The History of Indian Literature c9.229

Language: English

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The invasion of the Panjáb by Alexander was followed by the establishment of the Greek monarchies of Bactria, whose sway, in the period of their prime, extended, although only for a brief season, over the Panjáb as far as Gujarát.²⁷⁶ Concurrently therewith, the first Seleucidæ, as well as the Ptolemies, frequently maintained direct relations, by means of ambassadors, with the court of Páṭaliputra;[^asterisk] and thus it comes that in the inscriptions of Piyadasi we find mention of the names of Antigonus, Magas, Antiochus, Ptolemy, perhaps even of Alexander himself (cf. p. 179), ostensibly as vassals of the king, which is of course mere empty boasting. As the result of these embassies, the commercial intercourse between Alexandria and the west coast of India became particularly brisk; and the city of Ujjayiní, ᾿Οζηνή, rose in consequence to a high pitch of prosperity. Philostratus, in his life of Apollonius of Tyana—a work written in the second century A.D., and based mainly on the accounts of Damis, a disciple of Apollonius, who accompanied the latter in his travels through India about the year 50 A.D.—mentions the high esteem in which Greek literature was held by the Brahmans, and that it was studied by almost all persons of the higher ranks. (Reinaud, *Mém. sur l'Inde*, pp. 85, 87.) This is not very high authority, it is true [cf. Lassen, *I. AK.*, iii. 358 ff.];

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the statement may be an exaggeration, but still it accords with the data which we have now to adduce, and which can only be explained upon the supposition of a very lively intellectual interchange. For the Indian astronomers regularly speak of the Yavanas as their teachers: but whether this also applies to Paráśara, who is reputed to be the oldest Indian astronomer, is still uncertain. To judge from the quotations, he computes by the lunar mansions, and would seem, accordingly, to stand upon an independent footing. But of Garga,cont who passes for the next oldest astronomer, an oft-quoted verse has come down to us, in which he extols the Yavanas on account of their astronomical knowledge. The epic tradition, again, gives as the earliest astronomer the Asura Maya, and asserts that to him the sun-god himself imparted the knowledge of the stars. I have already elsewhere (*I. St.*, ii. 243) expressed the conjecture that this ‘Asura Maya’ is identical with the ‘Ptolemaios’ of the Greeks; since this latter name, as we see from the inscriptions of Piyadasi, became in Indian ‘Turamaya,’ out of which the name ‘Asura Maya’ might very easily grow; and since, by the later tradition (that of the Jnána-bháskara, for instance) this Maya is distinctly assigned to Romaka-puracont in the West. Lastly, of the five Siddhántas named as the earliest astronomical systems, one—the Romaka-Siddhánta—is denoted, by its very name, as of Greek origin;

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while a second—the Pauliśa-Siddhánta—is expressly stated by Albírúní† to have been composed by Paulus al Yúnání, and is accordingly, perhaps, to be regarded as a translation of the Εἰσαγωγή of Paulus Alexandrinus.²⁷⁷ The astronomers and astronomical works just instanced—Garga, Maya, the Romaka-Siddhánta, and the Paulíśa-Siddhánta—are, it is true, known to us only through isolated quotations; and it might still be open to doubt, perhaps, whether in their case the presence of Greek influence can really be established; although the assertion, for instance, that Pulíśa, in opposition to Áryabhaṭa,²⁷⁸ began the day at midnight, is of itself pretty conclusive as to his Western origin. But all doubt disappears when we look at the great mass of Greek words employed in his writings by Varáha-Mihira, to whom Indian astronomers assigned, in Albírúní's day, as they still do in our own,∗ the date 504 a.d.—employed, too, in a way which clearly indicates that they had long been in current use. Nay, one of his works—the Horá-Sástra—even bears a Greek title (from ὥρη); and in it he not only gives the entire list of the Greek names of the zodiacal signs and planets,† but he also directly employs several of the latter—namely, *Ára*, *Ásphujit*, and *Koṇa*—side by side with the Indian names, and just as frequently as he does these. The signs of the zodiac, on the contrary, he usually designates by their Sanskrit names, which are translated from the Greek.

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He has in constant use, too, the following technical terms, all of which are found employed in the same sense in the Εἰσαγωγή of Paulus Alexandrinus, viz.,\* *dṛikáṇa* = δεκανός, *liptá* = λεπτή, *anaphá* = ἀναφή, *sunaphá* = συναφή, *durudhará* = δορυφορία, *kemadruma* (for *kremaduma*) = χρηματισμός,²⁷⁹ *veśi* = φάσις, *kendra* = κέντρον, *ápoklima* = ἀπόκλιμα, *panaphará* = ἐπαναφορά, *trikoṇa* = τρίγωνος, *hibuka* = ὑπόγειον, *jámitra* = διάμετρον, *dyutam* = δυτόν, *meshúraṇa* = μεσουράνημα.