Age of the Nandas and Mauryas c9.s16: 4. Ctesias
Age of the Nandas and Mauryas c9.s16
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4. Ctesias
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Ctesias the Cnidian, who wrote a book on India² was just one generation later than Herodotus. Ctesias spent seventeen years in the Persian court (c. 416-398 B. C.) as physician to the Emperor Artaxerxes Mnemon. He must have had numerous opportunities of hearing reports of India from Persian officials who visited the country and of meeting Indian merchants and ambassadors who came to the Persian court; and he obtained permission besides from the Persian king to consult the state archives. But his work has not survived except in an abridgement of Photius, a Patriarch of Constantinople in the ninth century A.D. (858-886), and a number of citations by earlier writers particularly Aelian and Pliny. In no respect does Ctesias mark an advance upon Herodotus, and almost all his statements can with perfect justice be characterised as tall lies. Even the few facts to be gathered from him—such as that all Indians were not black, that he had seen some white ones among them, and that Indians were noted for their sense of justice, their devotion to their king and their contempt of death—are too vague to be accepted with confidence, particularly from such a writer. He cannot be excused on the ground that Photius had a predilection for the fabulous and abridged his work laying stress unduly on the fabulous races and wonderful products of India that Ctesias had mentioned, and passing over the more valuable portions of his narrative; for no other writer found anything of value in him. The case is not much improved by our seeking to explain his dog-headed and dog-faced men, pygmies and such others by a reference to like monstrosities known to old Indian books. In fact Ctesias wrote himself down as a fibster when he described the Martikhora (man-eater), a creature of the size of a lion, with the face of a man, capable of shooting its poisonous stings from its tail to a great distance and thus killing every animal except an elephant, and added that he saw in Persia one of these monsters sent from India as gift to the Persian King !
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² McCrindle-Ancient India as described by Ctesias the Cnidian, Calcutta, 1882.
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In truth the period between Herodotus and Alexander is marked by a decided setback in the Greek knowledge of India. The Persians lost their Indian Satrapy after some time and Alexander did not come across Persian officials east of the Hindu Kush. Even Herodotus was perhaps not much read, and there is no evidence that Alexander knew of his account of Scylax's voyage. On the banks of the Indus he thought that he had reached he sources of the Nile, and on the banks of the Beas he told his soldiers that they were at no great distance from the Eastern Sea, i. e., the end of the earth in that direction.¹ It has been doubted if Alexander ever really heard of the Ganges or suspected the real extent of the contemporary empire of Magadha; the intention attributed to him of conquering the Prasii on the Ganges may well be a later legend; and possibly he knew of only the Sutlej and just one kingdom beyond, that of the Gandaridae, the conquest of which would bring him to the shore of the Eastern Ocean.²
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¹ Arrian, *Anabasis*, VI, 1 and V, 26: Strabo, XV, 1,25.
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² Cf. Tarn, *Cambridge Ancient History*, VI, pp. 410-11.
Linked texts (3)
- Ἰνδική — Λούκιος Φλάουιος Ἀρριανός, Ancient Greek
- Ἀλεξάνδρου ἀνάβασις — Λούκιος Φλάουιος Ἀρριανός, Ancient Greek
- Naturalis historia — C. Plinius Secundus, Latin