The Cambridge History of India, Vol. I: Ancient India v1.c26.45

v1.c26.45

It was generally recognised in the Greek world of the fourth century that a great race called Indian, a substantial part of mankind, lived towards the sunrising¹. When European science, in the person of those philosophers who accompanied Alexander, first entered upon the Indian world, it had already made one substantial discovery as to the world in which man is placed. It was generally recognised in the Greek philosophic schools that the earth was a globe. It was already a matter of interest to determine the size of the globe and to know the measure of the lands and seas which covered it. And the men with Alexander, who found themselves in the plains of India stretching to even vaster distances beyond, or who, from the mouth of the Indus saw the coast fading to the eastward out of sight, were anxious to know what dimensions and shape they ought actually to give to this India upon their maps. They had not traversed more than a corner of it, and, had they gone to its extremities, they possessed none of our means of accurate surveying. It was only by report of the people of the land, based ultimately no doubt upon the rough practical reckonings of merchants and seamen, that they could form any conception of it. This being so, the conjectures which they recorded for the instruction of the West, have interest for us to-day, only as showing how near the truth under such circumstances men could come.