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ON THE PERIPLUS OF THE ERYTHREAN SEA.
DECEMBER, 1879.]
But to return to the Periplus: the author says that as the Indus up to Minnagara had not sufficient depth, vessels anchored at a port near the mouth, and that goods were transported to Minnagara on barges. Ptolemy had given to the Indus Valley the name of Ind o-Skuthia, and the author of the Periplús makes use of that term, but adds that it was then under the rule of Parthian chiefs, continually at war with one another."
Whence came the name Indo-Skuthia? It is true the Latin authors did not adopt it, and Dionysius Periegetes, who flourished towards the end of the first century, did not know it.
After the time of Asoka, the Greek generals who had raised the standard of independence in B a ktria crossed the Hindu Khush, and established their authority throughout the valley of the Indus; their power extended to the Ganges on the east and to the Gulf of Khambay on the south-east.00
The authority of the Greek kings of Baktria continued for more than a century. We know in a general way that their rule was not without its glory. We know also that while they made the Greek name respected, as is proved by their coins, they made concessions to the prejudices of the natives. For example, I am led to believe that the king Menander, whose beautiful coins the author of the Periplús found still in circulation in the commercial cities of India, had embraced Buddhism. In fact, Plutarch says that this prince made himself so beloved by the natives that at bis death the people disputed among themselves for his ashes, a circumstance which had taken place some centuries before for the body of Buddha, and which could not occur but with relation to a Buddhist and on the part of Buddhists. I suppose also that Menander is the same as king Milinda, who has left a memory well known to the Buddists of Ceylon. Unfortunately these countries were too far off for the Greek historians to know of what passed in them, or what the Greek writers did say has been lost.
About 130 B. c. Phraates, king of the Parthians, meeting with great difficulties in his strife with the kings of Syria, appealed to the populations to whom the Greek writers give the name of Skuthes, and who, driven from their native country on the borders of China, had established themselves on the banks of the Oxus. These barbarians becoming embroiled with the Parthians
Periplus, § 38, ante pp. 138, 139.
eo Strabo, lib. XI. a. xí
§ 47, ante p. 143.
Plut. Præcepta gerendæ republica (ed. Didot, tom. II., p. 1002).
Spence Hardy, Manual of Buddhism, p. 512. Lassen and Weber made the first approaches to these conjectures.
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turned to the east and seized upon Baktria." Then after a time they left, in their turn, the Hindu Khush, and occupied all the countries that had been conquered by the Greeks from Kashmir to the sea, from Afghanistan to the Ganges and the gulf of Khambay. This is how the Indus Valley received from Ptolemy the name of Indo-Skuthia.
Coins of the Indo-Skuthian kings have come down to us; but we know nothing of their history, and but for the Chinese annals their occupation of the Indus Valley would have been to us a mystery. It is necessary to know that the policy of the Chinese government has always been to keep itself acquainted with the concerns of the various populations that dwell near the frontiers of the Celestial Empire, for the purpose of corrupting and setting the one against the other. It is only in this way that the Chinese empire has been able to maintain itself so long. Scarcely had the populations now in question quitted their country when spies were sent after them to observe their movements. This explains how the Chinese annals are so rich in historical and geographical notices of the countries at all times shut out from European nations. Deguignes, Abel Rémusat, and Klaproth have specially noticed that important chapter of the Chinese Chronicles.
I cannot deal with the rule of the Skuthian kings in the Indus Valley without departing from my plan. I limit myself to a single fact; but that is a capital one, for the question at issue, and it alone is sufficient to prove that the Periplús had no other date than that which I have assigned to it. I have said that the Periplus was written, or at least received its last form, in the year 246 or 247 A.D., and that at the time of the compilation the Skuthians had been driven out by the warlike Parthians. Now the Chinese annals say that the rule of the S kuths in the Indus Valley continued till the time of the Han dynasty, which ruled from 221 to 263 of our era. Could we look for a more perfect agreement? James Prinsep, under the supposition that the occupation of the Indus Valley took place in 26 в.c., concludes that this occupation lasted 248 years, M. Vivien de Saint-Martin, by placing the compilation of the Periplús with Letronne in the last years of the second century, destroys their authority. In his Mémoire (1858) he goes further, and although continuing to insist on the import
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Strabo, lib. XI. c. viii.
es The most extended notices are by Pauthier in the Jour. As. Soc. Beng. vol. VI. (1837) Jan. and a dissertation published in 1849 by M. Vivien de Saint-Martin in the Annales des voyages, under the title of Les Huns blancs ou Ephthalites.
65 Jour. A. 8. Ben, vol. VI. p. 63.
