Discovery Of India By Greeks

Author(s): J W De Jong
Publisher: J W De Jong

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THE DISCOVERY OF INDIA BY THE GREEKS
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general description of India and some notes on India. The second is Arrian whose Indike we have already mentioned. He also wrote a book on Alexander's expedition, called Anabasis Alexandri, for which he made use of the works of Aristoboulos, one of Alexander's generals, and of Ptolemaeus, another of Alexander's generals who later became king of Egypt in 305. Ptolemaeus wrote a book on Alexander's campaigns. The third is the famous Greek geographer Strabo (64 B.C.-19 A.D.), author of the Geographica. Strabo was very critical of Megasthenes. In this he is preceded by another Greek geographer Eratosthenes, who lived in the third century B. C. and who was also the author of a work entitled Geographica, of which only fragments are extant. Strabo (II. 1.9) says: 'Generally speaking, the men who have hitherto written on the affairs of India were a set of liars - Deimachos holds the first place in the list. Megasthenes comes next; while Onesikritos and Nearchos, with others of the same class, manage to stammer out a few words (of truth). Of this we became the more convinced whilst writing the history of Alexander. No faith whatever can be placed in Deimachos and Megasthenes. They coined the fables concerning men with ears large enough to sleep in, men without any mouths, without noses, with only one eye, with spider legs, and with fingers bent backward. They renewed Homer's fables concerning the battles of the cranes and pygmies, and asserted the latter to be three spans high. They told of ants digging for gold, and Pans with wedge-shaped heads, of serpents swallowing down oxen and stags, horn and all – meantime, as Eratosthenes has observed, accusing each other of falsehood. Both of these men were sent as ambassador to Palimbothra - Megasthenes to Sandrokottos, Deimachos to Allitrochades his son-, and such are the notes of their residence abroad, which, I know not why, they thought fit to leave.'18
It is impossible to know if Strabo is right in saying that Deimachos was a greater liar than Megasthenes. Of his work Indika only tiny frag
18. McCrindle, op.cit., pp. 18-19.