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En inventant l’histoire, la Grèce inventa le jugement du monde, et, dans ce jugement, l’arrêt de la Grèce fut sans appel. A celui dont la Grèce n’a pas parlé, l’oubli, c’est-à-dire le néant. A celui dont la Grèce se souvient, la gloire, c’est-à-dire la vie.—Discours de M. Ernest Renan du 5 Mai 1892.

This work is the fifth of a series which may be entitled Ancient India as described by the Classical Writers, since it was projected to supply annotated translations of all the accounts of India which have descended to us from classical antiquity. The volumes which have already appeared contain the fragments of the Indika of Ktêsias the Knidian, and of the Indika of Megasthenês, the Indika of Arrian, the Periplous of the Erythraian Sea by an unknown author, and Ptolemy’s Geography of India and the other Countries of Eastern Asia. A sixth work, containing translations of the chapters in Strabo’s Geography which describe India and Ariana, is in preparation, and will complete the series. I cannot at present say whether this work will appear as a separate publication, or will be included in a volume containing new and revised editions of the three Indikas mentioned above, which are now nearly out of print, as are also the other two works of the series.

In the present work I have translated and annotated all the earliest and most authentic records which have been preserved of the Macedonian invasion of India under Alexander the Great. The notes do not touch on points either of grammar or of textual criticism, but are mainly designed to illustrate the statements advanced in the narratives. When short, they accompany the text as footnotes, and when of such a length as would too much encumber the pages, they have been placed together in an appendix by themselves. Such notes again as refer to persons have been placed, whether short or long, in a second appendix, which I have designated a Biographical Appendix.

In preparing the translations and notes I have consulted a great many works, of which the following may be specified as those which I found most useful:—

Droysen’s Geschichte Alexanders des Grossen.

Williams’s Life of Alexander.

Sainte-Croix’s Examen Critique des Anciens Historiens d’Alexandre le Grand.

C. Müller’s collection of the remaining fragments of the Historians of Alexander the Great.

Thirlwall’s History of Greece, vols. vi. and vii.

Grote’s History of Greece, vol. xii.

Duncker’s History of Antiquity, vol. iv., which treats of India exclusively.

Talboys Wheeler’s History of India.

Le Clerc’s Criticism upon Curtius, prefixed to Rooke’s Translation of Arrian’s Anabasis.

Lassen’s Indische Alterthumskunde.

General Sir A. Cunningham’s Geography of Ancient India.

V. de Saint-Martin’s Étude sur la Géographie Grecque et Latine de l’Inde, and his Mémoire Analytique sur la carte de l’Asie Centrale et de l’Inde.

Rennell’s Memoir of a Map of Hindoostan.

Bunbury’s History of Ancient Geography.

Abbott’s Gradus ad Aornon.

Journal Asiatique. Serie VIII.

Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society. New Series.

Mahaffy’s Alexander’s Empire and his Greek Life and Thought from the Age of Alexander to the Roman Conquest.

Professor Freeman’s Essay on Alexander the Great.

General Chesney’s Lecture on the Indian Campaign of Alexander.

Wesseling’s Latin Translation of Diodôros.

Translations of Curtius by Digby, Pratt, and Vaugelas respectively.

The Notes to the Elzevir edition of Curtius.

Chinnock’s Translation of Arrian’s Anabasis of Alexander, and Notes thereto.

Chaussard’s Translation of Arrian into French.

Moberly’s Alexander the Great in the Punjaub, from Arrian. Book V.

Burton’s Sindh.

Weber’s Die Griechen in Indien.

Dr. Bellew’s Ethnography of Afghanistan.

Sir W. W. Hunter’s and Professor Max Müller’s Works on India.

The Translations are strictly literal, but though such, will, I trust, be found to give, without crudeness of diction, a faithful reflex not only of the sense, but also of the spirit, force, fluency, and perspicuity of the original compositions. I have at all events spared no pains to combine in the translations the two merits of being at once literal and idiomatic in expression.

In translating Arrian I adopted the text of Sintenis (2nd edition, Berlin, 1863); and with regard to Curtius, I found the work entitled Alexander in India, edited by Heitland and Raven, very serviceable, containing, as it does, exactly that portion of Curtius which it was my purpose to translate. Both the works referred to contain valuable prolegomena and notes, to which I must here acknowledge my obligations.

The Introduction consists of two parts. In the first, I have pointed out the sources whence our knowledge of the history of Alexander has been derived, and discussed their title to credibility; while in the second, I have sketched Alexander’s career, and added a very brief summary of the events that followed his death till the wars for the division of his empire were finally composed.

In the transcription of Greek proper names I have followed as hitherto the method introduced by Grote, which scholars have now generally adopted. A vindication of the method which, to my thinking, is unanswerable, has appeared in the preface to Professor Freeman’s History of Sicily, a work which the author unfortunately has not lived to complete.

The most noticeable change resulting from this method is the substitution of K for C in the spelling of Greek names. This should be borne in mind by those who may have occasion to consult either the Biographical Appendix or the General Index. I may further note that in transcribing Sanskrit or other Indian names I have in all cases used the circumflex to distinguish the long â, which is sounded as a in fall, from the short a, which is sounded as u in dumb. In Sanskrit and its derivative dialects this short vowel (अ) is never written unless it begin a word, for it is supposed to be inherent in every consonant. The letter ś with the acute accent represents the palatal sibilant (श), which is sounded like sh.

Two maps accompany the work, the larger of which shows the entire line of the route which Alexander followed in the course of his Asiatic expedition, while the smaller shows more distinctly that part of his route which lay through the northern parts of Afghânistân and the Country of the Five Rivers. For both I consulted the latest and most authoritative maps, both British and German, in which these routes have been laid down, and I found them in pretty close agreement, except with regard to that part of the route which is traced in the smaller map. Here I have generally followed the sketch map of the Panjâb which is given in General Cunningham’s Ancient Geography of India, but have ventured to differ from him with regard to the position of the Rock Aornos, of Alexander’s bridge over the Indus, of Sangala, and of the Oxydrakai, whom I have placed, as in Sir E. H. Bunbury’s map, to the south of the Malloi.

The frontispiece to the volume, reproduced from a fifteenth-century French MS. of the Life of Alexander, may, it is hoped, appeal to many as a quaint rendering of a widely “popular” incident.

I cannot conclude without expressing my great obligations to Mr. Archibald Constable, by whose firm this work is published, for all the trouble he has taken in connection with its passage through the press, and especially with the preparation of the illustrations. I have also to thank Dr. Burgess for supplying the photograph from which the Aśôka inscription on page 373 has been reproduced, and for sundry valuable suggestions besides.

J. W. M’C.

9 Westhall Gardens,

Edinburgh, 1892.