The Cambridge History of India, Vol. I: Ancient India v1.c17.162

v1.c17.162

Compared with the case of the Nakshatras there is little other evidence of the contact of India with other civilisations in this period. In the Çatapatha Brāhmaṇa for the first time there appears the legend of the flood and the saving of Manu by a great fish; and it is most unlikely that we are to see here any reminiscence of the former Āryan home and the crossing of the Hindu Kush¹. It is therefore possible that the legend may be of Semitic origin; but, if so, as usual the Indians have completely appropriated the motive, so that the borrowing cannot be proved. It has been suggested² that the knowledge of iron was derived from Babylon; but this is merely a conjecture which has at present no support in evidence. A sea-borne commerce with Babylon cannot be proved for this epoch either by the evidence of Vedic literature or by the references in the Book of Kings to apes and peacocks by names which are believed to have had an Indian origin. The history of the alphabet has been used by Bühler³ to show that it was borrowed by traders from a South Semitic source via Mesopotamia about 800 B.C.; but we cannot lay any stress upon this date. It seems, indeed, most probable that writing was introduced by traders and that it was only gradually adopted into its proper form for the expression of the Sanskrit language. At what date this took place is not really susceptible of proof: there is no certain reference to writing in the literature of a date earlier than the fourth century B.C.; and the real development of writing belongs in all likelihood to the fifth century B.C. It was the end of the sixth century that saw the invasion of Darius and the annexation of the territory round the Indus; and, prior to that event, there is no strong evidence of a really active contact between India and the outer world. It is, indeed, probable enough that even before the time of Darius, Cyrus had relations with the tribes on the right bank of the Indus, and Arrian asserts that the Assakenoi and the Astakenoi were subject to the Assyrian kings¹; but everything points to the fact that, in the period of the Brāhmaṇas, relations with the Gandhāras and other tribes in the remote north-west were very slight. It is also significant that there is no really certain case of an inscription of any sort in India before the third century B.C.²