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THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY.
[SEPTEMBER, 1876.
it was that Porust was the writer ; that although he was the sovereign of six hundred kings, yet that he highly esteemed the friendship of Cæsar; that he was willing to allow him a pass through his country, in whatever part he pleased, and to Assist him in any undertaking that was just.
"Eight naked slaves, with girdles round their waists, and fragrant with perfumes, presented the gifts which were brought. The presents were a youth, a sort of Hermes, born without arms, whom I have seen ; large snakes; a serpent ten cubits in length; a river tortoise of three cubits' length; and a partridge (?) somewhat larger than a vulture. They were accompanied by the person, it is said, who burnt himself to death at Athens. This is the practice with persons in distress, who seek escape from existing calamities, and with others in prosperous circumstances, as was the case with this man. For, as everything hitherto had succeeded with him, he thought it necessary to depart, lest some unexpected calamity should happen to him by continuing to live with a smile, therefore, naked and perfumed, he leaped into the burning pile. On his tomb was his inscription -- Zarmanochégas, an Indian of Bargosa, who, according to the ancestral custom of the Indians, gave himself immortality, lies here."
This embassy is also noticed by other writers, though there are considerable discrepancies in the various accounts; and the author concludes from the presents, the Greek letter and its commercial tone, that it was planned and organized by Greek traders of Alexandria, and more for Greek than Hindu interests, and was probably sent by some petty râja on the west coast at their instigation.
The second embassy is that mentioned by Pliny (Nat. Hist. VI. 24) as arriving about A.D. 44 from Ceylon, and which consisted of Rachias and three others sent by the king of the island to Claudius, in company with Annius Plocamus, who had been driven by a gale of wind across the Arabian Sea to Taprobane. This our author, we think with scarcely sufficient reason, is inclined to regard as sent by a Tamil prince rather than by the Sinhalese king.
The remaining four embassies are barely noticed by historians. The first was to Trajan,ll A.D. 107; the second to Antoninus Pius, A.D. 138-161; the third, to Julian, reached him, according to Ammianus Marcellinus,* before it was expected, A.D. 361;
and the fourth, to Justinian,tt reached Constanti. nople in A.D. 530. The discussion of these, and of the notices of India in Greek and Roman authors during this period, occupies the second half of the volume. Much varied reading has been brought to bear on the subject, and the examination of the statements of the various authors is of the most searching character, often tending to throw doubt on the originality of their information: even of Cosmas Indicopleustes the author doubts that he ever was in India.
"On a review of these notices of India," he remarks that "it seems : 1st, That for a century after the fall of Palmyra no important mention of India was made by any Greek or Latin writer whatever. 2ndly, That the accounts of India which then and afterwards appeared, whether in travels, geographies, histories, or poems, those in the Topographia Christiana excepted, were all in the main made up of extracts from the writings of previous ages, and added nothing to our knowledge of India. 3rdly, That of such writing these compilers in general preferred, not those which recorded authenticated facts, it but those which worked most upon the imagination, and they indeed heightened their effect by new matter of the same character. 4thly, That these writings gradually took rank with, and even displaced, the more critical studies of Strabo, Arrian, Ptolemy, &c. Thus the Periegesis of Dionysius,SS on which Eustatius wrote a commentary, and the Geography of the anonymous writer who, so far as ] know, first gave locality to Eden, |||| were honoured by Latin translations, and, judging from the currency their fictions obtained, became the textbooks of after-ages. Thus, too, the Bassarika of Dionysius for Indian countries and towns is more frequently referred to than either Strabo or Arrian by Stephanos Byzantius; and thus the Apollonius of Philostratus becomes an authority for Suidas and Cedrenus, who borrow from him their accounts of the Brâhmans, to which Cedrenus adds some particulars drawn, partly from the anonymous Geography probably, partly from the Pseudo-Callisthenes, and partly from some other writer whom I am unable to identify. 5thly. That of Eastern travellers in the fourth and fifth centuries many were priests, as we may surmise from the number of Christian churches in India,
|| Dio Cassius, vol. I. pp. 68, 156, vol. II. p. 313, ed. Bekker. TAurelian Victor, Lpit. xvi. * Amm. Marcell. xxii. 7. t Malalas, p. 477.
II The description of India in Ammianus Marcellinus must be excepted from this censure."
$$ Bernardyus places Dionysius at the end of the third or beginning of the fourth century, the latest date assigned to him.
UN Junioris Philosophi Descriptio totius Orbis, $ 21, in Geog. Græc Min. vol. II. p. 516.
* Elsewhere Strabo (lib. XV.c.i. 4) calls him "Pandion, or according to others Porus.'
Ι. Σαρμανοχηγας, Ινδος απο Βαργοσης, κατά τα πατρια Ivw, cn, Eavtov amalavatlas ketat.-Bargosa is doubtless Baragaza or Bharuch.
Horace, Carmen Seculare, vv. 55, 56; Odes, lib. I. 12, lib. IV. 14; Florus, Hist. Rom. lib. IV. c. 12; Suetonius, Vit Avomat. e. 21 ; Dio Cassius, Hist. Rom. ix. 58; Georg. Syncellos, Byzant. Hist. Niebuhr, 588-9; Orosius, Hist. VI. 12.
