The Conception of India in Hellenistic and Roman Literature

Albrecht Dihle

doi:10.1017/S0068673500003084

The Conception of India in Hellenistic and Roman Literature

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 February 2013

Albrecht Dihle

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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. 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 Apollonius, written early in the third century A.D., as well as from the History of Alexander, falsely attributed to Callisthenes.

Type: Research Article
Information: Proceedings of the Cambridge Philological Society (Second Series) , Volume 10 , 1964 , pp. 15 - 23

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0068673500003084 [Opens in a new window]
Copyright: Copyright © The Author(s). Published online by Cambridge University Press 1964

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^{page 15 note 1} Wheeler, M., Rome beyond the Imperial Frontiers (London, 1955), pp.164ffGoogle Scholar.

^{page 15 note 2} 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, hinduš as do the Greek , the Hebrew ḥoddu, the Aramaic ḥenda. 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 (Smith, R. Payne, Thes. syr. p. 2676Google Scholar and suppl. 236) and Islamic geography from the eighth century onwards (Le Strange, G., The Lands of the Eastern Caliphate, Cambridge, 1930, p. 131Google Scholar). 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)rūd ‘river Indus’, as was shown by E. Herzfeld (for further discussions see Duchesne-Guillemin, J., La religion de l'Iran ancien, Paris, 1962, p. 242Google Scholar, where Marquart, J., Abh. Ges. Wiss. Göttg. III (1901), 46Google Scholar deserves to be mentioned). And in fact Sindh was closely linked with Parthian Mesopotamia by commercial intercourse (cf. App., Bell. civ. 5, 9, 37Google Scholar; Seyrig, H., Syria, XXII (1941), 263Google Scholar, and Goossens, R., Nouv. Clio (1957), p. 63Google Scholar).

^{page 16 note 1} Cf. Widengren, G., Mani (Stuttgart, 1961), p. 35Google Scholar.

^{page 16 note 2} Limyrike or Damyrike (Tab. Peut.) corresponds to the Sanskrit Dramidaka ‘Country of the Tamils’.

^{page 16 note 3} Ptolem. 1, 7, 6; V, 1.

^{page 16 note 4} Cf. Rhein. Mus. CV (1962), 97Google Scholarff.

^{page 16 note 5} Peripl. Mar. Rubr. 30.

^{page 16 note 6} Sozom, . Hist. eccl. 2, 24Google Scholar, 1.

^{page 16 note 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. Coedès, J., Textes d'auteurs grecs et latins relatifs à l'Extrême Orient (Paris, 1910Google Scholar).

^{page 16 note 8} Franke, O., Geschichte des chinesischen Reiches I (Berlin, 1930), p. 404Google Scholar.

^{page 17 note 1} Rufin, . hist. eccl. 10Google Scholar, 9; Socrat. 1, 19; Sozom. 2, 24; Theodt. 1, 23; Gelas. Cyz. 3, 9; Act. SS. Octobr. XII, 268.

^{page 17 note 2} Ed. Derrett, J. D. M., Class, et Med. (1960), p. 64Google Scholar, and Journ. Am. Or. Soc. LXXXII (1962), 21Google Scholar.

^{page 17 note 3} Expos, tot. mund. 18, 35.

^{page 18 note 1} FgH 779 F7.

^{page 18 note 2} Amometus, a contemporary of Callimachus, did not write a book on the Seres, as was stated by Altheim, F. (Weltgeschichte Asiens im griech. Zeitalter I (1947), 63Google Scholar), but on the Ottorocorrae (FgH 645 F 2, cf. Herrmann, A., RE 18, 2, 1888Google Scholar), that is to say the Uttara-kuru, the Hyperboreans of Indian mythology.

^{page 18 note 3} 2, 5, 12; 11, 7, 3; 11, 9, 1; 11, 11, 7; it seems to me highly probable that Strab. 11, 9, 2f. ( = FgH782 F3) is derived from Apollodorus too.

^{page 18 note 4} FgH 779 F7b.

^{page 18 note 5} The Samian Diodorus made a voyage from (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, 72Google Scholar and 9, 106). It seems to have been an outpost of the Chola kingdom .

^{page 18 note 6} Cf. Tarn, W. W., The Greeks in Bactria and India (Cambridge², 1951), pp. 143Google Scholarff.

^{page 18 note 7} W. W. Tarn, op. cit. pp. 217; 268ff.; 415ff.

^{page 18 note 8} Strab. 15. 1, 3. It is very curious that Narain, A. K. (The Indo-Greeks, Oxford, 1957Google Scholar), 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.

^{page 19 note 1} Strab. 15, 1, 72.

^{page 19 note 2} Strab. 2, 3, 4.

^{page 19 note 3} Strab. 15, 1, 4.

^{page 19 note 4} N.H. 6, 56ff.

^{page 19 note 5} 6, 101 ff.

^{page 19 note 6} Peripl. 57.

^{page 19 note 7} The author of the Periplus, whose literary erudition is extremely weak, tells us that Alexander reached the river Ganges (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.

^{page 20 note 1} The Maurya dynasty ruled from the late fourth to the early second century B.C. The word 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. Lüders, , K.Z. 38, 433Google Scholar).

^{page 20 note 2} See above, p. 18, n. 5.

^{page 20 note 3} Tac., ann. 14, 25Google Scholar.

^{page 20 note 4} Page, D. L., Greek Literary Papyri (London, 1950), p. 336Google Scholar.

^{page 20 note 5} Xen. Eph. 3, 11f.

^{page 20 note 6} This temple is attested by the Tabula Peutingeriana.

^{page 20 note 7} Praec. reip. ger. 821D.

^{page 20 note 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 geographical treatises.

^{page 21 note 1} FgH715 F33.

^{page 21 note 2} 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.

^{page 21 note 3} СΑΡΜΑΝΕС has been changed to ΓΑΡΜΑΝΕС in Strabo's text too.

^{page 21 note 4} It seems to me highly disputable whether the Indian goddess Μαῖα, 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.

^{page 21 note 5} Strom. 1, 17, 3ff.; cf. Mullus, Festschrift für Theodor Klauser (Münster, 1964), p. 60Google Scholar.

^{page 22 note 1} Euseb, . Praep. ev. 6, 10, 14Google Scholar = Bardesanes, , Lib. leg. reg. 31Google Scholar Nau.

^{page 22 note 2} Ed. Chaumont, M. L., Journ. Asiat. CCXLVIII (1960), 339Google Scholar.

^{page 22 note 3} Porph, . de abstin. 4, 17fGoogle Scholar.

^{page 23 note 1} Adv. Jov. 1, 42Google Scholar.

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