# Ancient India as described by Megasthenês and Arrian/Cap. VII.-IX.

​VII. The Indian tribes, Megasthenês tells us, number in all 118. [And I so far agree with him as to allow that they must be indeed numerous, but when he gives such a precise estimate I am at a loss to conjecture how he ​arrived at it, for the greater part of India he did not visit, nor is mutual intercourse maintained between all the tribes.] He tells us further that the Indians were in old times nomadic, like those Skythians who did not till the soil, but roamed about in their wagons, as the seasons varied, from one part of Skythia to another, neither dwelling in towns nor worshipping in temples; and that the Indians likewise had neither towns nor temples of the gods, but were so barbarous that they wore the skins of such wild animals as they could kill, and subsisted on the bark of trees; that these trees were called in Indian speech tala, and that there grew on them, as there grows at the tops of the palm-trees, a fruit resembling balls of wool; that they subsisted also on such wild animals as they could catch, eating the flesh raw,—before, at least, the coming of Dionysos into India. Dionysos, however, when he came and had conquered the people, founded cities and gave laws to these cities, and introduced the use of wine among the Indians, as he had done among the Greeks, and taught them to sow the land, himself supplying seeds for the purpose,—either because Triptolemos, when he was sent by Dêmêter to sow all the earth, did not reach these parts, or this must have been some Dionysos who came to India before Triptolemos, and gave the people the seeds of ​cultivated plants. It is also said that Dionysos first yoked oxen to the plough, and made many of the Indians husbandmen instead of nomads, and furnished them with the implements of agriculture; and that the Indians worship the other gods, and Dionysos himself in particular, with cymbals and drums, because he so taught them; and that he also taught them the Satyric dance, or, as the Greeks call it, the Kordax; and that he instructed the Indians to let their hair grow long in honour of the god, and to wear the turban; and that he taught them to anoint themselves with unguents, so that even up to the time of Alexander the Indians were marshalled for battle to the sound of cymbals and drums.
VIII. But when he was leaving India, after having established the new order of things, he appointed, it is said, Spatembas, one of his companions and the most conversant with Bakkhic matters, to be the king of the country. When Spatembas died his son Boudyas succeeded to the sovereignty; the father reigning over the Indians fifty-two years, and the son twenty; the son of the latter, whose name was Kradeuas, duly inherited the kingdom, and thereafter the succession was generally hereditary, but that when a failure of heirs occurred in the royal house the Indians elected their sovereigns on the principle of merit; Hêrakles, however, who is currently reported to have come as a stranger into the country, is said to have been in reality a native ​of India. This Hêrakles is held in especial honour by the Sourasenoi, an Indian tribe who possess two large cities, Methora and Cleisobora, and through whose country flows a navigable river called the Iobares. But the dress which this Hêrakles wore, Megasthenês tells us, resembled that of the Theban Hêrakles, as the Indians themselves admit. It is further said that he had a very numerous progeny of male children born to him in India (for, like his Theban namesake, he married many wives), but that he had only one daughter. The name of this child was Pandaia, and the land in which she was born, and with the sovereignty of which Hêrakles entrusted her, was called after her name, Pandaia, and she received from the hands of her father 500 elephants, a force of cavalry 4000 strong, and another of infantry consisting of about 130,000 men. Some Indian writers say further of Hêrakles that when he was going over the world and ridding land and sea of whatever evil monsters infested them, he found in the sea an ornament for women, which even to this day the Indian traders who bring us their wares eagerly buy up and carry away to foreign markets, while it is even more eagerly bought up by the wealthy Romans of to-day, as it was wont to be by the wealthy Greeks long ago. This article is the sea-pearl, called in the Indian tongue margarita. But Hêrakles, it is said, appreciating its beauty as a wearing ornament, caused it to ​be brought from all the sea into India, that he might adorn with it the person of his daughter.
Megasthenês informs us that the oyster which yields this pearl is there fished for with nets, and that in these same parts the oysters live in the sea in shoals like bee-swarms: for oysters, like bees, have a king or a queen, and if any one is lucky enough to catch the king he readily encloses in the net all the rest of the shoal, but if the king makes his escape there is no chance that the others can be caught. The fishermen allow the fleshy parts of such as they catch to rot away, and keep the bone, which forms the ornament for the pearl in India is worth thrice its weight in refined gold, gold being a product of the Indian mines.
IX. Now in that part of the country where the daughter of Hêrakles reigned as queen, it is said that the women when seven years old are of marriageable age, and that the men live at most forty years, and that on this subject there is a tradition current among the Indians to the effect that Hêrakles, whose daughter was born to him late in life, when he saw that his end was near, and he knew no man his equal in rank to whom he could give her in marriage, had incestuous intercourse with the girl when she was seven years of age, in order that a race of kings sprung from their common blood might be left to rule over India; that Hêrakles therefore made her of suitable age for ​marriage, and that in consequence the whole nation over which Pandaia reigned obtained this same privilege from her father. Now to me it seems that, even if Hêrakles could have done a thing so marvellous, he could also have made himself longer-lived, in order to have intercourse with his daughter when she was of mature age. But in fact, if the age at which the women there are marriageable is correctly stated, this is quite consistent, it seems to me, with what is said of the men's age,—that those who live longest die at forty; for men who come so much sooner to old age, and with old age to death, must of course flower into full manhood as much earlier as their life ends earlier. It follows hence that men of thirty would there be in their green old age, and young men would at twenty be past puberty, while the stage of of full puberty would be reached about fifteen. And, quite compatibly with this, the women might be marriageable at the age of seven. And why not, when Megasthenês declares that the very fruits of the country ripen faster than fruits elsewhere, and decay faster?
From the time of Dionysos to Sandrakottos the Indians counted 153 kings and a period of 6042 years, but among these a republic was thrice established * * * * and another to 300 years, and another to 120 years. The ​Indians also tell us that Dionysos was earlier than Hêrakles by fifteen generations, and that except him no one made a hostile invasion of India,—not even Kyros the son of Kambysês, although he undertook an expedition against the Skythians, and otherwise showed himself the most enterprising monarch in all Asia; but that Alexander indeed came and overthrew in war all whom he attacked, and would even have conquered the whole world had his army been willing to follow him. On the other hand, a sense of justice, they say, prevented any Indian king from attempting conquest beyond the limits of India.
* ↑ Tala.—The fan-palm, the Borassus flabelliformis of botany.
* ↑ It is not known from what sources Megasthenês derived these figures, which are extremely modest when compared with those of Indian chronology, where, as in geology, years are hardly reckoned but in myriads. For a notice of the Magadha dynasties see Elphinstone's History of India, bk. III. cap. iii.