Intercourse between India and the Western World from the Earliest Times to the Fall of Rome c12.30

c12.30

With Ptolemy we come to an end of the series of eminent geographers who have treated in detail the subject of India. The last Greek writer to deal with the subject of Indian travel is the monk Kosmas Indikopleustes, nearly five centuries later, who wrote when the mists of the Middle Ages were fast settling down upon the ancient world. The gap is, however, filled in, in a most interesting fashion, by a series of incidental notices appearing in philosophical and religious writers, Christian and pagan, of the time, who often exhibit an unexpectedly intimate knowledge of Indian philosophy, religion, and social observances. It is instructive, moreover, to observe the steady growth of knowledge about India which these writers exhibit, and to contrast them with Strabo, who knows little more than what he has learnt from Megasthenes, over two centuries before him. This intimacy was probably due both to the frequency with which Alexandrian and Syrian traders visited India, and also to the presence of Indians in Alexandria¹.