Age of the Nandas and Mauryas c9.s13.3

c9.s13.3

The accounts of any country and its people by foreign observers are of great interest to the historian of the country; for they enable him to know what impression the country made upon the minds of such observers and to estimate with greater confidence the part played by it in the general history of the world. And where, as in the case of ancient India, the native sources of history fail him partly or altogether at some points, the writings of foreigners gain great value in his eyes. Yet it is easy to exaggerate the value of the Greek writings on India. The Greek writers did evince a commendable interest in observing and recording facts; but they were also credulous purveyors of all the fable and gossip that came their way. The few who wrote before the invasion of Alexander did so mostly from hearsay and had little direct knowledge of India. The scientists and men of action who accompanied Alexander must have found most of their time taken up with planning, marching and fighting in a hostile and unknown country, and the wonder is that they succeeded in doing what they did to make India known to their countrymen; and the lands they traversed were but the fringe of Hindusthan far from the genuine centres of Hindu culture in the heart of the country. The ambassadors of the Hellenistic kings who came after Alexander, in particular Megasthenes, had better opportunities of studying the country and its people as their missions took them into their midst. But being ignorant of the language of the people, they must have depended on interpreters of sorts and experienced considerable difficulty in comprehending correctly what they saw and heard. The Chinese pilgrims of a later age who had command of the Sanskrit idiom were much better placed in this respect; but their interests were not so wide. Lastly, with very few exceptions, Herodotus being the most notable of them, all the original writings have perished, and we now depend on excerpts preserved by later writers and compilers, who, in turn, had access only at second hand to the matter they quoted. We lack the means of forming an independent integral judgment of most of our ultimate authorities. Nevertheless it is useful to study these excerpts with care, for much can be learnt thus of the geography, physical and human, of India as it was understood by contemporary Greek writers, of its fauna and flora, of its society, religious condition, and economic activity.