The Classical Accounts of India c17: X. Apollonius of Tyana
The Classical Accounts of India c17
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X. Apollonius of Tyana
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All that is known of the visit of Apollonius to India is derived from his biography written by Philostratus. According to this biography, Apollonius was born about the beginning of the Christian era at Tyana, in Cappadocia (Asia Minor). Early in life he became a staunch follower of the Neo-Pythagorean philosophy, and rigidly observed the monastic rules ascribed to Pythagoras. He renounced wine, animal food, and the married life, never used shoes or any dress made of animal skin, did not cut hair or beard, and condemned the sacrifice of animal to gods. He observed complete silence for five years, though he toured in various parts of Asia Minor during this period. He preached rigid asceticism, condemned dancing and other merriments and carried no money, having distributed his patrimony among his brother and other relations. He acquired great reputation for sanctity and it is said that the Roman Emperor Alexander Severus set up a statue of Apollonius, along with those of Alexander, Christ and a few others, in his private shrine, in place of images of gods. Apollonius travelled widely, and visited Persia, India, Egypt and Italy. Temples and shrines were erected in his honour in various parts of Asia Minor and he was held up as a rival to Jesus Christ by the opponents of Christianity.¹
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Philostratus, the biographer of Apollonius, was born in the island of Lemnos about A.D. 172. He was a reputed sophist and became a distinguished member of the salon of the Empress Julia Domna, a great patron of philosophers and literary men, and the wife of the Roman Emperor Septimius Severus (A.D. 193-211). "Realizing the need of finding a historical figure fitted to counter the propaganda of subversive gospels, she sought particularly to revive the memory of a hero of pagan hagiology, Apollonius of Tyana."² For, chancing to come upon the memoirs of Damis, a Babylonian and companion of Apollonius in his Indian travels, which gave a detailed account of that sage, she was very much impressed by the favourable light in which the character of Apollonius was presented. The Empress entrusted the memoirs of Damis to Philostratus with a request to write the life of Apollonius. Besides the memoirs of Damis Philostratus utilised an account of the career of Apollonius at Aegae written by Maximus and also many letters of Appollonius which were then in circulation. The Empress, however, did not live to see the book which was published in or some time after A.D. 217.³
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Various opinions have been expressed by modern scholars about the value and authenticity of the memoirs of Damis, which formed the basis of the work of Philostratus.⁴ Professor Bigg, writing in 1910, argued that the so-called memoirs of Damis never really existed and that Damis was really invented by Philostratus. Others have taken a more liberal view. They admit the existence of the memoirs of Davis, but regard him as an "arrant story-teller" who reproduced old popular stories and passed them on as witnessed by him.⁵ In any case there is little doubt that not much reliance can be placed on anything mentioned in the work of Philostratus so long as it is not corroborated by independent sources.
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The biography of Apollonius by Philostratus was first translated into English in 1811, by E. Berwick. Another translation with the original Greek text by F. C. Conybeare was published in 1912 and reprinted in 1917 and 1927.⁶ The book is divided into eight parts of which the second and third deal with his visit to India. A very brief account of it, in English, was given by McCrindle,⁷ while an extensive summary, with a short introductory note, and a short commentary at the end, in English, by Osmond De Beauvoir Priaulx, was published in 1873.⁸ This is reproduced below.
Indian Travels of Apollonius of Tyana, by Priaulx
I. Introduction
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Philostratus, in his life of Apollonius Tyanensis, has given an account of that philosopher’s visit to India. And as he professes to have drawn his materials from the note-book of Damis, Apollonius’s fellow-traveller and friend, as moreover he professes to have edited that note-book much as Hawkesworth edited the journals of Cook, we may fairly assume that he has given an original and authentic account of India—and indeed the only one that has come down to us from the olden world in a complete state Again, as Apollonius was the only Greek who up to his time had visited India for other purposes than those of war, negotiation, or commerce; as he visited it to make himself acquainted with its rites, discipline, and doctrines, and as he travelled unencumbered by a retinue, and was welcomed by its kings, and was with Damis for four months the guest of its Brahmins; he and Damis with him had every opportunity of familiar intercourse with all classes of its population, and of thus acquiring much and accurate information on matters beyond the reach of ordinary travellers. Philostratus’s account then is full of promise; and I propose to give a condensed translation of it, and afterwards to examine into its authority and value.
II. Summary of Philostratus’s Book
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Towards the close of the first half century of our era, Apollonius, then upwards of forty years of age and resident at Antioch, set out to visit India, its Brahmins and Sramans, taking with him two family slaves to act apparently as his secretaries. At Nineveh he met with and was joined by Damis, a native of the place, who recommended himself to his notice by a practical knowledge of the road to Babylon, and an acquaintance with the Persian, Armenian and Caducean languages. Together they journey on to Babylon, but warned by a dream first turn aside to visit Cissia and those Eretrians, whom Darius five hundred years before had settled there, and whom they find still speaking Greek, and still as they heard using Greek letters, and still dwelling near that wondrous petroleum well so carefully described by Herodotus.
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After a stay at Babylon of eighteen months, Apollonius, his friend and attendants, in the beginning of summer proceed for India on camels and with a guide furnished by the Parthian king Bardanes. Of their route we know only that it lay through a rich and pleasant country, and that the villages they traversed hurried to do them honour and to supply their wants; for a gold plate on their leading camel announced them guests of the king. We then hear of them enjoying the perfumed air at the foot of Caucasus, the mountain range which, while it separates India from Media, extends by one of its branches to the Red Sea. Of this Caucasus, they heard from the barbarians myths like those of the Greek. They were told of Prometheus and Hercules, not the Theban, and of the eagle; some pointed to a cavern, others to the mountain’s two peaks, a stadium apart, as the place where Prometheus was bound; and his chains, though of what made it is not easy to guess, still hung, Damis says, from the rocks. His memory too is still dear to the mountaineers, who for his sake still pursue the eagle with hate; and now lay snares for it, and now with fiery javelins destroy its nest. On the mountain they find the people already inclined to black, and the men four cubits high: on the other side of the Indus the men reached five cubits. On their way to the river, as they were going along in the bright moonshine, they fell in with an Empusa, who now in this form now in that followed after them; until Apollonius, and at his instigation his companions, attacked it with scoffs and jeers, the only safeguard against it, and it fled away jabbering.
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As they approached the summit of the mountain,—the dwelling of the Gods as their guide told them,—they found the road so steep that they were obliged to go on foot. On the other side, in the country between Caucasus and the Cophen, they met men riding on elephants, but they were only elephant herdsmen; others on dromedaries, which can run 1000 stadia in a day without rest. Here an Indian on a dromedary rode up to them and asked their guide whither they were going; and when he was told the object of their journey he told it again to the herdsmen, who shouted for joy, called to them to come near, and gave them wine and honey, both got from the palm; and also slices of lion and panther flesh just killed. They accepted everything but the flesh, and rode onward in an easterly direction.
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At a fountain they sat down to dine; and, in the course of conversation, Apollonius observed that they had met many Indians singing, dancing, and rolling about drunk with palm wine: and that the Indian money was of orichalcum and bronze—purely Indian, and not stamped like the Roman and Median coins.
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They crossed the Cophen, here not very broad or deep, themselves in boats, their camels on foot, and now entered a country subject to a king. Here they saw Mount Nysa; it rises up to a peak, like Tmolus in Lydia. It is cultivated, and its ascent has thus been made practicable. On its summit they found a moderate sized temple of Bacchus; this temple was a circular plot of ground, enclosed by a hedgerow of laurels, vines, and ivy, all of which had been planted by Bacchus himself, and had so grown and intertwined their branches together as to form a roof and walls impervious to the wind and rain. In the interior Bacchus had placed his own statue—in form an Indian youth, but of white stone. About and around it lay crooked knives, baskets and wine-vats in gold and silver, as if ready for the vintage. Aye, and the cities at the foot of the mountain hear and join in his orgies, and Nysa itself quakes with them.
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About Bacchus, Philostratus goes on to say whether speaking in his own person or from the journal of Damis I know not—Greeks and Hindus are not agreed; for the former assert that the Theban Bacchus with his bacchanals conquered and overran India, and they cite, among other proofs, a discus of Indian silver in the treasury at Delphi, with this inscription: “Bacchus, Jove and Semele’s son, from India to the Delphian Apollo”. But of the latter, the Indians of the Caucasus believe that he was an Assyrian stranger, not unacquainted however with him of Thebes; while those of the Indus and Ganges declare that he was the son of the Indus, and that the Theban Bacchus was his disciple and imitator, though he called himself the son of Jove, and pretended to have been born of Jove’s thigh, Meros, a mountain near to Nysa. They add, that in honour of his Indian prototype, he planted Nysa with vines brought from Thebes, and on Nysa the Greek historians assert that Alexander celebrated the Bacchic orgies, but the mountaineers will have it that Alexander, notwithstanding his love of glory and of antiquity, never ascended the mountain, but satisfied himself with prayer and sacrifice at its foot. He so feared lest the sight of the vines should raise in his soldiers, long accustomed to water, a longing for wine and the ease and pleasures of home.
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The rock Aornus, though at no great distance from Nysa, Damis says they did not visit, as it was somewhat out of their way. He heard however that it had been taken by Alexander, and was fifteen stadia in height; and that it was called Aornus, not because no bird could fly over it, but because there was a chasm on its summit which drew down to it all birds, much like the Parthenon at Athens, and several places in Phrygia and Lydia.
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On their way to the Indus, they fell in with a lad about thirteen years old riding an elephant and urging him on with a crooked rod, which he thrust into him like an anchor. On the Indus itself they watched a herd of about thirty elephants whom some huntsmen were pursuing. Apollonius admired the sagacity the elephants displayed in crossing the river; the smallest and lightest led the way, the mothers followed holding up their cubs with their tusks and trunks, while the largest brought up the rear. He spoke of their docility; their love for their keeper, how they would eat out of his hand like dogs, coax him with their trunks, and as he had seen among the nomads, open wide their mouths for him to thrust his head down their throats. He told too, how during the night they would bewail their slavery, not with their usual roar, but with piteous moans; and how, out of respect for man, they would at his approach stay their wailing; and he referred their docility and ready obedience more to their own self-command and tractable nature, than to the skill or power of their guide and rider. From the people they heard that elephants were found in the marsh, the mountain, and the plain. According to the Indians, the marsh elephant is stupid and idle, its teeth are few and black, and often porous or knotted, and will not bear the knife. The mountain elephants are treacherous and malignant, and save for their own ends, little attached to man; their teeth are small, but tolerably white, and not hard to work. The elephants of the plain are useful animals, tractable and imitative; they may be taught to write, and to dance and jump to the sound of the pipe, their teeth are very long and white and may be easily cut to any shapes. The Indians use the elephant in war; they fight from it in turrets, large enough for ten or fifteen archers or spearmen; and they say that it will itself join in the fight, holding and throwing the spear with its trunk as with a hand. The Indian elephant is of a large size, as much larger than the Lybian as this than the Nisaean horse. It lives to a great age, and Apollonius saw one in Taxila which had fought against Alexander about three hundred and fifty years before, and which Alexander had honoured with the name of Ajax. On its tusks were golden bracelets with this inscription: “Ajax to the sun, from Alexander, the son of Jove”. The people were accustomed to anoint it with unguents, and ornament it with garlands.
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When about to cross the Indus, their Babylonian guide, who was unacquainted with the river, presented to the Satrap of the Indus a letter from Bardanes. And the Satrap, out of regard to the king, though no officer of his, supplied them with his own barge for themselves, boats for their camels, and a guide to the Hydraotis. He also wrote to his sovereign to beg him that in his treatment of this Greek and truly divine man, he would emulate the generosity of Bardanes.
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Where they crossed, the Indus was forty stadia in breadth. It takes its rise in the Caucasus, and from its very fountain, is larger than any other river in Asia. In its course it receives many navigable rivers. Like the Nile it overflows the country, and deposits a fertilizing mud, which as in Egypt, prepares the land for the husbandman. It abounds, like the Nile, with sea-horses and crocodiles, as they themselves witnessed in crossing it and it produces, too, the same flowers. In India the winter is warm, the summer stifling; but the heat, providentially, is moderated by frequent rains. The natives told him, that when the season for the rise of the river is at hand, the king sacrifices on its banks black bulls and horses (black among them, because of their complexion, being the nobler colour), and after the sacrifice throws into the river a gold measure like a corn measure—why, the people themselves knew not; but probably as Apollonius conjectured, for an abundant harvest, or for such a moderate rise of the river as would benefit the land.
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The Indus passed, their new guide led them straight to Taxila, where was the palace of the Indian king. The people here wore cotton, the produce of the country, and sandals made of the fibre or bark of the papyrus and a leather cap when it rained. The better classes were clad in byssus, a stuff with which Apollonius, who affected a sombre colour in his dress, was much pleased. This byssus grows on a tree like the poplar in its stem, but with leaves like the willow; it is exported into Egypt for sacred uses.
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Taxila was about the size of Nineveh, walled like a Greek city, and was the residence of a sovereign who ruled over what of old was the kingdom of Porus. Just outside the walls was a temple of near a hundred feet, of porphyry, and in it a shrine, small considering the size of the temple and its many columns, but still very beautiful. Round the shrine were hung pictures on copper tablets, representing the feats of Alexander and Porus. The elephants, horses, soldiers, and armours were portrayed in a mosaic of orichalcum, silver, gold, and oxydised copper, the spears, javelins, and swords in iron; but the several metals were all worked into one another with so nice a gradation of tints, that the pictures they formed, in corrections of drawing, vivacity of expression, and truthfulness of perspective, reminded one of the productions of Zeuxis, Polygnotus and Euphranor. They told too of the noble character of Porus, for it was not till after the death of Alexander that he placed them in the temple and this, though they represented Alexander as a conqueror, and himself as conquered and wounded, and receiving from Alexander the kingdom of India.
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In this temple they wait until the king can be apprised of their arrival. Apollonius whiles away the time with a conversation upon painting, in the course of which he remarks that colour is not necessary to a picture; that an Indian drawn in chalk would be known as an Indian and black of colour, by his somewhat flat nose, his crisp hair, his large jaws, and wild eyes. While they are thus talking, a messenger and interpreter arrive from the king, with a permit for them to enter the city, and to stay in it three days, beyond which time no strangers are allowed in Taxila.
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They are taken to the palace. They found the city divided by narrow streets, well-arranged and reminding them of Athens. From the streets, the houses seemed of only one storey, but they all had an underground floor. They saw the Temple of the Sun, and in it statues of Alexander and Porus, the one gold, and the other of bronze; its walls were of red marble, but glittering with gold; the image of the god was of pearls, having, as is usual with the barbarians in sacred things, a symbolical meaning.
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The palace was distinguished by no extraordinary magnificence, and was just like the house of any citizen of the better class. There were no sentinels or bodyguards and but few servants about, and perhaps three or four persons who were waiting to talk with the king. The same simplicity was observable in the courts, halls, waiting and inner rooms; and it pleased Apollonius more than all the pomp of Babylon. When admitted to the king's presence, Apollonius, through the interpreter, addressed the king as a philosopher, and complimented him on his moderation. The king, Phraotes, in answer, said that he was moderate because his wants were few, and that as he was wealthy, he employed his wealth in doing good to his friends and in subsidizing the barbarians, his neighbours, to prevent them from themselves ravaging, or allowing other barbarians to ravage his territories. Here one of his courtiers offered to crown him with a jewelled mitre, but he refused it, as well because all pomp was hateful to him as because of Apollonius's presence.
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Apollonius inquired into his mode of life. The king told him that he drank but little wine, as much as he usually poured out in libation to the sun; that he hunted for exercise and gave away what he killed; that, for himself, he lived on vegetables and herbs, and the head and fruit of the palm, and other fruits which he cultivated with his own hands. With this account of his kingly tastes and occupations Apollonius was delighted, and he frequently looked at Damis. They now talked together a long time about the road to the Brahmans; and when they had done, the king ordered the Babylonian guide to be treated with the hospitality wont to be shown to travellers from Babylon, and the satrap guide to be sent back home with the usual travelling allowance. Then taking Apollonius by the hand, and ordering the interpreter to leave them, Phraotes asked him, in Greek, to receive him, the king, as a table companion. Apollonius, surprised, inquired why he had not spoken Greek from the first. "Because", answered the king, "I would not seem bold, or to forget that I am, after all, only a barbarian; but your kindness, and the pleasure you take in my conversation, have got the better of me, and I can no longer conceal myself from you. And how I became thus acquainted with Greek I will presently show you at large". "But why", again asked Apollonius, "instead of inviting me, did you beg me to invite you to dinner?" "Because", said the king, "I look on you as the better man; for wisdom is above royalty. So saying, he led him to the place where he was accustomed to bathe. This was a garden, about a stadium long, with a swimming bath of cold running water in the middle of it, and on each side an exercising ground. Here he practised the discus and the javelin, Greek fashion, and then, when tired, jumped into the water, and exercised himself with swimming. After the bath they went to dinner, crowned with garlands, as is usual with the Indians when they feast in the king’s palace.
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Of the dinner Damis has given a detailed account. The king, and about five of his family with him, lay on a low couch; the other guests sat on stools. The table was like an altar, about as high as a man’s knee; it was in the middle of the room, and as large as would be a circle formed by thirty people with joined hands standing up to dance. It was strewed over with laurel, and a sort of myrtle from which the Indians prepare their unguents, and was set out with fish and birds, the carcases of lions and goats and sows, and with tiger loins—the only part of the tiger they eat, and this because they suppose that at its birth it raises its forepaws to the rising sun Each guest, as he wanted anything, got up and went to the table; and taking a bit of this, cutting off a slice of that, he returned to his seat and ate his fill, always eating bread with his meat. When they had had enough, gold and silver bowls, each one large enough for ten guests, were brought in, and from these they drank, stooping down like cattle. In the meanwhile, they were amused by various feats which required no little skill and courage: a javelin was thrown upward, and at the same time a boy leaped at it and tumbled head over heels while in the air, but in such a way that he passed over the javelin as it fell, and with the certainty of being wounded if he did not properly time his somersault, indeed the weapon was carried round, and the guests tested its sharpness. One man also was so good a marksman, that he set up his own son against a board, and then threw his darts, so aiming them that, fixed in the board, they traced out his son’s outline.
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Damis and the others were much amused with these entertainments; but Apollonius, who was at the king’s table, paid little attention to them; and, turning to the king, asked him, how he came to know Greek, and where he acquired his philosophy. The king, smiling, answered: “In old times when a ship put into port, the people used to ask its crew if they were pirates, piracy was then so common. But now, though philosophy is God’s most precious gift to man, the first question you Greeks put to a stranger, even of the lowest rabble, is ‘Are you a philosopher?’ And in very truth with you Greeks, I speak not of you Apollonius, philosophy is much the same as piracy, for to the many who profess it, it is like an ill-fitting garment which they have stolen, and in which they strut about awkwardly, trailing it on the ground. And like thieves, on whom the fear of justice presses, they hurry to enjoy the present hour, and give themselves up to gluttony, debauchery, and effiminacy; and no wonder, for while your laws punish coiners of bad money, they take no cognizance of the authors and utterers of a false philosophy. Here, on the other hand, philosophy is a high honour, and before we allow any one to study it, we first send him to the home of the Brahmans, who inquire into his character and parentage. He must shew that his progenitors, for three generations, have been without stain or reproach, and that he himself is of pure morals and of a retentive intellect. The character of his progenitors", the king went on to say, “if of living men, was ascertained from witnesses; and if of dead, was known from the public records. For when an Indian died, a legally appointed officer repaired to his house, and inquired into, and set down in writing, his mode of life, and exactly, under the penalty of being declared incapable of holding any public office As to the youth himself, they judged him worthy or otherwise from his eyes, eyebrows, and cheeks which, as in a mirror reflect the mind and disposition".
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The king then told how his father, the son of a king, had been left very young an orphan; and how during his minority two of his relatives according to Indian custom acted as regents, but with so little regard to law, that some nobles conspired against them, and slew them as they were sacrificing to the Indus, and seized upon the government;—how on this his father, then sixteen years of age, fled to the king beyond the Hydaspes, a greater king than himself, who received him kindly, and offered either to adopt him, or to replace him on his throne; and how declining this offer, he requested to be sent to the Brahmans; and how the Brahmans educated him; and how, in time he married the daughter of the Hydaspian king, and received with her seven villages as pin-money and had issue one son,—himself, Phraotes. Phraotes told of himself that he was brought up by his father in the Greek fashion till the age of twelve; that he was then sent to the Brahmans, and treated by them as a son, for “they especially love”, he observed, “those who know and speak Greek, as akin to them in mind and disposition”, that his parents died; and that in his nineteenth year, just as, by the advice of the Brahmans, he was beginning to take into his own hands the management of his estates, he was deprived of them by the king, his uncle, and was then supported with four servants by willing contributions from his mother’s freedmen. As however he is one day reading the Heraclidae, he hears from a friend of his father's, that if he will return home, he may recover his family kingdom, but he must be quick. The tragedy he was reading he accepts as an omen; and of Greek legends. They then separate, the king to transact the business of his kingdom and to decide some lawsuits—Apollonius to offer his prayers to the Sun. When they again meet, the king tells Apollonius that the state of the victims had not permitted the Court to sit on that day, and he lays before him a case in dispute—one of treasure-trove and in land which has just changed hands, the buyer and seller both claiming the treasure. The king is in much perplexity, and states the pleas on both sides; and the suit might have been drawn out to the same length, and become as celebrated as that of the ass and the shadow at Abdera, had not Apollonius come to his assistance. He inquires into the life and character of the litigants; finds that the seller is a bad, and the purchaser a good man; and on the last therefore awards the treasure.
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When the three days of their sojourn expired, and the king learns that their camels from Babylon are worn out, he orders that of his white camels, on the Indus, four shall be sent to Bardanes, and four others given to Apollonius, together with provisions and a guide to the Brahmans. He offers him besides gold and jewels and linen garments; the gold Apollonius refuses, but he accepts the linen garments because they are like the old genuine Attic cloak, and he picks out besides one jewel, because of its mystic and divine properties. He receives also a letter for Iarchas, to this effect:—"The king Phraotes to the Master Iarchas and the wise men with him, greeting: Apollonius, a very wise man, thinks you wiser than himself and has travelled hither to learn your doctrine. Send him back knowing all you know. Your lessons will not be lost, for he speaks better, and has a better memory than any man I ever knew. Shew him Father Iarchas, the throne on which I sat when you gave me the kingdom. His followers are worthy of all praise, if only for submitting to such a man. Farewell".
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They leave Taxila, and after two days' journey reach the plain, where Porus is said to have encountered Alexander. There they saw a triumphal arch serving as a pediment to a statue of Alexander in a four-horse chariot, as he appeared on the Issus. A little farther on, they came upon two other arches on one of which was Alexander, on the other Porus—the one saluting, the other in an attitude of submission.
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Having passed the Hydraotes, they pursued their way through several countries to the Hyphasis. Thirty stadia from the river, they saw: the altars Alexander had built there "To Father Ammon and Brother Hercules, to the Providence Minerva and Olympian Jove, and to the Samo-Thracian Cabiri and the Indian Sun and Brother Apollo", and also a bronze pillar with this inscription:—"Here Alexander halted". And this pillar Philostratus conjectures was raised by the Indians in joy at the return homeward of Alexander.
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In reference to the Hyphasis and its marvels, we are told that it is navigable at its very source, in a plain; but that lower down alternate ridges of rock impede its course, and cause eddies which render navigation impossible. It is about as broad as the Ister, the largest of our European rivers, and the same sort of trees grow upon its banks. From these trees the people obtain an unguent with which if the marriage guests neglect to anoint the bride and bridegroom, the marriage rite is thought informal and not pleasing to Venus. To Venus indeed its groves are dedicated, as also a fish found here only, the peacock, so called from its caerulean crest, spotted scales, and golden tail, which it can open out at its pleasure. In this river is also found a sort of white worm, the property of the king, which is melted into an oil so inflammable, that nothing but glass will hold it. This oil is used in sieges, and when thrown on the battlements it burns so fiercely, that its fire, so far as yet known, is inextinguishable.
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In the marshes they catch wild asses with a horn on their foreheads, with which they fight, bull-fashion. From this horn is made a cup of such virtue that if any one drinks out of it, he need for that day fear no sickness, nor wounds, nor fire, nor poison. It belongs to the king, who also reserves to himself the right of hunting the ass. Apollonius saw the animal, and admired it; but when Damis asked him if he could believe all that was said of the virtue of the cup, he answered, "Yes, when I see any Indian king immortal".
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Here they met with a woman black to her breasts, white from her breasts downwards. She was sacred to the Indian Venus, and to this goddess piebald women are sacred from their birth, as to Apis among the Egyptians. Here they crossed that spur of the Caucasus which stretches down towards the Red Sea; it was full of all sorts of aromatic plants. The headlands produced cinnamon, a shrub very like a young vine and so grateful to goats, that if you hold it in your hands they will follow you and whine after you like dogs. On the cliffs grow the tall, and all other sorts of, frankincense, and pepper trees. The pepper tree resembles the *agnos* both in its leaves and the clustered form of its fruit.
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It grows on precipices inaccessible to man, but frequented by apes, which, as they gather for them the pepper fruit, the Indians make much of and protect with arms and dogs against the lion; for the lion will lie in wait for the ape, and eat its flesh as medicine when he is sick, and as food when he is old and no longer able to hunt the stag and wild boar. The pepper harvest is gathered in this way:—Directly under the cliffs where the peppers grow, the people dig small trenches into which they throw as something worthless the fruit of the neighbouring trees. The monkeys from the heights watch them, and as soon as it is night, begin like them to tear the clustered fruits from the pepper. and like thein to fling it into the trenches. In the morning the people come back and carry off the pepper, which they thus obtain without any labour.
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On the other side of the mountain was a large plain—the largest in India being fifteen days' journey to the Ganges, and eighteen days' to the Red Sea. It was intersected with dykes running in different directions, and communicating with the Ganges, and serving the double purpose of landmarks and canals for irrigation. The land here is the best in India black and very productive; its wheat stalks are like reeds, and its beans three times as large as the Egyptian; its sesame and millet are also extraordinarily fine. Here, too, grow those nuts, which for their rarity and size are, as a sort of curiosity, often found in Greek temples. The grapes of the country however are small, like the Lydian and Maeonian, and with an agreeable bouquet when gathered. A tree is also found here like the laurel but with a fruit like a large pomegranate, within the husk of which is an apple of the colour of a fine hyacinth, and the very best flavoured fruit they ever ate.
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As they came down the mountain, they witnessed a dragon-hunt. India, its marshes, plains, and mountains, are full of dragons Of these they tell us that the marsh-dragon is thirty cubits long. sluggish, and without a crest; the male very like the female. Its back is black, and it has fewer scales than the other kinds. Homer, when he speaks of the dragon at the fount in Aulis as of blood-red back, describes the marsh-dragon better than the other poets, who make the Nemaean dragon crested, for crested you will hardly find any marsh-dragon.
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The plain and hill-dragons are superior to, and larger than, the marsh kind. They move along more swiftly than the swiftest rivers, and nothing can escape them. They are crested; and though in the young the crest is small, when they are full-grown, it rises to a great height. They are of a fiery colour, with serrated backs, and bearded; their necks are erect, and their scales shine like silver. The pupils of their eyes are a fiery stone of wonderful and mystic properties. They are hunted for the sake of their eyes, skin, and teeth. A dragon of this kind will sometimes attack an elephant; both then perish and are a "find" for the huntsmen. They resemble largest fish, but are more lithe and active; their teeth are hard as those of the whale.
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The mountain-dragons are larger than those of the plain, and with a fiercer look; their scales are golden, their beard too, which hangs in clusters; they glide on the earth with a sound as of brass; their fiery crests throw out a light brighter than that of a torch. They overpower the elephant, but become themselves the prey of the Indian. They are killed in this fashion. The Indians spread out before the serpent's hiding-place a scarlet carpet inwrought with golden characters, upon which, should the dragon chance to rest his head, he is charmed to sleep. They then, with incantations, call him out of his hole; and if everything goes well—for often he gets the better of them and their "gramary"—as soon as with outstretched neck he is lulled in magic sleep, they rush on him with hatchets and cut off his head, and extract from it bright-coloured stones, flashing with every hue, and of powers wonderful as those of Gyges' ring. These dragons are also found in the mountains bordering on the Red Sea. They are said to live to an incredible age, but of this nothing sure is known.
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At the foot of the mountain was situated Paraka, a very large city. Its inhabitants are, from their youth, trained to hunt the dragon, and it is full of their trophies—the heads of dragons. They eat the hearts and livers, and in this way, as was proved by Apollonius himself, they acquire a knowledge of the language and thoughts of animals.
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Proceeding onwards, our travellers hear the sound of a shepherd's pipe, and presently see a herd of white stags grazing. The Indians keep them for their milk, which is very nourishing.
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Thence, after a four days' journey through a fertile and well-cultivated country, they approached the stronghold of the Sophoi; and now their guide ordered his camel to kneel, and jumped down sweating with fear. Then Apollonius knew where they were, and laughed at the Indian and bade him again mount his camel. The fact is, the near neighbourhood of the Sophoi frightened him; and indeed, the people fear them more than the king; for the king consults them as he would an oracle, and does nothing without their advice and concurrence.
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When they had reached a village, not the eighth of a mile from the hill of the Sophoi, and were preparing to put up there, they perceived a young man running towards them. He was the very blackest Indian they had yet seen, with a bright spot, crescent-shaped, between his brows, much such a mark as Menon, the Ethiopian foster-child of the sophist Herod, had in his youth. He bore a golden anchor, which, as symbolical of holding fast, the Indians have made their caduceus.
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When the messenger coming up addressed Apollonius in Greek, as the villagers also spoke Greek, his companions were not much surprised, but when he addressed Apollonius by name, they were struck with astonishment, all but Apollonius who, now full of confidence, looking at Damis, said, “The men we have come to visit are wise indeed; they know the future”: and then turning to the Indian, he asked him what he should do, for he wished to converse with the Sophoi immediately. The man answered, “Leave your people here, but come you, just as you are, so they request”. This “they” seemed to Apollonius quite Pythagorean, and he followed the messenger rejoicing.
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The hill of the Sophoi rose sheer up from the plain, and was about as high as the Acropolis at Athens. It was besides fortified by a goodly belt of rock, on which you might trace the impressions of hoofs, and beards, and faces, and what seemed the backs of falling men. And they heard that when Bacchus and Hercules attempted the place, Bacchus ordered his Pans, as able to shake it to its foundation, to storm it: but thunder-struck by the Sophoi, they fell headlong one upon the other and so left these marks upon the stones. They said also, that about and around this hill a cloud hung within which the Sophoi dwelt visible and invisible at will, and that their stronghold was without gates, so that it could not be called either enclosed or open.
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Apollonius and his guide ascended the hill on the south side. He saw a well some twenty-four feet about. Over its mouth hung a dark vapour which rose as the heat of the day increased and at noon gave out all the colours of the rainbow. He was told that here the subsoil was cinnabar and that the water of the well was sacred, and never used, and that all the neighbourhood swore by it. Near this place was a crater, which threw out a lead-coloured flame without smell or smoke, and which bubbled up with a volcanic matter that rose to its brim, but never overflowed: here the Indians purified themselves from all involuntary sins. The well, the Sophoi called the well of the test; the crater, the fire of pardon. Here were also seen two vessels of black stone—the urns of the winds and of the rain, and the one or the other is opened or shut just as wind or rain is wanted or otherwise. Here too they found statues of the most ancient Greek gods, and worshipped in the Greek manner; of the Polian Minerva, and of Bacchus, and of the Delian and Amyclaean Apollo. The Sophoi look upon their stronghold as the very navel of India. They here worship fire obtained from the sun's rays, and at noon daily hymn its praise.
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Apollonius, in an address to the Egyptians, somewhat enigmatically describes the life of the Sophoi:—"I have seen", he says, "Brahmans who dwell on the earth, and yet not on the earth; in places fortified, and yet without walls; and who possess nothing, and yet all things". According to Damis they used the earth as a couch, but first strewed it with choice grasses: they walked too the air—Damis himself saw them—and this not to excite wonder—all ostentation is abhorrent to their nature,—but in imitation of and as a more fitting service to the sun. He saw too the fire which they drew down from the sun's rays,—and which though it flamed on no altar and was confined by no hearth, took shape and body and floated in mid-air, where spite of the darkness, under the charm of their hymned praise it stayed unchanged. As in the night they worshipped this fire, so in the day they worshipped the sun and besought it to order the seasons for India's good. In this way is to be understood Apollonius's first assertion: "The Brahmans live on the earth, and yet not on the earth". His second, Damis refers to that covering of clouds which they draw over themselves at pleasure, and which no rain can penetrate. His third, to those fountains which bubble up for his Bacchanals when Bacchus shakes the earth and them, and from which the Indians themselves drink and give to others to drink. Well therefore may Apollonius say, that men, who at a moment's notice and without preparation can get whatever they want, possess nothing and yet all things. They wear their hair long, like the old Macedonians, and on their head a white mitre. They go bare-foot; and their coats have no sleeves, and are of wild cotton, of an oily nature, and white as Pamphylian wool, but softer. Of this cotton the sacred vestments are made; and the earth refuses to give it up if any but themselves attempt to gather it. They carry a stick, and wear a ring, both of infinite and magic power.
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Apollonius found the Sophoi seated on brazen stools, their chief, Iarchas, on a raised throne of bronze ornamented with golden images. They saluted him with their hands, but Iarchas welcomed him in Greek, asked him for the King's letter, and added, that it wanted a delta. As soon as he had read it, he asked Apollonius, "What do you think of us?" "Oh!" said Apollonius, "the very journey I have undertaken—and I am the first of my countrymen who has undertaken it—answers that question." "In what, then", enquired Iarchas, "do you think us wiser than you?" "I think your views wiser, more divine", answered Apollonius, "and should I find that you know no more than I, this at least I shall have learned that I have nothing more to learn". "Well", said the Indian, "other people usually ask of those who visit them, whence they come, who they are; but we, as a first proof of our knowledge, show strangers that we know them;" and so saying, he told Apollonius who his father was, who his mother, all that happened to him at Aegae, and how Damis joined him, and what they had said and done on the journey; and this so distinctly and fluently, that he might have been a companion of their route. Apollonius, greatly astonished, asked him how he knew all this. "In this knowledge," he answered, "you are not wholly wanting, and where you are deficient we will instruct you, for we think it not well to keep secret what is so worthy of being known, especially from you, Apollonius, a man of most excellent memory. And Memory, you must know, is of the Gods the one we most honour. "But how do you know my nature?" asked Apollonius. "We," he answered, "see into the very soul, tracing out its qualities by a thousand signs. But as midday is at hand, let us to our devotions, in which you also may, if you will, take part." They then adjourned to the bath, a spring like that of Dircae in Boeotia as Damis says who afterwards saw Dircae. They first took off their clothes, and then anointed their heads with an unguent which made their bodies run down with sweat, and so jumped into the water. After they had well bathed they put garlands on their heads and proceeded to the temple, intent on their hymn. There standing round in a circle with Iarchas as their leader they beat the ground with their staves, till bellying like a wave it sent them up into the air about two cubits; and then they sang a hymn, very like the Paean of Sophocles sung at Athens to Aesculapius. When they had again come down to the earth and had performed their sacred duties, Iarchas called the youth with the anchor, and bade him take care of Apollonius’s companions; and he in a shorter space of time than the swiftest birds, was gone and was back again, and told Iarchas, “I have taken care of them”.
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Apollonius was then placed on the throne of Phraotes, and Iarchas bade him question them on any matter he pleased, for he was now among men who knew all things. Apollonius therefore asked, as though it was of all knowledge the most difficult, “Whether the Sophoi knew themselves?” But Iarchas answered quite contrary to his expectation, that they knew all things, because they first knew themselves. That, without this first and elementary knowledge, no one could be admitted to their philosophy. Apollonius, remembering his conversation with Phraotes and the examination they had been obliged to undergo, assented to this, more especially as he felt the truth of the observation in himself. He then asked “What opinion they held of themselves?” and was told, “that they held themselves to be gods, because, they were good men”. Apollonius then enquired about the soul, and, when he heard that they held the opinions of Pythagoras, he further asked, whether, as Pythagoras remembered himself as Euphorbus, so Iarchas could speak of some one of his previous lives, either as Greek or Trojan, or other man? Iarchas, first reproving the Greeks for the reverence they pay to the Trojan heroes and to Achilles as the greatest of them, to the neglect of better men, Greek, Egyptian, and Indian, related: how years long ago he had been one Ganges, king of the Indian people, to whom the Ethiopians, then Indians, were subject: how this Ganges, ten cubits in stature and the most comely of men, built many cities and drove back the Scythians who invaded his territories: and how, though robbed of his wife by the then king of Phraotes’s country, he had unlike Achilles kept sacred his alliance with him: how, too, he had rendered his father, the Ganges river, propitious to India, by inducing it to keep within its banks and to divert its course to the Red Sea: how, notwithstanding all this, the Ethiopians murdered him, and were driven by the hate of the Indians and the now sterile earth and the abortive births of their wives to leave their native land: and how, pursued by his ghost, and still suffering the same ills, they wandered from place to place, till having at length punished his murderers they settled in that part of Africa from them called Ethiopia. He told, too, how Ganges had thrust seven adamantine swords deep into the ground in some unknown spot, and how when the gods without indicating it ordered that on that spot a sacrifice should be offered, he, then a child of four years old, immediately pointed it out. But ceasing to speak of himself, he directed Apollonius's attention to a youth of about twenty, and he described him as patient under all suffering and by nature especially fitted for philosophy, but beyond measure averse to it; and his aversion was attributed to the ill treatment and injustice he had received from Ulysses and Homer in a former life. He had been Palamedes.
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While they were thus talking, a messenger announced the king's approach and that he would arrive towards evening, and came to consult with them on his private affairs. Iarchas answered that he should be welcome, and that he would leave them a better man for having known “this Greek”. He then resumed his conversation with Apollonius, and asked him to tell something of his previous existence. Apollonius excuses himself, because as it was undistinguished he did not care to remember it. “But surely”, observed Iarchas, “to be the pilot of an Egyptian ship is no such ignoble occupation, and a pilot I see you once were”. “True”, replied Apollonius, “but an office which should be on a par with that of the statesman or the general has by the fault of sailors themselves become contemptible and degraded. Besides my very best act in that life no one deemed worthy even of praise”. “And what was that?” asked Iarchas. “Was it the doubling with slackened sail Malea and Sunium, or the carefully observing the course of the winds, or the carrying your ship over the reefs and swell of the Euboean coast?” “Well”, said Apollonius, “if I must speak of my sailor life, I will tell you of something I did then which I think was wise and honest. In those days pirates infested the Phoenician Sea. And some of their spies knowing that my ship was richly laden came to me and sounded me, and asked me what would be my share of the freight. I told them a thousand drachmas, for we were four pilots. ‘And what sort of a home have you?’ they asked. ‘A hut on Pharos, where Proteus used to live’, I answered, ‘Well’, they went on, ‘would you like to change the sea for land—a hut for a house—and receive ten times the pay you look for, and rid yourself at the same time of the thousand ills of the tempestuous sea?’ ‘Aye, that I would’, I said. They then told me who they were, and offered me ten thousand drachmas, and promised that neither myself nor any of my crew should suffer harm if I gave them an opportunity of taking my ship. So we agreed that I should set sail in the night, but lie-to under the promontory; and that the pirates, who were at anchor on the other side, should then run out and seize my ship and cargo. All this took place in a temple, and I made them swear to fulfil their promises; while I agreed on my part to do as they wished. But instead of lying to I made sail for the open sea and so got off". "And this", observed Iarchas, "you think an act of justice?" "Yes", said Apollonius, "and of humanity; for to save the lives of my men, and the property of my employers, and to be above a bribe, though a sailor, I hold to be a proof of many virtues".
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Cites (4)
- Ἰνδικά — Μεγασθένης, Ancient Greek
- Indus Civilisation
- Pagala
- Stobera