The Greeks in Bactria and India c31.5

c31.5

The Pāndya of southern India are mentioned in other classical writers.³ Megasthenes (Arr. Ind. 8), who calls their country Pandaea (Πάνδαια), had heard dimly of them—that the Pāndya and not the Pāndus are meant is shown by the reference to their wealth of pearls—but had nothing else to tell about them except a foolish and unpleasant legend; the reference to this legend shows that they are also the gens Pandae of Pliny VI, 76, though he separates them from the king Pandion (ib. 105); probably Pandae here ought to be Pandaea, for Solinus, who usually copies Pliny, gives Pandaea gens (52, 15). That there has been a good deal of confusion is obvious. But there is one other notice which has been overlooked and which almost certainly refers, not to the Pāndya, but to the people of Ptolemy VII, 1, 6 (Pāndava-Pāndus). Dionysius in the Bassarica, in what survives of his list of the Indian peoples who followed Deriades (corresponding to book XXVI of Nonnus, who substantially copied him), has a name Πάνδαι,¹ which is not in Nonnus. Dionysius' date is quite uncertain² and he may have been earlier or later than Ptolemy; but all his names must *ex hypothesi* belong to northern India, like those of Nonnus, for Bacchus' conquest of India is merely a reflection of Alexander's, and with one exception (Πάνδαι apart) all his genuine known names, like those of Nonnus, are taken from the Alexander story. But he has *one* Hellenistic name, Kaspeiroi,³ which Ptolemy also has; so the possibility of a real name outside the Alexander story is not ruled out. Now we have seen that the majority of the Latin versions of Ptol. VII, 1, 6 imply the existence of a name Πάνδοι or perhaps Πάνδαι; and this name is the Πάνδαι of Dionysius, whether he took it from Ptolemy or whether both ultimately go back to a common source.