Age of the Nandas and Mauryas c9.s15.1

c9.s15.1

The references to India and Indians in Herodotus (B. C. 484-425)¹ place them in a clear light, and the monstrous races that formed the stock in trade of Greek writers on India before and after him do not make their appearance in his pages. India is to him the furthest region of the inhabited world towards the east, and Indians dwell nearest the rising of the sun. Of the Indians within the empire of Darius he observed that they were more numerous than any other nation known to him, and paid a tribute exceeding that of every other people, three hundred and sixty talents of gold-dust. But he knows that there were many other tribes of Indians, all of them dark-skinned, living a long way from Persia towards the south over whom King Darius had no authority. There were many tribes among Indians and they did not all speak the same language. Some were nomads, others not. Among the nomads the Padaeans, who lived on raw flesh, including that of sick or old members of the tribe, who were offered in sacrifice to their gods—a practice attested by modern observers to have obtained till recently among some savage hill tribes. The same custom prevailed among the Kallatiai within the Persian empire. There was another tribe of marsh-dwellers who ate raw fish and wore garments of sedge. Herodotus' knowledge of the people across the Persian border was by no means confined to savages. ‘There is another set of Indians whose customs are very different. They refuse to put any living animal to death, they sow no corn, and have no dwelling houses. Vegetables are their only food. There is a plant which grows wild in their country, bearing seed, about the size of millet seed, in a calyx: their wont is to gather this seed and having boiled it, calyx and all, to use it for food. If one of them is attacked with sickness, he goes forth into the wilderness, and lies down to die; no one has the least concern either for the sick or for the dead.’ This is a very good account of the life of the forest-dwelling sages of India who used wild rice (*nivāra*) for their staple food.