Age of the Nandas and Mauryas c9.s24.21

c9.s24.21

Having gained some idea of what the Greeks knew of India's natural phenomena, we may now turn to their accounts of its humanity, social institutions and polity, and here Megasthenes is our leading authority, the attention of earlier writers having been confined to the North-west and to local customs and institutions in that part of the country. India, being of enormous size when taken as a whole, was, according to Megasthenes' information, peopled by races both diverse and numerous, not one of which was originally of foreign descent, all being evidently indigenous. Moreover, India neither received a colony from abroad, nor sent out a colony to any other nation². These are statements of some historical value; the memory of the incoming of Aryans had completely faded out, and quite probably, the movement of colonisation to the Eastern lands, Indo-china and Malaysia, had not yet begun. But the contact with the Hellenistic kingdom was already established, and the time was not distant when Asoka's zeal for Dhamma would carry the name of India far and wide to the West certainly, and possibly to the North and East as well.