The Mauryan Polity c5.s3.6

c5.s3.6

Secondly, we are not in possession of all the documents which Megasthenes is said to have left concerning India.² It is generally believed that Megasthenes' *Indika* consisted of four books. But what we have to-day is a fragment culled out from his books of *Indika* here and there by other interested writers. It is highly regrettable that not even one full book of the *Indika* is available. And what is available, though fragmentary, is not even the original document but quotations made by his contemporaries and successors from such original documents. How far the quotations are faithful to the original is of course a matter of opinion. Granting them to be faithful only such statements as particularly interest the writer would have been quoted leaving out of account the context or the chain of circumstances under which they were made by the author. It is, therefore, difficult to attach full significance to these fragments.