The Greeks in Bactria and India c32.5

c32.5

For the Ch’ien-han-shu I use the translations of A. Wylie¹ and J. J. M. de Groot, published in 1926 after his death by O. Franke.² Wylie’s translation is severely criticised by de Groot (vol. I, p. v); but, except in the spelling of proper names and a few out-of-date explanations of them, I have found remarkably little difference in those parts of the two translations which I have had to study, while more than once without Wylie I should have been badly off.³ On the other hand, Franke’s corrections may indicate that de Groot’s own translation is not always as faultless as he thought it was; and in one well-known passage it is, to use his own expression, ‘hair-raising’, for it introduces an alien set of ideas (p. 298 n. 5). If one knows something about the subject beforehand, there is much useful detail to be got from de Groot’s commentaries; but his is a tiresome book to use, as the translation is scattered in snippets throughout the work and does not include quite everything (see the important omission noted p. 342 n. 1); and the historian must have everything that there is—that is first principles.