Intercourse between India and the Western World from the Earliest Times to the Fall of Rome c7.8

c7.8

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*.