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120
THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY.
[APRIL, 1877.
if we seek to know what happened at any particular It is yet an unsettled question whether the Indika time." (pp. 76, 77).
was written'in the Attic or the Ionic dialect. FRAGMENT I., OR AN EPITOME OF MEGASTHENES.
(Diod. II. 35-42.) (85.) India, which is in shape quadrilateral, consequence the ordinary stature, and are distinhas its eastern as well as its western side guished by their proud bearing. They are also bounded by the great sea, but on the north- found to be well skilled in the arts, as might be ern side it is divided by Mount Hemodos expected of men who inhale a pure air and from that part of Skythia which is inhabited drink the very finest water. And while the hy those Skythians who are called the Sakai, soil bears on its surface all kinds of fruits while the fourth or western side is bounded by which are known to cultivation, it has also the river called the Indus, which is perhaps under ground numerous veins of all sorts of the largest of all rivers in the world after the metals, for it contains much gold and silver, Xile. The extent of the whole country from and copper and iron in no small quantity, and east to west is said to be 28,000 stadia, and even tin and other metals, which are employed from north to south 32,000. Being thus of in making articles of use and ornament, as well such vast extent, it seems well-nigh to em- as the implements and accoutrements of war. brace the whole of the northern tropic zone In addition to cereals, there grows throughout of the earth, and in fact at the extreme point of India much millet, which is kept well watered India the gnomon of the sundial may frequent- by the profusion of river-streams, and much ly be observed to cast no shadow, while the pulse of different sorts, and rice also, and what constellation of the Bear is by night invisible, is called bosporum, as well as many other plants and in the remotest parts even Arcturus dis- useful for food, of which most grow sponappears from view. Consistently with this, it is taneously. 10 The soil yields, moreover, not a also stated that shadows there fall to the south- few other edible products fit for the subsistence ward.
of animals, about which it would be tedions to *India has many huge mountains which abound write. It is accordingly affirmed that famine in fruit-trees of every kind, and many vast has never visited India, and that there has plains of great fertility-more or less beautiful, never been a general scarcity in the supply of but all alike intersected by a multitude of rivers. nourishing food. 11 For, since there is a double • The greater part of the soil, moreover, is under rainfall in the course of each year, ---one in the irrigation, and consequently bears two crops in | winter season, when the sowing of wheat takes the course of the year. It teems at the same place as in other countries, and the second time with animals of all sorts,-beasts of the field at the time of the summer solstice, which is the and fowls of the air, -of all different degrees of proper season for sowing rice and bosporum, as strength and size. It is prolific, besides, in ele also sesamum and millet—the inhabitants of phants, which are of monstrous bulk, as its India almost always gather in two harvests an. soil supplies food in unsparing profusion, mak- nually, and even should one of the sowings prove ing these animals far to exceed in strength more or less abortive they are always sure of the those that are bred in Libya. It results also other crop. The fruits, moreover, of sponthat, since they are caught in great numbers by taneous growth, and the esculent roots which the Indians and trained for war, they are of grow in marshy places and are of varied sweetgreat moment in turning the scale of victory. ness, afford abundant sustenance for man. The
(36.) The inhabitants, in like manner, hav- fact is, almost all the plains in the country ing abundant means of subsistence, exceed in have a moisture which is alike genial, whether
The following authorities are quoted by Schwanbeek (pp. 23. 24) to show that the Indika of Megasthenès was divided into four books Athen. IV. p. 153-where the 2nd book is mentioned ; Clem. Alex. Strom. I. p. 132 Eylb., where the Srd book is mentioned ; Joseph. contra Apion, I. 20, and Antiq. Jud. X. xi. 1, where the 4th book is, mentioned-ef. G. Syncell. tom. I. p. 419, Bonn. The
assignment of the fragments to their respective books was a matter of some difficulty, as the order of their connection varies in different authors.
With Epit. 1, conf. Fragm. i., iii. (in Ind. Ant. vol. V p. 86, c. 2). 1. Conf. Fragm. iv.
Conf. Fragm. ix. ... Conf. Fragm. i.
