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The Classical Doctrine of Indian Medicine: Its Origins and its Greek Parallels c14: Chapter Nine: Communications Between Greece and India Before Alexander

The Classical Doctrine of Indian Medicine: Its Origins and its Greek Parallels c14

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Chapter Nine: Communications Between Greece and India Before Alexander

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IT IS CURRENTLY admitted that it is because of the expedition of Alexander to India that India has been put in communication with the Hellenic world. It is quite natural to state that only when the Greek armies entered India and for the first time occupied the basin of the Indus did the Greeks and the Indians start really knowing each other. It suffices to compare the data on India possessed by the Greeks before Alexander, for example at the time of Herodotus, in the middle of the Vth Century B.C. with the data acquired by them during this expedition (an idea of the same can be had by the numerous fragments of Nearchos, of Aristobulos, of Onesicritos or of Megasthenes) to appreciate the immense progress that the direct contact had realised in the knowledge of India in the West. It is also clear that this progress has had no immediate consequences because the direct contact was very soon broken by the expulsion, after the death of Alexander, of the Prefects he had left in India and by the reconquest of the Indus basin by Candragupta.¹ To convince oneself about the same, one has only to note that during the centuries that followed, the majority of Greek and Latin authors who have written on India have borrowed their information from the contemporaries of Alexander and Seleucos. And, in this matter, one should not limit oneself only to noting the facts gathered from what we possess of Greek and Latin writings because the evidence of Strabo gives us the guarantee that even in those writings that have not reached us, but which were available to him when he wrote his *Geography*, about the beginning of the Christian era, little had been added to the data of the epoch of Alexander. Strabo, in fact, strongly deplores that this state of affairs does not enable him to draw a satisfactory picture of India (XV, 1, 23).

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¹ Justin, *Epitoma Historiarum Philippicarum*, XV, 4, 12, ff.

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Strabo is even severe on those companions of Alexander who have written on India and on their rare successors. According to him, these men had rushed through India as soldiers, had seen only some parts, had learnt a great deal only by hearsay and did not agree, even among themselves on what they had seen with their own eyes. If, therefore, even those who, in a large number of cases, had been able to learn directly about the Indian world, have such a precarious and such an uncertain knowledge of India, it is difficult not to believe that, for better reasons, during the preceding period, the two worlds of Greece and India have been completely unknown to each other.

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If one were to hold to these considerations one could be tempted not to pursue the enquiry and to conclude right now that no intellectual communication could have taken place between India and the Hellenic world before Alexander and that the analogies observed between the medical doctrines of India and Greece of that epoch are purely fortuitous, no matter how numerous and precise they may be. However, it must be observed that intellectual exchanges do not necessarily suppose complete and reciprocal knowledge, not even direct contacts. It will, therefore, not be correct on our part to say that because India and Greece had not known each other very well in antiquity, nothing could have passed from one to the other. To pursue the examination of the question of their relationship, it will suffice to find out if any intermediary had existed between them. We know that the Persian Empire had been this intermediary.

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The conquest of a part of India by the Achaemenian Persians or rather the conquest of India in the narrow and original sense of the word, that is to say of the Indus valley, is attributed to Darius I, but it should go back partly to Cyrus, as has been shown by Foucher.¹ In fact Darius, in his inscription of Behistan, declares that he has re-established his authority on the entire domain of Cyrus and mentions amongst the satrapies forming this domain of Gadara, that is to say Gandhara which, at that time, extended from the Hindukush up to the Hydraotes at least, descending towards the south up to Multan, thus comprising the entire far North-West and the greater part of the Punjab. Moreover, Pliny has reproduced an older piece of information which said that Cyrus had destroyed Cappissa, that is to say, Kāpiśī, to the South of the Hindukush, therefore at the beginning of his conquest of Gandhara.

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¹ Les satrapies orientales de l'empire achéménide, in *Comptes rendus de l'Acad. des Inscr. et Belles Lettres*, 1938, pp. 340-341; *La Nicée d'Aghanistan*, ibid., 1939, p. 438. *La vieille route de l'Inde de Bactres á Taxila*, with the collaboration of Mrs. E. Bazin Foucher, in *Mém. Deleg. archeol. franc. en Afghanistan*, Vols. I & II, 1947, pp. 190 ff.

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These facts, in their totality, are corroborated by Arrian (Ind., I, 3) who writes that the people living between the Kophen (Kubha, river of Kabul) and the Indus, had been the subjects of the Assyrians, then of the Medians and then of the Persians and that they had paid tribute to Cyrus. These facts are nowhere contradicted by tradition, which, though contested, said that the same Cyrus had met with a disaster while trying to attack the Indians, because it manifestly relates to an attack on the people of the lower Indus, of Sindh. It seems that this attack was directed through Gedrosia as, according to Strabo who refers to this tradition without giving it much credence, it was for the glory of marching his entire army through a region, where Cyrus had lost his, that Alexandar withdrew from India through Gedrosia (XV, 1, 5).

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It was left to Darius to bring Sindh into the Achaemenian Empire but, as Gandhara was a land of Indian culture, a narrow and direct contact of this culture with the Achaemenian civilisation should undoubtedly start before 528 B.C., the date of the death of Cyrus.¹

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¹ According to Ktesias (Persica 6) Cyrus died of a wound inflicted on him by an Indian soldier belonging to a corps allied against him with the Derbices, people living to the east of the Caspian sea, and who had brought to them the elephants of war. But Ktesias is contradicted by Xenophon (Cyrop., VIII, 7, 3-38) who makes Darius die in his place, by Herodotos (I, 214) who says that he was killed in a battle against the Massagetes and by Berose (Fr., 29, 6-7) who makes him die in a war against the Dahai of Parthia. The incertitude, therefore, is very great, although some parts of this information are irreconciliable. The fact reported by Ktesias can lead only to the inference that the presence of a corps of Indian soldiers with elephants in a region to the east of the Caspian was not considered impossible. It is true that Ktesias has often left the domain of probability in his writings but we will see that at least commerce did regularly bring Indian goods to such regions.

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Herodotus has recounted how Darius had (apparently in 519 B.C.) deputed the Greek Skylax of Karyanda in Caria, to explore the lower course of the Indus and how Skylax, starting from Kaspapyros or Kaspatyros (now Multan) reached the Indus, took to the sea and arrived, thirty months after his departure, at the Egyptian port, from where, in earlier times the Phoenicians had left for the periplus of Africa. The conquest followed a little later. The inscription of Darius at Persepolis, between 518 and 515, mentions the Hidu, that is to say the Sindh among the satrapies.

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The Persian occupation continued up to the conquest of the Achaemenian Empire by Alexander in 331. It was, therefore, kept up, probably with variations in the extent of subject territories, during approximately 185 years. Over this long period, the India of the North-West had been subjected to the deep influences of Persia, and which has, often been noted. One of the most notable ones was the local adoption of the Aramaic alphabet used in the Achaemenian administration confined in the whole empire to the functionaries of Babylonian culture. This alphabet had been completed with new forms and diacritical signs and adapted to the phonetic transcription of the Indian languages, just as had been the case, at a later date, with regard to these languages of the Arabic and European alphabets. It constituted the script called Kharoṣṭhī which should, for the sake of clarity and exactitude, be called Arameo-Indian.¹ Unfortunately, no document in this script and dating from the period of the Achaemenian domination has reached us. The oldest specimens known are the inscriptions of Aśoka which date from the middle of the IIIrd cent. B.C. and are, in consequence, about eighty years later after the end of the Persian administration. We can, consequently, know nothing of the relations between the learned of India and the functionaries of Irano-Babylon. At least we have the proof, in the existence of the Arameo-Indian script itself, that these relations were effective, because the adaptation of the Aramaic alphabet to Indian languages is the result of a savant effort and supposes the intervention of competent grammarians.

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¹ cf., Ecritures araméenne, indienne, in Ch. Fossey, Notices sur les caractères étrangers, anciens et modernes, Paris, 1948, pp. 265 ff.

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This fact is pregnant with consequences. In 525, a few years before the conquest of Sindh by Darius, Cambyses had conquered Egypt and there also had been installed the same administration of the Aramaic language as had been the case in India. By means of this step, the Achaemenians had thrown a bridge of Mesopotamian culture between Egypt and India. The big unit formed by the Persian empire had been sufficiently coherent to enable numerous exchanges between its farthest parts. Historians have not always justly appreciated the organisation of this empire. As has been very well pointed out by Sylvain Lévi, "We have taken up the cause of Greece, espoused, exaggerated its just grudges; the Persians are the vanquished and the Barbarians".¹ It is true that they have not imposed, not even powerfully spread in their territories a civilisation which was specifically and exclusively Iranian. But they have created political unity transcending races and religions. It is to the glory of Cyrus and Darius that they tolerated the beliefs of their subjects and this toleration has favoured the flowering and the exchange of thought. On the side of syncretisms (all of them have not been happy though) this has given rise to a large interchange of ideas where all the tributary people could bring in theirs and obtain those of others.

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¹ *L'Inde civilisatrice*, Paris, 1938, p. 40.

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The Greeks had put in many products of their genius and had been easily able to draw therefrom many new suggestions or precious knowledge. The King of Lydia, Cresus, had conquered the Greek establishments of Asia Minor² towards 560 and Lydia fell to Cyrus in 546. Ionia did not remain a peaceful subject of the Persians for long. It revolted from 499 to 494. The Persians sacked the Ionian towns and the bloody battles were not conducive to activating intellectual exchanges. Those which could take place with the Greece of Europe were also undoubtedly compromised by wars. But a large number of Greeks did, at that time, espouse the cause of the Persians and the conflicts between peoples did not hinder the activity of scientific and philosophical speculation. Moreover, the war was not continual. Miletus having taken the oath to Cyrus, stayed for some time, in perfect peace with the Achaemenians (Herodotus, I, 169) and some of the most notable of its children, like Hekateus were the partisans of an *entente* with the Persians. Moreover, the war itself was sometimes the occasion of deporting captives who, humanely treated in exile, could take the ideas of their country far. After the occupation of revolted Miletus in 496, a contingent of Milesian prisoners was first led to Susa, and then settled on the Erythrean sea at the mouth of the Tigris (Herodotos, VI, 20). The epoch of these wars is precisely that of the philosophers of Ionia. Thales and Anaximander flourished at the time when Cresus subjected Ionia. Anaximenes died in 525; Heraclitus wrote a little after 478; Anaxagoras, born in Asia Minor, at Clazomenes, lived chiefly at Athens but came back to end his days in Asia Minor, at Lampascus, towards 428. At the boundary of the Persian empire or incorporated therein, Ionia in its essential period of intellectual activity, has remained a part both of the Asian world and the Hellenic world. Its radiance reached both of them. It is difficult for us to believe that the Ionian thinkers have had no influence from the side of orient and that they remained blind and deaf to all that came from that side. India was not unknown to Miletus. One of its illustrious citizens, Hekateus, towards 500 B.C., possessed information concerning the geography and the peoples of India; the little fragments of his work that have been preserved for us show it to us directly. Unceasing relations, chiefly maritime, had put Ionia in contact with all the insular and the riverain people of the Mediterranean, especially with Egypt. Thales whose ancestors, according to Herodotos, were of Phoenician origin¹ and Heraclitus are often considered as having acquired important knowledge in Egypt.² As regards Thales, Tannery even thought that he had acquired the means of forecasting eclipses in Egypt and that, as this means was rather Chaldean, possibly the Egyptians had borrowed it from the Chaldeans, before the time of Thales.³ But Tannery forgot that Lydia, to which the motherland of Thales was then subject, was of Mesopotamian culture. This fact renders useless the hypothesis of an intervention of the Egyptians, at least for a loan of the Chaldean astronomy. The exchanges take place not only in particularly suitable countries; the political state of the Mediterranean Orient made them possible everywhere and in all directions.

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² Herodotus, I, 26-27.

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¹ I, 170. Modern authors have seldom noticed this fact. Many have sought to combat it. However Th. Gomperz has remarked that their objections only prove that probably Herodotos may have been mistaken, but it is unlikely that the Greeks had, without any motive, given a foreign origin to one of their great men. (*Les penseurs de la Gréce*, French trans., p. 76, f.n. 2).

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² P. Tannery, *Pour l'histoire de la science helléne*, Paris, 1930; *On Thales*, pp. 57 ff.; *On Heraclitus*, pp. 179 ff.

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³ ibid., p. 62.

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They took place equally with the Greek colonies of Italy, of Sicily and of Cyrenaica. We know the precise circumstances of the historical relations about which we do not know positively whether they ended in intellectual exchanges but which, at least, offered the requisite conditions for the establishment of such exchanges. This is how at the beginning of the reign of Darius, in the same epoch when the Great King was having the lower course of the Indus reconnoitred by the Greek Skylax, a part of the inhabitants of Barka in Cyrenaica¹ was abducted and transported to Bactriana where lands were allotted to them for founding a new Barka (Herodotos, IV, 204). The presence, at the end of the VIth Cent B.C., of Greeks or of men of Greek culture in India or at the gates of India is thus well attested. The deportees of Barka, of course, never came back to the West but they could have brought western ideas to India. Skylax, for his part, came back from his voyage and wrote a report thereof, which has unfortunately not reached us. Herodotos (III, 125-127) has also recounted the story of the doctor of Crotona, Demokedes.² This doctor who accompanied Polycrates, the tyrant of Samos, when the latter was drawn towards an ambush at Magnesia by the Persian Oretes, was made a prisoner and sent to Susa in 522 B.C. A little later, Darius, suffering from an ankle-sprain and not finding himself any better after eight days of treatment by the Egyptian doctors, was informed of the presence and of the qualities as doctor of Demokedes; the latter was then forced to treat Darius. The doctor was successful and remained, although against his will, attached to Darius. Having, later on, cured the queen Atossa of a suppurated ailment in the chest, he succeeded in making her to persuade Darius to send him under escort to reconnoitre Greece in view of an invasion. There he succeeded in escaping from the Persians and re-entered Crotona where he married the daughter of the famous athlete Milon. He sent word of this marriage to Darius because, says Herodotos, the name of Milon was, at that time, very well-known in the Persian court. Suidas says that he wrote a book on medicine.

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¹ At Cyrene flourished an important medical school but chiefly a little later, in the Vth century, cf., M. Wellmann, ‘Alkmaion von Kroton’, Archeion, XI, 1929, p. 156. Herodotos says that at one time the Crotonians were considered as first among doctors and those of Cyrene as second (I, 131).

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² Suidas, under the word dimokhydis, says that his father had been the priest of Asklepios at Cnida and Jamblique makes a Pythagorean of him (Vie de Pytha., 357), cf. A. Gotze, “Persische Weisheit in Griechischem Gewande”, in Zeit. fur Ind. und. Ir., p. 97, who rightly notes the importance of the presence of three doctors in India for the history of medical communications between Iran and the Hellenic world.

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Demokedes was certainly an eminent doctor although his cures at the court of Persia have probably been more fortunate than difficult. The sprain of Darius, painful as it naturally is during the first days, was not very serious, otherwise it could not have been rapidly cured as is said to have been the case by Herodotos. Undoubtedly Demokedes was lucky to have been called in a little before the normal attenuation of painful phenomena, but it is certain that the medical school of Crotona, the town of athletes, had specialised in the treatment of traumatisms and that Demokedes had personally acquired a great renown in the Hellenic world before he got attached to Polycrates. He was, therefore, capable of spreading in Iran Greek medical knowledge of great value as also of learning foreign theories and methods.¹ As he was able to come back to Crotona and was probably able to write there, he could have made known the Oriental data and techniques. The Achaemenian Court was certainly a meeting place for intellectual exchanges as reports from all the satrapies converged there and as the story of Demokedes himself tells us about Egyptian doctors and a Greek one assembled there. Moreover, relations between Susa and Crotona existed independently of the chance captivity of Demokedes at Susa as, according to Herodotos, Milon was well known in the Iranian Court.

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¹ On the probable Oriental influences on Demokedes and his own influence on the Greek schools of Italy, cf., P.M. Schuhl, *Essai sur la formation de la pensée grecque*, pp. 307 ff.

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Two other Greek doctors have been employed by the Achaemenians. It is known that according to a legend and certain texts, which are very probably apocryphal², Hippocrates had refused the parents of Artaxerxes, who had ordered him to come for fighting against an epidemic, but Appollonides of Cos practised in the Court of Artaxerxes from the beginning of the reign of this prince, even if he had not been there before him. In fact, he cured Megabyze, wounded during the troubles which followed the failure of the conspiracy of Artaban against Artaxerxes¹ in 464, seven months after the assassination of Xerxes which took place during the summer of 465. He had more time than Demokedes to propagate Greek medicine in Iran, but did not return to his country. He was shamefully executed in 440 for having seduced Amytis, the widow of Megabyze, under the pretence of curing her of an hysterical disease.²

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² Hippocrates, Vol. IX, pp. 308 ff.

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¹ Ktesias, *Persica*, 30.

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² ibid., 42.

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Lastly Ktesias of Cnidus, who has narrated these facts, was for a long time the doctor of Artaxerxes II and is said to have ended his days in his own country. He has remained famous by the fragments of his writings preserved by Photius and one of which was specially devoted to India. This work is of little value, in so far as it has reached us, because it is full of fables, but its existence positively guarantees that which was rendered, *a priori*, probable by the state itself of the Achaemenian empire, that is to say, that information concerning India could reach the Greeks by the intermediary of Iran. If the information of Ktesias is fantastic, it does not follow that nothing serious could have been then brought from India. Ktesias is not a critical author—the fragments of his work on Persia prove this point—he is certainly responsible for having listened to fables. Besides, Photius has been able to choose in his work the most extraordinary allegations and leave aside data which were truer but less striking. It is not doubtful, however, that the functionaries of the satrapies of Gandhara and of Sindh could bring nothing but the marvellous to the Achaemenian Court.

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It may be stated that the facilities offered by the great unity of the Achaemenian empire to the cultural exchanges between India and the West have proved to be of little effect. A serious error of Herodotos incidentally proves it. The Father of history was a Greek of Asia, he hailed from Halicarnassus, in Caria which was under the Persians. He lived from approximately 480 to 425. A great traveller and a man of great learning, he knew things Iranian and Egyptian particularly well. He was therefore seemingly well-placed for having exact information concerning the Mesopotamian sciences then in use in the Persian empire administered by the functionaries of Babylonian culture. He says, nevertheless, that the Babylonians have no doctors, that among them the sick are exhibited in the public place and that the passers-by give them advice according to their experience (I, 197). His information presents on this point an enormous lacuna; we possess a large number of the fragments of the medical literature of Babylonia¹ and the code of Hammurabi had already, towards 2000 B.C., fixed the fees of the doctors and the punishments they incurred in case of default.²

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¹ Description and bibliography in G. Contenau, *La médecine en Assyrie et en Babylonie*, Paris, 1938.

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² ibid., pp. 30-45.

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Badly informed of the social life and of the state of science at Babylon, Herodotos' knowledge of farther India is, generally speaking, still worse. This leads to the consequence that, in the Greek world of Asia, one was not generally and regularly well-informed on all that touched the peoples of the Persian empire. It does not follow in the least that it was impossible to have occasionally precise information concerning the ideas of their peoples.

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Herodotos himself fortuitously gives us the proof that under the Achaemenians Greeks and Indians could meet and know the ideas of each other. He describes (III, 38) how Darius, one day, asked the Greeks, his subjects, if they could force themselves to nourish themselves on the dead bodies of their relations. The reply was, as was to be expected, that they would never do it. Thereupon Darius confronted the Indians called Kalatiai³, who had the custom of eating their relations. They showed as much indignation as the Greeks when Darius asked them about the amount of money which could persuade them to burn the dead bodies of their relations. An interpreter, Herodotos specifies, was explaining to the Greeks all that was being said on both sides. Such conferences and conversations with the help of interpreters evidently facilitated the exchange of ideas. Therefore it is not only the voyagers like Skylax who could have learnt something about India and could have carried Hellenic notions of the same. The Greek doctors of Susa could have found themselves in a position to communicate with the Indians, of whom many, at that time, were more cultured than the Kalatiai cannibals. And, in a more general way, to enable the intellectual contacts among the peoples of the Persian empire to be more efficacious, it was sufficient to have suggestions and points of general information to pass from one country to another. It was not in the least necessary that the corpus of entire doctrines had to be carried and taught with a popular repercussion so that the memory of the same could not have failed to reach us.

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³ Hekateus of Miletus also mentions the Kalatiai. The word can refer to some people of the North-West because Megasthenes has, later on, reported that the inhabitants of the Indian Caucasus ate the dead bodies of their relations (Strabo, XV, 1, 56). Herodotos himself attributes an analogous custom to the Padaioi (III, 99). After having summarily described the customs of another category of Indians, he adds that those of whom he has talked are black in colour, farther from the Persians towards the centre and who have never been the subjects of Darius. If these latter details relate to the Padaioi as also to the Indians mentioned after them, these Padaioi have nothing in common with the Kalatiai, except for a similarity of customs. From then onwards it is difficult to recognise, as Lassen has claimed to do after

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On the other hand, and above all, it should be observed that precise enquiries which help us to obtain deep knowledge are often those which take place without much noise and we have the proof that such enquiries have been made on India inside the Persian administration. Strabo tells us that one of the rare authors for whom he has great regard among those who have written on India following the expedition of Alexander, namely, Patrocles¹ had said that the companions of Alexander had only an extremely superficial knowledge of India, whereas Alexander himself could have been better informed, as he had got detailed descriptions from people knowing the country well. Patrocles was able to see these reports as an act of special favour by the treasurer Xenocles (II, 1, 6). These exact reports were therefore secret or at least were not written for being circulated and largely known. Their authors being men

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¹ Named also by Pliny (VI, 21) as the admiral of Seleukos and of Antiochos Soter.

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Bohlan by basing himself on Herodotos (*Ind. Alt.*, I, pp. 465-466; II, p. 639) the word *kāla* “black” in the name of the Kalatiai. One may ask oneself if this name does not cover a form *khalati*, “bald” attested since the *Yajurveda*, not, of course, as the name of any people.

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who knew the country were not the Greeks brought by Alexander. They were, in all probability, the functionaries of Achaemenians who had passed under the authority of the conqueror, come to take possession of the satrapies administered by them. Their reports must have been devoted more to the geographical, economic and political conditions than to Indian thought but they could not have ignored the latter and they were in a position to give information regarding the same to the Greeks. It is through men of this type that scientific ideas have been easily able to pass through the Achaemenian Empire and reach the Greeks of the Orient. Moreover, it is quite possible that some of these men were Greeks and had been in the service of the Persians in India for a long time, because, before conquering Sindh, Darius had sent Skylax there.

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It is certainly through them rather than through the soldiers, or even the philosophers who accompanied them in their march, that theoretical data on science could have been transported. Even a philosopher cannot always collect useful information only by chance encounters during his passage. Onesikritos gives us an example of the same. Sent by Alexander to talk with the gymnosophists, he was able to have a sufficiently important conversation with them, but it became necessary for him to abandon the idea of knowing their thoughts fully because it was necessary to have recourse to three successive interpreters.¹ Men conversant with the country could have informed him more effectively about the ideas of these gymnosophists than the latter themselves encountered in passing.

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¹ Strabo, XV, 1, 64. Onesikritos has nevertheless drawn from this conversation certain data which are interesting even for us today. This is how he has understood a legend according to which the earth was at first covered with food but this food disappeared as a punishment for the insolence of human beings. A similar legend is found much later in texts like the *Mahavastu*, ed. Senart, I, pp. 338 ff. The report of Onesikritos teaches us usefully that this legend existed in the IVth century B.C.

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Besides, it is not excluded that Indians themselves may have sometimes established themselves in Greek lands for a sufficiently long time for having been able to disseminate among the learned some of their ideas. We have, on this subject, a text whose authenticity is not ordinarily admitted but which does deserve to be examined.

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Mr. Bréhier, Mr. Bidez and Father Festugiére have drawn attention to an extract of Aristoxenes of Tarentum, quoted after Aristocles by Eusebes in his *Préparation évangélique* (XI, 3, 8)¹, Aristoxenes, who lived towards 320-300 had narrated how an Indian who used to see Socrates at Athens, made fun of him one day when he learnt that Socrates did research on human life, saying that it was impossible to understand things human as long as things divine were ignored. If Socrates had thus been able to communicate with an Indian philosopher in Athens, it would have been quite natural for Plato to have knowledge of the medical doctrines of India which are evoked in his *Timaeus* by so many characteristic resemblances. But this piece is considered as presenting a purely imaginary anecdote. The possibility of the presence at Athens of an Indian before 399, the date of the death of Socrates, that is to say, more than seventy years before Alexander, had opened the Indian world to the knowledge of the Hellenes, does not seem to have been found worthy of examination. The only effort made has been to find out the reasons as to why such encounters between Greek and Oriental sages have been evoked.

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¹ E. Bréhier, *La philosophie de Plotin*, 1928, p. 132; *Eos ou Platon et l'Orient*, Brussels, 1945, pp. 122 ff; A.J. Festugiére, *Grecs et sages Orientaux*, in *Rev. Hist. des Rel.*, Vol. CXXX, July-Dec., 1945, pp. 34 ff.

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In fact, the dialogues between Greek and Oriental sages were numerous and appear during certain periods in Greek literature; they should be considered together as has been done by the Father Festugiére and there is every reason to think that the majority of them, far from having been composed on the basis of original documents giving an account of real dialogues have been forged, in imitation of one another, during those periods when the vogue of the Orient called for placing the Greek and Oriental sagacity side by side. Similarly the hypothesis of the Father Festugiére (p. 36) that in the Orientalist circles to which he belonged, Aristoxenes thought of India, then better known thanks to the expedition of Alexander, is quite likely. In fact it is quite certain that during the time of Aristoxenes, India was quite in the news, this was approximately the time when Seleukos had sent Megasthenes to the court of Candragupta. But Father Festugiére adds that the anecdote of Socrates and the Indian, the result of the presence of the sage of India and of the sage of Greece “is already in favour of the Oriental wisdom, following a fashion which will prevail later during the Greeko-Roman epoch”, and he refers on this subject to his book, *La Révélation d’Hermès Trismégiste*¹, wherein he has studied the vogue of Oriental wisdom during the first centuries of the Christian era following the decline of ancient rationalism. On this point, however, one should hesitate to follow him. A fashion cannot be active several centuries before its existence; in order to link up the invention made by Aristoxenes of a dialogue between Socrates and an Indian with the Orientalist infatuation seen during the Greeko-Roman period, it should be supposed that in reality the fashion reputed to be that of this period had commenced much earlier. But in the attention paid by the Greeks to the Oriental doctrines must one explain everything by simple fashions. There is, in any case, another point of view where the Orientalist finds himself quite naturally placed and we should stop a moment to see what can be discovered through this point of view.

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¹ Vol. I, Paris, 1944.

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When a Greek text refers to the Orient, the first job of the Orientalist is to find out whether what is alleged is exact. If it is found to be false, it follows automatically that we are dealing with a text of fantasy and the reasons that prompted the author to write it, should be looked for only in the preoccupations of the author himself or those of his circle. Things become altogether different if the indications regarding the Orient found in the text are found to be correct. Then the reasons of the author should not be sought only in his ideas or in those of his nation as the real influence of foreign thought on him is evident. Now on examining the facts regarding the wisdom of Indians found in various works or in the dialogues claiming to present Indians, it is perceived that they are generally exact; therefore, it can be said that the vogue of the Orient among the Greeks has not been solely due, in so far as India is concerned, to a purely internal evolution of ideas but it is due to a real contribution made by true facts. We have already had the occasion to show the same elsewhere *a propos* of the texts of the first centuries of the Christian era.¹ We can today give a new example of the same, concerning the anecdote of Aristoxenes studied here.

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¹ *JA*, 1943-45, pp. 349 ff (Book-review of Festugiére, *op. cit.*); *La doctrine des Brahmanas d'apres saint Hippolyte*, in *Rev. Hist. des Rel.*, July-Dec., 1945, pp. 59, ff.

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In his article quoted above, *Gréce et sages orientaux*, Father Festugiére has made a *rapprochement* between the opinion credited to the Indian in the anecdote of Aristoxenes, that things human cannot be understood without knowing things divine, the theory of the *Ist Alcibiades* that knowing one's soul is to discover God and the assertion put in the mouth of the Brahmin Iarchas, in the Life of Appllionos of Tyana, that all knowledge depends on the knowledge of oneself and that to know oneself is to know God (p.38). These concordant opinions have appeared to him to be inseparable and he asks himself if the remarks ascribed to Iarchas did not derive from the idea expressed in the *Ist Alcibiades*, which could have been well known to Philostratos, the author of the life of Appllonios. This would be quite probable if India had been an imaginary country; in that case, the Greek authors could not but have sought inspiration from one another for talking of India. But the idea reported to have been expressed by the Indian of Aristoxenes and that of Philostratos is in conformity with the chief doctrine of the Upaniṣads according to which supreme knowledge consists in the identity of the *ātman*, the self with *Brahman*, God. The passages of Aristoxenes and Philostratos agree between themselves because they refer to the same truth and if Philostratos lends to a conventional Brahmin a veritable Indian doctrine, it is in no way because he was inspired by the *Ist Alcibiades*. From then on there is no problem of filiation between the three texts put near one another. Two of them echo the true information that came from India. Only the third, the passage of the Platonist dialogue, because of its concordance with others poses a problem, namely, that of finding out how this dialogue contains an idea which is found to be a classical idea of the Brahmanical philosophy elsewhere.

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We will not let ourself be led into examining this last problem here, but this example shows that Greek assertions concerning India, even on the most fictitious stage like that of the *Life of Apollonios* are not necessarily pure fantasy and the opinion ascribed to the Indian interlocutor of Socrates in the anecdote of Aristoxenes is an authentic Indian opinion. One cannot therefore *a priori* reject this anecdote of the Indian and Socrates, as one would have had to do if Aristoxenes had credited his Indian with impossible views. It is, besides, quite natural that Aristoxenes, writing towards the epoch of the expedition of Alexander, was able to have a correct notion of the words that could be ascribed to an Indian philosopher. But the fact remains that he wrote precisely at a time when attention had been drawn towards India and when the conditions, under which knowledge about it was obtained, were well-known. He could not have, at such a time, evoked the presence of an Indian philosopher at Athens a century earlier, if it had been thought that such a presence was impossible before the great events of the conquest which then took place. It is, therefore, not very important whether the anecdote of Socrates and the Indian sage is true or false; even if false, it guarantees that towards the end of the IVth century B.C., it was known in the Hellenic world that Indians knowing the doctrines of their country had been able to visit Greece for a long time, just as the Greeks had been going to India. It is, therefore, in no way impossible that Plato had knowledge of the Indian medical theory before he explained the one which is near it and which he does not seem to have borrowed from the known schools of Greek medicine.

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Indices furnished by chance positively tell us on the other hand that Indian data on medicine had been received in the Greek medical circles where an Hippocratic manual namely *On Woman's Diseases* had been elaborated; this manual being quite generally considered as Cnidian.

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In this manual (I, 81, Littré, Vol. VIII, p. 203) is prescribed an ingredient used in the composition of a pessary, the "Indian medicine (variant-Median), which is for the eyes and which is called pepper (*peperi*)". The same prescription is found with slight variations in the manual *On the Nature of Woman* (32, Littré, Vol. VII, p. 365). In this latter passage, Littré has adopted *midikhoi* in his text and indicates the variant *endikhoi*; in the other he has adopted *indikhoi* and gives as variants *midikhoi* and *mildikhoi*. It is not doubtful that in the two cases, the correct readings be *indikhoi*, "Indian", because *peperi* is a derived form of the name of the pepper from Sanskrit *pippali* (or *pippalī*) and that pepper is an Indian product and not a Median one. One can even specify that it does not refer to pepper in general but to "long pepper" which is denoted by *pippali*, excluding the "round pepper", because the two Greeks just now quoted by us immediately add the mention of the "round" one (*strongulu*). Moreover, the indication that the medicine in question is meant for the eyes agrees very well with the teaching of the classical Indian medicine which frequently includes *pippali* in its formulae of collyriae.¹ Last of all, two other passages of the book, *On Woman's Diseases*, confirm that one should read "Indian" and not "Median" and one of them enables us to explain the wrong reading while giving a precious indication.

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¹ Suśr., *Uttaratantra*, XI, 11; XV, 29, XVII, 4. 6, 14, 18, 21, 22, etc. In these passages in verse the name of *pippali* is often replaced *metri causa* by various synonyms.

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First of all a pessary similar to the preceding ones is prescribed where the "Indian medicine" is included as one of the elements, without being named this time, and for this indication there is no variation (II, 358, Littré, VIII, p. 337). The second passage (ibid., 205, p. 395) again gives a similar formula where the Indian substance re-appears; about this substance, here it is said that "the Persians call it *peperi*" and there is inside it something round called *murtidanon*. The variant Median for "Indian" can come in only after an unhappy effort at correction is made, under the impression that the drug belonged to the Persians from whom its name had been received, but the passage says specifically, without giving any variant, that the drug is Indian, although the name given to it may have been Persian. In fact the name is also Indian but it is true that in the form of *peperi*, it is Persian, as was earlier noted by Lassen, *r* in Iranian standing for *l* in Indian.² It follows therefore that this product along with indications concerning its medical usage passed through the Persian empire to reach the Greeks.

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² *Indische Alterthumskunde*, Vol. I, p. 278, IInd edn., p. 326, f.n. 3.

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The same manual *On Woman's Diseases* also mentions another Indian formula for dentifrice (II, 185, Littré, Vol, VIII p. 367), which has the characteristic of having been offered along with a precept of general alimentary hygiene; to eat little and to partake of only substantial things. This characteristic is part of the tradition of Indian medicine, which has always been careful to regulate the use of food as much as the use of drugs.

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The presence of Indian data in the *Hippocratic Collection*, consciously received as such proves that at least indirect communication of Greek and Indian medical sciences had been realised during the elaboration of certain elements of this *Collection*. These communications must have commenced before the time of Alexander, to which the basis of the large part of these texts is anterior. However, in view of the state of extreme uncertainty of Hippocratic chronology, it will be imprudent to peremptorily affirm that the passages noted by us as referring to Indian remedies have not been written much later. It remains true, nevertheless, that the certainty of Indian influence on the texts *On Woman’s Diseases* and *On the Nature of Woman* brings in the possibility of a similar influence on the other texts such as the one *On Breaths* and that what is said of the Indian medicine *péperi* leads one to think that it has been known to the Greeks through the Persians and therefore this knowledge did not have the need to wait for the expedition of Alexander.

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Moreover, we need not limit ourselves to a vague indication when we invoke the passage of an Indian product across the Persian empire, because an old and regular commercial route between India and the West is described for us by Strabo and Pliny and probably, in general, enough attention has not been paid to the consequences arising out of the existence of this path of communication.

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In fact, Strabo (II, 1, 15) indicates that Indian goods used to arrive easily after being transported by the Oxus up to Hyrcania, that is to say, in the region of the Caspian, the region where they spread by means of the rivers right up to the Bridge. Pliny gives the details of transit on this route. The goods of the Oxus are routed by the Icare into the Caspian (Now the Oxus flows into the sea of Aral, but its ancient bed has been found), from where they are taken to the Cyrus. Thereafter they are transported by land up to the Phase, a tributary of the Euxine, in, at the most, five days. It is true that Pliny, while describing this itinerary (VI, 19, 2) says that Varron, from whom he has borrowed this information declares that it has been gathered under Pompei, during the war of Mithridates. The information of Pliny thus goes only upto 66 B.C., but Strabo, whom Pliny has not quoted and who drew from other sources, has specifically indicated these sources in a second reference made to the same route (XI, 7, 3); they are Aristobulos, who participated in the expedition of Alexander and Patrocles, the informant who had access to secret documents established for Alexander and about whom Pliny tells us that, as the admiral of Seleukos and of Antiochos Soter, he made a periplus of the Caspian Sea (VI, 21). As nothing enables us to suppose that the route from India to the Euxine was opened to commerce precisely by the expedition of Alexander, it is clear that it has been established earlier and it became known to the Western people only on this occasion.

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One could, therefore, under the Achaemenians, pass from India to Greece not only by reaching Ionia through the south or the centre of Asia Minor, but also by the Euxine and Thrace and it will be convenient to remind oneself of this fact while studying the possible connections between the doctrines of India and those of Orphism, connections held not as improbable by some critics but which they envisage as only across Iran.¹

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¹ Boulanger, *Orphée*, p. 45; taken up again by P.M. Schuhl, *Essai sur la formation de la pensée grecque*, p. 239; M.J. Lagrange, *Les Mystéres: L'orphisme*, Paris, 1937, p. 81.

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However it may be, other ways were also open for the passage from India to the Hellenic world. We know, from the time of Herodotos, that Cinnamon was brought up to there (III, 111), and as it refers, in all probability to cinnamon-bark, it should have been brought from Indian seas. The same text *On Woman's Diseases* which, several times, mentions the Indian pepper also knows the cinnamon (II, 187) and similarly the text *On the Nature of Women* (34, Littré, VII, p. 373). But Herodotos also indicates that it was brought by the Arabs and he did not know from where they drew it. On this point he merely repeats the tales about which Pliny has said that they were fabricated without any basis in order to make the most of the rarity of the commodity. It is therefore improbable that information regarding Indian ideas could have reached Greece by the route of the cinnamon, as this route became really known to the Westerners only towards the beginning of the Christian era.¹ Elsewhere again the voyage from India to Egypt which was accomplished by Skylax, starting from the mouth of the Indus, as a prelude to the Achaemenian conquest of Sindh, has been accomplished again, but on this subject we do not possess precise and sure evidence.

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¹ cf., *Les échanges de l'Inde et de l'Empire romain aux premiers siècles de l'ére chretienne*, in Rev. Hist., January-March 1949, pp. 6 ff.

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In any case, we see that sure paths and intermediaries, i.e., Greeks in the service of the Persians, being the functionaries of the Achaemenians who dominated both the Greek and the Indian lands, and may be Indians also, were there for assuring scientific communication between India and Greece before Alexander. Undoubtedly they did not suffice for making India largely known to the Greek public, nor did they suffice for making Greece known to the Indian public, but they were easily able to carry across the notions on which minds on both sides, whether by conscientious emulation or not, marked. This is the explanation of why there are, between Indian and Greek medicines, so very particular and precise similarities which are not easy to ascribe to chance. This is again why we come across, both in Greece and India, so many similar speculations during the same moments. If the two worlds, while knowing each other only in a vague manner, have brought the level of their science to the same level, it is because they communicated with each other on the under-side.²

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² While terminating this work, I have to express my thanks to all those who have been kind enough to take interest in it and to favour it with their criticism and advice, especially Messrs E. Benveniste, J Bloch, A Foucher and L. Renou who know all that I owe them on this occasion as on many others. I also have to thank the Centre national de la recherche scientifique and the Imprimerie Nationale who have been kind enough to undertake the printing and publication of this book. (in French)

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