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Intercourse between India and the Western World from the Earliest Times to the Fall of Rome c7: Chapter II

Intercourse between India and the Western World from the Earliest Times to the Fall of Rome c7

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Chapter II

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IN 538 B.C. the last of the great Semitic Empires of western Asia came to an end. Cyrus and his Iranians stormed the walls of Babylon, and the Persian monarch took the title of " Lord of Sumer, Akkad, Babel and the four quarters of the world." His successor, Darius, built up a great kingdom on the foundations thus prepared for him. His farsighted schemes, which gained for him the contemptuous epithet κάπηλος, The Pedlar, from his nobles, included the conquest of the remote Iranian tribes on the east of the Karmanian Desert. Darius, however, did not stop here. The wealth of the nations of the Indus valley had long been known to the Assyrians and Babylonians, and he determined to add this district to his domains. He probably, like Alexander, advanced upon India from Baktra, and reaching the river Indus at the town of Kaspapyrus (perhaps Kāśyapapura), "a frontier city of Gandhāra, on the Scythian borderland," says Hekataeus¹, sent an expedition under a Greek mercenary, Skylax of Karyanda, to explore the river down to its mouth, and when he reached the sea, to sail home, examining on the way the coastline and its chief features. Presumably Skylax had orders to find his way to the Red Sea, and not to return by the shorter Persian Gulf route, with which, probably, the Persians were already perfectly well acquainted. At any rate, he found his way, after an adventurous voyage of two and a half years' duration, to Arsinoe, the modern Suez, already used by the Egyptians for trade with the East¹. From the time he took, we may infer that Skylax proceeded in a leisurely fashion, probably enquiring his way from port to port and trading as he went. His road must have lain along the old trade route to Ophir, and from Ophir to Aden along the Arabian coast. To Skylax, as far as we know, belongs the double distinction of having been the first Greek to visit

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¹ Frag. 178. It is in the country of Paktyike, adds Herodotus (IV. 44), who twice mis-spells the word as Kaspatyrus. It is not to be connected with Kashmīr (Kāśyapa-mīra), or,

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¹ Herod. IV. 44. The date of the conquest of India by Darius is between 516 B.C. and his death in 486 B.C. In the Behistūn Inscriptions (c. 516 B.C.) only Gandhāra and Paruparaesanna (Paropamisus) are mentioned. Indians are not spoken of till the Persepolis and Naksh-i-Rastam inscriptions. Hence the expedition took place about 510 B.C.

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of course, Kābul. Paktyike is the country of the Pakhtū, Pashtū, or Pathāns. The town, which was later celebrated for its spikenard (*Periplus*, § 48), was probably on the Kābul river, which accounts for the fact that the voyagers sailed at first eastwards, as Herodotus says. (See Sir Aurel Stein, *Ancient Geography of Kaśmīr* (1889); H. H. Wilson, *Ariana Antiqua*, p. 137; Lassen, *Ind. Alt.* II. 630; Banbury, *Ancient Geography*, I. 226, note C.)

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India, and to make the Red Sea voyage. The latter feat was not repeated till the days of Eudoxus, three centuries later. The memoirs of Skylax have unfortunately perished, though they may have been utilized by Herodotus. Darius annexed the Indus valley and made it the twentieth satrapy of the Persian Empire. At that time the alluvial gold fields of Dardistān produced an immense quantity of gold, and the new province paid to the Great King the enormous tribute of 360 talents of gold-dust¹. They also supplied a light division to the Persian forces. The statement of Herodotus, that the Persian fleet "frequented the sea," seems to imply that Darius considerably developed the sea-traffic².

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¹ Herod. III. 97. 360 talents of gold = 20,736 lb = £1,078,272. No wonder the gold was soon worked out! (Cunningham, Coins of Ancient India, p. 12 ff.)

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² Μετὰ δὲ τούτους περιπλώσαντας, Ἴνδους τε κατεστρέψατο Δαρεῖος, καὶ τῇ θαλάσσῃ ταύτῃ ἐχρᾶτο, IV. 44. Darius tried, amongst other things, to re-open the Suez Canal, a project attempted by more than one of the Pharaohs, and afterwards by Ptolemy Philadelphus. Probably this was suggested to him by the report of Skylax on the richness of the Red Sea traffic.

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The Greeks, long before the annexation of the Panjāb by Persia, appear to have heard, in a dim sort of way, of India. Homer speaks of two races of Ethiopians, the western, or African Ethiopians, and the eastern Ethiopians³. The word Ethiopian is applied by Herodotus to the dark Dravidians of southern India¹, and probably even in the Homeric age it was thought that Asia and Africa united so as to enclose the Indian Ocean like the Mediterranean². In that case there would be no incongruity in applying the word Ethiopian to the dark peoples of India and Africa alike. Even in those early days, Indian goods reached Europe, as the words ἐλέφας, κασσίτερος, and σινδών testify. The first writer, however, to mention India is the father of Greek geography, Hekataeus of Miletus, a contemporary of Skylax³. In the fragments of his lost work, the Periegesis, eight Indian names occur—the Indus, the Indi, the city of Kaspapyrus, the country of the Gandarii, the Opiae and the Kalliatiae⁴, the Skiapodes⁵, and the city of Aragante. From his mention of Kaspapyrus, we may conclude that Hekataeus came to know of India through the narrative of Skylax. It is interesting to notice that the Greeks talked of the "Indus" and "Indians," whereas the inhabitants of the country itself spoke of "Sindhu," "Sindhava." Later travellers noticed this with surprise. "Indus incolis Sindus appellatus est," says Pliny, and the author of the Periplus says that the river is locally called Sinthus. The Persians softened the initial *s*, *more suo*, to *h* (the Avesta word is *Hindu*); the Ionians, having no aspirate, made the word into "Ἰνδός¹." The word reached Greece through Persia. In the same way, the Oriental nations heard chiefly of the Greeks through the Ionian traders who had colonized the coasts of Asia Minor. The word for Greek in Hebrew² and Sanskrit is *Yavana*, and *Yaunā* in old Persian. This must date from a time when the digamma was still in use. It is a literal transcript of *ἸάFων*. *Yona*, the Prakrit word, is not, of course, derived from *Yavana*, but it is a separate rendering of *Ἰων³*.

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³ Αἰθίοπας τοὶ διχθὰ δεδίαται, ἔσχατοι ἀνδρῶν, οἱ μὲν δυσομένου Ὑπερίονος, οἱ δ’ ἀνίοντος. Od. I. 23.

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¹ Herod. VII. 70. Ktesias also calls the Indians Ethiopians. Even the late Barlaam and Josaphat, 8th cent. A.D. is actually described in the Preface as coming ἐκ τῆς ἐνδοτέρας τῶν Αἰθιόπων χώρας, τῆς Ἰνδων λεγομένης!

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² Alexander thought the Indus was the Nile, and the idea of Africa joining Asia was entertained by Ptolemy. On the other hand the fact that many voyagers attempted the circumnavigation of Africa points to the fact that the belief was not universally held. The word "Aethiopian" is really applied to Abyssinia (Itiopyavan), perhaps from Atyōb, incense.

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³ Fl. c. 520 B.C. Expedition of Skylax to the Red Sea, c. 512-510 B.C.

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⁴ Kaliantiae in Herodotus. They are not identified.

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⁵ A fabulous race, who lived, however, in Libya, according to Ktesias. Here again India and Africa are confused.

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¹ Thus "India" is Greek, "Hindu" is Persian.

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² e.g. Ezekiel XXVII. 18, Isaiah LXXI. 19, etc. The Jews identified the Javan of Genesis x. 2 with the Ionians. So Milton (*P.L.* 508):

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³ The digamma, however, was lost as early as 800 B.C. Hence it is possible that both *Yavana* and *Yona* are derived from the old Persian *Yaunā*. Probably the Indians heard first of the Ionians through the Persians.

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"Ionian gods of Javan's issue held."

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Herodotus, the first Greek writer about India whose account has survived, was born in 484 B.C., at Halikarnassus, not far from Karyanda, the home of Skylax, to whom he may owe not a little of his knowledge. He tells us¹ that the Indians are the last of all the nations on the eastern side of the world; for beyond the Panjāb lay the limitless Rājputāna desert, the *Marusthālī*, or place of death, stretching, as Herodotus thought, to the end of the world. Indians, he says, are of many nations, each speaking a different tongue. He divides them, however, into two broad classes, the dark, barbarous nomads, living in the marshes, and the paler, refined Aryans of the Kaspapura and Pakhtū districts of northern India, whom he appropriately compares to their Iranian kinsmen of Baktria². Besides these, he adds, there are other Indians in the far south, out of the sphere of Persian influence, who resemble the Ethiopians. These are plainly the Dravidian peoples. The aborigines were in his opinion degraded savages. Those of the marshes of the Indus wore clothes made of rushes, lived (like their neighbours, the famous Ichthyophagi of the Mekrān) on raw fish¹, and made rude boats out of a single joint of the gigantic reeds growing near the river². A neighbouring tribe, the Padaei, (who may be the Bhīl and other aboriginal races of central India, where such practices were common till quite recent times³), even killed and ate their sick relatives. This disgusting custom, which originates in a religious superstition, was also carried on by certain Scythian tribes⁴. Herodotus also makes a very interesting reference to a religious sect who killed nothing that had life, lived on a grain like millet, and had no houses. It is impossible to help wondering whether we have not here a reference to the Buddhists. Gautama, it will be remembered, died in 488 B.C., four years before Herodotus was born¹.

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¹ The following information is taken from Bk III. 97-106. The voyage of Skylax is mentioned in Bk IV. ch. 44.

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² Herod. III. 102. Arrian (*Indika*, VI) contrasts the swarthy Dravidians (whom he compares to the Ethiopians) with the fair Aryans "who are white like the Egyptians." Ktesias saw two Indian men and five women "as fair as any in the world" (*Frag*. I. § 9. McCrindle). Many Pathans to-day are as fair as an Englishman.

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¹ Dried fish still forms a staple food for Indians on the coasts. This impressed the Greeks, who disliked most kinds of fish.

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² Herod. III. 98-99. The "reed" is generally supposed to be the giant bamboo. But no bamboo is large enough to serve this purpose. Hence it has been suggested that the palmyra tree is really meant. With its ringed trunk, it was probably mistaken by Skylax and his companions for a kind of bamboo. Megasthenes speaks of "reeds" 180 feet high and three to six cubits in diameter (Strabo, xv. I. 56). Pliny (N.H. VII. 2) says a section between two nodes of the Indian reed will make a "dug-out" to carry three men. See McCrindle's learned note to the passage of Strabo, Ancient India, pp. 59-60.

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³ Duncker, Gesch. des. Alt. II. 268. In the Rāmāyaṇa these aborigines figure as "demons" haunting the woods.

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⁴ e.g. the Massagetae, Strabo, XI. 8. 6. Megasthenes also notices this practice among the tribes of the Hindu Kush, Strabo, xv. I. 56.

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¹ Buddhism spread to the Panjāb very quickly. The people of Gandhāra claimed relationship with Gautama and, as his relatives, a share in his ashes (*Mahāparinibbāna Sutta*, *S.B.E.* XI. 131).

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Herodotus is the first writer to mention the famous legend of the Indian ants who watched over the gold which the Indians carried off in order to pay the tribute due to the Great King. It was said that this gold was guarded by gigantic ants, but the Indians, mounted on swift she-camels, plundered the gold at mid-day when the ants were asleep in their holes, and made off, hotly pursued! These "ants" were smaller than dogs but larger than foxes², and threw up the gold in excavating their burrows. Some of them were in the possession of the Great King. Later writers talk of having seen their skins³, or even (*mirabile dictu*) their horns! This curious story arose from the Sanskrit *Paippīlika*, "ant-gold," a term applied to alluvial gold from its resemblance to the earth of ant-hills⁴. The gold was carried off from the miners of Dardistān, who still keep fierce yellow mastiffs to guard their houses. These mastiffs were the "ants" of the legend. The "horns," which Pliny¹ asserts were hung in the temple of Hercules at Erythrae, were the horns of wild sheep, which, mounted in handles, are still used by the miners and farmers of Ladāk as pickaxes. The gold-fields of Dardistān were quickly exhausted, perhaps by the exorbitant demands of Persia. They are seldom mentioned in later literature², though Alexander, had he found them working, would have almost certainly exploited them. To-day they yield only insignificant quantities³.

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² Pliny says they were of the colour of cats and the size of Egyptian wolves, *N.H.* IX. 31.

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³ Megasthenes *apud* Strabo, XV. I. 44, and Schwanbeck's note *ad loc.* Marten and other skins were early imported from Thibet and central Asia. The famous statue of Anaitis at Baktra was "clothed in beaver-skins."

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⁴ So Wilson, *Ariana Antiqua*, p. 135, who quotes the *Mahābhārata* (II. 1860) in support. See McCrindle, *Ancient India*, pp. 44 and 51 (notes).

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¹ *N.H.* xi. 36.

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² e.g. Pliny's "Fertilissimi sunt auri Derdae" (*N.H.* 19. 67), which may, however, merely be an echo of earlier writers.

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³ Sandrakottus was paid in alluvial gold dust as tribute, probably from the "golden river," the Sona or Hiraṇyabāhu, Strabo, xv. i. 57. It flowed past his capital. He apparently had no gold from the Panjāb.

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On the whole, the account given by Herodotus of the Indian satrapy is careful and accurate. It is no doubt drawn from the lost narrative of Skylax, or from other first-hand evidence⁴. He mentions, among other things, the extremes of heat and cold of the Panjāb, the size of the animals and birds, the crocodiles in the Indus, the horses (which he considers inferior to the Median breed), and the excellent wild-cotton, superior to sheep's wool, of which the Indians made their clothes¹. Besides the legend of the gold-ants, one or two Indian fables have crept, through Persia, into his narrative. Thus the famous story of Hippokleides², who "didn't care" when he danced away his wife, seems to have a close parallel in the *Jātaka* story of the silly young Peacock, who danced so indecently that he shocked the father of the golden Goose, and lost his wealthy bride. The story of the wife of Intaphernes³, who pleaded for her brother's life, because she could get another son or husband, but not another brother, has been traced to the *Ucchaṅga Jātaka*⁴. The Hyperboreans, who play such a large part in contemporary Greek legend, are the Indian Uttarakuru, transferred rather pointlessly from their home in the holy Himālaya to Europe, where they are quite out of place. Perhaps this legend may be traced to Hekataeus, whose lost work "on the Hyperboreans" is cited by Pliny. It is difficult, however, to see where Hekataeus obtained his information, unless the legend was current in Persia at an early date.

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⁴ Probably from the accounts given by Persian officials who had served in India.

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¹ Herodotus was also struck with the teeming population of India, which contrasted strongly with the sparsely-inhabited little Greek states. *Ἰνδῶν δὲ πλῆθος πολλῷ πλεῖστον ἐστὶ πάντων τῶν ἡμεῖς ἴδμεν ἀνθρώπων*, III. 94. Cf. Strabo, II. 5. 32.

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² Herod. VI. 110.

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³ Herod. III. 18.

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⁴ No. 67, Fausböll. See Tawney, *Journal of Philology*, XII. 121.

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The praise accorded to Herodotus for the admirable sobriety and truth of his remarks about India, cannot, unfortunately, be extended to Ktesias. Ktesias made very poor use of his opportunities—he was for twenty years court-physician to Artaxerxes Mnemon at Susa, and retired in 398 B.C.¹ He settled in Greece and there wrote his *Indika*, fragments of which survive in the abridgement of Photius and in other writers. It is full of extravagant stories of monstrous people and strange animals, and adds practically nothing to our knowledge of India. Ktesias is responsible for most of the grotesque legends about India which fill the pages of classical and medieval writers to the days of Sir John Mandeville². It may be stated, in excuse, that these fables are repeated, with additions, even by sober writers like Megasthenes, and are not originally due to Greek invention³. They were coined in the first instance by the Indians themselves, among whom they apparently originated from exaggerated descriptions of the strange features and repulsive customs of the hated Dasyus—aborigines, Dravidian and Mongolian—whom they encountered when the Aryans first invaded India. Thus the Antipodes of Ktesias are the *Paśchāṅgulajas* of the *Mahābhārata*; the Pygmies are the Kirāta—the Mongolian hillmen of Bhotān or the wild tribes of the Assam frontier perhaps. But this plea will not cover all the sins, of omission and commission, of Ktesias. His Indian animals are as fabulous as his Skiapodes and Anthropophagi. And a reference to the fragments of his companion work, the *Persika*, shews that his other writings were equally unreliable and uncritical. Although he had resided for years in Persia and had the opportunity of consulting the royal archives, he adds little, or nothing, to our knowledge of Persian history. To him, for instance, we owe the fable of the invasion of India by Semiramis and the equally absurd romances attached to the story of the Scythian campaigns of Cyrus the Great.

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¹ He was present at the battle of Kunaxa, and treated Artaxerxes for his wound after it. The legends in the *Indika* are treated at length in an appendix to this chapter. The fragments have been edited by Müller and translated by McCrindle.

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² Othello's “Anthropophagi and men whose heads Do grow beneath their shoulders.”

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³ Nor was Ktesias the first to fall in this respect. Hekataeus mentioned the Skiapodes who used their gigantic feet as umbrellas!

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To the Persians, then, Greece owes her first knowledge of India. Darius had both Greeks and Indians as his subjects. Indian troops formed the light division of the army of Xerxes: they must have marched through the bloody defiles of Thermopylae, and their usefulness caused them to be retained by Mardonius¹ after the retreat of the king, to take part in the Boeotian campaign which ended so disastrously at the Asopus. Ionian officers in Persian employ, and probably Ionian traders, visited the Panjāb. But with the gradual break-up of the Persian Empire, the practical independence of eastern Irān, and the war with Greece, the traffic between India and the West sank to practically nothing. Probably the satrapy of the Panjāb, like Baktria, owed a merely nominal allegiance, as time went on, to the court at Susa. But the Persian Empire made a profound impression upon the Indian mind. The Kharōṣṭhī script, introduced no doubt by the Persians in their official documents, remained in use on the North-West Frontier till the fourth century A.D. The remains of Persian and Babylonian customs at Taxila may point to this place as the capital of the satrapy under the Persian Empire. The Maurya Emperors, as we gather from the account given by Megasthenes of the court of Sandrakottus¹, lived in Persian style. The Indian, like the Persian monarch, lived in seclusion, surrounded by his guards, and only appearing at rare intervals. The Buddhist architecture of Aśoka, with its bell-capitals and winged lions, shews many traces of Persian influence². Aśoka’s plan of propagating the *Dharma* by means of inscriptions upon the face of the rock, may have been borrowed from similar practices in vogue among the Persians—for instance the Behistūn inscription. Even the Royal Road running through the Maurya domains finds its parallel in Persia. How this influence precisely crept in, we are, in our ignorance of the history of the Panjāb at this period, unable to say. Was there a viceregal court at Taxila, where Sandrakottus had seen the stately Persian ceremonial in practice? Or did he merely assume Persian customs, as Alexander and the Syrian Seleukids assumed them, because Persia, even in decay, remained the greatest and most imposing empire known to the world at that time?

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¹ Herod. VIII. 113.

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¹ Sandrakottus acquired these customs during his long exile in the Panjāb.

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² And also, of course, that of Assyria through Persia. The fact that the Persian element is so thoroughly assimilated (unlike the crude mixture of East and West in the Gandhāra sculptures) shews that Persian influence had been long felt in India in the days of Aśoka. Persia, no doubt, suggested to Mauryan artists the use of stone instead of wood, brick, and stucco.

Appendix

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I. KTESIAS. Lassen¹ thinks the current opinion about Ktesias is too harsh, in spite of the fact that he had ample opportunities to question Persian officials who had been to the Panjāb, and confesses to having met certain Indians who had come on an embassy to Persia. Lassen says that we are unable to judge Ktesias fairly from the summary of Photius, as Photius only extracted the marvellous stories. Unfortunately, other writers who had an opportunity of judging the work entire, have recorded their opinion. Thus Aulus Gellius², the eminent bibliophile, tells us that he bought a copy of Ktesias on an old bookstall at Brindisium for a few coppers, and was disgusted to find it full of absurd legends. Lucian says that Ktesias wrote about things he had never seen, and had never heard from anyone else. In fact, the testimony of the ancient writers concurs to prove that he set out to write a pleasing narrative after the style of Gulliver’s Travels and nothing more. He takes some facts, *e.g.* that the Indians were the last race in the world, from Herodotus¹, and some legends from Skylax. If the Hyparkhus is the Ganges, he has the credit for a fresh geographical discovery. He says that the Indus is between 40 and 100 stadia broad; that there are no rains in India, but the land is watered by rivers which overflow like the Nile; that the surface of the sea is too hot for fish to live in it; that there is a spring containing liquid gold. He tells the legend of the gold guarded by griffins.

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¹ *Ind. Alt.* (1874), II. 641.

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² *Noct. Att.* IX. 4.

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¹ Lassen denies this. If it is argued that Ktesias could not get more accurate facts, we have only to compare his narrative with that of Herodotus.

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On Indian plants he is a little more satisfactory. He mentions the cinnamon, giving it its Tamil name *kārppu* (*κάρπιον*)²; also the cocoa-nut, the Indian reed (probably the palmyra, though Lassen says the bamboo), and the fact that there are male and female palms. He mentions cotton, as do most Greek writers on India. He also speaks of the “sweet wine” (*tāḍi*) of the palm³. With regard to animals, on the contrary, he indulges in the most ludicrous legends. He speaks fairly sensibly, indeed, of the elephant, the jackal and the parrot. The wild ass, or unicorn⁴, whose horn has such wonderful properties, may be the rhinoceros, and the *Skōlēx*, a gigantic worm with two huge teeth, living in the Indus and preying on animals, may be the crocodile. But the descriptions are wildly inaccurate. The *Martichora*, with its triple rows of teeth, the sting in its tail, and other strange attributes, is the man-eating tiger, but the picture is wilfully¹ distorted, almost out of recognition. The dung of the bird Dikairos, which produces sleep and even death, can hardly be *opium*, as opium was then unknown in India. The griffin is the gold-guarding ant of the other writers. It has been suggested, though Lassen does not agree, that Ktesias was influenced by the huge mythological animals of the Assyrian sculptures.

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² Ktesias saw a small quantity of cinnamon oil sent from India as a present. He says it had a most exquisite fragrance. But is he thinking of attar of roses?

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³ He had tasted this and liked it greatly.

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⁴ *καρτάζων*; the Skt. *khaḍga*.

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¹ Wilfully, because Ktesias had seen a tiger, sent to the king from India! See Pausanias, IX. 21, and Aristotle, *Hist. Anim.* II. I.

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Of the Indians, little is worth recording of what has been preserved. The Aryans were fair, they worshipped the Sun and Moon, and lived to a great age—even 200 years! Of the marvellous springs which healed diseases and which revealed the guilty, we hear from other sources. The first were mineral springs; and trial by the ordeal of water is mentioned in the works of the Chinese pilgrims.

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The fabulous races, for the legends about which Ktesias is not wholly responsible, are treated in the Appendix to Chapter III.

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Photius concludes his summary with the following words : “ Ktesias, while romancing in this fashion, asserts that his narrative is literally true, and declares that he records nothing which he has not seen with his own eyes, or learnt from the words of many credible witnesses. He adds that he left even greater wonders untold, lest ignorant people might call him a liar!” (*Bibliotheke*, 62. 33). This seems to prove that Ktesias deliberately invented, *pace* Lassen. It is like the tiger which he saw and described.

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II. TRACES OF THE PERSIAN PERIOD. Some coins of the Persian Satrapy in the Panjāb survive, *e.g.* the double-daric of Darius Codomannus (337–330 B.C.) figured by Rapson, *Grundriss der Ind.-Ar. Philologie*, Pl. I. 5. At the same time, Athenian *owls* were imported till the closing of the mint in 322 B.C., after which they were imitated locally (*ibid.* Pl. I. 6, 7).

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The word *Yavana* occurs in Indian literature first in Pāṇini in the feminine form *Yavanānī*. The commentator Kātyāyana says this is used of *Yavanānī lipi*, the Greek script. Goldstücker, in his learned book on *Pāṇini, his place in Sanskrit Literature* (London, 1861), says Pāṇini was *before* Buddha (568–488 B.C.). But India could hardly have heard of the Greek alphabet before Darius, even though Pāṇini lived in Gandhāra. Goldstücker suggests cuneiform, but this is hardly suitable. If, on the other hand, we were to accept the late tradition connecting Pāṇini with the last Nanda king, it would be quite easy to see that Pāṇini was familiar with Greek letters on coins. The expression may possibly be used of *Kharoṣṭhī*.

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