The Cambridge History of India, Vol. I: Ancient India v1.c25.64

v1.c25.64

The gates of Takshaçilā were thrown open to the Europeans and the Indian crowd watched, no doubt with a crowd's curiosity, the strange figures and dresses which thronged their streets. But in one quarter the Greeks met with an indifference which took them aback. At Takshaçilā, so far as we know, the Greeks first noticed Indian ascetics. The report reached Alexander himself of a strange set of men who were to be seen naked somewhere near the city, 'practising endurance,' men commanding a great reverence among the people. It was no use his sending for them, since they would certainly refuse to come: those who wished to learn their secret must go to them. Alexander, however, on his side, felt he could not go to them consistently with his dignity; so he chose an envoy, a Greek officer named Onesicritus, who had been a disciple of the Cynic philosopher Diogenes, a figure obviously akin to the Indian ascetics. Onesicritus, in the book he afterwards wrote, gave an account of his interesting mission, and we may still read it in Strabo's version². He found fifteen ascetics some ten miles from the city, sitting naked and motionless in a sun so burning that one could not even walk over the stones with bare feet. Onesicritus could only communicate with them through a series of three interpreters, but he made them understand that the Yavana king would like to learn their wisdom. The ascetic to whom he first addressed himself answered bluntly that no one coming in the bravery of European clothes—cavalry cloak and broad-brimmed hat and top-boots, such as the Macedonians wore—could learn their wisdom. To do that, he must strip naked and learn to sit on the hot stones beside them. Another answered more mildly that it was really very creditable for such a man as Alexander to desire to know something of the deeper wisdom, but one must remember that to attempt to convey their teaching through three interpreters, common men incapable of understanding more than the mere words, would be like trying to make water flow clear through mud. They seem however to have made an attempt, and then they asked Onesicritus whether among the Yavanas there was any teaching of this kind, and he told them about Pythagoras and Socrates and his old master Diogenes. The ascetics seemed pleased, but expressed regret that the wise men of the Greeks had clung to such superfluities as clothes¹. One of these ascetics was ultimately persuaded by the rāja of Takshaçilā to accompany Alexander and return to clothes and a worldly life. His companions considered it an apostasy, and followed him with reproaches. The name of this Indian, who remained a notable figure in Alexander's entourage, was one which Plutarch reproduces as ‘Sphines,’ but the Greeks, catching among the Indian words of greeting which he exchanged with his fellow-countrymen, the word *kalyāṇa*, ‘lucky,’ came to call him Kalanos².