Intercourse between India and the Western World from the Earliest Times to the Fall of Rome c8.20

c8.20

He hoped for great results from this new and formidable arm. The alliance between the monarchs was cemented by a marriage between the Indian king and a Syrian princess. Such a daring innovation is in itself a convincing proof of the greatness of Chandragupta’s mind. It was probably owing to this occurrence that the Syrian and Maurya monarchs continued for several generations to maintain a close and friendly intercourse. An amusing correspondence, of which a fragment or two is recorded, was maintained between Bindusāra and Seleukus. Bindusāra asks for a sample of Greek wine, some raisins and a “Sophist.” Seleukus writes back, saying that he sends the wine with much pleasure, but regrets that “it isn’t good form among the Greeks to trade in philosophers 1!” When Aśoka was converted to Buddhism, his first thought was to despatch missionaries to his friends, the Greek monarchs of Egypt, Syria and Macedonia, that they might share in the glad tidings of his new creed. Ambassadors from the West frequently visited the Maurya court. Megasthenes came from Seleukus to Chandragupta; Dēimachus from the same monarch to Bindusāra, Chandragupta’s son and successor, and Dionysius from Ptolemy Philadelphus². The most important of these, of course, was Megasthenes, to whom we owe the only complete account we possess of the court and government of the great Indian monarch. His work, though no longer extant, is known to us from numerous citations by Strabo, Pliny, Arrian, Diodorus, Photius and others¹.