The Greeks in Bactria and India c16.2

c16.2

The Gārgī Saṃhitā is an astrological work of uncertain date (it has been dated anywhere from the Christian Era to the third century A.D.), one of whose chapters, the Yuga-purāṇa, contains an historical account of (among other matters) the Greek advance to Pāṭaliputra, written as usual in the form of a prophecy. The existing texts of the Yuga-purāṇa are written in Sanscrit with (it is said) traces of Prakritisms; in the opinion of the late Dr Jayaswal, who devoted special attention to this work,¹ the extant account must go back to a historical chronicle,² written either in Prakrit or in mixed Sanscrit-Prakrit, which he dates in the latter half of the first century B.C. on the ground that it mentions no dynasties later than the Sacas. Historians of India have usually considered the historical account of the Yavanas in the Yuga-purāṇa as valuable, an opinion shared by Jayaswal, who regards the work as the earliest known Purāṇa and as exhibiting an independent tradition; occasionally someone has dissented from this view,³ but the manner in which the accounts of the Greek Apollodorus and of the Yuga-purāṇa complement each other (Chap. IV) ought to be conclusive for the Yavanas sections, as the two are presumably independent.