The Early History of India, from 600 B.C. to the Muhammadan Conquest, including the Invasion of Alexander the Great c16.39

c16.39

¹ These details are taken from Curtius, ix (chap. xxiii and xxiv of Delphin Edition). Arrian (vi, 14) mentions only 500 chariots, but Curtius probably had good authority for his statement. In the 10th impression of the annotated text by Dosson and Pichon (Paris, Hachette, 1916) the relevant chapters are numbered vii and viii. Chap. vii (p. 355) states that the two nations complied with a requisition for 2,500 horsemen, as in chap. xxiii of the Delphin Edition. The gifts in chap. viii (= xxiv of Delphin text) are as stated in my account, viz, 300 horsemen, 1,030 chariots, linen goods, lizard skins, *&c.* According to Delphin text (chap. xxiii) the envoys wore ‘lineae vestes, intextae auro, purpuraque distinctae’. Prof. Jogeschandra Ray (*J.B.O.Res.Soc.*, vol. iii, June, 1917, ‘Textile Industry in Ancient India’) shows (pp. 187–97) that linen made of the fibre of the *atasi* (*alsi*) or flax plant was known in the time of the *Arthasāstra*, and for centuries before and after, but the manufacture was gradually superseded by cotton, and recently in Bengal by jute. The old general name for flax was *kshumā* (adj. *kshauma*). *Kshauma* was the name for linen, *dukūla* for the finest, and *aṭṭa* for the coarsest (p. 191). *Kshauma* was made from *atasi* fibre. It was used for bandages. *Dukūla* was woven of *atasi* thread. *Kshauma* was known in Vedic times, but after about the 12th century the correct meanings were forgotten and much confusion arose in the terminology, *kshauma* being taken to mean ‘silk’. Coarse linen seems to have been made in Bengal as late as the eighteenth century (p. 196). The Bihār Planters’ Association has proved that ‘flax can be successfully grown and prepared at a profit in Bihār’ [James Mackenna, *Agriculture in India*, 1915] (App., p. 236). Balfour (*Cyclopaedia*, 1885) observed that ‘by proper treatment, however, good fibre can be got from plants raised in India’. Steel of peculiarly excellent quality has been produced in India from remote times. Curtius calls it *ferrum candidum*, which is assumed to mean ‘steel’, not ‘tin’, or more strictly, ‘tin-plate’ (*fer blanc*). Tortoise-shell (χελώνη) was still an article of Indian trade in the first century A. D. (*Periplus*, in *Ind. Ant.* viii, 111). The statement of Curtius (ix, 7) that Alexander imposed upon the Malloi and Oxydrakai ‘the tribute which the two nations paid in instalments to the Arachosians’ is unintelligible; and the name ‘Arachosians’ must be corrupt. Arachosia, the Kandahār country, cannot possibly have levied tribute from tribes in the Eastern Panjāb. Bacon makes a curious and inaccurate allusion to the Oxydrakai in his essay ‘On the Vicissitudes of Things’, apparently quoting loosely from Philostratos, *Life of Apollonios of Tyana*, ii, c. 33 (*Ind. Ant.*, 1906, p. 335).