The Ancient Geography of India. I. The Buddhist Period, including the Campaigns of Alexander, and the Travels of Hwen-Thsang c5.s2.t3.23

c5.s2.t3.23

During the reign of the Parthian Bardanes, A.D. 42 to 45, Taxila was visited by Apollonius of Tyana and his companion, the Assyrian Damis, whose narrative of the journey Philostratus professes to have followed in his life of Apollonius. His account is manifestly exaggerated in many particulars regarding the acts and sayings of the philosopher, but the descriptions of places seem to be generally moderate and truthful. If they were not found in the narrative of Damis, they must have been taken from the journals of some of Alexander's followers; and in either case they are valuable, as they supply many little points of information that are wanting in the regular histories. According to Philostratus, Taxila was "not unlike the ancient Ninus, and was walled in the manner of other Greek towns."* For Ninus, or Nineveh, we must read Babylon, as we have no description of the great Assyrian city, which was destroyed nearly two centuries before the time of Herodotus. Now we know from Curtius that it was the "symmetry as well as the antiquity" of Babylon that struck Alexander and all who beheld it for the first time.† I conclude, therefore, that Taxila must have reminded the Greeks of Babylon by its symmetry, as Philostratus goes on to say, that the city was "divided into narrow streets with great regularity." He mentions also a temple of the sun, which stood outside the walls, and a palace in which the usurper was besieged. He speaks also of a garden, one stadium in length, with a tank in the midst, which was filled by "cool and refreshing streams." All these points will be noticed in a separate work when I come to describe the existing ruins of this ancient city.