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historians pleads against such an hypothesis. It is not of course questioned that in the country where men "spent their time in nothing else, but either to tell, or to hear some new thing," there were many curious enquiries into the wisdom and learning of the East. And with such help as the Greeks themselves give us, it is possible in their philosophy to put our finger on ideas that are non-Hellenic. But, these are details that do not affect the general question. From its glorious beginnings down to the time when it overflowed the boundaries of the Greek world, Greek literature was a purely native growth.
The date assigned to Achilles Tatius is 450 A.D. In his romance containing the love story of Leucippe and Cleitophon, I have marked, on a cursory inspection, the following analogies to descriptions, sentiments, and ideas that are of constant occurrence in Bâna, while no trace of them is found in the story of Kâdambari as Bâna read it in the Vṛihatkathâ of Gunâdhya. I quote from the Trübner Edition of the Erotici Scriptores:
"The maiden's chiton covered her breast down to her middle; the lower part of her body a chlaina concealed. The chiton was white, the chlaina purple, her body gleamed through her garments.
Her breasts peeped forward but a little: the girdle that drew together her dress and breasts confined the two in such fashion that the dress became a glass for the body." (P. 39.)*
"I looked at the Love who was represented as leading the bull,† and said, Child as you are, you rule over heaven and earth and sea." "
(P. 39.)
"Her mouth a rosebud when the rose begins to open its petals. As I looked I was straightway undone : for beauty pierces sharper than any dart, and through the eyes finds its way into the heart. It is by the eye that the stroke of love enters. A tumult of emotions held me, praise, astonishment, fear, shame, boldness. I praised her, stature; stood awe-stuck at her beauty, feared her heart; gazed unabashed; felt shame to be so moved: fain would I have induced my eyes to turn away from the maiden; but they would not. They laid hold of the
* अतिधवलप्रभापरिगतदेहतया स्फटिकगृहगतामिव दुग्धसलिलमग्नामिव विमलचेलांशुकान्तरितामिवादर्शतल संक्रान्तामिव शरदभ्रपटला तर स्कृताभिवा रिस्फुटविभाव्यमानावयवां.-(Kadambart, p. 128.) An interesting paper might be written on the conception of female beauty among Sanskrit medieval writers, in which it would not, I think, be difficult to trace a greater analogy between Greek and Sanskrit thought on that subject than can be easily explained by independent similar appreciation of an identical type in the two countries.
+ The subject is a picture of the rape of Europa.
