The State in Ancient India: A Study in the Structure and Practical Working of Political Institutions in North India in Ancient Times c11.69

c11.69

original works have perished. The extracts probably embellished by successive generations of writers and preserved in a few authors mostly of the first century B.C., or the first century A.D., sometimes indulge in fairy tales and sometimes contradict one another. Strabo stigmatised the Greek writers on India as a set of liars of whom only a few managed now and then to stammer out some words of truth. The charge is sweeping and rather uncritical but it must be admitted that it is difficult to penetrate to the truth in writers who had a love for the marvellous and who borrow or summarise accounts of regions and times far removed from their own. They cannot be accepted at their face value and have always to be used with great caution.¹