Intercourse between India and the Western World from the Earliest Times to the Fall of Rome c8.54

c8.54

It was at this time that the foreign ambassadors were received, and Megasthenes must have attended many a time the strange levée which he here so graphically describes. On the rare occasions when the monarch left the seclusion of the Royal Palace, whether to offer sacrifice or to go hunting, his Amazonian guard accompanied him, forming a hedge round the royal chariot. One or two women, armed to the teeth, rode in the chariot, while others were mounted on horses or elephants. The road when the royal cortège was to pass was marked off with ropes, and a ring of spearmen surrounded the whole retinue. No one was allowed to approach, and it was certain death for any, man or woman, to pass the barriers¹. Megasthenes says that these women were bought from their parents and brought up in the palace; but it is more probable that they were partly foreign, and mostly Westerners. Greek girls, we know, were frequently imported at Barygaza², and a "Guard of Yavana women" is a stock feature of the Rāja's court in the Indian dramas³. In Southern India, we hear of a body-guard of "dumb Mlecchas" being used in a similar fashion⁴. Their utility was obvious;