The Classical Accounts of India c20.s2: 2. Dion Chrysostom
The Classical Accounts of India c20.s2
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2. Dion Chrysostom
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Dion, surnamed Chrysostom or the golden-mouthed on account of his shining abilities as an orator, was born at Prusa, a city of Mysia, about the middle of the first Christian century He found occupation at first in his native place, where he held important offices, practised the composition of speeches and rhetorical essays, and studied philosophy. Eight of his Orations are still extant, and these sufficiently justify the opinion of the ancients that Dion is one of the most eminent among the Greek rhetoricians and sophists His style is praised for its Attic purity and grace
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*Oratio.* XXXV. 434. No men live more happily than you (the Phrygians), with the exception of the Indians, for in their country, ’tis said, the rivers flow not, like yours, with water, but one river with pellucid wine, another with honey, and another with oil, and they have their springs among the hills—in the breasts, so to speak, of the earth. In these respects there is a world of difference between you and them as regards pleasure and power; for what you have here, you get with difficulty and in a shabby way, pilfering trees of their fruits, calves of their milk, and bees of their honey; but in India things are altogether purer, except, I imagine, for violence and rascality. The rivers flow for one month for the king, and this is his tribute, but for the rest of the year they flow for the people. So then they pass each day in the society of their children and their wives at the sources and by the streams of the rivers, playing and laughing as if at a festival. Along the river banks there flourishes in great vigour and luxuriance the lotus—and this is about the sweetest of all comestibles, and not like our lotus, which is no better than food for cattle. Sesame also grows there in abundance, and parsley, as one might conjecture from their similarity—but in respect of excellence of quality there can be no comparison. In the same country is produced another seed yielding a better and much more suitable food than wheat and barley. This grows in large enveloping leaves like a rose, but these leaves are more fragrant and of larger size. The roots of these plants they eat as well as the fruit, and they require not to labour. There are many channels to convey water from the rivers, some of them large and others which are smaller and mingle with each other. These are made by the inhabitants as suits their pleasure; and they convey water in ducts with facility, just as you convey water for the irrigation of your gardens. They have besides at hand water-baths of two kinds; that which is hot and clearer than silver, and the other dark-blue by reason of its depth and coldness. In these the women and children swim about together—all of them models of beauty. Emerging from the bath, I can fancy them lying down in the meadows, commingling their sweet voices in mirth and song. And there the meadows are of ideal loveliness, and decked by nature with flowers, and with trees, which from overhead cast a protecting shade, and offer fruit within reach of all who would pluck it from the descending branches. Of birds, again, there is a great plenty, which make the hills where they have their homes resound with their songs, while others, from the spray of overhanging boughs, warble notes more melodious than those played by your instruments of music. The wind, too, blows gently, and there is always an equable temperature, such as prevails at the beginning of summer, and besides all this, the sky is there clearer than yours, and surpasses it in the multitude and splendour of its stars. Their span of life is not less than forty years, and for all this time they are in the bloom of youth and they know neither old age nor disease nor want. But, though India is actually in the enjoyment of all these blessings, there are nevertheless men called Brachmans, who, bidding adieu to the rivers and turning away from those with whom they had been thrown in contact, live apart, absorbed, in philosophic contemplation, subjecting their bodies to sufferings of astonishing severity, though no one compels them, and submitting to terrible endurances. It is said, further, that they possess a remarkable fountain—that of truth—by far the best and most divine of all—and that any one who has once tasted it can never be satiated or filled with it.
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These statements are not fictions, for some of those who come from India have ere now asserted them to be facts, and some few do come in pursuit of trade. Now these do business with the inhabitants of the sea coast, but this class of Indians is not held in repute, and are reprobated by the rest of their countrymen You must needs then acknowledge that the people of India are more blest than yourselves. while you are yourselves more blessed than all others, with the solitary exception of a race of men that are the richest in gold. This gold, let me tell you, they take from ants—creatures that are larger than foxes, though in other respects like your own foxes. They dig under the earth in the same way as other ants, but the gold which they heap up is purer than all other gold and of greater brilliancy. The mounds are piled up close to each other in regular order like hillocks of gold dust, and flash their splendour all the plain over. It is difficult in consequence to look towards the sun, and many who have tried to do so have ruined their eyesight. The men who are next neighbours to the ants, in seeking to plunder these mounds, cross the intervening space—a desert of no great extent, mounted on wagons drawn by their swiftest horses. They arrive at noon when the ants have gone underground, and seizing at once the contents of the mound, take to flight. The ants on discovering the theft give chase, and overtaking the robbers, close with them in fight till they conquer or die; for in prowess they surpass all other wild beasts.
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*Oratio.* XLIX. 538. The Indians have the Brachmans, who excel in self-control and in righteousness and their love of the Diving Being, whence they have a better knowledge of the future than other men have of the present *Oratio.* XXXII. 373. For I see in the midst of you (the Alexandrians) not only Greeks, Italians, Syrians, Libyans, Cilicians, Ethiopians, Arabians, but even Bactrians and Scythians and Persians, and some Indians who view the spectacles with you and are with you on all occasions.
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*Oratio.* LIII. 554-55. It is said that the poetry of Homer is sung by the Indians, who had translated it into their own language and modes of expression, so that even the Indians, to whom many of our stars are invisible since it is said that the Bears do not show themselves in their horizon, are not unacquainted with the woes of Priam, and the weeping and wailing of Andromache and Hecuba, and the heroic feats of Achilles and Hector, so potent was the influence of what one man had sung.⁴