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242 POLITICAL HISTORY OF ANCIENT INDIA
country towards the east is a desert by reason of the sands."
The organisation of the empire into Satrapies served as a model to several succeeding dynasties, and was given a wider extension in India by the Sakas and the Kushāns in the centuries immediately preceding and succeeding the Christian era. The Desa-goptri of the Gupta Age was the lineal successor of the Satrap (Kshatra-pāvan) of earlier epochs.
The Persian conquerors did much to promote geographical exploration and commercial activity. At the same time they took from the country not only an enormous amount of gold and other commodities such as ivory and wood, but denuded it of a great portion of its man-power. Military service was exacted from several tribes. Contact between the East and the West became more intimate with important results in the domain of culture. If the Achaemenians brought the Indian bowmen and lancers to Hellenic soil, they also showed the way of conquest and cultural penetration to the peoples of Greece and Macedon.
Khshayārshā or Xerxes (486-465 B.C.), the son and successor of Darius I, maintained his hold on the Indian provinces. In the great army which he led against Hellas both Gandhāra and "India” were represented. The Gandbārians are described by Herodotus as bearing bows of reed and short spears, and the "Indians” as being clad in cotton garments and bearing cane bows with arrows tipped with iron. One of the newly discovered stone-tablets at Persepolis records that Xerxes "by Ahuramazda's will” sapped the foundations of certain temples of the Daivas and ordained that "the Daivas shall not be worshipped”.
1 The Illustrated London News, Feb. 22, 1936, p. 328. Sen, Old Persian Inscriptions, 152
