Cosmography and Geography in Early Indian Literature c6.s5.3

c6.s5.3

The Achaemenian empire included Northern Africa in the west and Sindhu (the valley of the Indus or the Punjab) and Gandhāra in the east. While Indian soldiers in the army of Xerxes fought on Greek soil, Greek officers in the Achaemenian administration served in India. Maurya Aśoka (c. 272-232 B. C.) sent embassies to Antiochus II Theos of Syria and Western Asia, Ptolemy II Philadelphos of Egypt, Magas of Cyrene, Antigonas Gonatas of Macedonia and Alexander of Epirus or Corinth. The empire of some of the Kuṣāṇa rulers extended over considerable parts of both Northern India and Central Asia. There were also Indian settlers in Chinese Turkestan during the early centuries of the Christian era. There is evidence of the existence of Brāhmaṇa theosophists at Alexandria (Egypt) during the same period,⁹⁸ and there are a large number of Sanskrit records and Brahmanical and Buddhist monuments all over the countries of Indochina and Indonesia beginning from the same age.⁹⁹ In spite of the contact, however, there is nothing in Indian literature which exhibits such knowledge of foreign lands as we get, e.g., in the historical work of Herodotus (484-424 B.C.), the Indica of Megasthenes (last quarter of the 4th century B.C.), the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea (about 80 A.D.) and the Geography of Ptolemy (middle of the 2nd century A.D.) in the Greek literature. In any case, however, we are here not concerned, as already indicated above, with the problem of contact between India and the outside world.¹⁰⁰