The Greeks in Bactria and India c12.120

c12.120

What Alexander may actually have said to the recluses is not material here; what matters is the legend. Though the steps cannot be traced, our existing literature shows that, at some undefined period later than Megasthenes, two main versions of Alexander’s conversation with the Indian gymnosophists had come into existence: one, which I will call Y, is represented to-day by the Metz Epitome,⁴ Berlin papyrus 13044,⁵ and (with slight variations) Plutarch;⁶ the other, which I will call Z, is the version of the Alexander-Romance;⁷ both represent Alexander as putting a number of questions, though other incidents may differ. It has been contended that the list of questions in the Metz Epitome and the papyrus (these two lists are identical) is the oldest form, Plutarch and Z being derivatives;⁸ but I cannot see it quite like that. In Z Alexander comes to the Indians peaceably and is quite agreeable; in Y he is a tyrant who threatens them with death,⁹ though he ultimately relents; in this respect Z agrees with the historical fact (Arrian) while Y is a tendentious invention, which should therefore be later. Again, the question which in Z is ‘Which is bigger, land or sea?’ has become in Y ‘Which rears the bigger animals, land or sea?’ and the simpler form must be the older.¹ Y attempted to turn Alexander into a tyrant by shifting the time and the place of the questioning to Sambos’ revolt, of which Z knows nothing; in Plutarch we still have the historical Sambos on the Lower Indus, but in the Metz Epitome Sambos has been shifted to the Malli; Plutarch therefore in this respect represents an earlier version of Y. As every account in both Y and Z begins with the same question, ‘Which are more numerous, the living or the dead?’ it is clear that both ultimately derive from a common original. Many variations of this must have come into existence,² but in some respects Z, however much its different versions may have been worked over, represents (as we have seen) an earlier form, *i.e.* stands nearer to the common original, than does Y. The common original must be early, for of the Y documents, though the Epitome and the papyrus generally agree as against Plutarch’s variants, in one important point the papyrus agrees with Plutarch as against the Epitome;³ and as the papyrus has been dated to *c.* 100 B.C. or perhaps a little earlier,⁴ the original of the Y documents must be second-century at latest, and the common original of Y and Z earlier still.