Indian Antiquary Vol 48

Author(s): Richard Carnac Temple, Devadatta Ramkrishna Bhandarkar
Publisher: Swati Publications

Page 22

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THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY
(FEBRUARY, 1919
Horodotus (484-431 B.c.), the Father of History, was a traveller. He rejected the flat theory of the earth, but gave none of his own. He knew something of the countries from Seythia to Abyssinia and from India to the Pillars of Hercules. But "his knowledge of India was meagre and most vague. He knew that it was one of the remotest provinces of the Persian Empire towards the East; but of its extent and exact position he had no proper conception." (M'Crindle's Ancient India, p. 1). Hence though his work can be utilised as a source of history for informing us of Skylax's Voyage, etc., it contributes little towards the geography of India.
The Indika of Kteslas (398 B.c.), the royal physician of Persia, is full of old wives' tales not to be trusted.
Alexander the Groat's march through the Punjao and Sindh brought for the first time, the direct Greek knowledge of India to the banks of the Sutloj. The great invader caused the whole of India to be described by men well acquainted with it (M'Crindle's Invasion, p. 6, f. n.). Some of the eminent men of science and letters who had accompanied him wrote invaluable memoirs which are now totally lost, but they furnished materials to subsequent writers--1. Diodorus (100 B.C.-A.D. 100. He mixed history with fiction). 2. Plutarch. 3. Strabo. (60 B.C.-A.D. 19). 4- Curtius. (A.D. 100. he was deficient in the knowledge of Geography, Chronology and Astronomy"). 5. Arrian (A.D. 200)—the best of Alexander's historians. 6. Justinus (not later than A.D. 500). As none of these abstractors had even a very slight personal knowledge of India, their works. though based on accounts written by persons who actually visited India, are not so much invaluable for geography as for history. A little vagueness due to want of personal knowledge and a few mutual contradictions diminish not a little of their usefulness as a source of the geography of the North-Western and Western districts of India. Hence it is that a “few of the places mentioned in them have been identified with any real approach to certainty" (Fleet in IA., 1901, p. 24) and a greater number of identifications can only be made from Indian sources and not from them.
Mogasthenos (305 B.c.). His long s'ay in the very heart of India might probably have given his work great authority in topographical matters also; but, unluckily for us, it exists only in fragments preserved as quotations. In the existing fragments we can only find out his idea of the shape of India, names of some mountains and an important but doubtful catalogue of the Indian races and tribes.
About 240 B. c. Eratosthenes, who was placed in charge of the great library established by the Ptolemies at Alexandria, brought Mathematics to his aid and laid the first foundation of a really scientific geography. Accepting the theory which is said to have originated from Thales (600 B.C.) but the credit of which ought to go to Pythagoras, he took the earth to be spherical and as lying in the centre of the universe. Though he had various errors, Sir E. Bunbury has justly pointed out that his geography is not only much nearer to the truth than that adopted by Ptolemy three centuries later, but it is actually a better approximation than was arrived at by modern geographers till about (three) centuries ago. (Hist. of Ancient Geography, Vol. I, p. 635). He described Indis on the authority of Alexander's historians, Megasthenes, and the Register of Stathmi or Marohes,
After the lapse of about two centuries flourished Strabo (60 B.C.-A.D. 19) whose object in writing a new geography was to correct the earlier works in light in the