Intercourse between India and the Western World from the Earliest Times to the Fall of Rome c8.96

c8.96

The Indians enjoyed a great and well-founded reputation for probity. Of their honesty, Megasthenes, like Hiuen Tsiang many centuries later, speaks in an extraordinarily enthusiastic fashion. When he visited the camp of Chandragupta, he found that, in the whole of the vast army encamped there, the thefts reported amounted to the value of less than 200 *drachmae* per day². They left their houses unguarded, made no written contracts, and no written laws. They seldom went to law. Legal cases were decided according to immemorial custom by the local *panchāyat*. Strabo notes that the Hindus were acquainted with reading and writing, and used paper woven from flax. This we should, of course, infer from the existence of Aśoka’s Edicts. Strabo also mentions the contrary opinion, which no doubt arose from the comparative rarity of written books. Laws, religious precepts, even secular poetry were committed to memory and handed down orally. Fa-Hian had to travel all over India before he could obtain texts of the Buddhist Canon.