Intercourse between India and the Western World from the Earliest Times to the Fall of Rome c6.56

c6.56

Whether India was affected in the prehistoric period by her contact with her nearer and more powerful neighbours, the Assyrians and Babylonians, is an interesting question. The *Brāhmī*-script, the parent script of India, was borrowed from Semitic sources, probably about the seventh century B.C.¹ The influence of Babylonian mythology may perhaps be detected in Hindu literature. The myth of the Fish Incarnation of Vishnu in the Śatapatha Brāhmaṇa is reminiscent of the Babylonian stories of the Flood². Chaldaean astronomy may be responsible for the division of the sky into twenty-four nakshatras, and perhaps we may trace to this ultimate source the division of the week into seven days, named after the sun, moon, and five planets. This, however, was apparently borrowed directly from Alexandria by the Indians, as it is only mentioned in the later astronomical works³. The relation between the earliest Indian and Babylonian weights and measures is obscure⁴. In architecture, India owed very little to Babylon, though she borrowed certain details of ornamentation, such as the bell-capital and the lion-pillar, indirectly from Assyria through Persia. Babylonian architecture, owing to the lack of good building stone, was never remarkable. "Babylonian temples are massive but shapeless structures of crude brick supported by buttresses⁵.'