The History of Indian Literature c9.230

c9.230

²⁷⁶ According to Goldstücker, the statement in the Mahábháshya as to a then recent siege of Sáketa (Oude) by a Yavana prince has reference to Menander; while the accounts in the Yuga-Puráṇa of the Gárgí Saṃhitá even speak of an expedition of the Yavanas as far as Páṭaliputra. But then the question arises, whether by the Yavanas it is really the Greeks who are meant (see *I. Str.*, ii. 348), or possibly merely their Indo-Scythian or other successors, to whom the name was afterwards transferred; see *I. St.*, xiii. 306, 307; also note 202 above. [^asterisk]: * Thus Megasthenes was sent by Seleucus to Chandragupta (d. b.c. 291); Deimachus, again, by Antiochus, and Dionysius, and most probably Basilis also, by Ptolemy II. to ᾿Αμιτροχάτης, Amitragháta, son of Chandragupta. [Antiochus concluded an alliance with Σωφαγασήνας, Subhagasena (?). Seleucus even gave Chandragupta his daughter to wife; Lassen, *I. AK.*, ii. 208; Talboys Wheeler, *History of India* (1874), p. 177. In the retinue of this Greek princess there of course came to Páṭaliputra Greek damsels as her waiting-maids, and these must have found particular favour in the eyes of the Indians, especially of their princes. For not only are παρθένοι εὐειδεῖς πρὸς παλλακίαν mentioned as an article of traffic for India, but in Indian inscriptions also we find Yavana girls specified as tribute; while in Indian literature, and especially in Kálidása, we are informed that Indian princes were waited upon by Yavanís; Lassen, *I. AK.*, ii. 551, 957, 1159, and my Preface to the *Málaviká*, p. xlvii. The *métier* of these damsels being devoted to Eros, it is not a very far-fetched conjecture that it may have been owing to their influence that the Hindú god of Love, like the Greek Eros, bears a dolphin (*makara*) on his banner, and, like him, is the son of the goddess of Beauty; see *Z. D. M. G.*, xiv. 269. (For *makara* = dolphin, see *Journ. Bomb. Br. R. A. S.*, v. 33, 34; *I. Str.*, ii. 169); and cf. further *I. St.*, ix. 380.] \* The name of Paráśara, as well as that of Garga, belongs only to the last stage of Vedic literature, to the Áraṇyakas and the Sútras: in the earlier works neither of the two names is mentioned. The family of the Paráśaras is represented with particular frequency in the later members of the *vaṁśas* of the Śatapatha-Bráhmaṇa: a Garga and a Paráśara are also named in the Anukramaṇí as Rishis of several hymns of the Ṛik, and another Paráśara appears in Páṇini as author of the Bhikshu-Sútra; see pp. 143, 185. [The Gargas must have played a very important part at the time of the Mahábháshya, in the eyes of the author at all events; for on almost every occasion when it is a question of a patronymic or other similar affix, their name is introduced among those given as examples; see *I. St.*, xiii. 410 ff. In the Atharva-Pariśishtas, also, we find Garga, Gárgya, Vṛiddha-Garga cited: these latter Gargas are manifestly very closely related to the above-mentioned Garga the astronomer. See further Kern, Pref. to Varáha-Mihira's Bṛih. Saṃh., p. 31 ff.; *I. Str.*, ii. 347.]
* See my *Catal. of the Sansk. MSS. in the Berl. Lib.*, p. 288. In reference to the name Romaka, I may make an observation in passing. Whereas, in Mahá-Bhárata xii. 10308, the Raumyas are said to have been created from the *roma-kúpas* (‘hair-pores’) of Vírabhadra, at the destruction of Daksha's sacrifice, at the time of Rámáyaṇa i. 55. 3, their name must have been still unknown, since other tribes are there represented, on a like *occasion*, as springing from the *roma-kúpas*. Had the author been acquainted with the name, he would scarcely have failed to make a similar use of it to that found in the Mahá-Bhárata. [Cf. my Essay on the Rámáyaṇa, p. 23 ff.]