Intercourse between India and the Western World from the Earliest Times to the Fall of Rome c7.s1.1

c7.s1.1

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.