European invasion of India was an event of too great magnitude
not to have far-reaching consequences. As other overflowings of foreign
conquests have done, it swept away internal barriers which prevented the
unification of the lands concerned. The confederacies of free tribes, which
had maintained tleir proud isolation from other political systems, were left
utterly broken. Smaller principalities were swallowed up in a realm such
as that given by Alexander to the Paurava. This, no doubt, made it a
simpler matter for the Maurya king a few years later to take these count-
ries into his great Indian empire.
The contact of India with the Greek world did not cease with the
disruption of Alexander's empire. What can be traced of later political
connexions between Indian and Hellenistic kings will be exhibited in
another chapter. Any influences which can ultimately be shown to have
reached India from the Greek West, whether through the medium of
Seleucid or Bacterian kings or of the Roman Empire, which took up the
inheritance of Hellenism in Asia, may be regarded as consequences of the
work of Alexander. If they were not consequences of the work which
Alexander did in India, they were, in any case, consequences of the work
which he did when he established Hellenism in Irān, Syria, Asia Minor, and
Egypt. India indeed and the Greek world only touched each other on
their fringes, and there was never a chance for elements of the Hellenistic
tradition to strike root in India, as a part of Hellenism struck root in the
Nearer East and was still vital in the Muhammadan, largely Hellenistic,
culture of the Middle Ages. There are, however, the two unquestionable
cases of transmission, which will be noted in subsequent chapters -
the artistic types conveyed by the school of Gandhāra, and the Greek
astronomy which superseded the primitive native system in the latter part
of the fourth century A. D.
When Alexander died, it was plain that the imperial system in India
was as yet anything but secure. It was not only a case of the people of the
1 A chance light is thrown on Alexander's intentions 'Ichthyophagos vetuit
piscibus vivere,' Plin. N, H. VI. § 95 ; cf. Curt. VIII, 8, 12.
.
## p. 346 (#384) ############################################
346
[CH.
ANCIENT GREEK COINS IN INDIA
land proving restive; the Europeans themselves did not form a harmonious
community. Although thousands of Greeks had fought, as mercenaries or
allies, side by side with the Macedonians in the conquest of Asia and to
the Asiatics, no doubt, appeared indistinguishably as Yavanas, neither
kindred people loved the other. It was specially Greek veterans whom
Alexander had settled in his new eastern cities. In Bacteria and Sogdiāna
we know that they had been settled very much against their will and tried
at the first opportunity to make their way home. Their settlement in the
remote colonies was sometimes a punishment for disaffection”. We may
conclude that the Greeks who had been planted in the Punjab did not find
their surroundings congenial. Within a few months apparently of
Alexander's departure, the Greek mercenaries under Philip rose in mutiny.
Philip received a mortal wound. Instantly his Macedonian guards avenged
his death upon the Greeks. Then orders came from Alexander that till a
satrap was appointed to succeed Philip, the province should be administered
by the rāja of Takshaçilā and Eudamus, the commander of the Thracians.
This provisional arrangement was apparently still in force when the news
reached India in the summer of 323 B. c. that the great king was dead.
Suddenly in Babylon his designs for conquest and organisation had come
to an end.
ATHENIAN AND MACEDONIAN COINS IN INDIA
It is difficult to say how far the currency of India was immediately
affected by Alexander's conquest. In the end, of course, it must have
been profoundly modified by the disappearance of the Persian sigloi,
the issue of which did not long survive the overthrow of Darius III, as
well as by the stimulus which native art undoubtedly received as a result
of the Greek invasion. But the change did not come all at once, and the
task of determining the exact course that events followed is rendered
virtually impossible by the lack of trustworthy evidence. It is, indeed,
often stated that India was one of the many quarters of the ancient
world into which the silver tetradrachms of Athens made their way, and
also that imitations of Athenian coins are found from time to time in
the Punjab. If these statements could be confirmed, they would furnish at
least one definite clue. A demand for local copies would only arise
when the supply of originals ran short, and such a shortage could most
readily be accounted for by connecting it with the paralysis that overtook
the Athenian mint when the city was finally crushed beneath the heel
of Macedon. Indian imitations might, therefore, be assigned with
reasonable confidence to the period of Macedonian supremacy.
1 Arr. V, 27, 5.
2 Justin XII, 5, 8, and 13.
As a
## p. 347 (#385) ############################################
xv]
ATHENIAN AND MACEDONIAN TYPES
347
matter of fact, however, enquiry has failed to bring to light any trustworthy
records of the actual discovery of ‘owls' in India, while the imitations
acquired by the British Museum at Rāwalpindi appear to have been
brought without exception from the northern side of the frontier and
thus to be of Central Asian, rather than of Indian, ori gin. Precisely
the same difficulty besets any attempt to establish an intimate connexion
between India itself and those coins of a Macedonian character which
are usually described as being of Indian provenance ; in all definitely
ascertained cases the ‘find-spot' lies beyond the Hindu Kush. Nevertheless,
as fresh testimony may at any moment emerge, it seems desirable to
enumerate briefly the more important of the issues concerned.
The imitations of Athenian tetradrachms fall into two distinct
groups. The first of these (Pl. I, 7) appromixates fairly closely to the
original model. One variety, however, -represented both in the Bodleian
and in the British Museum (Pl. I, 8) - reads, not A TE, but AIT, which
Head interprets as perhaps referring to the Aigloi, whom Herodotus (111,92)
mentions as dwelling to the north of the Bactrians. The second group
(Pl. I, 9, 10) is characterised by a softer style, by the presence of the
monogram 1, and by the use of a bunch of grapes as a symbol. The
Y'
a
difference between the two is emphasised by the fact that, whereas the
dies from which coins belonging to the first are struck have lain at all
conceivable angles relatively to one another, the types of the coins belong-
ing to the second are adjusted (^ D with a nicety which points to the
employment of a hinge or of some equally effective mechanical contrivance.
Further while the first group appears to consist solely of tetradrachms, the
second includes also didrachms and drachms (P1, 1, 11, 12). These
smaller denominations are remarkable in that they are not minted, like
the tetradrachms, on the Attic standard, which has a maximum weight of
67·5 grains (4:37 grammes) to the drachm, but on a standard in which
the drachm seems to have weighed at the outside no more than 58 grains
(3. 75 grammes). In this and other respects they link themselves naturally
to a set of drachms and diobols which are struck from regularly adjusted
dies ( 1 ), but in which the place of the Athenian owl is taken by
an eagle, looking backwards (Pl. I, 13). On the drachms and diobols just
referred to, the bunch of grapes still figures as a symbol. In one instance
it is accompanied by a caduceus.
Some ground for thinking that at least the smaller Athenian
imitations were not unfamiliar in the north of India is furnished by
a notable series of silver drachms of Attic weight (Pl. I, 17), for the actual
finding of which in the Punjab General Cunningham is able to vouch.
They are struck from regularly adjusted dies ( Î V), and these dies have
been cut by a Greek artist who signs himself M or MN. The obverse
## p. 348 (#386) ############################################
318
[ch.
ANCIENT GREEK COINS IN INDIA
shows the head of a warrior wearing a close-fitting helmet, wreathed
with olive, while the reverse has a cock standing to right with a caduceus
behind. The legend is ERØYTOY. Apart from the circumstance that
a unique trihemiobol in the Berlin Museum has the head, of Athena, instead
of that of a warrior, the coins leave a general impression of having been
designed after an Athenian prototype. This and the absence of a royal
title go to indicate a date not long subsequent to Alexander's expedition, a
conclusion which in its turn fits in well with the current interpretation
of the inscription. Sophytes (Saubhūti) has been by universal consent
identified with the Sopeithes of Arrian (v1, 2, 2) and Strabo (xv, 699). If
this view is right, his coins may be regarded as a very direct memorial of
Greek influence in India.
A few coins with the name of Alexander himself have also been
classed as Indian. Thus a bronze piece, not distinguishable from his
ordinary issue except that it is of squarish shape, has for many years been
tacitly accepted as proof that the conqueror issued money of his own in
India, conforming so far to local custom as to adopt the native fashion of
striking the coins on blanks cut from oblong strips or bars. But the piece,
which is now in Berlin, stands absolutely alone. Beyond the shape, there
is not a particle of evidence to suggest association with the East. And
closer scrutiny points to the shape being no more than an accidental freak,
the result of awkward handling by some workman at a Western mint.
A group of silver tetradrachms deserves more serious consideration. They
have on the obverse a head of Zeus, and on the reverse an eagle on a
thunderbolt, accompanied by the legend AEINAPOY (Pl. I, 14). The
types are Macedonian, and the coins were long believed to be European
and to represent Alexander's earliest mintage. There can, however, be
little doubt that Head is right in claiming them for the East. The significance
of the symbol in the field, which he was the first to recognise as a satrapal
tiara, is unmistakable. Again, the only specimen whose history is known,
came from Rāwalpindi, while a diobol of similar types is said to have been
in the hands of a dealer in Tashkand in 1906. Finally, although the die-
positions are irregular, there are points of contact with the second group
of Athenian imitations described above. To say nothing of the eagle with
reverted head, certain subsidiary symbols - an olive-spray with leaves, and
--
berry, and a vine-branch with grapes - are
to both ; and both
are apparently struck on the same abnormal standard, the average weight
of three of the Macedonian tetradrachms being 2175 grains (14. 09
grammes). But, if the coins in question are Eastern, it does not follow
1 This is the emphatic opinion of Prof. Regling, who has been good enough to
examine the original carefully. His view is fully borne out by a cast which he has
kindly supplie l.
common
## p. 349 (#387) ############################################
Xv]
DOUBLE DARICS
349
>
that they are Indian. On the contrary, the evidence of provenance, slight
though it be, is all in favour of Central Asia. And so, too, is that of the
peculiar weight standard. When this standard next emerges in that quarter
of the world, it is among coins struck by Antiochus I during his viceroyalty
or in other words, after Seleucus Nicator had formally renounced his
pretensions to the Punjab as part of his bargain with Chandragupta.
inference is that the district whose needs tetradrachms of the sort were
meant to meet, lay beyond the confines of India.
None of the pieces we have been discussing bear the King's title.
Both title and name (Bu. G! os Alseavdo pv) have, however, been read
into the monogram Æ, which occurs on an extraordinary silver decadrachm
of Attic weight now in the British Museum (Pl. I, 16). The obverse type
is a horseman, with lance at rest, charging down upon a retreating
elephant, on the back of which are two men turning round to face their
pursuer. On the reverse, beside the monogram, is a tall figure, wearing
cloak and cap, and having a sword by his side, standing to left holding a
thunderbolt and a spear. In spite of certain features which are not alto-
gether satisfactory, the genuineness of the coin has been unhesitatingly
accepted by Head and Gardner, and from such experienced judges it would
be very rash to differ. Gardner, who was the first to publish it (N. C. ,
1887, p. 177), was disposed to give it to Bactria and to connect it with 'some
notable victory won by a Greek King of Bactria over the invading hordes
of Yueh-chi in the second century B. C. ' Head, on the other hand, comes
to the conclusion, ‘after a careful study of the fabric. . . that it belongs to
Alexander's own time, and that it records the historical event of his
invasion of the Punjab in 326 B. C. ' He sees in the standing figure a
representation of Alexander as Zeus, while he puts forward the interesting
suggestion that the lance is being wielded, not by the horseman, but by
the rearmost of the two elephant-riders, and that consequently the scene
depicted is the retreat of Porus and his pursuit by Taxiles, exactly as
recorded by Arrian (v, 18). The coin, he thinks, may have been struck by
Taxiles himself at his capital city Takshaçilā. Unfortunately this hypothesis
is not supported by the 'find-spot' of the decadrachm. It was discovered
at Khullum in Bukhāra.
A similar inconclusive result awaits any endeavour to sift the asser-
tions so frequently advanced as to the circulation, and even the striking,
of double darics in India. These fine gold coins (Pl. I, 6) are, in the strict
sense, Persian. But it is hardly likely that any of them were minted until
after the defeat of the last of the Achaemenids by Alexander. It is certain
that the great majority bear Greek monograms or letters, and that they
were issued at Babylon, and possibly elsewhere, by the satraps of the
## p. 350 (#388) ############################################
350
[сн
ANCIENT GREEK COINS IN INDIA
Macedonian conqueror. That they were popular in the East is beyond
question. Whether they made their way into India is another matter.
The statement that they were struck there has nothing whatever to confirm
it. Nearly all of the specimens in the British Museum were acquired at
Rāwalpindi, but the real source seems to have been the rich find or series
of finds made about 1877 and 1878 in Bukhāra, ‘eight marches beyond the
Oxus, at an old fort on the tongue of land formed by two joining rivers. '
The precise locality appears to have been Kabadian, a town on the
Kapinahan, in the Sogdiāna.
## p. 351 (#389) ############################################
CHAPTER XVI
INDIA IN EARLY GREEK AND LATIN LITERATURE
In this chapter we shift our point of view. We no longer try to trans-
fer ourselves to ancient India and see for ourselves what is going on there :
we ask instead what impression this magnitude, India, made upon another
people, the Hellenes on the shores of the Mediterranean, the progenitors
of our modern European rationalistic civilisation. India is for us now
a remote country, 2800 miles away.
The Greek peoples at the time when the Homeric poems were
composed had probably never heard of India, and knew nothing of
the Aryan cousins separated from them by the great Semitic kingdoms of
Assyria and Babylonia. At most they knew that peoples of dark complexion
dwelt, some towards the setting, and some towards the rising, sun'.
The Homeric Greeks used ivory, and were no doubt aware that it was
the tusk of an animal--the Phoenician traders indeed will have called it, as
the Hebrews did, shen, 'tooth' - but the ivory was more prubably African
ivory brought from Egypt than Indian? .
The Greek word for tin, again, found already in Homer, kassiteros, has
been adduced to show that tin was among the wares which travelled to the
Greek world from India. For the Greek word is obviously the same as the
Sanskrit word kastira. Unfortunately the borrowing seems to have been the
other way. The word kastira found its way comparatively late into India
from Greece
In the sixth century B. C. the Semitic and other kingdoms of Nearer
Asia disappeared before a vast Āryan Empire, the Persi an, which touched
Greece at one extremity and India at the other. Tribute from Ionia and
1 Odyssey I, 22 f.
2 The derivation of the Greek word for ivory, elephas, given in Liddell and Scott
is etymology at its wildest. It is supposed to be the Sanskrit word ibha, meaning
'elephant,' preceded by the Arabic definite article el (! ). Not much can be built upon
the passage, I Kings, X, 22, where the Hebrew author states that the navy of King
Solomon in the tenth century B. C. brought (according to our English version) 'ivory,
apes and peacocks. ' See Cheyne in Encycl. Bibl. , 8. v. 'Ophir' and 'Peacocks. '
3 E. g. by Lassen, II, 632.
4 Daremberg and Saglio, 8. v. 'stannum. ,
>
351
## p. 352 (#390) ############################################
352
(CH.
INDIA IN GREEK AND LATIN LITERATURE
tribute from the frontier hills of India found its way into the same imperial
treasure-houses at Ecbatana or Susa.
Contingents from the Greek cities of
Asia Minor served in the same armies with levies from the banks of
the Indus. From the Persian the name Indoi, 'Indians', now passed
into Greek speech. Allusions to India begin to appear in Greek literature. !
It is not a mere accident that the books produced by a people
who dwelt so far away from India should to-day contribute to our know-
ledge of ancient India. In the Greek republics a new quality was appearing
in the world - or rather the development of a certain factor in the human
mind to an activity and power not seen before-the quality which we may
describe as Rationalism. That is what makes the essential continuity bet-
ween the ancient Mediterranean civilisation and the civilisation which has
developed so wonderfully in Europe during the last five centuries. A charac-
teristic of this rationalism is a lively curiosity as to the facts of the
Universe, an interest which directs itself upon the endless variety of the
world, in contrast with that movement of the spirit, exemplified in the sages
of India and in the piety of medieval Europe, which seeks to flee from the
Many to the One. To be interested in a fact as such, to care so much
about its precise individual character, as to examine and verify and try to
get its real contours, to value hypothesis only so far as it can be substan-
tiated by reference to objective truth - these are the motives behind modern
Western Science; and a disinterested intellectual curiosity in the facts of
the outside world has actually helped to give the West a power to modify
and control that world for practical uses never before possessed by man.
It was the beginning of this interest in the facts of the world, the desire to
see things as they really were, which marked ancient Greek culture, as
expressed in its writings and its art. The universal curiosity of Herodotus
in the fifth century B. C. , the eager eyes of the men of scierce and of action
who accompanied Alexander, the industrious enquiries of Megasthenes-it
is to these that we owe such information about India as the Greek and
Latin books contain.
And yet in order to estimate this information truly one must bear in
mind some limiting considerations. The motive of intellectual curiosity just
described, the critical scientific temper, has never been exhibited in complete
purity. It is all a question of more or less. The Greeks had it more than
any previous people; the modern man of science has it more than the
Greeks ; but not even the modern man of science has so far reduced all the
other elements of human nature to their proper place, as to make his
1 Indian influence has been alleged in the philosophy of Pythagoras who must
have been born in the early years of the sixth century, some fifty years before the
Persian conquest of Babylon. The question is examined at length by Prof. A. B. Keith
in the J. R. A. S. for 1909, pp. 569 f. , Pythagoras and the Doctrine of Transmigration.
Prof. Keith's conclusion is that there is no evidence for the Indian influence.
## p. 353 (#391) ############################################
XVI]
SCYLAX OF CARY ANDA
353
curiosity absolutely disinterested or his criticism impeccably scientific. In
the case of the ancient Greeks, scientific curiosity was constantly being
interfered with and thwarted by another interest which was strong in
them – the love of literary form, the delight in logical expression. One of
the reasons why Natural Science never got farther than it did among the
Greeks is that a book-tradition would so soon establish itself in which the
original observation became stereotyped and passed on from writer to writer
with no fresh verification or addition. From the fifth century onwards a
conventional classicism was always hemming in vitality and making litera-
ture opaque to real life. This is what one has to remember in approaching
the Greek notices of India or their reproduction by Latin writers.
The classical notices of India represent only three groups of original
documents, (1) the works produced by Greeks of Asia Minor from the
latter part of the sixth century till the beginning of the fourth century
B. C. , (2) the works based upon the expedition of Alexander in the fourth
century, and (3) the works of the Greek ambassadors sent in the third
century from Syria and Egypt to the court of Pāțaliputra. The first group-
Scylax, Hecataeus, Herodotus, Ctesias - was for most purposes superseded
by the two later ones, since the expedition of Alexander marked a new
epoch of geographical knowledge. Yet to some extent even in later times
the earlier writers were drawn upon.
The first Greek book about India was perhaps written in the latter
part of the sixth century B. c. by Scylax of Caryanda, a Greek sea-captain,
whom King Darius (522-486 B. c. ) employed to explore the course
of the Indus? . The book seems to have lain before Aristotle two centu-
ries later, who quotes, as coming from it, a statement that among the
Indians the kings were held to be of a superior race to their subjects.
Scylax probably did not tell much of his own experiences in descending the
Indus, or we should have heard of his book in connexion with the voyage
of Alexander. He probably preferred to astonish his countrymen with
travellers’tales-stories of people who used their enormous feet as sunshades
(Skiapodes), of people who wrapped themselves up in their own ears
(Otoliknoi or Enotokoitoi), of people with one eye, and so on, with which
the Greek tradition about India thus started and which it retained to the
ends. These stories, it is now recognised, correspond with statements in
the old Indian books about peoples on the confines of the Indian world,
and Scylax may therefore very well have really heard them from Indians
and accepted them in simple faith.
Herodotus IV, 44.
2 Polit. VII, 14.
Philostratus, Vit. A poll, III, 47 ; Tzetzes, Chil. VII, 630 f,
## p. 354 (#392) ############################################
351
[ch.
INDIA IN GREEK AND LATIN LITERATURE
POS.
Hecataeus of Miletus had probably already given forth his geographic
cal work, the Periodos Ges, before 500 B. C. At the extremity of his field
of vision there was some vague picture, derived from Scylax and the
Persians, of the Indian world. His knowledge stopped on the frontier of
the Persian Empire, the river Indus. Beyond that was just a great desert
of sand. But the name of the people called Gandhāri on the upper Indus
had reached him, and the name of a city in that region, whence Scylax had
started on his expedition down the river : Hecataeus wrote it as Kaspapy-
He mentioned the names of other Indian peoples too of the frontier
hills-Opiai, Kalatiai are the ones preserved in his fragments, and a city
of India which he called Argante. The fabulous Skiapodes also appeared in
Hecataeus as well as in Scylax, though Hecataeus by some confusion
connected them with the African Aethiopians instead of with India'.
We may probably infer from the long geographical passages in the
plays of Aeschylus, that a lovely interest in far-off peoples and strange
lands was general in the Greek world of the fifth century. Where an
ancient Argive king in the Suppliants has to express wonder at the foreign
garb of the Egyptian, maidens, the poet takes the opportunity to give eri-
dence of his anthropological knowledge. The king mentions different races
whose appearance might be like that, and in the course of bis specula-
tions, says –
‘Moreover I hear tell of Indians, of women that go roving on camels,
mounted horse-fashion, riding on padded saddles, them that are citizens
of a land neighbouring the Ethiopians. '
In the Greek books which we possess this is the earliest mention of
Indians by name.
A good deal of what Herodotus wrote about India (middle of the
fifth century) was no doubt drawn from Hecataeus- his idea, for instance,
that the river Indus flowed towards the east, and that beyond that corner
of India which the Persians knew there was nothing towards the east but a
waste of sand. Perhaps what Herodotus says is less remarkable than what
he does not say. For of the monstrous races which Scylax and Hecataeus
before him, which Ctesias and Megasthenes after him, made an essential
part of the Indian world, Herodotus says not a word. Hellenic rationalism
1 See article by Von Radinger in Pauly-Wissowa, s. v. 'Hekataios. '
Ινδας το α'ko'υω νομαδας ιπποβ' αμοσιν
ειναι καμ’ηλοι3 αστραβίζουσας αθ'ονα
παρ' Αιθιοψιυ α' στυγειτουουμ'ευα3
Supplices 284-286,
So the passage reads in Sidgwick's text. This involves a certain amount of conjectural
emendation, since the MS. reading is obviously in part corrupt. One must add that
the emendation proposed by Professor Tucker and approved by W. Headlam, tolas for
'Ivdds (MS. ’Iudous), eliminates the Indians altogether.
a
2
## p. 355 (#393) ############################################
xvi]
HERODOTUS
355
took in him the form of a saving good sense. Certain of the broad facts
about India Herodotus knew correctly - the diversity of its population, for
one. “There be many nations of Indians,' he says, 'diverse one from the
other in tongue, some of them are roving tribes, some of them are settled,
and some dwell in the swamps of the river, and live on raw fish which they
catch from boats of reed (kalamos)? ' Herodotus knew also that the
population of India was a very vast one. 'The Indians are by far the
greatest multitude of all the peoples of men whom we know? ,' he says. Of
course, the Indians who came especially within the sphere of his know-
ledge would be the more or less barbarous tribes near the Persian frontier.
What he tells us therefore of their manners and customs does not apply to
civilised India. Of the peoples beyond the Persian frontier he had heard
of the marsh-dwellers, who dressed in garments made of soine sort of
water-reed? . Other Indians dwelling to the east of these are rovers,
eaters of raw flesh, and they are called 'Padaeans. ' He goes on to say that
members of the tribe were killed on the approach of old age and eaten by
their fellow-tribesmen”. Others of the Indians would not eat the flesh of
any living thing or sow fields or live in houses. “Whenever a man of this
people falls into a sickness, he goes into the desert and lies down there :
and no one pay3 any regard when a man is dead or fallen ill. ' The Indians
who dwelt near the city of Kaspa pyros and the country of the Pactyes
(Pashtus), that is, the hill-tribes about the Kābul valley, were, he says, the
most warlike. It was from these, of course, that the Persian government
drew levies. Among them was the tribe called Kallatiai, who ate the
bodies of their dead relations. He describes the dros3 of the Indians
serving in the army of Xerxes. They wore garments made from trees
1 III, 98.
2 III, 94.
3 These would be people living in the country flooded by the Indus, the Miānwāli
district of Sind, where, as Lassen points out, mats and baskets are still made from
the reeds of the river,
4 Lieutenant Prendergast, quoted in the Asiatic Journal, New Series, V (1831),
p. 161, was assured by a Gond that in his native village cannibalism of this kind was
still practised. This inay have been the isolated survival of a more general canniba.
lism among the Gonds. As Lieutenant Prendergast's statement, now more than 80
years old, is still quoted in evidence for the practice among these tribes, one presumes
that later evidence is hard to find. E. T. Dalton, Ethnology of Bengal (1872), p. 220,
mentions a tribe called Birhors, accused of cannibalism. Some of them had assured
him that they had themselves given up the practice, but they admitted that their
fathers were in the habit of disposing of the dead in the manner indicated viz. by
feasting on the bodies ; but they declared they never shortened life to provide such
feasts, and shrank with horror at the idea of any bodies but those of their own blood
relations being served up to them ! ' The Cyclopaedia of India (Quaritch, 1885), which
quotes the passage from Dalton, under 'Birhor,' omits to note that Dalton himself
says, "I have no faith in the story. '
5 III, 38.
## p. 356 (#394) ############################################
356
[CH.
INDIA IN GREEK AND LATIN LITERATURE
O
(i. e. , cotton) and carried bows of reed and arrows of reed with iron heads? .
Some fought on foot and some in chariots drawn by horses and wild asses? .
The account of the ants who throw up mounds of gold dust, which after-
wards became a permanent element in the classic conception of India, was
given in full by Herodotus”. The facts on which the account was based
seem now fairly clear. Gold-dust was actually brought as tribute by the
tribes of Dardistān in Kashmir and was called by the Indians pipilika, ‘ant
gold. ' When Herodotus says that the ants were the size of dogs and
fiercely attacked any one carrying off the gold, it has been plausibly sug.
gested that the account was derived from people who had been chased by
the formidable dogs kept by the native miners.
As to the peculiar products of India, it is interesting that Herodotus
told the Greek world, perhaps for the first time, of the trees that bore wool,
'surpassing in beauty and in quality the wool of sheep ; and the Indian
wear clothing from these trees. '
The peacock, which was introduced into Greece during the second
half of the fifth century B. C. ; retained in his designations evidences both of
his Indian origin (taws) and of the route-via the Persian empire – by
which he had been conveyed (M781k'os o "puus); and it seems to be more than
a coincidence that the only Buddhist mention of Babylon is in connexion
with a story concerning the importation of this magnificent bird".
Ctesias of Cnidus, a generation later than Herodotus, and exceptional
opportunities for acquiring knowledge about India, since he resided for
seventeen years (from 415 to 397 B. c. ) at the Persian court as physician to
the king Artaxerxes Mnēmõne. As a matter of fact this contribution seems
to have been the most worthless of all those which went to make up the
classical tradition. Ctesias apparently was a deliberate liar. Modern writers
urge that some of his monstrosities – his dog-faced men', his pygmies and
so on--can be paralleled by the statements in old Indian books. This shows
that Ctesias was not above saving himself the trouble of fresh invention
when statements sufficiently sensational were furnished him by others. Any
parallel which can be proved between Ctesias and old-Indian tradition is,
of course, interesting and exhibits the Greek as to that extent a borrower
rather than as creatively mendacious, and, where we cannot prove a paral-
lel, it is always possible that the statements of Ctesias may have been
suggested by travellers' tales; but it is equally possible that he was drawing
1 VII, 65.
2 VII, 86.
3 III, 102 f.
4 The gold-digging ants are mentioned in the Mahābhārata, II, 1860 (Calcutta ed. ).
5 M'Crindle, Ancient India, p. 44, note 3.
6 III, 106.
? See the Bāveru Jätaka (No. 339 of the Jätaka collection) and M. Sylvain Lévi's
article in Annuair de l'Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes (1913—4).
8 Diod, II, 32, 4 ; Plut. Artax. 21.
9 The çvamukhas of Sanskrit literature, e. g. Varāhamihira Brihatsamhita
## p. 357 (#395) ############################################
xvi]
CTESIAS'S DESCRIPTION
357
-
.
upon nothing but his imagination. One of his most monstrous animals,
the creature as large as a lion, with a human face, which shoots stings out
of the end of its tail, called in the Indian language, says Ctesias, martikhora
- as a matter of fact the word is Persian-Ctesias affirms that he had him-
self seen, as one was sent as a present to the Persian king ! This gives the
measure of the man. No doubt, his wildest statements about the fauna and
flora of India can, if sufficiently trimmed, be made to bear a sort of resemb-
lance to something real', but it seems ingenuity wasted to attempt to esta-
blish these connexions. The influence of Ctesias upon the Greek conception
of India was probably great. It confirmed for ever in the West the idea that
India was a land where nothing was impossible - a land of nightmare mons-
ters and strange poisons, of gold and gemsa.
Where Ctesias described the people of India as 'very just' (Skalotatot),
we may see the reflexion of a common Greek belief that a people of ideal
goodness lived somewhere at the extremities of the earth, or in this case we
may perhaps gather the impression made upon strangers by a social system
so firmly governed in its complex structure and the working of its parts by
traditional law.
It was generally recognised in the Greek world of the fourth century
that a great race called Indian, a substantial part of mankind, lived to-
wards the sunrising. When European science, in the person of those philo-
sophers who accompanied Alexander, first entered upon the Indian world,
it had already made one substantial discovery as to the world in which
man is placed. It was generally recognised in the Greek philosophic schools
that the earth was a globe. It was already a matter of interest to deter-
mine the size of the globe and to know the measure of the lands and seas
which covered it. And the men with Alexander, who found themselves in
the plains of India stretching to even vaster distances beyond, or who,
from the mouth of the Indus saw the coast fading to the eastward out of
sight, were anxious to know what dimensions and shape they ought actu-
ally to give to this India upon their maps. They had not traversed more
than a corner of it, and, had they gone to its extremities, they possessed
none of our means of accurate surveying. It was only by report of the people
of the land, based ultimately no doubt upon the rough practical reckonings
of merchants and seamen, that they could form any conception of it. This
being so, the conjectures which they accorded for the instruction of the
West, have interest for us to-day, only as showing how near the truth under
such circumstances men could come.
1 For what may be done in this direction, seo Prof. H. H. Wilson's Notes on the
Indica of Ctesias (Oxford, 1836).
2 Cf. Plin. N. H. vi, § 58 f.
3 Ephorus, frag. 38 (Frug. Hist. Graec. I, p. 243).
## p. 358 (#396) ############################################
358
[CH.
INDIA IN GREEK AND LATIN LITERATURE
Of the companions of Alexander, three men chiefly enriched the
Greek conception of India by their writings. One was Nearchus, a Cretan
by extraction, whose home was in Macedonia, where he had been a friend
in youth of Alexander's. This was the man whom Alexander put in com-
mand of the fleet which explored the coast between the Indus and the
Persian gulf, and Nearchus later on gave his own account of this expedition
to the world. His book also contained a good deal of incidental information
about India. He appears from the fragments quoted to have been an
honest reporter, who took pains to verify the stories which were told him'.
Another was Onesicritus from the Greek island of Aegina, who regarded
the Cynic philosopher Diogenes as his master, a man with some practical
knowledge of sea-craft, since Alexander made him pilot of the royal vessel
down the Indus. Onesicritus took part in the expedition of Nearchus,
and he too afterwards wrote a book about it and about India. Strabo
considered him untruthful, and he has generally a bad reputation with
modern scholars, though this unfavourable judgment has been seriously
challenged? The third was Aristobulus, a Greek probably from the
Chalcidic peninsula, who not only accompanied Alexander through India,
but was entrusted with certain commissions, perhaps not military ones.
Aristobulus wrote his book long afterwards, in extreme old age. His
interest was predominantly geographical, not military ; yet his book seems
to have been adversely affected by the rhetorical fashion and perhaps by
the Alexander myth which had already begun to take popular shape at the
time when he wrote".
Alexander's father-in-law. There was finally a fifth district in somewhat
looser connexion with the Empire, Abhisāra in Kashmir, whose ruler, as we
' have seen, had been enabled by Macedonian influence to establish his
authority over the smaller rājas in his neighbourhood.
The European rule was supported by an army of occupation. Its
numbers are not told us, but it included Macedonians and Greek mercen-
aries. Besides these Philip had at his disposal a considerable body of
Thracians. The commander of this corps was a Macedonian destined to
play a conspicuous part in the near future, Eudamus the son of Crateuas,
a native of the region south of the Ostrovo Lake, and brother of one of the
Seven who constituted the king's special body-guarda.
The army of occupation was, no doubt, in large part distributed
through the new cities, which were intended in Alexander's design, not only
to give the European root in the country, but to quicken India through
Greek intelligence and enterprise to new developments of commercial
activity and material splendour. There these little bodies of Europeans
remained, when Alexander was gone, enclosed within their fresh-built walls,
subject, it would seem, to Macedonian satraps but not to the native
princes', urged by the king's command to build docks and quays and
reproduce the life of Greek cities upon the rivers of India.
We know, of course, that Alexander's dream came to nothing. The
European in India faded away. But it is a mistake when we judge the
dream by its actual result. For the experiment was never really tried ; it
was frustrated at its inception by an event which no one could have
foreseen, - Alexander's premature death, without an adequate heir, less than
two years after he quitted India. The realisation of the dream all depended
upon the Empire's holding together for a century or two. Flad Alexander
lived to a normal age, there is no reason why it should not have done so.
As it was, the rapidly constructed fabric, its cement still soft, fell quickly
to pieces. If a military occupation of eight years or so left no permanent
trace upon the north-west of India, we can hardly infer from that the
essential unreceptiveness of India for Hellenism. Had the occupation been
prolonged for a series of generations, the result might have been very
different. The idea, ineradicable from modern journalism, that 'the East'
(whatever that vague term may denote) is by its nature impervious to the
1 Plut. Alex. 60.
2 Arr. VI, 15, 2; 28, 4; Curt. X, 1, 21 ; Diod. XIX, 14,1.
3 In colonias in Indis conditas Pithon Agenoris filius mittitur,' Justin XIII, 4,
21, quoted by Niese (p. 504).
## p. 345 (#383) ############################################
xv]
CONSEQUENCE OF THE INVASION
345
>
rationalistic culture of ancient Greece and modern Europe is not supported
by the facts, either by what happened in ancient Syria, or what happened
in the Muhammadan kingdoms of the Middle Ages, or by what is happen-
ing to-day in India, China and Japan. When the rest of the East, after the
passage of phalanx and legion, 'plunged in thought again,' it was thought
profoundly modified by the Greek schoolmaster who followed in the
soldier's train. In India Hellenic rationalism? would have come into
contact with more elaborate homegrown systems of imaginative thought
or intuition than the nearer East afforded. What would have happened we
cannot say ; but that the contact would have left either unaffected is
highly improbable.
The European invasion of India was an event of too great magnitude
not to have far-reaching consequences. As other overflowings of foreign
conquests have done, it swept away internal barriers which prevented the
unification of the lands concerned. The confederacies of free tribes, which
had maintained tleir proud isolation from other political systems, were left
utterly broken. Smaller principalities were swallowed up in a realm such
as that given by Alexander to the Paurava. This, no doubt, made it a
simpler matter for the Maurya king a few years later to take these count-
ries into his great Indian empire.
The contact of India with the Greek world did not cease with the
disruption of Alexander's empire. What can be traced of later political
connexions between Indian and Hellenistic kings will be exhibited in
another chapter. Any influences which can ultimately be shown to have
reached India from the Greek West, whether through the medium of
Seleucid or Bacterian kings or of the Roman Empire, which took up the
inheritance of Hellenism in Asia, may be regarded as consequences of the
work of Alexander. If they were not consequences of the work which
Alexander did in India, they were, in any case, consequences of the work
which he did when he established Hellenism in Irān, Syria, Asia Minor, and
Egypt. India indeed and the Greek world only touched each other on
their fringes, and there was never a chance for elements of the Hellenistic
tradition to strike root in India, as a part of Hellenism struck root in the
Nearer East and was still vital in the Muhammadan, largely Hellenistic,
culture of the Middle Ages. There are, however, the two unquestionable
cases of transmission, which will be noted in subsequent chapters -
the artistic types conveyed by the school of Gandhāra, and the Greek
astronomy which superseded the primitive native system in the latter part
of the fourth century A. D.
When Alexander died, it was plain that the imperial system in India
was as yet anything but secure. It was not only a case of the people of the
1 A chance light is thrown on Alexander's intentions 'Ichthyophagos vetuit
piscibus vivere,' Plin. N, H. VI. § 95 ; cf. Curt. VIII, 8, 12.
.
## p. 346 (#384) ############################################
346
[CH.
ANCIENT GREEK COINS IN INDIA
land proving restive; the Europeans themselves did not form a harmonious
community. Although thousands of Greeks had fought, as mercenaries or
allies, side by side with the Macedonians in the conquest of Asia and to
the Asiatics, no doubt, appeared indistinguishably as Yavanas, neither
kindred people loved the other. It was specially Greek veterans whom
Alexander had settled in his new eastern cities. In Bacteria and Sogdiāna
we know that they had been settled very much against their will and tried
at the first opportunity to make their way home. Their settlement in the
remote colonies was sometimes a punishment for disaffection”. We may
conclude that the Greeks who had been planted in the Punjab did not find
their surroundings congenial. Within a few months apparently of
Alexander's departure, the Greek mercenaries under Philip rose in mutiny.
Philip received a mortal wound. Instantly his Macedonian guards avenged
his death upon the Greeks. Then orders came from Alexander that till a
satrap was appointed to succeed Philip, the province should be administered
by the rāja of Takshaçilā and Eudamus, the commander of the Thracians.
This provisional arrangement was apparently still in force when the news
reached India in the summer of 323 B. c. that the great king was dead.
Suddenly in Babylon his designs for conquest and organisation had come
to an end.
ATHENIAN AND MACEDONIAN COINS IN INDIA
It is difficult to say how far the currency of India was immediately
affected by Alexander's conquest. In the end, of course, it must have
been profoundly modified by the disappearance of the Persian sigloi,
the issue of which did not long survive the overthrow of Darius III, as
well as by the stimulus which native art undoubtedly received as a result
of the Greek invasion. But the change did not come all at once, and the
task of determining the exact course that events followed is rendered
virtually impossible by the lack of trustworthy evidence. It is, indeed,
often stated that India was one of the many quarters of the ancient
world into which the silver tetradrachms of Athens made their way, and
also that imitations of Athenian coins are found from time to time in
the Punjab. If these statements could be confirmed, they would furnish at
least one definite clue. A demand for local copies would only arise
when the supply of originals ran short, and such a shortage could most
readily be accounted for by connecting it with the paralysis that overtook
the Athenian mint when the city was finally crushed beneath the heel
of Macedon. Indian imitations might, therefore, be assigned with
reasonable confidence to the period of Macedonian supremacy.
1 Arr. V, 27, 5.
2 Justin XII, 5, 8, and 13.
As a
## p. 347 (#385) ############################################
xv]
ATHENIAN AND MACEDONIAN TYPES
347
matter of fact, however, enquiry has failed to bring to light any trustworthy
records of the actual discovery of ‘owls' in India, while the imitations
acquired by the British Museum at Rāwalpindi appear to have been
brought without exception from the northern side of the frontier and
thus to be of Central Asian, rather than of Indian, ori gin. Precisely
the same difficulty besets any attempt to establish an intimate connexion
between India itself and those coins of a Macedonian character which
are usually described as being of Indian provenance ; in all definitely
ascertained cases the ‘find-spot' lies beyond the Hindu Kush. Nevertheless,
as fresh testimony may at any moment emerge, it seems desirable to
enumerate briefly the more important of the issues concerned.
The imitations of Athenian tetradrachms fall into two distinct
groups. The first of these (Pl. I, 7) appromixates fairly closely to the
original model. One variety, however, -represented both in the Bodleian
and in the British Museum (Pl. I, 8) - reads, not A TE, but AIT, which
Head interprets as perhaps referring to the Aigloi, whom Herodotus (111,92)
mentions as dwelling to the north of the Bactrians. The second group
(Pl. I, 9, 10) is characterised by a softer style, by the presence of the
monogram 1, and by the use of a bunch of grapes as a symbol. The
Y'
a
difference between the two is emphasised by the fact that, whereas the
dies from which coins belonging to the first are struck have lain at all
conceivable angles relatively to one another, the types of the coins belong-
ing to the second are adjusted (^ D with a nicety which points to the
employment of a hinge or of some equally effective mechanical contrivance.
Further while the first group appears to consist solely of tetradrachms, the
second includes also didrachms and drachms (P1, 1, 11, 12). These
smaller denominations are remarkable in that they are not minted, like
the tetradrachms, on the Attic standard, which has a maximum weight of
67·5 grains (4:37 grammes) to the drachm, but on a standard in which
the drachm seems to have weighed at the outside no more than 58 grains
(3. 75 grammes). In this and other respects they link themselves naturally
to a set of drachms and diobols which are struck from regularly adjusted
dies ( 1 ), but in which the place of the Athenian owl is taken by
an eagle, looking backwards (Pl. I, 13). On the drachms and diobols just
referred to, the bunch of grapes still figures as a symbol. In one instance
it is accompanied by a caduceus.
Some ground for thinking that at least the smaller Athenian
imitations were not unfamiliar in the north of India is furnished by
a notable series of silver drachms of Attic weight (Pl. I, 17), for the actual
finding of which in the Punjab General Cunningham is able to vouch.
They are struck from regularly adjusted dies ( Î V), and these dies have
been cut by a Greek artist who signs himself M or MN. The obverse
## p. 348 (#386) ############################################
318
[ch.
ANCIENT GREEK COINS IN INDIA
shows the head of a warrior wearing a close-fitting helmet, wreathed
with olive, while the reverse has a cock standing to right with a caduceus
behind. The legend is ERØYTOY. Apart from the circumstance that
a unique trihemiobol in the Berlin Museum has the head, of Athena, instead
of that of a warrior, the coins leave a general impression of having been
designed after an Athenian prototype. This and the absence of a royal
title go to indicate a date not long subsequent to Alexander's expedition, a
conclusion which in its turn fits in well with the current interpretation
of the inscription. Sophytes (Saubhūti) has been by universal consent
identified with the Sopeithes of Arrian (v1, 2, 2) and Strabo (xv, 699). If
this view is right, his coins may be regarded as a very direct memorial of
Greek influence in India.
A few coins with the name of Alexander himself have also been
classed as Indian. Thus a bronze piece, not distinguishable from his
ordinary issue except that it is of squarish shape, has for many years been
tacitly accepted as proof that the conqueror issued money of his own in
India, conforming so far to local custom as to adopt the native fashion of
striking the coins on blanks cut from oblong strips or bars. But the piece,
which is now in Berlin, stands absolutely alone. Beyond the shape, there
is not a particle of evidence to suggest association with the East. And
closer scrutiny points to the shape being no more than an accidental freak,
the result of awkward handling by some workman at a Western mint.
A group of silver tetradrachms deserves more serious consideration. They
have on the obverse a head of Zeus, and on the reverse an eagle on a
thunderbolt, accompanied by the legend AEINAPOY (Pl. I, 14). The
types are Macedonian, and the coins were long believed to be European
and to represent Alexander's earliest mintage. There can, however, be
little doubt that Head is right in claiming them for the East. The significance
of the symbol in the field, which he was the first to recognise as a satrapal
tiara, is unmistakable. Again, the only specimen whose history is known,
came from Rāwalpindi, while a diobol of similar types is said to have been
in the hands of a dealer in Tashkand in 1906. Finally, although the die-
positions are irregular, there are points of contact with the second group
of Athenian imitations described above. To say nothing of the eagle with
reverted head, certain subsidiary symbols - an olive-spray with leaves, and
--
berry, and a vine-branch with grapes - are
to both ; and both
are apparently struck on the same abnormal standard, the average weight
of three of the Macedonian tetradrachms being 2175 grains (14. 09
grammes). But, if the coins in question are Eastern, it does not follow
1 This is the emphatic opinion of Prof. Regling, who has been good enough to
examine the original carefully. His view is fully borne out by a cast which he has
kindly supplie l.
common
## p. 349 (#387) ############################################
Xv]
DOUBLE DARICS
349
>
that they are Indian. On the contrary, the evidence of provenance, slight
though it be, is all in favour of Central Asia. And so, too, is that of the
peculiar weight standard. When this standard next emerges in that quarter
of the world, it is among coins struck by Antiochus I during his viceroyalty
or in other words, after Seleucus Nicator had formally renounced his
pretensions to the Punjab as part of his bargain with Chandragupta.
inference is that the district whose needs tetradrachms of the sort were
meant to meet, lay beyond the confines of India.
None of the pieces we have been discussing bear the King's title.
Both title and name (Bu. G! os Alseavdo pv) have, however, been read
into the monogram Æ, which occurs on an extraordinary silver decadrachm
of Attic weight now in the British Museum (Pl. I, 16). The obverse type
is a horseman, with lance at rest, charging down upon a retreating
elephant, on the back of which are two men turning round to face their
pursuer. On the reverse, beside the monogram, is a tall figure, wearing
cloak and cap, and having a sword by his side, standing to left holding a
thunderbolt and a spear. In spite of certain features which are not alto-
gether satisfactory, the genuineness of the coin has been unhesitatingly
accepted by Head and Gardner, and from such experienced judges it would
be very rash to differ. Gardner, who was the first to publish it (N. C. ,
1887, p. 177), was disposed to give it to Bactria and to connect it with 'some
notable victory won by a Greek King of Bactria over the invading hordes
of Yueh-chi in the second century B. C. ' Head, on the other hand, comes
to the conclusion, ‘after a careful study of the fabric. . . that it belongs to
Alexander's own time, and that it records the historical event of his
invasion of the Punjab in 326 B. C. ' He sees in the standing figure a
representation of Alexander as Zeus, while he puts forward the interesting
suggestion that the lance is being wielded, not by the horseman, but by
the rearmost of the two elephant-riders, and that consequently the scene
depicted is the retreat of Porus and his pursuit by Taxiles, exactly as
recorded by Arrian (v, 18). The coin, he thinks, may have been struck by
Taxiles himself at his capital city Takshaçilā. Unfortunately this hypothesis
is not supported by the 'find-spot' of the decadrachm. It was discovered
at Khullum in Bukhāra.
A similar inconclusive result awaits any endeavour to sift the asser-
tions so frequently advanced as to the circulation, and even the striking,
of double darics in India. These fine gold coins (Pl. I, 6) are, in the strict
sense, Persian. But it is hardly likely that any of them were minted until
after the defeat of the last of the Achaemenids by Alexander. It is certain
that the great majority bear Greek monograms or letters, and that they
were issued at Babylon, and possibly elsewhere, by the satraps of the
## p. 350 (#388) ############################################
350
[сн
ANCIENT GREEK COINS IN INDIA
Macedonian conqueror. That they were popular in the East is beyond
question. Whether they made their way into India is another matter.
The statement that they were struck there has nothing whatever to confirm
it. Nearly all of the specimens in the British Museum were acquired at
Rāwalpindi, but the real source seems to have been the rich find or series
of finds made about 1877 and 1878 in Bukhāra, ‘eight marches beyond the
Oxus, at an old fort on the tongue of land formed by two joining rivers. '
The precise locality appears to have been Kabadian, a town on the
Kapinahan, in the Sogdiāna.
## p. 351 (#389) ############################################
CHAPTER XVI
INDIA IN EARLY GREEK AND LATIN LITERATURE
In this chapter we shift our point of view. We no longer try to trans-
fer ourselves to ancient India and see for ourselves what is going on there :
we ask instead what impression this magnitude, India, made upon another
people, the Hellenes on the shores of the Mediterranean, the progenitors
of our modern European rationalistic civilisation. India is for us now
a remote country, 2800 miles away.
The Greek peoples at the time when the Homeric poems were
composed had probably never heard of India, and knew nothing of
the Aryan cousins separated from them by the great Semitic kingdoms of
Assyria and Babylonia. At most they knew that peoples of dark complexion
dwelt, some towards the setting, and some towards the rising, sun'.
The Homeric Greeks used ivory, and were no doubt aware that it was
the tusk of an animal--the Phoenician traders indeed will have called it, as
the Hebrews did, shen, 'tooth' - but the ivory was more prubably African
ivory brought from Egypt than Indian? .
The Greek word for tin, again, found already in Homer, kassiteros, has
been adduced to show that tin was among the wares which travelled to the
Greek world from India. For the Greek word is obviously the same as the
Sanskrit word kastira. Unfortunately the borrowing seems to have been the
other way. The word kastira found its way comparatively late into India
from Greece
In the sixth century B. C. the Semitic and other kingdoms of Nearer
Asia disappeared before a vast Āryan Empire, the Persi an, which touched
Greece at one extremity and India at the other. Tribute from Ionia and
1 Odyssey I, 22 f.
2 The derivation of the Greek word for ivory, elephas, given in Liddell and Scott
is etymology at its wildest. It is supposed to be the Sanskrit word ibha, meaning
'elephant,' preceded by the Arabic definite article el (! ). Not much can be built upon
the passage, I Kings, X, 22, where the Hebrew author states that the navy of King
Solomon in the tenth century B. C. brought (according to our English version) 'ivory,
apes and peacocks. ' See Cheyne in Encycl. Bibl. , 8. v. 'Ophir' and 'Peacocks. '
3 E. g. by Lassen, II, 632.
4 Daremberg and Saglio, 8. v. 'stannum. ,
>
351
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(CH.
INDIA IN GREEK AND LATIN LITERATURE
tribute from the frontier hills of India found its way into the same imperial
treasure-houses at Ecbatana or Susa.
Contingents from the Greek cities of
Asia Minor served in the same armies with levies from the banks of
the Indus. From the Persian the name Indoi, 'Indians', now passed
into Greek speech. Allusions to India begin to appear in Greek literature. !
It is not a mere accident that the books produced by a people
who dwelt so far away from India should to-day contribute to our know-
ledge of ancient India. In the Greek republics a new quality was appearing
in the world - or rather the development of a certain factor in the human
mind to an activity and power not seen before-the quality which we may
describe as Rationalism. That is what makes the essential continuity bet-
ween the ancient Mediterranean civilisation and the civilisation which has
developed so wonderfully in Europe during the last five centuries. A charac-
teristic of this rationalism is a lively curiosity as to the facts of the
Universe, an interest which directs itself upon the endless variety of the
world, in contrast with that movement of the spirit, exemplified in the sages
of India and in the piety of medieval Europe, which seeks to flee from the
Many to the One. To be interested in a fact as such, to care so much
about its precise individual character, as to examine and verify and try to
get its real contours, to value hypothesis only so far as it can be substan-
tiated by reference to objective truth - these are the motives behind modern
Western Science; and a disinterested intellectual curiosity in the facts of
the outside world has actually helped to give the West a power to modify
and control that world for practical uses never before possessed by man.
It was the beginning of this interest in the facts of the world, the desire to
see things as they really were, which marked ancient Greek culture, as
expressed in its writings and its art. The universal curiosity of Herodotus
in the fifth century B. C. , the eager eyes of the men of scierce and of action
who accompanied Alexander, the industrious enquiries of Megasthenes-it
is to these that we owe such information about India as the Greek and
Latin books contain.
And yet in order to estimate this information truly one must bear in
mind some limiting considerations. The motive of intellectual curiosity just
described, the critical scientific temper, has never been exhibited in complete
purity. It is all a question of more or less. The Greeks had it more than
any previous people; the modern man of science has it more than the
Greeks ; but not even the modern man of science has so far reduced all the
other elements of human nature to their proper place, as to make his
1 Indian influence has been alleged in the philosophy of Pythagoras who must
have been born in the early years of the sixth century, some fifty years before the
Persian conquest of Babylon. The question is examined at length by Prof. A. B. Keith
in the J. R. A. S. for 1909, pp. 569 f. , Pythagoras and the Doctrine of Transmigration.
Prof. Keith's conclusion is that there is no evidence for the Indian influence.
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SCYLAX OF CARY ANDA
353
curiosity absolutely disinterested or his criticism impeccably scientific. In
the case of the ancient Greeks, scientific curiosity was constantly being
interfered with and thwarted by another interest which was strong in
them – the love of literary form, the delight in logical expression. One of
the reasons why Natural Science never got farther than it did among the
Greeks is that a book-tradition would so soon establish itself in which the
original observation became stereotyped and passed on from writer to writer
with no fresh verification or addition. From the fifth century onwards a
conventional classicism was always hemming in vitality and making litera-
ture opaque to real life. This is what one has to remember in approaching
the Greek notices of India or their reproduction by Latin writers.
The classical notices of India represent only three groups of original
documents, (1) the works produced by Greeks of Asia Minor from the
latter part of the sixth century till the beginning of the fourth century
B. C. , (2) the works based upon the expedition of Alexander in the fourth
century, and (3) the works of the Greek ambassadors sent in the third
century from Syria and Egypt to the court of Pāțaliputra. The first group-
Scylax, Hecataeus, Herodotus, Ctesias - was for most purposes superseded
by the two later ones, since the expedition of Alexander marked a new
epoch of geographical knowledge. Yet to some extent even in later times
the earlier writers were drawn upon.
The first Greek book about India was perhaps written in the latter
part of the sixth century B. c. by Scylax of Caryanda, a Greek sea-captain,
whom King Darius (522-486 B. c. ) employed to explore the course
of the Indus? . The book seems to have lain before Aristotle two centu-
ries later, who quotes, as coming from it, a statement that among the
Indians the kings were held to be of a superior race to their subjects.
Scylax probably did not tell much of his own experiences in descending the
Indus, or we should have heard of his book in connexion with the voyage
of Alexander. He probably preferred to astonish his countrymen with
travellers’tales-stories of people who used their enormous feet as sunshades
(Skiapodes), of people who wrapped themselves up in their own ears
(Otoliknoi or Enotokoitoi), of people with one eye, and so on, with which
the Greek tradition about India thus started and which it retained to the
ends. These stories, it is now recognised, correspond with statements in
the old Indian books about peoples on the confines of the Indian world,
and Scylax may therefore very well have really heard them from Indians
and accepted them in simple faith.
Herodotus IV, 44.
2 Polit. VII, 14.
Philostratus, Vit. A poll, III, 47 ; Tzetzes, Chil. VII, 630 f,
## p. 354 (#392) ############################################
351
[ch.
INDIA IN GREEK AND LATIN LITERATURE
POS.
Hecataeus of Miletus had probably already given forth his geographic
cal work, the Periodos Ges, before 500 B. C. At the extremity of his field
of vision there was some vague picture, derived from Scylax and the
Persians, of the Indian world. His knowledge stopped on the frontier of
the Persian Empire, the river Indus. Beyond that was just a great desert
of sand. But the name of the people called Gandhāri on the upper Indus
had reached him, and the name of a city in that region, whence Scylax had
started on his expedition down the river : Hecataeus wrote it as Kaspapy-
He mentioned the names of other Indian peoples too of the frontier
hills-Opiai, Kalatiai are the ones preserved in his fragments, and a city
of India which he called Argante. The fabulous Skiapodes also appeared in
Hecataeus as well as in Scylax, though Hecataeus by some confusion
connected them with the African Aethiopians instead of with India'.
We may probably infer from the long geographical passages in the
plays of Aeschylus, that a lovely interest in far-off peoples and strange
lands was general in the Greek world of the fifth century. Where an
ancient Argive king in the Suppliants has to express wonder at the foreign
garb of the Egyptian, maidens, the poet takes the opportunity to give eri-
dence of his anthropological knowledge. The king mentions different races
whose appearance might be like that, and in the course of bis specula-
tions, says –
‘Moreover I hear tell of Indians, of women that go roving on camels,
mounted horse-fashion, riding on padded saddles, them that are citizens
of a land neighbouring the Ethiopians. '
In the Greek books which we possess this is the earliest mention of
Indians by name.
A good deal of what Herodotus wrote about India (middle of the
fifth century) was no doubt drawn from Hecataeus- his idea, for instance,
that the river Indus flowed towards the east, and that beyond that corner
of India which the Persians knew there was nothing towards the east but a
waste of sand. Perhaps what Herodotus says is less remarkable than what
he does not say. For of the monstrous races which Scylax and Hecataeus
before him, which Ctesias and Megasthenes after him, made an essential
part of the Indian world, Herodotus says not a word. Hellenic rationalism
1 See article by Von Radinger in Pauly-Wissowa, s. v. 'Hekataios. '
Ινδας το α'ko'υω νομαδας ιπποβ' αμοσιν
ειναι καμ’ηλοι3 αστραβίζουσας αθ'ονα
παρ' Αιθιοψιυ α' στυγειτουουμ'ευα3
Supplices 284-286,
So the passage reads in Sidgwick's text. This involves a certain amount of conjectural
emendation, since the MS. reading is obviously in part corrupt. One must add that
the emendation proposed by Professor Tucker and approved by W. Headlam, tolas for
'Ivdds (MS. ’Iudous), eliminates the Indians altogether.
a
2
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xvi]
HERODOTUS
355
took in him the form of a saving good sense. Certain of the broad facts
about India Herodotus knew correctly - the diversity of its population, for
one. “There be many nations of Indians,' he says, 'diverse one from the
other in tongue, some of them are roving tribes, some of them are settled,
and some dwell in the swamps of the river, and live on raw fish which they
catch from boats of reed (kalamos)? ' Herodotus knew also that the
population of India was a very vast one. 'The Indians are by far the
greatest multitude of all the peoples of men whom we know? ,' he says. Of
course, the Indians who came especially within the sphere of his know-
ledge would be the more or less barbarous tribes near the Persian frontier.
What he tells us therefore of their manners and customs does not apply to
civilised India. Of the peoples beyond the Persian frontier he had heard
of the marsh-dwellers, who dressed in garments made of soine sort of
water-reed? . Other Indians dwelling to the east of these are rovers,
eaters of raw flesh, and they are called 'Padaeans. ' He goes on to say that
members of the tribe were killed on the approach of old age and eaten by
their fellow-tribesmen”. Others of the Indians would not eat the flesh of
any living thing or sow fields or live in houses. “Whenever a man of this
people falls into a sickness, he goes into the desert and lies down there :
and no one pay3 any regard when a man is dead or fallen ill. ' The Indians
who dwelt near the city of Kaspa pyros and the country of the Pactyes
(Pashtus), that is, the hill-tribes about the Kābul valley, were, he says, the
most warlike. It was from these, of course, that the Persian government
drew levies. Among them was the tribe called Kallatiai, who ate the
bodies of their dead relations. He describes the dros3 of the Indians
serving in the army of Xerxes. They wore garments made from trees
1 III, 98.
2 III, 94.
3 These would be people living in the country flooded by the Indus, the Miānwāli
district of Sind, where, as Lassen points out, mats and baskets are still made from
the reeds of the river,
4 Lieutenant Prendergast, quoted in the Asiatic Journal, New Series, V (1831),
p. 161, was assured by a Gond that in his native village cannibalism of this kind was
still practised. This inay have been the isolated survival of a more general canniba.
lism among the Gonds. As Lieutenant Prendergast's statement, now more than 80
years old, is still quoted in evidence for the practice among these tribes, one presumes
that later evidence is hard to find. E. T. Dalton, Ethnology of Bengal (1872), p. 220,
mentions a tribe called Birhors, accused of cannibalism. Some of them had assured
him that they had themselves given up the practice, but they admitted that their
fathers were in the habit of disposing of the dead in the manner indicated viz. by
feasting on the bodies ; but they declared they never shortened life to provide such
feasts, and shrank with horror at the idea of any bodies but those of their own blood
relations being served up to them ! ' The Cyclopaedia of India (Quaritch, 1885), which
quotes the passage from Dalton, under 'Birhor,' omits to note that Dalton himself
says, "I have no faith in the story. '
5 III, 38.
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356
[CH.
INDIA IN GREEK AND LATIN LITERATURE
O
(i. e. , cotton) and carried bows of reed and arrows of reed with iron heads? .
Some fought on foot and some in chariots drawn by horses and wild asses? .
The account of the ants who throw up mounds of gold dust, which after-
wards became a permanent element in the classic conception of India, was
given in full by Herodotus”. The facts on which the account was based
seem now fairly clear. Gold-dust was actually brought as tribute by the
tribes of Dardistān in Kashmir and was called by the Indians pipilika, ‘ant
gold. ' When Herodotus says that the ants were the size of dogs and
fiercely attacked any one carrying off the gold, it has been plausibly sug.
gested that the account was derived from people who had been chased by
the formidable dogs kept by the native miners.
As to the peculiar products of India, it is interesting that Herodotus
told the Greek world, perhaps for the first time, of the trees that bore wool,
'surpassing in beauty and in quality the wool of sheep ; and the Indian
wear clothing from these trees. '
The peacock, which was introduced into Greece during the second
half of the fifth century B. C. ; retained in his designations evidences both of
his Indian origin (taws) and of the route-via the Persian empire – by
which he had been conveyed (M781k'os o "puus); and it seems to be more than
a coincidence that the only Buddhist mention of Babylon is in connexion
with a story concerning the importation of this magnificent bird".
Ctesias of Cnidus, a generation later than Herodotus, and exceptional
opportunities for acquiring knowledge about India, since he resided for
seventeen years (from 415 to 397 B. c. ) at the Persian court as physician to
the king Artaxerxes Mnēmõne. As a matter of fact this contribution seems
to have been the most worthless of all those which went to make up the
classical tradition. Ctesias apparently was a deliberate liar. Modern writers
urge that some of his monstrosities – his dog-faced men', his pygmies and
so on--can be paralleled by the statements in old Indian books. This shows
that Ctesias was not above saving himself the trouble of fresh invention
when statements sufficiently sensational were furnished him by others. Any
parallel which can be proved between Ctesias and old-Indian tradition is,
of course, interesting and exhibits the Greek as to that extent a borrower
rather than as creatively mendacious, and, where we cannot prove a paral-
lel, it is always possible that the statements of Ctesias may have been
suggested by travellers' tales; but it is equally possible that he was drawing
1 VII, 65.
2 VII, 86.
3 III, 102 f.
4 The gold-digging ants are mentioned in the Mahābhārata, II, 1860 (Calcutta ed. ).
5 M'Crindle, Ancient India, p. 44, note 3.
6 III, 106.
? See the Bāveru Jätaka (No. 339 of the Jätaka collection) and M. Sylvain Lévi's
article in Annuair de l'Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes (1913—4).
8 Diod, II, 32, 4 ; Plut. Artax. 21.
9 The çvamukhas of Sanskrit literature, e. g. Varāhamihira Brihatsamhita
## p. 357 (#395) ############################################
xvi]
CTESIAS'S DESCRIPTION
357
-
.
upon nothing but his imagination. One of his most monstrous animals,
the creature as large as a lion, with a human face, which shoots stings out
of the end of its tail, called in the Indian language, says Ctesias, martikhora
- as a matter of fact the word is Persian-Ctesias affirms that he had him-
self seen, as one was sent as a present to the Persian king ! This gives the
measure of the man. No doubt, his wildest statements about the fauna and
flora of India can, if sufficiently trimmed, be made to bear a sort of resemb-
lance to something real', but it seems ingenuity wasted to attempt to esta-
blish these connexions. The influence of Ctesias upon the Greek conception
of India was probably great. It confirmed for ever in the West the idea that
India was a land where nothing was impossible - a land of nightmare mons-
ters and strange poisons, of gold and gemsa.
Where Ctesias described the people of India as 'very just' (Skalotatot),
we may see the reflexion of a common Greek belief that a people of ideal
goodness lived somewhere at the extremities of the earth, or in this case we
may perhaps gather the impression made upon strangers by a social system
so firmly governed in its complex structure and the working of its parts by
traditional law.
It was generally recognised in the Greek world of the fourth century
that a great race called Indian, a substantial part of mankind, lived to-
wards the sunrising. When European science, in the person of those philo-
sophers who accompanied Alexander, first entered upon the Indian world,
it had already made one substantial discovery as to the world in which
man is placed. It was generally recognised in the Greek philosophic schools
that the earth was a globe. It was already a matter of interest to deter-
mine the size of the globe and to know the measure of the lands and seas
which covered it. And the men with Alexander, who found themselves in
the plains of India stretching to even vaster distances beyond, or who,
from the mouth of the Indus saw the coast fading to the eastward out of
sight, were anxious to know what dimensions and shape they ought actu-
ally to give to this India upon their maps. They had not traversed more
than a corner of it, and, had they gone to its extremities, they possessed
none of our means of accurate surveying. It was only by report of the people
of the land, based ultimately no doubt upon the rough practical reckonings
of merchants and seamen, that they could form any conception of it. This
being so, the conjectures which they accorded for the instruction of the
West, have interest for us to-day, only as showing how near the truth under
such circumstances men could come.
1 For what may be done in this direction, seo Prof. H. H. Wilson's Notes on the
Indica of Ctesias (Oxford, 1836).
2 Cf. Plin. N. H. vi, § 58 f.
3 Ephorus, frag. 38 (Frug. Hist. Graec. I, p. 243).
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Of the companions of Alexander, three men chiefly enriched the
Greek conception of India by their writings. One was Nearchus, a Cretan
by extraction, whose home was in Macedonia, where he had been a friend
in youth of Alexander's. This was the man whom Alexander put in com-
mand of the fleet which explored the coast between the Indus and the
Persian gulf, and Nearchus later on gave his own account of this expedition
to the world. His book also contained a good deal of incidental information
about India. He appears from the fragments quoted to have been an
honest reporter, who took pains to verify the stories which were told him'.
Another was Onesicritus from the Greek island of Aegina, who regarded
the Cynic philosopher Diogenes as his master, a man with some practical
knowledge of sea-craft, since Alexander made him pilot of the royal vessel
down the Indus. Onesicritus took part in the expedition of Nearchus,
and he too afterwards wrote a book about it and about India. Strabo
considered him untruthful, and he has generally a bad reputation with
modern scholars, though this unfavourable judgment has been seriously
challenged? The third was Aristobulus, a Greek probably from the
Chalcidic peninsula, who not only accompanied Alexander through India,
but was entrusted with certain commissions, perhaps not military ones.
Aristobulus wrote his book long afterwards, in extreme old age. His
interest was predominantly geographical, not military ; yet his book seems
to have been adversely affected by the rhetorical fashion and perhaps by
the Alexander myth which had already begun to take popular shape at the
time when he wrote".
