The Antiquities of Orissa v1.c7.310.2

v1.c7.310.2

Of his Indian dominion Calanus, the gymnosophist, presented to him an excellent image. "He laid", says Plutarch, "dry and shrivelled hide before him, and first trod upon the edges of it. This he did all round; and as he trod on one side, it started up on the other; at last, he fixed his feet on the middle, and then it lay still. By this emblem he showed him, that he should fix his residence, and plant his principal force, in the heart of his empire, and not wander to the extremities."¹³ His Grecian successors in India were neither of sufficient importance, nor did they hold any part of the country sufficiently long, to be the leaders of taste and fashion to such a potentate as Aśoka. They had then occupied only for a short time an edge of the dry leather, the border land of the North West, and for all practical purposes do not appear to have exercised much influence on Indian civilized life. To judge of the past from the present, let us take the English nation in India. It has held India for a longer period than the Greeks did Bactria from the time of Alexander to that of Aśoka, but yet it has produced no appreciable effect on the architecture of its neighbours. The Bhutanese and the Sikimites have not yet borrrowed a single English moulding. The Nepalese, under the administration of Sir Jung Bahadur, are not a whit behind-hand of Aśoka and his people; Sir Jung went to Europe, which Aśoka never did;