Chandragupta Maurya and His Times c14.74

c14.74

**Ascetics seen by the Greeks in the Panjab.** At the time of Alexander's invasion, the Greeks first saw the Indian ascetics at Takshaśilā. As they won't care to come to see Alexander, Alexander sent to them Onesicritus who reports that he saw 15 ascetics about 10 miles from the city, given to meditation in the sun, sitting naked. On being told that the Yavana king wanted to learn their wisdom, one of them bluntly answered that, "no one coming in the bravery of European clothes—cavalry cloak and broad-brimmed hat and top-boots, such as the Macedonians wore—could learn their wisdom. To do that, he must strip naked and learn to sit on the hot stones besides them" [*Cambridge History*, I, 358].