The Cambridge History of India, Vol. I: Ancient India v1.c19.s8.5

v1.c19.s8.5

Unfortunately each set is open to very serious objections. The Chronicles are quite good as chronicles go, and we have them not only complete but well edited and translated. But of course we cannot expect from documents written fifteen hundred years or more ago, any of that historical criticism that we are only just beginning to use in the West. They are written throughout for edification, and in the Mahāvaṁsa sometimes also for amusement; they are in verse, and are not infrequently nearer to poetry than history; and though based on a continuous tradition, that tradition is now lost. On the other hand, the work of Megasthenes, written during the life-time of Chandagutta, is itself lost. What we have are fragments preserved more or less accurately, and with the best intentions, by later Latin and Greek authors. Where what is evidently intended as a quotation from the same passage in Megasthenes is found in more than one of these later authors the presentations of it do not, in several cases, agree. This throws doubt on the correctness of those quotations which, being found in one author only, cannot be so tested. A number of the quotations contain statements that, as they stand, are glaringly absurd—stories of gold-digging ants, men with ears large enough to sleep in, men without mouths, and so on. Strabo therefore calls Megasthenes mendacious. But surely such stories (and other things) only show that Megasthenes was just as ignorant of the modern rules of historical evidence as the Chroniclers were, and for the same reason. Strabo's idea of criticism is no better than that of those who ignore the Chroniclers on the ground that they are mendacious. As will be seen in Chapter XVI which deals more fully with the Greek and Latin writers on Ancient India, it is more probable that in these fairy-tales of his Megasthenes, like Herodotus before him, had either accepted in good faith stories which were current in the India of his day, or had merely misunderstood some Indian expression.