The Cambridge History of India, Vol. I: Ancient India v1.c24.157

v1.c24.157

Prior to the seventh century B.C., and for numerous ages afterwards, there is further proof of relations between Persia and India through the facts of trade in antiquity, especially through the early commerce between India and Babylon, which, it is believed, was largely via the Persian Gulf¹. Persia's share in this development, although hard to determine, must have been significant even in days before the Achaemenian Empire. Beginning with the sixth century B.C., however, we enter upon the more solid ground of recorded political history. From unquestioned sources in the classics we know that the Medo-Persian kingdom, which was paramount in Western Asia during that century, was brought into more or less direct contact with India through the campaigns carried on in the east of Īrān by Cyrus the Great at some time between 558 and 530 B.C., the limits of his reign. The difficulty, however, of determining exactly when this campaigning occurred and just how the domains between the rivers Indus and Jaxartes came under the control or sphere of influence of the Persian Empire is a problem accounted among the hardest in Īrānian history².