Thanks for this thread. I have been reading up on the nomenclature used for what we call South Asia through history. It is fascinating subject and I have been fortunate to get some imput from native Persian and Greek speakers as these are relevant to many of the terms used, For now please read this. Of course it is beyond the thick skulled, those who have smoked the religious pot and the Indian nationalist kiddos here. Reading this academic article on this subject.
The Cambridge Classical Journal
The Conception of India in Hellenistic and Roman Literature
Albrecht Dihle
The Cambridge Classical Journal / Volume 10 / January 1964, pp 15 - 23 DOI: 10.1017/S0068673500003084, Published online: 28 February 2013
Link to this article:
The Cambridge Classical Journal - The Conception of India in Hellenistic and Roman Literature - Cambridge Journals Online
How to cite this article: Albrecht Dihle (1964). The Conception of India in Hellenistic and Roman Literature. The Cambridge Classical Journal, 10, pp 15-23 doi:10.1017/S0068673500003084
THE CONCEPTION OF INDIA IN HELLENISTIC AND ROMAN LITERATURE
Going through the literature of late antiquity, of, say, the third and fourth centuries A.D., one is likely to discover very easily three different concepts of Indian geography. (1) In literary—not in scientific—texts which belong to the classical tradition, India is usually thought of as the country of two big rivers, namely the Indus and the Ganges. This India does not include the region south of the Vindhya mountains, in spite of the fact that the commercial relations between South India and the Roman empire had been particularly close during the first and second centuries A.D.1 India, according to this literary tradition, was accessible by land, by following the course of Alexander's campaign, whereas Indian trade in the Roman period actually followed the passage provided by the monsoon, which had been discovered in the late Hellenistic period. Many details of that classical or rather classicistic conception of India can be gathered from Philostratus' Life of Apollontus, written early in the third century A.D., as well as from the History of Alexander, falsely attributed to Callisthenes. (2) Another concept of Indian geography is to be found in those writings of the same period, of which the origin can be located within the Parthian or early Sasanid empire and its borderlands. Here, India comprehends only the region of the Indus and its tributaries, as it was considered, in Greece, before Alexander's campaign. This India is considered an Iranian India, for Parthian dynasts founded some little Kingdoms in that very region during the first century B.C., and it became, in the following centuries, the eastern part of the powerful Kushan empire, which was the most important factor in Parthian and Sasanid diplomacy. The usual way leading into this country went, in reality as well as according to the literary texts in question, by the sea-passage from Basra to Karachi, which is far more comfortable than the route through the Iranian Highlands and which had always been, for this very reason, the artery of Iranian trade. Commercial intercourse in the Persian Gulf was monopolized, for several centuries, by the merchants from Persian Mesopotamia. The author of the famous Periplus of the Red Sea, though disposing of extremely wide and detailed information, knew very little about the Persian Gulf, for he was a Greek from Egypt.2
1 M. Wheeler, Rome beyond the Imperial Frontiers (London, 1955), pp. 3 The Syrian merchants of Parthian Mesopotamia probably introduced for a second time the Indian name of India and of the river Indus into Western languages. Our word India, denoting nowadays the subcontinent in general, goes back to the Old Persian hind, hindul as do the Greek 'IvSia, the Hebrew hoddu, the Aramaic henda. The name of Sindh, having by-passed Persia and kept its original s at the beginning of the word, is now used to denote only the region of the Indus. Within 'Western' languages, the difference between Sindh and India is common in Syrian chronography
(R. Payne Smith, Thes. syr. p. 2676 and suppl. 236) and Islamic geography from the eighth century onwards (G. I.e Strange, The Lands of the Eastern Caliphate, Cambridge, 1930, p. 131). But the Indian word with its original s occurs for the first time in a Syrian text from Western Mesopotamia written in the third century A.D. According to the apocryphal Acts, St Thomas disembarked in an Indian harbour called sandaruk, which seems to correspond to the Persian sind{a)rud 'river Indus', as was shown by E. Herzfeld (for further discussions see J. Duchesne-Guillemin, La religion de Vlran ancien, Paris, 1962, p. 242, where J. Marquart, Abh.
l6 A. DIHLE
We find this second conception of India in the apocryphal Acts of St Thomas, wrinen in Edessa early in the third century A.D., and in the account of Mani's voyage from Mesopotamia to India.1 It can be verified as a quite realistic though limited conception—completely different from that of the classical tradition—by the evidence we have got for die flourishing trade between Mesopotamia and Northern India. (3) Finally, there is a third opinion about India, held only by Christian authors of Greek or Roman origin, according to which India is threefold like Caesar's Gaul. One part borders upon Parthia or Media, which is obviously Northern India. The second is connected with Ethiopia, but one can reach it by boat only, and the diird part lies at die end of the world. As for die second part bordering upon Ediiopia, only Soudi India or Limyrike2 (as this country was called by tradesmen and geographers) can be meant. Limyrike was not considered a part of India when it was discovered by a Greek sailor called Diodorus, probably in the second century B.C.3 Moreover, diere was a very old tradition about the identity of Indians and Ediiopians,4 which could easily be applied to Soudi India in die first centuries A.D., for Roman trade, going mainly by sea, had its western positions in Egypt, Soudi Arabia, and Abyssinia, diat is to say next to ancient Ediiopia (modern Sudan soudi of Egypt). Many Indian merchants lived in die coastal districts of die Red Sea,5 which were called, accordingly, f\ KOC6' T\\xas 'IvSia.6 Finally, many Greek geographers from the second century B.C. onwards believed diat Soudi India and East Africa were connected by a continental bridge. So a Greek of die first or second century A.D. was likely to wonder where die India of Roman tradesmen—diat is to say, Soudi India—really began and where die borderline between diat India, which was not Alexander's India, and Africa was to be drawn. The third part of die India tripartita of die Christians, supposed to lie at die end of die world, is by no means die country of Fairy Tales. Furdier India and die sea behind Malacca were discovered by a skipper called Alexandros late in die first or early in die second century A.D.7 Subsequently, many Greco-Roman tradesmen came to die harbours of Indo-China and starting from diese harbours even reached occasionally die capital of die Chinese empire.8 Now, the geographers of die second century A.D., Marinus and Ptolemy, made use of diis recent information. They described Indo-China as being a part of India and placed it at die very end of die inhabited world. In die early Christian literature we find diis India—including Nordi India, Soudi
Ges. Wiss. Gottg. Hi (1901), 46 deserves to be mentioned). And in fact Sindh was closely linked with Parthian Mesopotamia by commercial intercourse (cf. App. Bell. civ. 5, 9, 37; H. Seyrig, Syria, xxii (1941), 263, and R. Goossens, Nouv. Clio (1957), p. 63). 1 Cf. G. Widengren, Mani (Stuttgart, 1961), p. 35. 2 Limyrike or Damyrike {Tab. Peut.) corresponds to the Sanskrit Dramidaka 'Country of the Tamils'. 3 Ptolem. i, 7, 6; v, 1. 4 Cf. Rhein. Mus. cv (1962), 97ff. 5 Peripl. Mar. Ruhr. 30. 6 Sozom. Hist. eccl. z, 24, I. 7 Ptolem. 1, 14; the authors of the first century A.D. know nothing about the regions behind Malacca and Sumatra, whereas the famous harbour of Kattigara is mentioned by nearly all geographers after Marinus the Tyrian. Cf. J. Coedes, Textes d'auteurs grecs et latins relatifs a I'Extreme Orient (Paris, 1910). 8 O. Franke, Geschichte des chinesischen Reiches I (Berlin, 1930), p. 404.
CONCEPTION OF INDIA IN HELLENISTIC AND ROMAN LITERATURE 17
India, and Further India or at least North India and South India—in the Pass'xa Bartholomaei, in several accounts of Metrodorus' and Meropius' travels,1 in the Commonitorium Palladii? and in some details already in Clement's writings. This conception was maintained until the sixth century at least.3 Perhaps we may be allowed to neglect the rather limited conception of India which only the Syrian writers had, and to concentrate on the comparison between the classical and the Christian ones. The most important observation to arise from this comparison might be described as follows. India as represented in early Christian writings, even in those which have some literary and stylistic pretensions, exactly corresponds to all the information which had been collected by sailors and tradesmen during the first two centuries A.D., information which had been used by the geographers of the same period but neglected by all the men of letters. On the other hand, India as represented in the literary text of pagan origin is, in fact, the country known to the Greeks 400 or 500 years previously. There is no relation between this literature in the narrow sense of the word and all that information about contemporary India which must have been easily available during a period of flourishing Indian trade, as is shown by the anonymous author of the famous Periplus of the Red Sea, which does not belong to literature according to classical standards. In order to explain this striking difference, we have to go back into earlier periods. We have still a fair number of literary texts concerning India from the first two centuries A.D.: Strabo's Book xv, the 6th Book of Pliny, Arrian's 'Iv5itc/|, and the geographical chapters of Curtius' History of Alexander. As we learn from the prefaces of Strabo and Ptolemy, the description of a country and its inhabitants was considered as belonging to literature, whereas geography in the narrow sense of the word dealt with mathematical methods of fixing positions. Ptolemy was interested only in scientific geography, as was Hipparchus in the Hellenistic period. But Strabo as well as Eratosthenes and Posidonius tried to combine both descriptive and scientific geography, and that is why they could possibly influence not only scientific opinions about foreign countries but also the representation of them in literary texts. All those authors of the imperial period I mentioned above, whose writings were published mainly for literary and stylistic reasons, took their information about India almost entirely from early Hellenistic sources, that is to say from the historians of Alexander's campaign and from Megasthenes and other ambassadors of his time. It is generally true that in writings about foreign countries the authors of the imperial epoch relied upon the important geographical, ethnographical, and historical literature of the late Hellenistic period, and took into account, too, new information arising from commercial intercourse of their own period. But so far as India is concerned, they neglected these sources almost entirely. This remarkable fact can be illustrated by some details from Strabo and Pliny.
1 Rufin. hist. eccl. 10, 9; Socrat. 1, 19; Sozom. 2, 24; Theodt. 1, 23; Gelas. Cyz. 3, 9; Act. SS. Octobr. XH, 268. 1 Ed. J. D. M. Derrett, Class, et Med. (1960), p. 64, and Journ. Am. Or. Soc. LXXXII (1962), 21. 3 Expos, tot. mund. 18, 35.
2 CPS
18 A. DIHLE
Apollodorus of Anemita, who lived early in the first century B.C., wrote a History of the Parthians and the Bactrian Greeks. The work was undoubtedly most important, as the late Sir W. W. Tarn has already shown most clearly. Apollodorus mentions an expedition which the Bactrian Greeks undertook early in the second century B.C. against the tribes of Central Asia,1 and it is in this very context that the Seres,1 the eponyms of the silk-trade and silk-production, occur for the first time in Greek literature. But already from the end of the first century onwards, in Horace's and Vergil's verses for instance, the Seres are generally known to be the inhabitants of the north-easternmost part of the world. Now the important passage of Apollodorus' account,.which introduced the silk-men into Greek literature, has been preserved in Strabo's Geography, Possibly Strabo took the passage directly from Posidonius; but, in any case, Strabo considered Apollodorus a most reliable authority as far as Parthia, Bactria, and Central Asia were concerned, as is proved by many verbal quotations.3 This same Apollodorus gave a valuable account of the second Greek invasion of India.4 During the second century B.C. the Bactrian Greeks occupied the whole coastal region between Karachi and Baroda, and starting from these harbours of Northern India Greek sailors discovered the eastern coast of South India in that very period, as we can show from some short passages in later Greek texts.5 Moreover, Menander, the most famous among the Greco-Indian kings, made an assault on Pataliputra, the old Mauryan capital in the Ganges plain—a fact that is well attested by Indian sources.6 This campaign, being a well-planned expedition, must have given valuable information about the eastern parts of North India. Finally, the Greek kings of the second century came into close touch with their Indian subjects: Menander was a benefactor of Buddhism, as can be seen from his coins and from a famous book of early Buddhist literature, and he was buried according to Indian rites.? Strabo could easily have taken all this information from Apollodorus' history. But, so far as India is concerned, he cites his book only once and for the sole reason of blaming the author for having given information about India which was different from Megasthenes' account of 200 years before.8 Knowledge of India could not possibly improve on the information given by Megasthenes—according to Strabo's standards.
1 FgH 779 F7. 2 Amometus, a contemporary of Callimachus, did not write a book on the Seres, as was stated by F. Altheim {Weltgeschichu Asiens im griech. Zeitalter 1 (1947), 63), but on the Ottorocorrae {FgH 645 f 2, cf. A. Herrmann, RE 18, 2, 1888), that is to say the Uttara-kuru, the Hyperboreans of Indian mythology. 3 2, 5, 12; 11, 7, 3; n, 9, 1; ii, ii, 7; it seems to me highly probable that Strab. 11, 9, 2f. ( = FgH782 F 3) is derived from Apollodorus too. 4 FgH 779 F7 b. 5 The Samian Diodorus made a voyage from 'IVSIKT) to AIUUDIKTI (Ptolem. 1, 7, 6) and Aelian (hist. an. 15, 8) mentions pearl-fishers in the harbour of Perimula during the period of King Eucratides of Bactria, i.e. at the beginning of the second century B.C. Perimula is to be located on the south-western coast of India (Plin. N.H. 6, 72 and 9, 106). It seems to have been an outpost of the Chola kingdom ((3a<riA£us Zcopas). Cf. W. W. Tarn, The Greeks in Bactria and India (Cambridge2, 1951), pp. I43ff. 7 Vt'. W. Tarn, op. cit. pp. 217; 268ff.; 415ff. 8 Strab. 15. 1, 3. It is very curious that A. K. Narain {The Indo-Greeks, Oxford, 1957), in his polemics against Tarn, repeats the arguments Strabo used against Apollodorus. Narain did not take into account the classicistic tendency of Strabo's literary activity, as far as India is concerned.
CONCEPTION OF INDIA IN HELLENISTIC AND ROMAN LITERATURE 19
Posidonius and Artemidorus, the Ephesian geographer who lived about ioo B.C., were also authorities Strabo refers to through the whole of his Geography. In the chapters on India, however, Strabo quotes the Ephesian only once, rejecting his opinion about the course of the Ganges.1 Artemidorus' information is contrary to that of Eratosthenes and Megasthenes, but apparently far superior to all previous knowledge about the subject; it is perhaps a result of Menander's campaign. Posidonius' account of Eudoxos' discovery of the direct passage from Egypt to India is not reported in the book on India but only in the general preface to Strabo's Geography.'1 In the Indian chapters we hear only of Nearchus' famous expedition and, in addition, there are a few remarks about the regrettable fact that tradesmen in Strabo's own days were stupid people, from whom serious information about India could be hardly expected.3 As Strabo puts it, Indian geography and ethnography of the early Hellenistic period might possibly be corrected or supplemented, by contemporary information only. But Strabo obviously considered such information as was available to be unreliable or even worthless. The same combination of early Hellenistic sources and contemporaneous information is also to be found in Pliny's description of India.4 He follows almost entirely the accounts given by Megasthenes and Eratosthenes. He also repeats the well-known story of Nearchus' expedition, and describes the monsoon-passage, too, as belonging to his own period.5 We are told that the various routes of this passage came into use only gradually and over a fairly long period of time. The same opinion is held by the author of The Periplus of the Red Sea,6 but Pliny's knowledge of this historical development is more substantial, although his geographical knowledge cannot in any way be compared with the extensive and detailed information at the disposal of that anonymous sea-captain. Apparently Pliny took his information about seafaring developments in the Indian Ocean from literary sources which must have belonged to the latest Hellenistic period. But, since literary descriptions of India had to be composed mainly from Early Hellenistic elements, supplemented only by some contemporary information, Pliny was eager to conceal the Late Hellenistic source he was dependent on. Curtius and Arrian took all their Indian information from Early Hellenistic literature, Eratosthenes included. And although both of them are likely to consider Indian geography a mere addition to the account of Alexander's achievements, they include a description of the Ganges plain, which Alexander never entered, for that region had been treated in Megasthenes' narrative, which was considered an indispensable and canonical work on Indian geography and ethnography.7 The same can be stated about Greek lexicography. There is no Indian word or name discussed in Greek glossaries that does not seem to come from Early Hellenistic 1 Strab. 15, 1, 72. » Strab. 2, 3, 4. ' Strab. 15, 1, 4. « NJi. 6, 56ff. 5 6, lOiff. *Peripl.i7. ' The author of the Periplus, whose literary erudition is extremely weak, tells us that Alexander reached the riverG anges (47). This is a striking testimony to the vulgar belief according to which India is the country of two big rivers and the country Alexander subjugated.
2O A.DIHLE sources,1 whereas many other exotic words of non-Indian origin dealt with inj grammatical writings are taken from Late Hellenistic authors as well, such as Artemidorus, Posidonius, or Agatharchides. Aelian, too, took all the Indian examples for his zoology either from Ctesias or from Early Hellenistic authors—with one exception only, mentioned above.2 There are, of course, during the first two centuries A.D. some casual references to contemporary India in historiography^ and in literary texts of low quality such as Mimes4 and erotic novels. 5 That could hardly be avoided during a period when thousands of Greek sailors made the annual passage from Egypt to India, when so many Greek soldiers, merchants, and craftsmen worked and lived in South India that a temple dedicated to the cult of the Roman emperor was built at Cape Comorin.6 But every author likely to have had stylistic ambitions avoided any allusion to contemporary or late Hellenistic India. Eventually, a note on late Hellenistic India even lost its relation to India, when its content had been incorporated into literary tradition, as we can see in a passage of Plutarch.? He describes King Menander's funeral and is likely to have derived his knowledge of the subject not directly from Apollodorus* History but from a treatise De fiinerihus mirabilibus. Plutarch did not even know that Menander had ruled in India. He makes him a king of Bactria, which never belonged to his kingdom. So we may conclude that—according to the standards of literary tradition in the time of the Roman empire—India was to all intents and purposes the country Alexander subjugated and Megasthenes lived in, and nothing else. I do not believe it was simply the general classicism of the imperial epoch that preserved Early Hellenistic India unchanged within Greco-Roman literature, since so many other details of Late Hellenistic geography had been introduced into the literary tradition.8 Certainly, it was the dominating part Alexander played in any kind of literary tradition that prevented his India from being transformed into the India of contemporary reality. His Indian expedition excited people's imagination more than any other of his achievements, and, moreover, it was due to those accounts that India became the country of the most ancient philosophy. India's literary dignity entirely depended on Alexander and his campaign, and that is why later information, arising from increasing commercial intercourse and utilized by scientists, was never admitted into the literary tradition. Moreover, early Hellenistic India was protected by Eratosthenes' authority, whose geography was to influence both science and literature, since it comprehended ethnographical description and mathematical research. But in early Christian literature the conception of India definitely changed and was
' The Maurya dynasty ruled from the late fourth to the early second century B.C. The word pcopieis is explained as the title of Indian kings in Hesychius' glossary. The corresponding Indian form of the name comes from a Middle Indian dialect, not from the Sanskrit (cf. Luders, K.Z. 38, 433)2 See above, p. 18, n. 5. 3 Tac. ann_ I4) 25, 4 D. L. Page, Creek Literary Papyri (London, 1950), p. 336. 5 Xen. Eph. 3, nf. 6 This temple is attested by die Tabula Peudngeriana. ' Praec. reip. ger. 821 D. 8 Apart from the Seres already mentioned we find Britons and Germans, Garamantes and Blemmyes in literary texts of the Imperial period as well as in geograpliical treatises.
CONCEPTION OF INDIA IN HELLENISTIC AND ROMAN LITERATURE 21
adapted to really existing conditions. We are able to prove this change not only by comparing the different size and shape given to India in pagan and in Christian literature but also by noting differences in the ethnographical details attached to the general idea of India. Doxographical accounts in Hellenistic and Roman philosophy usually contain a chapter on 91X00-09(0: fJapfiapos where we read something about theologians of Egypt, Persian Magi, Celtic Druids, and the like. In those lists, India is represented either by the Gymnosophists or by two groups of ascetics called Brahmans and Sarmans. Gymnosophists and Brahmans are well known to the historians of Alexander's campaign, but the combination of Brahmans and Sarmans was introduced into Greek literature by Megasthenes.1 As we know from King Ashoka's inscriptions (third century B.C.), bramanairamananam was used as a comprehensive term for all brahmanic and non-brahmanic ascetics, not as a name for individual sects such as Buddhists or Jains. Megasthenes used the Greek transliteration—Bpcrxnovss Kod ZccpuavES— in exactly the same way, for he knew perfectly well that there were far more than two Indian sects. Accordingly, he described many of them and even gave a verifiable account of the Jains,* for the ZEMNOI dealt with in that fragment are in fact the fENNOl mentioned in Hesychius' glossary.' Megasthenes' descriptions are remarkably detailed, his translations and transliterations of Indian names astonishingly correct; sometimes we are even able to ascertain whether the corresponding Indian word came from Sanskrit or from a Middle Indian dialect. Under these circumstances it seems to be noteworthy that Buddha and his teaching never occur in Greek literature. Apparently Megasthenes did not mention it. Now the rise of Buddhism to outstanding importance in Indian social and spiritual life began under King Ashoka's rule, when regular diplomatic relations between the Hellenistic kingdoms and the Mauryan empire had ceased to be maintained, and when the list of canonical Greek books on India had been established. For this very reason, I believe, Buddha's title and Buddha's doctrine never occur in Greco-Roman texts of pagan origin and literary pretension.4 Now Clement of Alexandria may fairly be considered the first Christian writer to be master of all the elements of literary and philosophic erudition which were available in his lifetime. Accordingly, the record he gives of 91X0x709(0 p&pf3ctpos is extremely rich as far as traditional items are concerned.5 But, in addition, he supplied new information within the traditional catalogue, which was apparently an innovation, for
1 FgH715*33* It seems to me very likely that all pieces of information given in Clem. Al. strom. 3, 60, 2-4 go back to Megasthenes' report, the fragment attributed to Alexander Polyhistor (FgH 273 F18)— perhaps Clement's primary source—included, for there are no other notes on India in Clement's compilation which cannot be traced back to Megasthenes. 3 CAPMANEC has been changed to TAPMANEC in Strabo's text too. 4 It seems to me highly disputable whether the Indian goddess Mala, praised in P. Oxy. 1380 as being identical with Isis, is in fact the mother of the Buddha. All the other goddesses mentioned in this liturgy and identified as appearances of Isis are famous and cosmic goddesses, whereas the mother of the Buddha never became a goddess at all. Moreover, the text does not represent Greek literary tradition.
5 Strom. 1, 17, 3ff.; cf. Mullus, Festschrift fur Theodor Ktauser (Mflnster, 1964), p. 60.
22 A.DIHLE
the catalogue of exotic philosophers had been fixed at least 200 years previously and had not been changed since. As for India, Clement mentions Brahmans and Sarmans, known from Megasthenes' report. But, moreover, he introduces the Xauotvotloi of Bactria. In those days, the name of Bactria usually meant the powerful Kushan empire which included large parts of Eastern Iran and of North India.1 Under Kushan rule, probably in the second century A.D., Sanskrit became the sacred language of Northern Buddhism and the word sramana, the Sanskrit equivalent of Greek lapnavEs, became the well-known title of Buddhist monks. Starting from the monasteries of the Kushan empire, Buddhist missionaries came to China, where their title was transformed into sha-men, and also to Western countries. There are ssamana, that is to say Buddhists, among the victims of a persecution directed by the Zoroastrian clergy of the Sasanid empire and recorded in a Middle Persian inscription of the third century A.D.2 The lingua franca within the Parthian and early Sasanid empire and in its western borderland was still the Aramaic language. Consequently the western Buddhists were known to Syrians and Greeks under the name of samanaija, of which the Greek transcription was to be Xanocvaioi—just like other Aramaic plurals such as Oocpiacaoi, Za58ouKonoi, MoryouaaToi, etc. So we can trace the title of Buddhist monks from sramana to the Persian ssamana to the Aramaic samanaija to the Greek Zctnocvccloi— which we find for the first time in Clement's catalogue. He did not notice that Megasthenes' Zappaves bore the same Indian name as the Zajjocvccloi he knew about. But Clement was quite right, unconsciously perhaps, in not identifying them, for his Zanocvaioi were Buddhists and Megasthenes' Zotpiactves were not, or not necessarily, since Sramana was a comprehensive title in those days. As for the samanaija/Zctuocvocioi, we still possess a detailed description of their communities, written a few years later than Clement's Stromateis by the famous Syrian author Bar Daisan, who lived at Edessa next to the Persian frontier.^ But Clement did not confine his attention to the Buddhists of North-western India (whence information came to him through Persia and Mesopotamia and, consequently, through various languages). He introduced also the Indian worshippers of Buddha, but separated them from the Sanavcrtoi. Apparently, the two pieces of information about Buddhism came to Clement by different ways, and that is the reason why he made no attempt to combine them. So we are led to believe that the second piece of information, including the title of Buddha himself, came directly from South India, which had been closely linked to Egypt for at least two centuries. It must have been common knowledge in Greco-Roman Egypt from the first century A.D. onwards that there was a religion in India devoted to the worship of the Enlightened. Too many Greeks, mainly from Egypt, visited or even lived in South India, where Buddhism flourished during the first centuries A.D., and too many Indians visited Egypt, for such a thing to go unnoticed. But, as we concluded, there was no literary dignity in this comparatively new complex of information, since the
1 Euseb. Praep. ev. 6, 10, 14 = Bardesanes, Lib. leg. reg. 31 Nau. * Ed. M. L. Chaumont, Journ. Aslat. CCXLVTII (1960), 339. 3 Porph. de abstin. 4, I7f.
CONCEPTION OF IND/A IN HELLENISTIC AND ROMAN LITERATURE 23
image of India in the literary and philosophic tradition had been definitively shaped in the Early Hellenistic period. It does not seem to be a mere coincidence that it was a Christian who was to violate this literary taboo for the first time. Today we are inclined to emphasize the continuity of scholarly activity, of literary style, and of general education, which undoubtedly subsists between the pagan and the Christian part of Greco-Roman literature. We usually think of Plotinus and Clement, of St Jerome and Macrobius, as being representatives of the same literary and philosophical tradition, even as belonging to the same social class. Obviously we have to be cautious about those generalizations. As for the concept of India, there seems to be a striking difference between the two groups of Greco-Roman authors, a difference concerning the fundamental attitude towards a tradition which was, in fact, the generally accepted basis of every literary, scholarly, and philosophic activity for both pagans and Christians. Christians like Clement and St Jerome, who also gave interesting accounts of Buddhist teachings,1 did not disclaim the literary standards of the Greco-Roman civilization they belonged to. But they disengaged themselves from this very tradition to an extent diat enabled them to transform it according to their own experience, according to reality.
KOLN ALBRECHT DIHLE
ALEXANDER THE GREAT AND AN EXPERIMENT IN GOVERNMENT*
In early summer of the year 334, only a few weeks after his crossing into Asia Minor and perhaps only a week or two after his first victory in Asia at the river Granicus, Alexander was in Sardes making arrangements for the future government of the satrapy of Lydia, the second of the Persian satrapies to be annexed in this way. Besides appointing in each case a Macedonian to be satrap in place of the former Persian official, and besides making certain special arrangements in each province, at Sardes he appointed a (probably) Greek officer Nicias to be in charge of the financial administration of Lydia.3 This appointment has always been recognized as a particularly interesting one, because it provides the earliest evidence suggesting an administrative experiment undertaken by Alexander, if it is true, as is usually thought, that he was introducing here something new into the government of the empire in Asia,
1 Adv. Jov. 1, 42. 1 This paper has been expanded in places and contracted in others partly as a result of the discussion after it was read to the Society. I am grateful especially to Professor D. L. Page, Professor A. H. M. Jones and Mr F. H. Sandbach for their constructive suggestions. My thanks are due also to Dr E. Badian for reading it at a late stage, when I could unfortunately make only small changes in proof in the light of his stimulating criticism and suggestions.
Abbreviations: A. Arrian, Anabasis.
Berve H. Berve, Das AUxanderrekh auf prosopographischer Grundlage (Munich, 1926).
It's interesting that the concept of Ινδική has meant differant things in the past.
1 (a) Ινδική > The Indus region that is modern Pakistan.
(b) Hendosh > The Achaemenid Persian satrapy covering modern Sindh in Pakistan.
2. Ινδική > The Indus region and Ganges basin.
3. Limyrike > Deccan region or modern South India.
