Age of the Nandas and Mauryas c12.s2.1

c12.s2.1

The enormous advance of Indian industries which has just been postulated for the Nanda and Maurya times was rendered possible by the abundance of India's agricultural and mineral resources to which the Greek writers allude with evident admiration. 'India,' says Diodorus (ii. 35-7) quoting from Megasthenes, 'has many huge mountains which abound in fruit trees of every kind and many vast plains of great fertility—more or less beautiful, but all alike intersected by a multitude of rivers .... And while the soil bears on its surface all kinds of fruits, it has also underground numerous veins of all sorts of metals, for it contains much gold and silver and copper and iron in no small quantity and even tin and other metals.....India again possesses many rivers both large and navigable¹. A no less important factor of economic progress noted likewise by the observant Greeks was the extraordinary skill of the Indian craftsman which has been his heritage down to our own times. Thus, to continue the quotation from Diodorus given above, ‘The inhabitants are found to be well skilled in the arts.’ Concrete instances of the skill of the Indian craftsmen are found in the *Geography* of Strabo (xv. 1.67) from information supplied by Nearchus².