The Greeks in Bactria and India c10.s7.165

c10.s7.165

But much more important than the things to which I have referred are the traces which show that some Greeks probably—one might almost say certainly—knew the Mahābhārata; for Hellenistic Greeks as a general rule took no interest in the language or literature of the Asiatic peoples with whom they were in contact (p. 59),⁵ and this illustrates once more the fact that their attitude in India differed somewhat from that in other parts of Asia. The inscription which Heliodorus son of Dion, ambassador from Antialcidas to some Sunga king of Vidiśā, set up on a column at Besnagar (p. 313) concludes with the words, inscribed on the reverse side of the pillar, ‘Three immortal precepts when practised lead to Heaven—Restraint, Renunciation, Rectitude’;⁶ and these words have been identified as a concise rendering of two passages in the Mahābhārata.¹ Heliodorus called himself a Bhāgavata, a devotee of the reformed worship of Vishnu-Krishna as the Supreme Being; and it has been suggested, independently of the words cited above, that he may have known the Bhagavadgītā,² one of the philosophical chapters tacked on to the epic. The quotation by itself is perhaps not quite conclusive for his personal acquaintance with the Mahābhārata, as it *might* have been found for him by an Indian secretary, if he had one; but if the inscription means that he is pledging himself to these three virtues³ then it *is* conclusive, as would in any case be the natural interpretation. Another instance is supplied by the occurrence in Ptolemy and in the Bassarica of Dionysius of the name of the Pāndava-Pāndus,⁴ who are not known to have played any part in, or been mentioned in, history during any period in which Greeks were acquainted with India; they were only a people of the epic, and the ultimate common source of Ptolemy and Dionysius can only have been a Greek who had read the Mahābhārata and taken the name directly from it.⁵ It may be connected with this that, as has often been noticed, Ptolemy’s names for the rivers of the Punjab are nearer the Sanscrit forms than the Greek names in use since Alexander’s day, and suggest as their ultimate source a Greek acquainted with Sanscrit. Another case of a Greek knowing some Indian literature has already been noticed (p. 47): ‘Trogus’ source’ knew the Jain dating for Chandragupta’s accession (it may have been through him that the name ‘Jains’ found its way to the West),⁶ and can only have got it from some Greek who read Jain writings, unless, as is not impossible, he could read them himself.