Intercourse between India and the Western World from the Earliest Times to the Fall of Rome c7.s1: Appendix
Intercourse between India and the Western World from the Earliest Times to the Fall of Rome c7.s1
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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*.
Linked texts (1)
- Aṣṭādhyāyī — Pāṇini, Sanskrit