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were touched, if no more than touched, by a live coal from off the altar which is the sacred birthplace of the poetry and philosophy of the whole western world. When down-trodden Greece made prisoner her conqueror she could boast that she carried the first seeds of literary culture to a rude and unlettered people, which, however far their own efforts in that field might carry them, must always trace their first beginnings in it to Athens. The India of the Rig Veda knows no such dependence on foreigners for the intellectual and spiritual life that flows through her frame.
I cannot here enter into any detailed examination of the discussion as to the existence and extent of Greek influence in the works of such of tbe Indian mediæval writers as have come down to us. I proceed to state very briefly reasons which appear to me to go to show that Båņa was, in a fashion and to a degree which I cannot pretend to define, subject to an influence whose all-pervading power is, when we think of it, almost as much of a miracle as the spread of Christianity itself.
In the first place, then, I do not think it is possible any longer to resist* the available proof that Indian astronomy as taught by Aryabhata (A.D. 476) and Varahamihira (died A.D. 587), and as known to Kalidasa and to Båņa, is of Greek origin. That being taken for granted, it is clear that in the absence of direct evidence it is more probable than not that Greek influence, whether exerted directly or through some intermediate channel of communication, was not confined to that branch of literature where it has left traces of its presence too clear to be explained away, and that what might elsewhere have been explained away as mere coincidences may fairly, as the facts stand, be held to wear a very different aspect. Can we point to anything in our author which
* If this position is premature it is time that some defender of the authochthonous origin of the system replied to the arguments of European scholars in the matter. But is it too much to say that Sh. Pandit, for example, virtually gives up the fight when he takes refuge in the hypothesis that diametron may be a Greecized from of jâmitra. (Preface to Raghuvamsa, p. 43.) Is this not equivalent to playing with the two words as if they were two counters with regard to which nothing is known but their present form and the meaningless inscription they bear. Diametron is a pure Greek word, formed after the analogy of hundreds of other words, from a verb used by Homer, and itself occuring in the vocabulary of Plato and of Aristotle. In Sanskrit jâmitra is a hybrid word, of no assignible origin within the language itself, and geen first in the works of these astronomers, unless we are to take its presence in Kálidâsa as evidence that it had existed in Sanskrit for hundreds of years before. When Sh. Pandit then goes on to say that " whether however jamitra is obtained from diametron or diametron from jâmitra, the two words having the same astrological sense must have had a common origin," he really concedes all that is asked. For it is quite certain that jâmitra cannot be the origin of diametron.
+ “It was however Greek influence that first infused a real life into Indian astronomy. This occupies & much more important relation to it than has hitherto been supposed: and the fact that this is so of tself implies that Greek
