Political History of Ancient India, from the Accession of Parikshit to the Extinction of the Gupta Dynasty c14.s1.t2.1

c14.s1.t2.1

We learn from the classical writers that after the war the Syrian and Indian Emperors lived on friendly terms. Athenaios tells us that Chandragupta sent presents including certain powerful aphrodisiacs to the Syrian monarch.¹ Seleukos sent an envoy to the Maurya court, whose name was Megasthenes. Arrian tells us¹ that Megasthenes originally lived with Sibyrtios, the satrap of Arachosia. He was sent from thence to Pāṭaliputra where he often visited the Maurya Emperor, and wrote a history on Indian affairs. The work of Megasthenes has been lost. The fragments that survive in quotations by later authors like Strabo, Arrian, Diodoros and others, have been collected by Schwanbeck, and translated into English by McCrindle. As Professor Rhys Davids observes, Megasthenes possessed very little critical judgment, and was, therefore, often misled by wrong information received from others. But he is a truthful witness concerning matters which came under his personal observation. The most important piece of information supplied by him is, as Rhys Davids pointed out, the description of Pāṭaliputra which Arrian quotes in Chapter X of his *Indica*: