The Classical Accounts of India c23: Appendix II. Indian Embassy to Augustus
The Classical Accounts of India c23
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Appendix II. Indian Embassy to Augustus
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Along with his account of the Indian travels of Apollonius of Tyana (above, pp. 383-412) Priaulx published a critical account of the several embassies sent from India to Rome, noted by classical writers. His dissertation on the Indian Embassy to Augustus, the first and the most important one, is reproduced below. Cf accounts of embassies given by Strabo and Dion Cassius and miscellaneous notices about them (above, pp. 282, 451-53).
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ON THE INDIAN EMBASSY TO AUGUSTUS.
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NICOLAUS DAMASCENUS, in a fragment preserved by Strabo, relates that at Antioch Epidaphne he fell in with three Indian ambassadors, then on their way to the court of Augustus. They were, as their letter showed, the survivors of a larger embassy, to the other members of which the length of the journey principally had proved fatal. Their letter was written on parchment and in the name of Porus and in Greek. It set forth that Porus, though lord over six hundred kings, much valued the friendship of, and was ready to open his dominions to, Caesar, and to assist him on all just and lawful occasions. The presents they brought with them were in the charge of eight well-anointed slaves naked all but their girdles, and consisted of a youth whose arms had been amputated at the shoulders in childhood, a sort of Hermes, some large vipers, a snake ten cubits long, a river tortoise of four cubits, and a partridge somewhat larger than a vulture. With the ambassadors was that Indian, who burned himself at Athens—not to escape from present ills, but because, hitherto successful in everything he had undertaken, he now feared, lest any longer life should bring him misery and disappointment; and so smiling, naked and perfumed, he leaped into the buring pile. On his tomb was placed this inscription :—
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“Here lies Zarmanochegas, of Bargosa, who according to the ancestral caustom of the Hindus gave himself immortality.”
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In this narrative, the king of kings Porus, the Greek letter, the beggerly presents better suited to a juggler’s booth than to the court of a great sovereign, strike us with surprise; and we ask whether an Indian, or what purported to be an Indian Embassy, and such an embassy as described by Damascenus, ever presented itself to Augustus, and by whom and from what part of India it could have been sent?
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To this Indian Embassy, Horace, a contemporary, in more than one ode, exultingly and with some little exaggeration alludes, and to it Strabo almost a contemporary a second time refers, when in opening his account of India he laments the scantiness of his materials; that so few Greeks, and those but ignorant traders and incapable of any just observation,- had reached the Ganges; and that from India but one embassy to Augustus from one place and from one king Pandion or Porus had visited Europe. Of later writers who mention it, Florus (A.D. 110, 117) states "that the ambassadors were four years on the road and that their presents were of elephants, pearls, and precious stones", and Suetonius (A.D. 120, 130) attributes it to the fame of Augustus' moderation and virtues, which allured Indians and Scythians to seek his alliance and that of the Roman people. Dio Cassius (A.D. 194) speaks of it at length; he tells, that "at Samos (B.C. 22, 20) many embassies came to Augustus, and that the Indians, having before proclaimed, then and there concluded, a treaty of alliance with him, that among their gifts were tigers now seen for the first time by Romans and even Greeks, and a youth without arms like a statue of Hermes, but as expert with his feet as other people with their hands, for with them he could bend a bow, throw a javelin, and play the Trumpet". Dio then goes on to say that "one of the Indians, Zarmaros, whether because he was of the Sophists and therefore out of emulation, or whether because he was old and it was the custom of his country, or whether as a show for the Athenians and Augustus who had gone to Athens, expressed his determination of putting an end to his existence. And having been first initiated in the mysteries of the two Gods held out of their due course for the initiation of Augustus, he afterwards threw himself into the burning pile."
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Hieronymus (A.D. 380) in his translation of the Canon Chronicon of Eusebius just notices an Indian Embassy to Augustus, but places it in the third year of the 188th Olympiad, or B.C. 26. And Orosius, a native of Tarragona (early part of the 5th century), relates, that "an Indian and a Scythian Embassy traversed the whole world, and found Caesar at Tarragona, in Spain", and with some rhetorical flourish, then observes, "that just as in Babylon Alexander received deputations from Spain and the Gauls, so now Augustus in the furthest west was approached with gifts by suppliant Indian and Scythian Ambassadors". From these authorities, I think we may safely conclude, that an Indian Embassy, or what purported to be an Indian Embassy, was received by Augustus.
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But while we allow that our authorities are applicable to, or certainly not irreconcilable with, Damascenus' embassy which Augustus received at Samos, 22-20 B.C., we cannot but observe that St. Jerome's is referred to the year 26 B.C. and that Orosius brings it to Tarragona, whither Augustus had gone 27 B.C. and where he was detained till 24 B.C. by the Cantabrian war. Hence a difficulty, which Casaubon and others have endeavoured to remove by assuming two Indian Embassies; the one at Tarragona to treat of peace, the other at Samos to ratify the peace agreed upon. But—not to mention that this preliminary embassy is unknown to the earlier writers, who all so exult in the so-called second embassy that they scarcely would have failed to notice the first—I would first remark that no author whatever speaks of two Indian Embassies. And I would secondly refer to the ambassadorial letter of which Damascenus has preserved the contents, and in which we find no allusion to any previous contract or agreement between the two sovereigns, but simply an offer on the part of the Hindu prince to open his country to the subjects and citizens of Rome in the person of Caesar. Surely then, than this embroglio of embassies which come to sue for peace where war was impossible, it is more natural to suppose that Jerome, a careless writer, misdated his embassy; and that Orosius, a friend and pupil of Jerome, finding that the date in Jerome tallied with Caesar's expedition to Spain, seized the opportunity both of illustrating his native town and of instituting a comparison between Augustus and Alexander the Great. I think we may rest content with one embassy.
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But is Damascenus' account of this embassy a trustworthy and faithful account? Strabo evidently gives credit to it, and to some extent confirms it by stating that the Hermes he himself had seen and in another place, while he attributes our embassy to a Pandion rather than a Porus, he still connects it with the Indian who burned himself at Athens. Plutarch in noticing the self-cremation of Calanus, Alexander's Gymnosophist, adds, that many years afterwards at Athens another Indian in the suite of Augustus similarly put an end to his life, and that his monument is still known as the Indian's tomb. Horace, Florus, and Suetonius give indeed another character and other objects to the embassy but write too loosely to be authorities for any fact not reconcilable with the narrative of Damascenus. With that narrative Dio Cassius, too, in the main agrees; but as he specifies tigers, a truly royal gift, and unknown to Damascenus, as among the Indian presents, he gives us an opportunity of testing his and Damascenus' accuracy. For he affirms that the tigers of the embassy were the first ever seen by Romans. Now Suetonius mentions it as a trait of Augustus, that he was ever so ready to gratify the people with the sight of rare or otherwise remarkable animals, that he would exhibit them “extra ordinem”, out of due course and on ordinary days and that in this way he exhibited a tiger on the stage. And Pliny states that “a tame tiger” (and other than tame tigers our ambassadors would scarcely carry about with them) “was shown in Rome for the first time at the consecration of the Theatre of Marcellus (the in scena of Suetonius) in the Nones of May and during the consulships of Q. Tubero and Fabius Maximus, or in the year 11 B.C. i.e. nine years after the date of our embassy, and therefore, a tiger presented by it. The evidence of Dio Cassius on this point is then, to say the least of it, unsupported, and we see no reason to believe that tigers were among the Indian gifts. We thus find the account of Damascenus confirmed in several particulars, and in none satisfactorily impugned. We accept the Indian Sophist, we accept the Hermes, we accept the beggarly presents, and because we accept so much we accept also the Greek letter, and the Pandyan or Puru, king of kings; for we believe, as Strabo also evidently believed, that what Damascenus wrote, he wrote from his own knowledge. But how then explain what is so at variance with our established notions?
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Lassen, in that great Encyclopaedia of Hindu literature, the “Indische Alterthmskunde”, evidently struck by the good faith of Damascenus' narrative, has endeavoured to smooth down the difficulties attached to it. The six hundred subject kings he sets down to evident exaggeration, but he identifies the Porus of the embassy with the Paurava king, who at the beginning of our era on the death of Kadphises II founded an independent kingdom in the western Punjab. This Prince he observes was a serpent worshipper, and as a serpent worshipper would naturally look upon the sacred reptile as a fit offering to a brother sovereign. He accounts: for the presents, by suggesting that the more valuable of them the ambassadors had sold on the road: and for the Greek letter, by supposing that it was obtained from some Greek scribe, and substituted for the royal credentials.
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This explanation, however ingenious, is scarcely satisfactory. For,
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1st. Even supposing that our ambassadors had procured a Greek version of the royal letter, yet as Damascenus expressly states that their letter was in Greek, not translated, it follows that they must have suppressed the original and substituted for it what may or may not have been a translation, i.e. we must suppose them guilty of the gravest crime which can be laid to the charge of ambassadors, the falsification of their credentials.
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2ndly. Allowing our Porus to have been a serpent-worshipper, was he therefore likely to approach an unknown ally with one of his pet gods, and such a god! as an offering? I have never heard that the old Egyptian Pharaohs, in reciprocating civilities with any neighbouring king, ever presented him with some well-grown crocodile, or a case of beetles with their appropriate garniture. But let the serpent pass. You have still to account for the vipers and the tortoise. And if you allege in apology that these were but the dregs and refuse of a once richly freighted embassy, and that all that was of value, the pearls and spices, had been sold: then as it could only have been sold under the pressure of want, you have to show that under the circumstances the pressure of want was probable. Now, though the journey before our ambassadors was long and perhaps dangerous, it was over no strange and untrodden country, but along the most ancient route in the world, frequented by caravans, with many stopping places well known and at ascertained distances, it is scarcely credible then that they should set out otherwise than provided against all contingencies, as well-provided at least as the merchants whom they probably accompanied, and scarcely credible that they should have actually suffered from want. But may not the troubles which then harassed the Parthian Empire have delayed their progress, lengthened their journey, and thus increased its expenses? Yes, but as those troubles were now of long standing, they appear surely rather as a reason against the setting out of the embassy than as one for its miserable plight on arrival.
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3rdly. The Paurava Prince to whom Lassen would ascribe this embassy, obtained his throne only after the death of Kadphises II, and in the beginning of our era. And as Kadphises conquered India, more properly the Punjab and Kabulistan, according to Lassen himself about 24 B.C. and died about 10 B.C.
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and as our embassy met Augustus at Samos 22, 20 B.C. it very evidently could not be the embassy of the Paurava Prince. And it could hardly have represented either Kadphises or the King whom Kadphises dethroned : because it is improbable that Kadphises in any transaction with a foreign sovereign would appear disguised under a Hindu name; and very improbable that either the king who had just conquered a kingdom, or the king who was on the point of losing one, should occupy himself with embassies not of a political but of a purely commercial character, and for an object which the very countries that separated him from Rome rendered impossible.
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But how then account for all that surprises us in this embassy ?
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What do we gather from Damascenus' narrative ?
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I. He met our ambassadors at Antioch Epidaphne. Now Antioch Epidaphne is so situated that it is just as probable they arrived there on the road to Greece from the western coast of the Indian Peninsula, either by way of the Red Sea and Alexandria or the Persian Gulf and the Euphrates, as by the mid-Asiatic route and from the Punjab.
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II. Damascenus speaks of a native of Bargosa as accompanying or attached to the embassy, and though he states that the ambassadorial letter was written in the name of Porus, Strabo rather attributes it to a Pandion : and as Barygaza is a trading town at the mouth of the Nerbudda on the Indian coast, and Pandya a kingdom extending along the Western shores of the Indian Peninsula, to the Western coast of India I conclude with Strabo that the embassy probably belongs.
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III. This native of Bargosa or Bargaza, Sanscrit Varikatcha (Julien), is described as a Hindu, and bears a name Zarmanos Chegan, Sanscrit Sramanakarja, i.e. Teacher of the Shamans, which points him out as of the Buddhist faith and a priest, and as his death proves, a priest earnest in his faith. His companions then were probably not Hindus also, and perhaps Buddhists and the representatives of a Hindu and possibly a Buddhist prince.
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IV. The wretched presents—the Greek letter—the sort of doubt which hangs over the name and country of the prince, are all indicative not of the sovereign of a great kingdom but of the petty raja of some commercial town or insignificant district.
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V. The presents not unsuited to the tastes of Augustus, and the Greek letter and its purely commercial tone, indicate that our embassy was planned and organized by Greek traders, and more for Greek than Hindu interests.
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VI. This embassy is conceivable only under the supposition that, if it forwarded the interests of the Greeks who planned it, it also benefited the Hindu prince who was induced to lend it his name.
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But who was this Prince? who these Greeks? and what their common interests? The prince and his residence we are unable to identify. There is nothing in the reptiles of the presents, larger indeed in Guzerat but common to the whole western coast of India, which can enable us to fix on the locale of the embassy. If we turn to the name of the prince, we find that he is a Porus in the ambassadorial letter, but had become Pandion when Strabo wrote and the Peninsula was better known. A Puru of the Punjab we have seen that in all probability he was not; and I do not understand how he could well have been a Pandyan; because Pandya was a great and powerful sovereign and of the Saiva faith, the most bigoted of the Hindu forms of religion and was not likely therefore either to have initiated a commercial alliance with a foreign state, or to have initiated it by-such an embassy as ours. D'Anville suggests that he was a Raja of Ougein who claimed a descent from Porus. But surely a descent from Porus, real or pretended, is not in itself sufficient to identify our prince, unless it can be shown that like the Pandyans and the Guptas he attached to his own name that of his ancestors, used it as a family name and in all public documents styled himself son of Puru. Besides, it seems to me that Ougein is too far inland to have already come into direct contact with Greek traders, and to have known anything of Augustus and the Roman Empire. To recur then to our narrative, it records the name of one Indian town, Bargosa or Barygaza. And in the neighbourhood of Barygaza, and indeed throughout the Northern part of the Peninsula, statues and temples of Buddha are still seen, which indicate that there formerly Buddhism was certainly recognised, perhaps flourished, and was on the ascendant. Barygaza besides, being situated at the mouth of a great river, was, when the Periplus was written, a place of considerable trade, the great and legal mart for the commerce of the West, a city therefore which would probably avail itself with eagerness of any opportunity for assuring its friendly relations with its great customer, Rome; and to it I should be inclined to refer our embassy. But when we remember that Damascenus miscalls it, and that Strabo copies and does not correct him and never himself notices the place, we may well doubt whether in the times we are speaking of it was frequented by Greeks, or better known to them than the other commercial ports on the same part of the coast. And except that one of its citizens was in the ambassadorial suite, I do not think it can show any special claim to our embassy
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Who our Greeks were we may more accurately determine. After the destruction of the Persian Empire, the two great Western marts for the produce of India were Palmyra and Alexandria. But with regard to Palmyra—
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I Its distance from the Peninsula of India was too short, and the route through the Persian Gulf and up the Euphrates too direct to admit of a journey so long, that from the mere time it occupied as hinted by Damascenus several of the ambassadors should have died on the road.
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II Palmyra at this period still retained its national character and civilization and was essentially a Syrian republic. It had not yet merged into that Graeco-Roman city which it became after the time of Trajan, and which its ruins and the legends on its coins and the names of some of its citizens illustrate. Greek and Roman residents it no doubt admitted, but they could have been neither numerous enough nor powerful enough to have organised and forwarded our embassy.
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III Palmyra, situated in the desert some eighty miles from the Euphrates, was pre-eminently an inland town. Its citizens and resident strangers were merchants, warehousemen, carriers, agents, but they assuredly were not seafaring men they possessed no ships, and received the produce of India through the Arabs, whose vessels delivered it at Sura or Thapsacus on the Euphrates whence it was brought on camels to Palmyra. They neither had nor could have any direct intercourse with India, and without such an intercourse our embassy is not conceivable
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IV Palmyra is not likely to have encouraged any Indian embassy to the Roman Emperor. It was a free city. Its inhabitants had not forgotten the designs of Antony and the dangers they had but lately escaped, and it is not probable that they would now of their own free will call Roman attention to their wealth, and place the Indians from whom they derived it in direct communication with their own best customers. Through Palmyra this embassy could not have made its way to Augustus We turn now to the Greeks of Alexandria. Alexandria with a population made up of about every nation under the sun was essentially a Greek city. It carried on a large, profitable and increasing trade with the East. And though at the period of our embassy its merchants seldom ventured beyond the Arab Ports of Cane and Aden, where they traded for the products and manufactures of India, they nevertheless occasionally sailed for the Indian Seas, and made their way even to the Ganges.
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And as they then interfered with the Arab monopoly, they saw themselves everywhere jealously watched and opposed by the Arabs, everywhere treated as interlopers, and had everywhere to encounter the persecutions of an excited populace. Only in some of the smaller and therefore neglected ports, could they find opportunity and permission to trade And then how eagerly would they lay before the authorities the advantages of a direct trade! They would show them the prices asked and obtained by the Arabs for Hindu and Greek commodities, and point out how of the profits the Arabs carried away the lion's share. And if they fell in with some Rajah of the Buddhist faith—a faith without the prejudices of race, proselytising, catholic—and not averse to travel, they surely would easily persuade him, as in after times the Rajah of Ceylon was persuaded, to further and attempt to assure the direct trade by an embassy, the details of which a small Prince would willingly leave to them.
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But besides this commercial interest common to both peoples, the Greeks of Alexandria had an interest of their own in getting up this embassy. In the great civil war but just concluded they had been partisans of Antony, they had fought in his ranks and were the last to yield after his defeat. They had to conciliate the favour of the conqueror. But they were no vulgar flatterers, theirs was not that adulation which repeats ever the same cuckoo note of praise. They studied their man and to his temper and character adapted their tone. To the literary Claudius they devoted a new room in their Museum, and placed his works among their class books. The theatre-circus-loving Nero they wheedled by hired bands of artistic claqueurs. And the usurpation of the plebeian Vespasian they sanctioned by endowing him with miraculous powers. How now would such a people seek to win over the politic Augustus? They bring to his feet these Indian ambassadors, and thus raise him to a rivalship with Alexander. That he was too wise and far-seeing to be himself deceived is probable enough, but is no valid objection. What cared he that the crown was of copper-gilt and the robes of tinsel, provided that