# Ancient India as described by Megasthenês and Arrian/Introduction

THE FRAGMENTS OF THE INDIKA OF MEGASTHENÊS.
Introduction.
The ancient Greeks, till even a comparatively late period in their history, possessed little, if any, real knowledge of India. It is indeed scarcely so much as mentioned by name in their greatest poets, whether epic, lyric, or dramatic. They must, however, have known of its existence as early as the heroic times, for we find from Homer that they used even then articles of Indian merchandize, which went among them by names of Indian origin, such as kassiteros, tin, and elephas, ivory. But their conception of it, as we gather from the same source, was vague in the extreme. They imagined it to be an Eastern Ethiopia which stretched away to the uttermost verge of the world, and which, like the Ethiopia of the West, was inhabited by a race of men whose visages were scorched black by the ​fierce rays of the sun. Much lies in a name, and the error made by the Greeks in thus calling India Ethiopia led them into the further error of considering as pertinent to both these countries narrations, whether of fact or fiction, which concerned but one of them exclusively. This explains why we find in Greek literature mention of peculiar or fabulous races, both of men and other animals, which existed apparently in duplicate, being represented sometimes as located in India, and sometimes in Ethiopia or the countries thereto adjacent. We can hardly wonder, when we consider the distant and sequestered situation of India, that the first conceptions which the Greeks had of it should have been of this nebulous character, but it seems ​what remarkable that they should have learned hardly anything of importance regarding it from the expeditions which were successively undertaken against it by the Egyptians under Sesostris, the Assyrians under Semiramis, and the Persians first under Kyros and afterwards under Dareios the son of Hystaspês. Perhaps, as Dr. Robertson has observed, they disdained, through pride of their own superior enlightenment, to pay attention to the transactions of people whom they considered as barbarians, especially in countries far remote from their own. But, in whatever way the fact may be accounted for, India continued to be to the Greeks little better than a land of mystery and fable till the times of the Persian wars, when for the first time they became distinctly aware of its existence. The first historian who speaks clearly of it is Hekataios of Miletos (B.C. 549-486), ​and fuller accounts are preserved in Herodotos and in the remains of Ktêsias, who, having lived for some years in Persia as private physician to king Artaxerxes Mnêmôn, collected materials during his stay for a treatise on India, the first work on the subject written in the Greek language. His descriptions were, unfortunately, vitiated by a large intermixture of fable, and it was left to the followers of Alexander to give to the Western world for the first time fairly accurate accounts of the country and its inhabitants. The great conqueror, it is well known, carried scientific men with him to chronicle his achievements, and describe the countries to which he might carry his arms, and some of his officers were also men of literary culture, who could wield the pen as well as ​the sword. Hence the expedition produced quite a crop of narratives and memoirs relating to India, such as those of Baeto, Diognetos, Nearchos, Onesikritos, Aristoboulos, Kallisthenês, and others. These works are all lost, but their substance is to be found condensed in Strabo, Pliny, and Arrian. Subsequent to these writers were some others, who made considerable additions to the stock of information regarding India, among whom may be mentioned Dêimachos, who resided for a long time in Palibothra, whither he was sent on an embassy by Seleukos to Allitrochadês, the successor of Sandrakottos; Patroklês, the admiral of Seleukos, who is called by Strabo the least mendacious of all writers concerning India; Timosthenês, admiral of the fleet of Ptolemaios Philadelphos; and Megasthenês, who being sent by Seleukos Nikator on an embassy to Sandrakottos (Chandragupta), the king of the Prasii, whose capital was Palibothra (Pâṭaliputra, now Pâṭnâ), wrote a work on India of such ackuowledged worth that it formed the principal source whence succeeding writers drew their accounts of the country. This work, which appears ​to have been entitled to τὰ ’Ἰνδικά, no longer exists, but it has been so often abridged and quoted by the ancient writers that we have a fair knowledge of its contents and their order of arrangement. Dr. Schwanbeck, with great industry and learning, has collected all the fragments that have been anywhere preserved, and has prefixed to the collection a Latin Introduction, wherein, after showing what knowledge the Greeks had acquired of India before Megasthenês, he enters into an examination of those passages in ancient works from which we derive all the little we know of Megasthenês and his Indian mission. He then reviews his work on India, giving a summary of its contents, and, having estimated its value and authority, concludes with a notice of those authors who wrote on India after his time. I have translated in the latter part of the sequel a few instructive passages from this Introduction, one particularly which successfully vindicates Megasthenês from the charge of mendacity so frequently preferred against him. Meanwhile the following extracts, translated from C. Müller's Preface to his edition of the Indika, will place before the reader all the information that can be gleaned regarding Megasthenes and his embassy from a careful scrutiny and comparison of all the ancient texts which relate thereto.
Justinus (XV. 4) says of Seleukos Nikator, ​'He carried on many wars in the East after the division of the Makedonian kingdom between himself and the other successors of Alexander, first seizing Babylonia, and then reducing Baktrianê, his power being increased by the first success. Thereafter he passed into India, which had, since Alexander's death, killed its governors, thinking thereby to shake off from its neck the yoke of slavery. Sandrokottos had made it free: but when victory was gained he changed the name of freedom to that of bondage, for he himself oppressed with servitude the very people which he had rescued from foreign dominion. . . Sandrokottos, having thus gained the crown, held India at the time when Seleukos was laying the foundations of his future greatness. Seleukos came to an agreement with him, and, after settling affairs in the Bast, engaged in the war against Antigonos (302 B.C.).'
"Besides Justinus, Appianus (Syr. c. 55) makes mention of the war which Seleukos had with Sandrokottos or Ohandragupta king of the Prasii, or, as they are called in the Indian language, Prâchyas:—'He (Seleu​kos) crossed the Indus and waged war on Sandrokottos, king of the Indians who dwelt about it, until be made friends and entered into relations of marriage with him.' So also Strabo (xv. p. 724):—'Seleukos Nikator gave to Sandrokottos' (sc. a large part of Arianê). Conf. p. 689:—'The Indians afterwards held a large part of Arianê, (which they had received from the Makedonians), 'entering into marriage relations with him, and receiving in return five hundred elephants' (of which Sandrakottos had nine thousand—Plinius, vi. 22-5); and Plutarch, Alex. 62:—'For not long after, Androkottos, being king, presented Seleukos with five hundred elephants, and with six hundred thousand men attacked and subdued all India.' Phylarchos (Fragm. 28) in Athenaaus, p. 18 D., refers to some other wonderful enough presents as being sent to Seleukos by Sandrokottos.
"Diodorus (lib. xx.), in setting forth the affairs of Seleukos, has not said a single word about the Indian war. But it would be strange that that expedition should be mentioned so incidentally by other historians, if it were true, as many recent writers have contended, that Seleukos in this war reached the middle of India as far as the Ganges and the town Palimbothra,—nay, even advanced as far as the mouths of the Ganges, and therefore left Alexander far behind him. This baseless theory has been well refuted by Lassen (De Pentap. Ind. 61), by A. G. Schlegel (Berliner Calender, ​1829, p. 31; yet see Benfey, Ersch. u. Grüber. Encycl. v. Indien., p. 67), and quite recently by Schwanbeck, in a work of great learning and value entitled Megasthenis Indica (Bonn, 1846). In the first place, Schwanbeck (p. 13) mentions the passage of Justinus (I. ii. 10) where it is said that no one had entered India but Seniiramis and Alexander; whence it would appear that the expedition of Seleukos was considered so insignificant by Trogus as not even to be on a par with the Indian war of Alexander. Then he says that Arrianus, if he had known of that remote expedition of Seleukos, would doubtless have spoken differently in his Indika (c. 5. 4), where he says that Megasthenes did not travel over much of India, 'but yet more than those who invaded it along with Alexander the son of Philip.' Now in this passage the author could have compared Megasthenes much more suitably and easily with Seleukos. I pass over other proofs of less moment, nor ​indeed is it expedient to set forth in detail here all the reasons from which it is improbable of itself that the arms of Selenkos ever reached the region of the Ganges. Let us now examine the passage in Plinius which causes many to adopt contrary opinions. Plinius (Hist, Nat. vi. 21), after finding from Diognetos and Baeto the distances of the places from Portæ Caspiæ to the Huphasis, the end of Alexander's march, thus proceeds:—'The other journeys made for Seleukos Nikator are as follows:—One hundred and sixty-eight miles to the Hesidrus, and to the river Jomanes as many (some copies add five miles); from thence to the Ganges one hundred and twelve miles. One hundred and nineteen miles to the Rhodophas (others give three hundred and twenty-five miles for this distance). To the town Kalinipaxa one hundred and sixty-seven. Five hundred (others give two hundred and sixty-five miles), and from thence to the confluence of the Jomanes and Ganges six hundred and twenty-five miles (several add thirteen miles), and to the town Palimbothra four hundred and twenty-five. To the mouth of the Ganges six hundred and thirty-eight' (or seven hundred and thirty-eight, to ​follow Schwanbeck's correction),—that is, six thousand stadia, as Megasthenês puts it.
"The ambiguous expression reliqua Seleuco Nicatori peragrata sunt, translated above as 'the other journeys made for Seleukos Nikator,' according to Schwanbeck's opinion, contain a dative 'of advantage,' and therefore can bear no other meaning. The reference is to the journeys of Megasthenês, Dêimachos, and Patroklês, whom Seleukos had sent to explore the more remote regions of Asia. Nor is the statement of Plinius in a passage before this more distinct. ('India,') he says, 'was thrown open not only by the arms of Alexander the Great, and the kings who were his successors, of whom Seleucus and Antiochus even travelled to the Hyrcanian and Caspian seas, Patrocles being commander of their fleet, but all the Greek writers who stayed behind with the Indian kings (for instance, Megasthenes and Dionysius, sent by Philadelphus for that purpose) have given accounts of the military force of each nation.' Schwanbeck thinks that the words circumvectis etiam. . . . . . Seleuco et Antiocho et Patrocle are properly meant to convey nothing but additional confirmation, and also an explanation how India was opened up by the arms of the kings who succeeded Alexander."
"The following statements," continues Müller, "contain all that is related about Megasthenês:—
"'Megasthenês the historian, who lived with Seleukos Nikator',—Clem. Alex. p. 132 Sylb. (Fragm. 42); 'Megasthenês, who lived with Sibyrtios the satrap ​of Arachosia, and who says that he often visited Sandrakottos, king of the Indians,'—Arrian, Exp. Alex. V. vi. 2 (Fragm. 2);—'To Sandrokottos, to whom Megasthenês came on an embassy,'—Strabo, XV. p. 702 (Fragm. 25);—'Megasthenês and Dêimachos were sent on an embassy, the former to Sandrokottos at Palimbothra, the other to Allitrochadês his son; and they left accounts of their sojourn in the country,'—Strabo, ii. p. 70 (Fragm. 29 note); Megasthenês says that he often visited Sandrokottos, the greatest king (mahâraja: v. Bohlen, Alte Indien, I. p. 19) of the Indians, and Pôros, still greater than he:'—Arrian, Ind. c. 5 (Fragm. 24). Add the passage of Plinius, which Solinus (Polyhistor. c. 60) thus renders:—'Megasthenês remained for sotne time with the Indian kings, and wrote a history of Indian affairs, that he might hand down to posterity a faithful account of all that he had witnessed. Dionysius, who was sent by Philadelphus to put the truth to the test by personal inspection, wrote also as much.'
"From these sources, then, we gather that Megasthenês was the representative of Seleukos ​at the court of Sibyrtios, satrap of Arachosia, and that he was sent from thence as the king's ambassador to Sandrokottos at Palimbothra, and that not once, but frequently—whether to convey to him the presents of Seleukos, or for some other cause. According to the statement of Arrianus, Megasthenês also visited king Pôros, who was (Diod. xix. 14) already dead in 317 B.C. (Olymp. CXV. 4). These events should not be referred to the period of Seleukos, but they may very easily be placed in the reign of Alexander, as Bohlen (Alte Indien, vol. I. p. 68) appears to have believed they should, when he says Megasthenês was one of the companions of Alexander. But the structure of the sentences does not admit of this conclusion. For Arrianus says, 'It appears to me that Megasthenês did not see much of India, but yet more than the companions of Alexander, for he says that he visited Sandrokottos, the greatest king of the Indians, and Pôros, even greater than he (καὶ Πώρῳ ἔτι τούτου μέζονι).' We should be disposed to say, then, that he made a journey on some occasion or other to Pôros, if the obscurity of the language did not lead us to suspect it a corrupt reading. Lassen (De Pentap. p. 44) thinks the mention of Pôros a careless addition of a chance transcriber, but I prefer Schwanbeck's opinion, who thinks it should be written καὶ Πώρου ἔτι τούτῳ πέζονι, 'and who was even greater than Poros.' If this correction is admitted, everything fits well.
"The time when he discharged his embassy or embassies, and how long he stayed in India, cannot be determined, but he was probably sent after the treaty had been struck and friendship had ​Page:Ancient India as described by Megasthenês and Arrian.djvu/35 ​Page:Ancient India as described by Megasthenês and Arrian.djvu/36 ​Page:Ancient India as described by Megasthenês and Arrian.djvu/37 ​Page:Ancient India as described by Megasthenês and Arrian.djvu/38 ​Page:Ancient India as described by Megasthenês and Arrian.djvu/39 ​Page:Ancient India as described by Megasthenês and Arrian.djvu/40 ​Page:Ancient India as described by Megasthenês and Arrian.djvu/41 ​tinguish from the fabulous races, since they neither believe that they live within the borders of India, nor have any intercourse with the human race. These, therefore, the Greeks could not confound with the races of India.
"These races, however, might be more readily confounded with other creatures of the Indian imagination, who held a sort of intermediate place between demons and men, and whose number was legion. For the Râkshasas and other Piśâchas are said to have the same characteristics as the fabulous races, and the only difference between them is that, while a single (evil) attribute only is ascribed to each race, many or all of these are assigned to the Râkshasas and the Piśâchas. Altogether so slight is the distinction between the two that any strict lines of demarcation can hardly be drawn between them. For the Râkshasas, though described as very terrible beings, are nevertheless believed to be human, and both to live on the earth and take part in Indian battles, so that an ordinary Indian could hardly define how the nature of a Râkshasa differs from that of a man. There is scarcely any one thing found to characterize the Râkshasas which is not attributed to some race or other. Therefore, although the Greeks might have heard of these by report,—which cannot be proved for certain,—they could scarcely, by reason of that, have erred in describing the manners of the races according to the Indian conception.
"That reports about these tribes should have reached Greece is not to be wondered at. For fables invented with some glow of poetic fervour have ​Page:Ancient India as described by Megasthenês and Arrian.djvu/43 ​Page:Ancient India as described by Megasthenês and Arrian.djvu/44 ​Page:Ancient India as described by Megasthenês and Arrian.djvu/45 ​Page:Ancient India as described by Megasthenês and Arrian.djvu/46 ​Page:Ancient India as described by Megasthenês and Arrian.djvu/47 ​Page:Ancient India as described by Megasthenês and Arrian.djvu/48
* ↑ Kassiteros represents the Sanskṛit kastîra, 'tin,' a metal found in abundance in the islands, on the coast of India; and elephas is undoubtedly connected with ibha, the Sanskṛit name for the domestic elephant—its initial syllable being perhaps the Arabic article.
* ↑ See Homer, Od. I. 23-24, where we read Αἰθίοπες, τοὶ διχθὰ δεδαίαται, ἔσχατοι ἀνδρῶν, οἱ μὲν δυσομένου Ὑπερίονος, οἱ δ' ἀνιόντος. (The Ethiopians, who are divided into two, and live at the world's end—one part of them towards the setting sun, the other towards the rising.) Herodotos in several passages mentions the Eastern Ethiopians, but distinguishes them from the Indians (see particularly bk. vii. 70). Ktêsias, however, who wrote somewhat later than Herodotos, frequently calls the Indians by the name of Ethiopians, and the final discrimination between the two races was not made till the Makedonian invasion gave the Western world more correct views of India. Alexander himself, as we learn from Strabo, on first reaching the Indus mistook it for the Nile.
* ↑ Instances in point are the Skiapodes, Kynamolgoi, Pygmaiôi, Psylloi, Himantopodes, Sternophthalmoi, Makrobioi, and the Makrokephaloi, the Martikhora, and the Krokotta.
* ↑ Herodotos mentions that Dareios, before invading India, sent Skylax the Karyandian on a voyage of discovery down the Indus, and that Skylax accordingly, setting out from Kaspatyras and the Paktyikan district, reached the mouth of that river, whence he sailed through the Indian Ocean to the Red Sea, performing the whole voyage in thirty months. A little work still extant, which briefly describes certain countries in Europe, Asia, and Africa, bears the name of this Skylax, but from internal evidence it has been inferred that it could not have been written before the reign of Philip of Makedonia, the father of Alexander the Great.
* ↑ The following names pertaining to India occur in Hekataios:—the Indus; the Opiai, a race on the banks of the Indus; the Kalatiai, an Indian race; Kaspapyros, a Gandaric city; Argantê, a city of India; the Skiapodes, and probably the Pygmies.
* ↑ Herodotos mentions the river (Indus), the Paktyikan district, the Gandarioi, the Kalantiai or Kalatiai, and the Padaioi. Both Hekataios and Herodotos agree in stating that there were sandy deserts in India.
* ↑ "The few particulars appropriate to India, and consistent with truth, obtained by Ctêsias, are almost confined to something resembling a description of the cochineal plant, the fly, and the beautiful tint obtained from it, with a genuine picture of the monkey and the parrot; the two animals he had doubtless seen in Persia, and flowered cottons emblazoned with the glowing colours of the modern chintz were probably as much coveted by the fair Persians in the harams of Susa and Ecbatana as they still are by the ladies of our own country; .... but we are not bound to admit his fable of the Martichors, his pygmies, his men with the heads of dogs, and feet reversed, his griffins, and his four-footed birds as big as wolves.” - Vincent.
* ↑ The discovery that the Sandrakottos of the Greeks was identical with the Chandragupta who figures in the Sanskṛit annals and the Sanskṛit drama was one of great moment, as it was the means of connecting Greek with Sanskṛit literature, and of thereby supplying for the first time a date to early Indian history, which had not a single chronological landmark of its own. Diodôros distorts the name in Xandrames, and this again is distored by Curtius into Agrammes.
* ↑ He enumerates Eratosthenês, Hipparclios, Polemo, Mnaseos, Apollodôros, Agatharchidds, Alexander Polyhistor, Strabo, Marînos of Tyre, and Ptolemy among the Greeks, and P. Terentius Varro of Atax, M. Vipsanius Agrippa, Pomponius Mela, Seneca, Pliny, and Solinus among the Romans.
* ↑ The adjective πραξιακός in Ælianus On the Nature of Animals, xvii. 39 (Megasthen. Fragm. 13. init.) bears a very close resemblance to the Indian word Prâchyas (that is 'dwellers in the East'). The substantive would be Πράξιοι, and Schwanbeck (Megasthenis Indica, p. 82) thinks that this reading should probably be restored in Stephanus of Byzantium, where the MSS. exhibit Πράσιοι, a form intermediate between Πράξιλος and Πρᾶς. But they are called Πράσιοι by Strabo, Arrianus, and Plinius; Πραίσιοι in Plutarch (Alex. chap. 62), and frequently in Ælianus; Πραΰσιοι by Nicolaüs of Damascus, and in the Florilegium of Stobæus, 37, 38; Βρείσιοι and Βραίσιοι are the MS. readings in Diodorus, xvii. 93; Pharrasii in Curtius, IX. ii. 3; Præsidæ in Justinus, XII. viii. 9. See note on Fragm. 13.
* ↑ Moreover, Schwanbeck calls attention (p. 14) to the words of Appianus (i. 1), where when he says, somewhat inaccurately, that Sandrakottos was king of the Indians around the Indus (τῶν περὶ τὸν 'ινδὸν 'ινδῶν) he seems to mean that the war was carried on on the boundaries of India. But this is of no importance, for Appianus has τῶν περὶ αὐτὸν 'Ινδῶν, 'of the Indians around it,' as Schwanbeck himself has written it (p. 13).
* ↑ The following passage of the Indian comedy Mudrâ-râkshasa seems to favour the Indian expedition:—"Meanwhile Kusumapura (i.e. Pataliputra, Palimbothra) the city of Chandragupta and the king of the mountain regions, was invested on every side by the Kirâtas, Yavanas, Kambojas, Persians, Baktrians, and the rest." But "that drama" (Schwanbeck, p. 18), "to follow the authority of Wilson, was written in the tenth century after Christ,—certainly ten centuries after Seleukos. When even the Indian historians have no authority in history, what proof can dramas give written after many centuries? Yavanas, which was also in later times the Indian name for the Greeks, was very anciently the name given to a certain nation which the Indians say dwelt on the north-western boundaries of India and the same nation (Manu, x. 44) is also numbered with the Kambojas, the Śakas, the Paradas, the Pallavas, and the Kiratas as being corrupted among the Kshatriyas. (Conf. Lassen, Zeitschrift für d. Kunde des Morgenlandes, III. p. 245.) These Yavanas are to be understood in this passage also, where they are mentioned along with those tribes with which they are usually classed.
* ↑ Sibyrtios, according to Diodorus (XVIII. iii. 3), had gained the satrapy of Arachosia in the third year of the 114th Olympiad (B.C. 323), and was firmly established in his satrapy by Antipater (Arrianns, De Success. Alex. §86, ed. Didot). He joined Enmenês in 316 (Diod. xix. 14. 6), but being called to account by him he songht safety in flight (ibid. XIX. xxiii. 4). After the defeat of Eomenês, Antigonos delivered to him the most troublesome of the Argyraspides (ibid. C. xlviii. 3). He must have afterwards joined Seleukos.
* ↑ Bohlen (Alte Indien, I. p. 68) says that Megasthenês was a Persian. No one gives this account of him but Annius Viterbiensis, that forger, whom Bohlen appears to have followed. But it is evidently a Greek name. Strabo (v. p. 243; comp. Velleius Paterculus, i. 4) mentions a Megasthenês of Chalkis, who is said to have founded Cumæ in Italy along with Hippoklês of Kumê.