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Age of the Nandas and Mauryas c9.s32: 20. Skill in arts

Age of the Nandas and Mauryas c9.s32

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20. Skill in arts

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Nearchus testifies to the ingenuity of Indians in works of art by citing their facility in the imitation of the sponges, curry-combs, oil-flasks and such other articles which they saw the Greeks using. Cloth was used for writing on. Copper was used fused but not wrought, with the result that vessels broke like earthenware if they fell to the ground. Prostration before kings and noblemen was unknown; only hands were raised in salutation⁴. According to one of Strabo's sources, it was a great occasion when the king washed his hair, and the courtiers vied with each other in sending costly presents; this seems to be a reference to the *abhisheka* of the king soon after his accession. In the processions at festivals many elephants adorned with gold and silver were in the train, as well as four-horsed chariots and ox-waggons. There followed hosts of attendants in holiday attire carrying basins, goblets and other vessels of silver and gold some of them set with precious gems. Animals and birds also formed a feature. Kleitrachus mentioned four wheeled carriages carrying whole trees from which were suspended cages with tame birds of bright plumage and fine song.¹

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⁴ Strabo, XV, 1, 67 (p. 73). Curtius, viii, ch. 9, says that the tender side of the barks of trees received written characters like paper—*Invasion*, p. 186.

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¹ Strabo *Ibid*. 60 (pp. 75-6) King's washing his hair is interpreted *abhisheka* by Jayaswal, *JBORS*, II, p. 99.

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*Peculiar usages*

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Onesicritus noted a number of usages peculiar to the kingdom of Musikanos in Sindh. They had a common meal which they ate in public as did the Lacedemonians, their food consisting of the produce of the chase. They used neither gold nor silver though they had mines of these metals. They had no slaves, and employed instead young men in the flower of their age, as the Cretans employed Aphamiotai and the Lacedemonians the Helots. They studied no science but medicine with any care, for they regarded the excessive pursuit of any art, as war for instance, to be a wicked thing. They had no actions at law but for murder and outrage ; in contracts and other matters of mutual trust, if one of the parties broke faith the other must endure it and blame himself for trusting the wrong man and not engross the attention of the citizens with his law-suits².

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² Strabo *Ibid*, 34 (p. 41).

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21. Slaves

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Some of these statements particularly those relating to slavery and law-suits, were repeated by Megasthenes with a much wider application. His statement on slavery has been extracted by Diodorus, Arrian, and Strabo³; we may reproduce Arrian's as being the clearest and most complete of them ; 'All the Indians are free, and not one of them is a slave. The Lacedaemonians and the Indians are so far in agreement. The Lacedaemonians, however, hold the Helots as slaves, and these do servile labour ; but the Indians do not even use aliens as slaves, and much less a countryman of their own.' To understand this statement in its proper sense, we should remember that Megasthenes had Onesicritus before him ; and we find him deliberately extending to all India a statement that his predecessor made particularly of one country visited by him, and equally deliberately correcting or contradicting him in regard to Helotry. Megasthenes says in effect, that there are no slaves in India as Onesicritus knew, but his comparison of the Indian servants to Helots is wrong, for the Helots were put to servile labour and were in fact slaves. Obviously Megasthenes is here thinking of slavery in its full legal and political implications according to which the slave was the chattel of his master with no rights of any kind whatsoever. And by a close study of the rules of the *Arthaśāstra* on *dāsas* and *karmakaras*, serfs and hired labourers, Breloer has shown that *dāsas* were not slaves in this sense ; for they could not be employed in unclean work—servile labour as Megasthenes would call it, and they could hold and transmit property and regain their freedom by right under certain conditions. And this appears to be the correct meaning of the text before us. Megasthenes was neither misled by the mildness of Indian slavery into denying its existence, nor was he idealising Indian conditions for the edification of the Greeks, but simply stating and interpreting a fact as he saw and understood it, incidentally commenting on the view of another writer known to him¹.

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³ Diod. II, 39 (p. 40): Arrian, *Indika*, X—Frag. xxvi (pp. 68-9 and 206-8): Strabo, XV, 1, 54 (p. 58).

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¹ Breloer, *Kautalya Studien*, II, Pt. i, pp. 11-69. *Contra*. Stein, *Megasthenes und Kautilya*, pp. 109 ff. where the argument is built on the assumption *dāsa*-(Gk.) *doulos*-slave. J. J. Meyer has found fault with Breloer for assumig too much knowledge of Greek law on the part of Megasthenes, but his criticism carries no conviction to me. ZII, 7, pp. 194-204 and Breloer's reioinder, pp. 205-32.

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