Читать книгу The History of Antiquity, Vol. 4 (of 6) - Duncker Max - Страница 1

It was not only in the lower valley of the Nile, on the banks of the Euphrates and the Tigris, and along the coast and on the heights of Syria that independent forms of intellectual and civic life grew up in antiquity. By the side of the early civilisation of Egypt, and the hardly later civilisation of that unknown people from which Elam, Babylon, and Asshur borrowed such important factors in the development of their own capacities; along with the civilisation of the Semites of the East and West, who here observed the heavens, there busily explored the shores of the sea; here erected massive buildings, and there were so earnestly occupied with the study of their own inward nature, are found forms of culture later in their origin, and represented by a different family of nations. This family, the Indo-European, extends over a far larger area than the Semitic. We find branches of it in the wide districts to the east of the Semitic nations, on the table-land of Iran, in the valleys of the Indus and the Ganges. Other branches we have already encountered on the heights of Armenia, and the table-land of Asia Minor (I. 512, 524). Others again obtained possession of the plains above the Black Sea; others, of the peninsulas of Greece and Italy. Nations of this stock have forced their way to the shores of the Atlantic Ocean; we find them settled on the western coast of the Spanish peninsula, from the mouth of the Garonne to the Channel, in Britain and Ireland no less than in Scandinavia, on the shores of the North Sea and the Baltic. Those branches of the family which took up their abodes the farthest to the East exhibit the most independent and peculiar form of civilisation.

The mutual relationship of the Arian, Greek, Italian, Letto-Sclavonian, Germanic, and Celtic languages proves the relationship of the nations who have spoken and still speak them; it proves that all these nations have a common origin and descent. The words, of which the roots in these languages exhibit complete phonetic agreement, must be considered as a common possession, acquired before the separation; and from this we can discover at what stage of life the nation from which these languages derive their origin stood at the time when it was not yet divided into these six great branches, and separated into the nations which subsequently occupied abodes so extensive and remote from each other. We find common terms for members of the family, for house, yard, garden, and citadel; common words for horses, cattle, dogs, swine, sheep, goats, mice, geese, ducks; common roots for wool, hemp or flax, corn (i. e. wheat, spelt, or barley), for ploughing, grinding, and weaving, for certain metals (copper or iron), for some weapons and tools, for waggon, boat and rudder, for the elementary numbers, and the division of the year according to the moon.1 Hence the stock, whose branches and shoots have spread over the whole continent of Europe and Asia from Ceylon to Britain and Scandinavia, cannot, even before the separation, have been without a certain degree of civilisation. On the contrary, this common fund of words proves that even in that early time it tilled the field, and reared cattle; that it could build waggons and boats, and forge weapons, and if the general name for the gods and some names of special deities are the same in widely remote branches of this stock, – in India, Iran, Greece, and Italy, and even on the plains of Lithuania, – it follows that the notions which lie at the base of these names must also be counted among the common possessions existing before the separation.

We can hardly venture a conjecture as to the region in which the fathers of the Indo-European nations attained to this degree of cultivation. It must have been of such a nature as to admit of agriculture beside the breeding of cattle. The varieties of produce mentioned and the domestic animals point to a northern district, which, however, cannot have reached down to the ocean, inasmuch as no common roots are in existence to denote the sea. This proof is strengthened by the fact that in all the branches the wolf and bear alone among beasts of prey are designated by common roots. If we combine these considerations with the equal extension of the tribes of this nation towards east and west, we may assume that an elevated district in the middle of the eastern continent was the abode of the nation while yet undivided.

The branches which occupied the table-land of Iran and the valley of the Indus were the first to rise from the basis acquired in common to a higher civilisation; and even they did not attain to this till long after the time when Egypt, under the ancient kingdom of Memphis, found herself in the possession of a many-sided culture, after Babylon had become the centre of a different conception of life and development. The western branches of the Indo-Europeans remained at various stages behind their eastern fellow-tribesmen in regard to the epochs of their higher culture. If the Greeks, who were brought into frequent contact with the civilisation of the Semites, came next in point of time after the eastern tribes, and the Italians next to the Greeks, it was only through conflict and contact with the culture of Greece and Rome that the western branches reached a higher stage, while the dwellers on the plains of the Baltic owe their cultivation to the influences of Germanic life. Finally, when the West European branches, the Indo-Germans, had developed independently their capacities and their nature, when in different phases they had received and assimilated what had been left behind by their Greek and Roman kinsmen, and formed it into the civilisation of the modern world, their distant navigation came into contact with the ancient civilisation, to which their fellow-tribesmen in the distant East had finally attained some 2000 years previously. With wonder and astonishment the long-separated, long-estranged relatives looked each other in the face. But even now the ancient, deeply-rooted, and variously-developed civilisation of the eastern branch maintains its place with tough endurance beside the mobile, comprehensive, and restlessly-advancing civilisation of the west.

On the southern edge of the great table-land which forms the nucleus of the districts of Asia, the range of the Himalayas rises in parallel lines. The range runs from north-west to south-east, with a breadth of from 200 to 250 miles, and a length of about 1750 miles. It presents the highest elevations on the surface of the earth. Covered with boundless fields of snow and extensive glaciers, the sharp edges and points of the highest ridge rise gleaming into the tropic sky; no sound breaks the deep silence of this solemn Alpine wild. To the south of these mighty white towers, in the second range, is a multitude of summits, separated by rugged ravines. Here also is neither moss nor herb, for this range also rises above the limits of vegetation. Much lower down, a third range, of which the average elevation rises to more than 12,000 feet, displays up to the summits forests of a European kind; in the cool, fresh air the ridges are clothed with birches, pines, and oaks. Beneath this girdle of northern growths, on the heights which gradually sink down from an elevation of 5000 feet, are thick forests of Indian fig-trees of gigantic size. Under the forest there commences in the west a hilly region, in the east a marshy district broken by lakes which the mountain waters leave behind in the depression, and covered with impenetrable thickets, tall jungles, and rank grass – a district oppressive and unhealthy, inhabited by herds of elephants, crocodiles, and large snakes.

The mighty wall of the Himalayas decides the nature and life of the extensive land which lies before it to the south in the same way as the peninsula of Italy lies before the European Alps. It protects hill and plain from the raw winds which blow from the north over the table-land of Central Asia; it checks the rain-clouds, the collected moisture of the ocean brought up by the trade winds from the South Sea. These clouds are compelled to pour their water into the plains at the foot of the Himalayas, and change the glow of the sun into coolness, the parched vegetation into fresh green. Owing to their extraordinary elevation, the mountain masses of the Himalayas, in spite of their southern situation, preserve such enormous fields of ice and snow that they are able to discharge into the plains the mightiest rivers in the world. From the central block flow the Indus, the Ganges, and the Brahmaputra, i. e. the son of Brahma.

Springing from fields of snow, which surround Alpine lakes, the Indus descends from an elevated mountain plain to the south of the highest ridge. At first the river flows in a westerly direction through a cleft between parallel rows of mountains. In spite of the long and severe winter of this region, mountain sheep and goats flourish here, and the sandy soil contains gold-dust. To the south of the course of the river we find depressions in the mountains, where the climate is happily tempered by the nature of the sky and the elevation of the soil. The largest of these is the valley of Cashmere, surrounded by an oval of snowy mountains. To the west of Cashmere the Indus turns its course suddenly to the south; it breaks through the mountain ranges which bar its way, and from this point to the mouth accompanies the eastern slope of the table-land of Iran. As soon as the Himalayas are left behind, a hilly land commences on the left bank, of moderate warmth and fruitful vegetation, spreading out far to the east between the tributaries of the stream. The river now receives the Panjab, and the valley is narrowed in the west by the closer approach of the mountains of Iran; in the east by a wide, waterless steppe, descending from the spurs of the Himalayas to the sea, which affords nothing beyond a scanty maintenance for herds of buffaloes, asses, and camels. The heat becomes greater as the land becomes flatter, and the river more southerly in its course; in the dry months the earth cracks and vegetation is at a standstill. Any overflow from the river, which might give it new vigour, on the melting of the snow in the upper mountains, is prevented for long distances by the elevation of the banks. The Delta formed by the Indus at its mouth, after a course of 1500 miles, contains only a few islands of good marsh soil. The sea comes up over the flat shore for a long distance, and higher up the arms of the river a thick growth of reeds and rushes hinders cultivation, while the want of fresh water makes a numerous population impossible.

Not far from the sources of the Indus, at the very nucleus of the highest summits of the Himalayas, rise the Yamuna (Jumna) and the Ganges. The Ganges flows out of fields of snow beneath unsurmountable summits of more than 20,000 feet in height, and breaking through the mountains to the south reaches the plains; here the course of the river is turned to the east by the broad and thickly-wooded girdle of the Vindhyas, the mountain range which rises to the south of the plains. Enlarged by a number of tributaries from north and south, it pours from year to year copious inundations over the low banks, and thus creates for the plains through which it flows a fruitful soil where tropic vegetation can flourish in the most luxuriant wildness. This is the land of rice, of cotton, of sugar-canes, of the blue lotus, the edible banana, the gigantic fig-tree. On the lower course of the river, where it approaches the Brahmaputra, which also at first flows between the parallel ranges of the Himalayas towards the east, in the same way as the Indus flows to the west, there commences a hot, moist, and luxuriant plain (Bengal) of enervating climate, covered with coco and arica palms, with the tendrils of the betel, and the stalks of the cinnamon, with endless creepers overgrowing the trunks of the trees, and ascending even to their topmost branches. Here the river is so broad that the eye can no longer reach from one bank to the other. In the region at the mouth, where the Ganges unites with the Brahmaputra, and then splits into many arms, the numerous waters create hot marshes; and here the vegetation is so abundant, the jungles of bamboo so thick and impenetrable, that they are abandoned to the rhinoceros, the elephant, and the tiger, whose proper home is in these wooded morasses.

Into this wide region, which in length, from north to south, exceeds the distance from Cape Skagen to Cape Spartivento, and in breadth, from east to west, is about equal to the distance from Bayonne to Odessa, came a branch of the family, whose common origin has been noticed, and their civilisation previous to the separation of the members sketched. The members of this branch called themselves Arya, i. e. the noble, or the ruling. In the oldest existing monuments of their language and poetry these Aryas are found invoking their gods to grant them room against the Dasyus,2 to make a distinction between Arya and Dasyu, to place the Dasyus on the left hand, to turn away the arms of the Dasyus from the Aryas, to make the hostile nations of the Dasyus bow down before the Aryas, to increase the might and glory of the Aryas, to subjugate the "Black-skins" to them.3 In the epic poetry of the Indians we find mention of black inhabitants of Himavat (i. e. inhabitants of the snowy mountains, the Himalayas), and of "black Çudra" beyond the delta of the Indus. By the same name, Çudra, the Aryas designated the population which became subject to them in the valley of the Ganges; and when they advanced from the valleys of the Indus and the Ganges towards the south, to the coasts of the Deccan, they found there also populations of a similar kind. Even at the present day the inhabitants of India fall into two great masses, essentially distinguished from each other by the formation of their bodies and their language. In the broad and inaccessible belt of the Vindhya mountains, which separates the peninsula of the Deccan from the plains of the two rivers, are situated the tribes of the Gondas, men of a deep-black colour, with thick, long, and black hair, barbarous manners, and a peculiar language. Closely allied to these nations are the slim and black Bhillas, of small stature, who inhabit the western slopes of the Vindhyas to the sea; and the Kolas, who dwell in the mountainous district of Surashtra (Guzerat), and to this day form two-thirds of the inhabitants of this district.4 On the eastern declivities and spurs of the Vindhyas we find in the south the Kandas, in the north the Paharias, nations also of a dark colour and thick long hair. Distinct from these rude savages, less dark in colour, and exhibiting other modes of life, are the tribes which possess the coasts of the Deccan, the Carnatas, Tuluwas, and Malabars on the west, the Tamilas and Telingas on the east. Opposed to all these tribes are the Aryas, with their light colour and decisively Caucasian stamp. These once spoke Sanskrit, and are still acquainted with the language, and to them is due the development of civilisation in these wide districts.

This juxtaposition of two populations, of which one is in possession of the best districts in the country, while of the other only fragments are in existence (combined masses are not found except in the most inaccessible regions), – the indications supplied by these invocations, according to which the light-coloured population on the Indus was in conflict with the "Black-skins," – the fact that the light-coloured population, both on the Ganges and the coasts of the Deccan, has always taken up an exclusive and contemptuous position towards the darker tribes existing there, justify the conclusion that the whole region from the Indus to the mouths of the Ganges, from the Himalayas to Cape Comorin, once belonged to the dark population, and that the Aryas are immigrants. These immigrants partly drove back the ancient population, and confined it in hardly accessible mountains or morasses, partly forced it to submit to their rule and accept their civilisation, partly allowed it to live among them, as now, in a despicable and subordinate position. In historical times we can trace this process, by which the old population was driven back or civilised, on the coasts of the Deccan and in Ceylon. From the position of the remnant of this population on the Ganges, and these invocations of the Aryas, which spring from a time when they were not yet established in the land of the Ganges, we may conclude that a similar process went on in a severer form on the Indus. Following the example of the Indians, modern science collects the languages of these inhabitants of India, who are found under and among the Aryas, so far as they at present exist, under the names of the Nishada and Dravida languages.5 The language of the Brahuis to the west of the Indus, – they were settled there, or at least retired from thence, at the time of the immigration of the Aryas, – the Canaresian, the Malayalam, the language of the Tamilas, of the Telingas, the Badaga of the inhabitants of the Nilgiri, on the southern apex of the Deccan, are closely related, but to which of the great stems of language they are to be apportioned is not determined.6

The immigration of the Aryas into India took place from the west. They stand in the closest relation to the inhabitants of the table-land of Iran, especially the inhabitants of the eastern half. These also call themselves Aryas, though among them the word becomes Airya, or Ariya, and among the Greeks Arioi. The language of the Aryas is in the closest connection with that of the Avesta, the religious books of Iran, and in very close connection with the language of the monuments of Darius and Xerxes, in the western half of that region. The religious conceptions of the Iranians and Indians exhibit striking traits of a homogeneous character. A considerable number of the names of gods, of myths, sacrifices, and customs, occurs in both nations, though the meaning is not always the same, and is sometimes diametrically opposed. Moreover, the Aryas in India are at first confined to the borders of Iran, the region of the Indus, and the Panjab. Here, in the west, the Aryas had their most extensive settlements, and their oldest monuments frequently mention the Indus, but not the Ganges.7 Even the name by which the Aryas denote the land to the south of the Vindhyas, Dakshinapatha (Deccan), i. e. path to the right8, confirms the fact already established, that the Aryas came from the west.

From this it is beyond a doubt that the Aryas, descending from the heights of Iran, first occupied the valley of the Indus and the five tributary streams, which combine and flow into the river from the north-east, and they spread as far as they found pastures and arable land, i. e. as far eastward as the desert which separates the valley of the Indus from the Ganges. The river which irrigated their land, watered their pastures, and shaped the course of their lives they called Sindhu (in Pliny, Sindus), i. e. the river9. It is, no doubt, the region of the Indus, with the Panjab, which is meant in the Avesta by the land hapta hindu (hendu), i. e. the seven streams. The inscriptions of Darius call the dwellers on the Indus Idhus. These names the Greeks render by Indos and Indoi.

Can we fix the time at which the Aryas immigrated into India and occupied the valley of the Indus? As we proceed it will become clear that it was not till a late period that the nation began to record the names of the kings of their states, that they never wrote down in a satisfactory matter their legends and the facts of their history, and that we cannot find among them any trustworthy chronology. Even with the assistance of the statements of western writers, we can only go back with any certainty to the year 800 B.C. for the dynasties of the kingdom of Magadha, the most important kingdom in ancient times on the Ganges. But if at this period the Aryas held sway not on the upper Ganges only, but also on the lower, they must have been already settled on the Indus for centuries. If the narratives already given of the foundation of the Assyrian kingdom and the war of Semiramis on the Indus (II. 9 ff) were historical, the Aryas must have been settled in that country even at this date, i. e. about 1500 B.C. They must have lived there under a monarchy which could place great forces in the field, and they must have been already acquainted with the use of elephants in war. Stabrobates, the name of the king of the Indians who met Semiramis and repulsed her, would become Çtaorapati, i. e. lord of oxen, in the language of the Aryas. But after what has been previously said (II. 19 ff), we can only allow this narrative to have a value for the conceptions existing in Persian epic poetry about the foundation of the empire of Assyria, and the campaigns of Assyrian rulers to the distant East. In their statements about India we can only, at most, expect to find a repetition of the information existing about that country in the western half of Iran in the seventh or sixth century, and even this takes a form corresponding to the views expressed in the poems. In the monuments of the kings of Assyria we found the elephant and the rhinoceros among the tribute offered to Shalmanesar II., who reigned from 859-823 B.C. (II. 320); the inscriptions of Bin-nirar III. (810-781 B.C.) pointed to campaigns of this king extending as far as Bactria (II. 328); we were able to follow the marches of Tiglath Pilesar II. (745-727 B.C.) in the table-land of Iran as far as Arachosia (III. 4). Hence the Assyrian tablets do not as yet supply any definite information about the land of the Indus. Arrian has preserved a notice according to which the Astacenes and Assacanes, Indian nations on the right bank of the Indus, between the river and Cophen (Cabul), were once subject to the Assyrians.10 The Indian epics extol the horses of the Açvakas, who, in them also, are an Indian nation, and we may venture to regard them as the Assacenes of Arrian. Alexander of Macedon found them in that region; they could place many warriors in the field against him on their high mountain uplands. But the observation in Arrian, even if we attach weight to it, does not carry us far in answering the question when the Aryas came into the valley of the Indus, for it does not make it clear at what period the Açvakas were subject to the Assyrians. More may be gained, perhaps, from the Hebrew scriptures. We saw that about 1000 B.C. Solomon of Israel and Hiram of Tyre caused ships to be built and equipped at Elath, on the north-east point of the Arabian Gulf. These ships were to visit the lands of the south, and we saw what wealth they brought back from Ophir after an absence of three years (II. 188). They are laden with gold, silver, precious stones, and sandal-wood in abundance, the like of which was not seen afterwards; peacocks, apes, and ivory.11 Now ivory, sandal-wood, apes, and peacocks are the products of India, and peacocks and sandal-wood belong to that land exclusively. It is true that they might have been transported to the south coast of Arabia or the Somali coast of East Africa by the trade of the Arabians, or even of the Indians (I. 321); but the ships of Solomon and Hiram would not need to be absent for three years in order to obtain them there. For our question it is decisive that the names with which the Hebrews denote apes, peacocks, and sandal-wood, kophim, tukijim, almugim, are Sanskrit (kapi, çikhi, valgu), and from this it follows that the Aryas must have been in possession, at any rate, of the land of the Indus and the coast of that region as early as 1000 B.C. The book of the law of the Aryas mentions a nation Abhira. According to the Aryan epics this nation possessed cows, goats, sheep, and camels. Ptolemy places a land Abiria at the mouth of the Indus, and to this day a tribe of the name of Ahir possesses the coast of the peninsula of Cashtha (Kattywar).12 These Abhiras may therefore have been meant by the Ophir of the Hebrews. It is true that the genealogical table in Genesis puts Ophir among the tribes which are said to spring from Joktan, but no doubt it includes under the name of Joktan all the nations of the south-east known to the Hebrews. If the ships of Hiram brought back gold in abundance from their voyages to the mouth of the Indus, this can only have been conveyed to the lower Indus, where there is no gold, from the upper Indus, which is rich in gold, and from other upland valleys in the Himalayas, where the mountain streams carry down this metal. Hence about the year 1000 B.C. there must have been a lively trade between the upper and lower Indus. Further, if the Phenicians and Hebrews purchased sandal-wood among the Abhiras, this can only have been transported to the mouth of the Indus by sea, and the coast navigation, which is rendered easy in the Indian Sea by the regular occurrence of the monsoons, for sandal-wood nowhere flourishes except in the glowing sun of the Malabar coast. Whatever may have been the case with this trade, products of India, and among them such as do not belong to the land of the Indus, were exported from the land about 1000 B.C., under names given to them by the Aryas, and therefore the Aryas must have been settled there for centuries previously. For this reason, and it is confirmed by facts which will appear further on, we may assume that the Aryas descended into the valley of the Indus about the year 2000 B.C., i. e. about the time when the kingdom of Elam was predominant in the valley of the Euphrates and Tigris, when Assyria still stood under the dominion of Babylon, and the kingdom of Memphis was ruled by the Hyksos.

We have no further accounts from the West about the Aryas till the year 500 B.C., and later. It is not improbable that the arms of Cyrus reached the Indus. The Astacenes and Assacanes are said to have been subject to the Medes after the Assyrians; then Cyrus, the son of Cambyses, imposed tribute upon them.13 As Cyrus subjugated Bactria, fought in Arachosia, and marched through Gedrosia, we may assume that he compelled the nations of the Aryas on the right bank of the Indus to pay tribute. It was in conflict with the Derbiccians, to whom the Indians sent elephants as auxiliaries, that Cyrus, according to the account of Ctesias, was slain. Darius, as Herodotus tells us, sent messengers to explore the land of the Indus. Setting out from Arachosia, they proceeded from Caspapyrus (Kaçpapura), a city which, according to Hecatæus, belonged to the Gandarii14—i. e. without doubt from Kabura (Cabul) down the Indus to the sea. According to Herodotus' account the Gandarii, together with the Arachoti and Sattagydæ, paid 170 talents of gold yearly; the rest of the Indians paid a larger tribute than any other satrapy – 360 talents of gold.15 The Indians who paid this tribute were, according to Herodotus, the most northerly and the most warlike of this great nation. They dwelt near the city of Caspapyrus, i. e. near Cabul; their mode of life was like that of the Bactrians, and they obtained the gold from a sandy desert, where ants, smaller than dogs, but larger than foxes, dug up the gold-dust.16 Darius tells us himself, in the inscriptions of Persepolis, that the Gandarii and the Indians were subject to him. Like Herodotus, these inscriptions comprise the tribes of the Aryas on the right bank of the Indus as far down as Cabul under the name of Indians, so that the Açvakas were included among them. The Gandarii, as is shown by their vicinity to and connection with the Arachoti, lay to the south of Cabul. In the epos of the Indians the daughter of the king of the Gandharas is married to the king of the Bharatas, who lie between the Yamuna and the Ganges, and the Buddhist writings speak of the Brahmans of the Gandarii as the worst in India.17 In the campaign of Xerxes, Herodotus separates the Gandarii from the rest of the Indians who are subject to the Persian kingdom. The first, he says, were armed like the Bactrians; with the rest marched the Ethiopians of the East, equipped almost like the Indians; but on their heads they had the skins of horses' heads, with the ears and mane erect, and their shields were made from the skins of cranes. These Ethiopians of the East were not distinguished from the others in form and character, but by their language and hair. The Libyan Ethiopians, i. e. the negroes, had the curliest hair of all men; but the hair of the Eastern branch was straight.18 We have already observed that now, as in the days of Xerxes, remains of the dark-coloured pre-Aryan population of India are found on the right bank of the Indus (p. 10).

Of the Indians "who never obeyed Darius,"19 Herodotus tells us that they lived the furthest to the east of all the nations about which anything definite was known. Still further in that direction were sandy deserts. The Indians were the largest of all nations, and the Indus was the only river beside the Nile in which crocodiles are found (they are alligators).20 The remotest parts of the earth have always the best products, and India, the remotest inhabited land to the east, was no exception. The birds and the quadrupeds were far greater in size here than elsewhere, with the exception of the horse; for the Nisæan horses of the Medes were larger than the horses of the Indians. Moreover, India possessed an extraordinary abundance of gold, of which some was dug up from mines, and some brought down by the rivers, and some obtained from the deserts. The wild trees also produced a wool which in beauty and excellence surpassed the wool of sheep; this the Indians used for clothing. There were many nations of the Indians, and they spoke different languages. Some were stationary; some dwelt in the marshes of the rivers, and lived on raw fish, which they caught in canoes made of reeds, and every joint of the reed made a canoe. These Indians wore garments of bark, which they wove like cloths, and then drew on like coats of mail. Eastward of these dwelt the Padæans, a migratory tribe, who ate raw flesh; and when any one, even the nearest relative, among them was sick, they slew him, in order to eat the corpse. This custom was also observed by the women. Even the few who attained to old age they killed, in order to eat them. Other Indian nations lived only on herbs, which they ate cooked, and troubled themselves neither about their sick nor their dead, whom they carried out, like the sick, into desert places. All the nations spoken of were black in colour.21

These, the oldest accounts from the West on the ancient pre-Aryan population of India, and on the black-skins of the Rigveda, we owe to Herodotus. His statements about their physical formation are correct; those on their savage life may be exaggerated; but even to this day a part of these nations live in the marshes and mountains in a condition hardly removed from that of animals.

The contrast between the light-coloured and dark population of India, between the Aryas and the ancient inhabitants, did not escape Ctesias. India, he maintained, was as large as the rest of Asia, and the inhabitants of India almost as numerous as all the other nations put together. The Indians were both white and black. He had himself seen white Indians, five men and two women. The sun in India appeared ten times as large as in other lands, and the heat was suffocating. The Indus was a great river flowing through mountains and plains; in the narrowest places the water occupied a space of 40 stades, or five miles, in the broadest it reached 100 stades.22 The river watered the land. In India it did not rain, and there were no storms there, though there were violent whirlwinds which carried everything before them.23 On the Indus grew reeds small and great; the stoutest reeds could not be spanned by two men, and the height of the largest was equal to the mast of a ship.24 The fruit of the palms also in India was three times as large as in Babylonia, and the sheep and goats there were equal in size to asses elsewhere, and had such enormous tails that they had to be cut off to enable them to walk. Ctesias goes on to describe the large cocks of India, with their beautiful combs, and broad tails of gold, dark-blue, and emerald; the peacocks, the many-coloured birds with red faces, dark-blue necks, and black beards, which had a human tongue, and could speak Indian, and would speak Greek if they were taught; the little apes with tails four cubits long.25 He was the first to describe the elephant to the Greeks.26 He had seen these animals, and had been present in Babylon when the elephants of the Persian king had torn up palm trees with their roots out of the ground. These animals could even throw down the walls of cities. In war the king of India was preceded by 100,000 elephants, and 3000 of the strongest and bravest followed him.27

After the army of Alexander of Macedon had encamped in the Panjab, the Greeks could give more accurate accounts of India. Megasthenes assures us that India reached in breadth, from west to east, an extent of from 15,000 to 16,000 stades (1940 to 2000 miles), while the length, from north to south, was 22,000 stades (2750 miles);28 and in these distances he is not very greatly in error, for, measured in a direct line, the breadth is 13,600 stades (1720 miles), and the length 16,400 stades (2050 miles). To the north India was bounded by lofty mountains, which the Greeks called Caucasus, and the Indians Paropamisos (Paropanishadha29), and Emodos, or Imaos. Emodos, like Imaos, is the Greek form of the old Indian name for the Himalayas, Haimavata (Himavat).30 In India there were many great mountains, but still greater plains; and even the mountains were covered with fruit-trees, and contained in their bowels precious stones of various kinds – crystals, carbuncles, and others. Gold also and silver, metals and salt, could be obtained from the mines,31 and the rivers carried down gold from the mountains.32 The streams of India were the largest and the most numerous in the world. The Indus was larger than the Nile, and all the rivers of Asia; the Ganges, which took an easterly direction on reaching the plains, was a great river even at its source, and reached a width of 100 stades, or 12½ miles. In many places it formed lakes, so that one bank could not be seen from the other, and its depth reached 20 fathoms.33 The first statement is exaggerated, the second is correct for the lower course of the river. The Indus, according to Megasthenes, had 15 navigable affluents, and the Ganges 19, the names of which he could enumerate.34 In all there were 58 navigable rivers in India.

This abundance of streams in India the Greeks explained by the fact that the lands which surrounded the country – Ariana, as the Greeks call eastern Iran, Bactria, and the land of the Scythians – were higher than India, so that the waters from them flowed down, and were collected there.35 The water was also the cause of the great fertility of India, which the Greeks unite in extolling. The rivers not only brought down, as Nearchus observes, soft and good earth into the land from the hills,36 but they traversed it in such a manner that, from the universal irrigation, it was turned into a fruit garden.37 Onesicritus tells us that India is better irrigated by its rivers than Egypt by its canals. The Nile flows straight on through a long and narrow land, and so is continually passing into a different climate and different air, while the Indian rivers flow through much larger and broader plains, and continue long in the same region. Hence they are more nourishing than the Nile, and the fish are larger than the fish in the Nile;38 they also refresh the land better by their moist exhalations.39 Besides, there were the inundations caused by the rivers; and the land was also watered by the heavy rains, which fell constantly each year at a fixed period with the regular winds, so that the rivers rose fully 20 cubits above their beds, – a statement quite accurate, – and in many places the plains were changed into marshes,40 in consequence of which the Indus had sometimes taken a new channel through them.41 Since, then, the warmth of the sun was the same in India as in Arabia and Ethiopia, – for India lay far to the south, and in the most southern parts of the land the constellation of the Bear was seen no longer, and the shadows fell in the other direction, i. e. to the south, —42while in India there was more water and a moister atmosphere than in those other countries, the creatures of the water, air, and land were much larger and stronger in India than anywhere else.43 Further, as the water in the river and that which fell from heaven was tempered by the sun's heat, the growth of the roots and plants was extraordinarily vigorous. The strength of the tiger, which, according to Megasthenes, is twice the size of the lion, the docility of the elephant, the splendour of the birds, were the admiration of the Greeks. With horror they saw the whale for the first time in the Indian waters. Nearchus caused his ship to be rowed forward at double speed to contend with this peaceful monster of the deep.

According to the statement of Megasthenes – which for the land of the Ganges is quite correct – there are two harvests in India. For the winter sowing rice and barley were used, and other kinds of fruit unknown to the Greeks; for the summer sowing, sesame, rice, and bosmoron; while during the rainy season flax and millet were planted, so that in India want and famine were unknown.44 Equally luxuriant in growth were the herbs and reeds. There was a reed there which produced honey without bees (the sugar-cane); and in Southern India cinnamon, nard, and the rest of the spices grew as well as in Arabia and Ethiopia.45 The Greeks did not know that the cinnamon is a native of India only, and that the bark came to them from that country, though it came through Arabia. The marshes of India were filled with roots, wholesome or deadly; the trees there grew to a larger size than elsewhere; some were so tall that an arrow could not be shot over them, and the leaves were as large as shields. There were other trees there of which the trunks could not be spanned by five men, and the branches, as though bent, grew downwards till they touched the earth, and then, springing up anew, formed fresh trunks, to send out other arches, so that from one tree was formed a grove, not unlike a tent supported by many poles. Fifty or even 400 horsemen could take their mid-day rest under such a tree. Nearchus even goes so far as to say that there were trees of this kind under which there was room for 10,000 men.46 There were also trees in India which produced intoxicating fruits. This description of the Indian fig tree and the statements about the shelter its branches afford are not exaggerated. By intoxicating fruits the coco and fan-palms are, no doubt, meant, from which palm-wine is made.47

The northern, i. e. the light-coloured, Indians, or Aryas, are said by the Greeks of this period to have most closely resembled the Egyptians in the colour of their skin and their shape. They were light, delicate, and slim of body, and not so heavy as other nations. They were free from diseases, for their climate was healthy, and their land possessed good air, pure water, and wholesome fruits. The southern Indians, i. e. the non-Aryan population, who were at that time far less broken up in the Deccan by Aryan and other settlers than now, and must therefore have existed in far greater masses, were not quite so black as the Ethiopians (the negroes), and had not, like them, a snub nose and woolly hair. Strabo was of opinion that their colour was not so black owing to the moist air of India, which also caused the hair of the inhabitants to be straight.48 Of the 200 millions, at which the population of India is now estimated, more then 150 millions either spring from the Aryas or have adopted their civilisation. The number of the dark-coloured races, dwelling in the mountains and broad marshes, who have remained free from the dominion of the Aryas, the Mohammedans, and the English, and are, therefore, strangers to their civilisation, is estimated at 12 millions.