Megasthenes

“ There is war, the Brachhmans bold, in the body where- with they are clothed, and they regard the body as being the fruitful source of wars, and, as we have already shown, fight against it like soldiers in battle contending against the enemy. ”

“ And why not ? when everything which we trample under foot is an object of admiration to the lucre-loving Kalanos, your worthless friend, but no friend of ours, — a miserable creature, and more to be pitied than the unhappiest wretch, for by setting his heart on lucre be wrought the perdition of his soul ! Hence he seemed neither worthy of us, nor worthy of the friendship of God, and hence he neither was content to revel away life in the woods beyond all reach of care, nor was he cheered with the hope of a blessed hereafter : for by his love of money he slew the very life of his miserable soul. ”

“ It is farther said that the Indians do not rear monuments to the dead, but consider the virtues which men have displayed in life, and the songs in which their praises are celebrated, sufficient to preserve their memory after death. ”

“ But, in whatever way the fact may be accounted for, India continued to be to the Greeks little better than a land of mystery and fable till the times of the Persian wars, when for the first time they became distinctly aware of its existence. ”

“ The road is marked off with ropes, and it is death, for man and woman alike, to pass within the ropes. Men with drums and gongs lead the procession. The king hunts in the enclosures and shoots arrows from a platform. ”

“ If I wish to keep gold, I destroy my sleep ; Earth supplies me with everything, as a mother does to her child. Wherever I wish to go, I proceed, and wherever I do not wish to be, no necessity of care can force me to go. ”

“ This light, how- ever, which they call the Word, and think to be God, is, they say, known only by the Brachhmans themselves, because they alone have discarded vanity, li which is the outermost covering of the soul. The members of this sect regard death with contemptuous indifference, and, as we have seen already, they always pronounce the name of the Deity with a tone of peculiar reverence, and adore him with hymns. They neither have wives nor beget children. ”

“ Of the Indians some cultivate the soil, very many follow war, and others trade. The noblest and richest manage public affairs, administer justice, and sit in council with the kings. There exists also a fifth class, consisting of those most eminent for their wisdom, who, when sated with life, seek death by mounting a burning funeral pile. Those, however, who have become the devotees of a sterner sect, and pass their life in the woods, hunt ele- phants, which, when made quite tame and docile, they use for ploughing and for riding on. ”

“ Much fruit is produced by trees ; and the roots of plants, particularly of tall reeds, are sweet both by nature and by coction, since the moisture by which they are nourished is heated by the rays of the sun, whether it has fallen from the clouds or been drawn from the rivers. Eratosthenes uses here a peculiar expression : for what is called by others the ripening of fruits and the juices of plants is called among the Indians coction, which is as effective in producing a good flavour as the coction by fire itself. ”

“ Near a mountain which is called Nulo there live men whose feet are turned backwards and have eight toes on each foot. Megasthenis writes that on different mountains in India there are tribes of men with dog- shaped heads, armed with claws, clothed with skins, who speak not in the accents of human language, but only bark, and have fierce grinning jaws. [In Ktesias we read that in some parts the females bear offspring but once, and that the children are white-haired from their birth, &c.] ”

“ The people who are next neighbours to the ants, with a view to plunder these heaps, cross the intervening desert, which is of no great extent, mounted on wagons to which they have yoked their swiftest horses. ”

“ There are also dogs of great strength and courage, which will not let go their hold till water is poured into their nostrils : they bite so eagerly that the eyes of some become distorted, and the eyes of others fall out. ”

“ The Brachmanes do not communicate a know- ledge of philosophy to their wives, lest they should divulge any of the forbidden mysteries to the profane if they became depraved, or lest they should desert them if they became good philosophers : for no one who despises pleasure and pain, as well as life and death, wishes to be in subjection to another, but this is characteris- tic both of a good man and of a good woman. Death is with them a very frequent subject of discourse. ”

“ How, then, can he be the lord of all, who has not yet crossed the river Tyberoboas, nor has made the whole world his abode, nor crossed the zone of G a d e s, nor has beheld the course of the sun in the centre of the world P Therefore many nations do not yet even know his name. If, how- ever, the country he possesses cannot contain him, let him cross our river and he will find a soil which is able to support men. All those things Alexander promises would be useless to me if he gave them: I have leaves for a house, live on the herbs at hand and water to drink ”

“ They regard this life as, so to speak, the time when the child within the womb becomes mature, and death as a birth into a real and happy life for the votaries of philosophy. On this account they undergo much discipline as a preparation for death. ”

“ The length of a hair is two cubits, and from a single root there sprout out, in the form of a fringe, somewhere about thirty hairs. The ani- mal itself is the most timid that is known, for should it perceive that any one is looking at it, it starts off at its utmost speed, and runs right forward, — but its eagerness to escape is greater than the rapidity of its pace. It is hunted with horses and hounds good to run. When it sees that it is on the point of being caught, it hides its tail in some near thicket, while it stands at bay facing its pursuers, whom it watches narrowly. ”

“ Rain during the same season falls also on the plains of India, so that much of the country is submerged: and indeed the army of Alexander was obliged at the time of midsummer to retreat in haste from the Akesinês, because its waters overflowed the adjacent plains. So we may by analogy infer from these facts that as the Nile is subject to similar inundations, it is probable that rain falls during the summer on the mountains of Ethiopia, and that the Nile swollen with these rains overflows its banks and inundates Egypt. ”

“ Megasthenes informs us that this city stretched in the inhabited quarters to an extreme length on each side of eighty stadia, and that its breadth was fifteen stadia, and that a ditch encompassed it all round, which was six hundred feet in breadth and thirty cubits in depth, and that the wall was crowned with 670 towers and had four-and-sixty gates. The same writer tells us farther this remarkable fact about India, that all the Indians are free, and not one of them is a slave. ”

“ In India there are herds of wild horses, and also of wild asses. They say that the mares submit to be covered by the asses, and enjoy such coition, and breed mules, which are of a reddish colour and very fleet, but impatient of the yoke and otherwise skittish. ”

“ Nor do the Indians consider it any disgrace to a woman to grant her favours for an elephant, but it is rather regarded as a high compUment to the sex that their charms should be deemed worth an elephant They marry without either giving or taking dowries, but the women, as soon as they are marriageable, are brought forward by their fathers and exposed in public, to be selected by the victor in wrestUng or boxing or running, or by some one who excels in any other manly exercise.* The people of India live upon grain, and are tillers of the soil ”

“ No one wears a crown at a sacrifice or libation, and they do not stab the victim, but strangle it, so that nothing mutilated, but only what is entire, may be presented to the deity. A person convicted of bearing false witness suffers mutilation of his extremities. He who maims any one not only suffers in return the loss of the same limb, but his hand also is cut off". If he causes an artizan to lose his hand or his eye, he is put to death. ”

“ On the outside they leave only a single aperture to admit them- selves and the grain which they collect and carry to their store-chambers. Their object in selecting lofty sites for their mansions is, of course, to escape the high floods and inimdations of the rivers; and they derive this advantage from their foresight, that they live as it were in so many watch-towers or islands when the parts around the heights become all a lake. ”

“ I then, becoming spirit, shall ascend to my God, who enclosed us in flesh, and left us upon the earth to prove whether when here below we shall live obedient to his ordinances, and who also will require of us, when we depart hence to his pre- sence, an account of our life, since he is judge of all proud wrong-doing ; for the groans of the oppress- ed become the punishments of the oppressors. ”

“ Their favourite mode of exercising the body is by friction, applied in various ways, but especially by passing smooth ebony rollers over the skin. Their tombs are plain, and the mounds raised over the dead lowly. ”

“ XVII. The Indians are in person slender and tall, and of much lighter weight than other men. 222 The animals used by the common sort for riding on are camels and horses and asses, while the wealthy use elephants, — for it is the elephant which in India carries royalty. ”

“ When it is said that an Indian by springing forward in front of a horse can check his speed and hold him back, this is not true of all Indians, but only of such as have been trained from boy- hood to manage horses ”

“ The Indians all live frugally, especially when in camp. They dislike a great undisciplined multitude, and consequently they observe good order. Theft is of very rare occurrence. Megasthenês says that those who were in the camp of Sandrakottos, wherein lay 400,000 men, found that the thefts reported on any one day did not exceed the value of two hundred drachme, and this among a people who have no written laws, but are ignorant of writing, and must therefore in all the business of life trust to memory. ”

“ They live, nevertheless, happily enough, being simple in their manners and frugal. They never drink wine except at sacrifices. [12] Their beverage is a liquor composed from rice instead of barley, and their food is principally a rice-pottage [13] The simplicity of their laws and their contracts is proved by the fact that they seldom go to law. They have no suits about pledges or deposits, nor do they require either seals or witnesses, but make their deposits and confide in each other. Their houses and property they generally leave unguarded. ”

“ It is they who tell those stories about the men who sleep in their ears, the men without mouths, the men without nostrils, the men with one eye, the men with long legs, and the men with their toes turned backward. They renewed Homer's fable about the battle between the Cranes and the Pygmies, asserting that the latter were three spans in height. They told of the ants that dig for gold, of Fans with wedge-shaped heads, and of serpents swallow- ing down oxen and stags, horns and all, — ^the one author meanwhile accusing the other of falsehood, as Eratosthenes has remarked. ”

“ Partly from ignorance and the remoteness of its situation, every thing about it is exaggerated or represented as marvellous : for instance, there are the stories of the gold-digging ants, of animals and men of peculiar shapes, and possessing wonderful faculties; as the Sêres, who, they say, are so long-lived that they attain an age beyond that of two hundred years. ”

“ Their robes are worked in gold, and ornamented with precious stones, and they wear also flowered garments made of the finest muslin. Attendants walking behind hold up umbrellas over them: for they have a high regard for beauty, and avail themselves of vice to improve their looks. Truth and virtue they hold alike in esteem. ”

“ But they do not put saddles on their horses, nor do they curb them with bits like the bits in use among the Greeks or the Kelts, but they fit on round the extremity of the horse's mouth a circular piece of stitched raw ox-hide studded with pricks of iron or brass pointing inwards, but not very sharp : if a man is rich he uses pricks made of ivory. ”

“ Uttarakum is a part of Sirica, and as the first accounts of India came to the West from the Seres, perhaps a part of the description of the peaceful happy life of the Seres is to be explained from the Indian stories of the Uttarakum. The story of the long life of the Sires may be similarly explained, especially when Megas- thenls reckons the life attained by the Hyperboreans at 1000 years. ”

“ A fifth class devotes itself to the philosophy pre- valent in the country, which almost assumes the form of a religion, and the members always put an end to their life by a voluntary death on a burning funeral pile. ”

“ From the number caught they reject such as are too old or too young to be serviceable, and the rest they lead away to the stables. Here they tie their feet one to another, and fasten their necks to a firmly fixed pillar, and tame them by hunger. ”

“ King Alexander, accordingly, when he heard of all this, was desirous of learning the doctrines of the sect, and so he sent for this Dandamis, as heing their teacher and president Onesikrates was therefore despatched to fetch him, and when he found the great sage he said,
Hail to thee, thou teacher of the Bragmanes. The .son of the mighty god Zeus, king Alexander, who is the sovereign lord of all men, asks you to go to him, and if you comply, he will reward you with great and splendid gifts,, but if you refuse will cut off your head. ”

“ God knows it is simply that he may show off how he can endure pain as do the Brachmans, to whom it pleased Theagends to liken him, just as if India had not her own crop of fools and vain-glorious persons. But let him bjr all means imitate the Brachmans, for, as Onesi- kritos informs us, who was the pilot of Alexander's fleet and saw Kalanos burned, they do not immolate themselves by leaping into the flames, but when the pyre is made they stand close beside it perfectly motionless, and suffer themselves to be gently broiled ”

“ Husbandmen, and all the hands engaged in field labour, turn them up with their mattocks, and take them out just in the way one extracts wood-worms fyom the plants they have eaten into. They are fat things and their flesh is sweet, having nothing of the sharp flavour of the sea-tortoise. (15.) Intelligent animals are to be met with among ourselves, but they are few, and not at all so common as they are in India. For there we find Digitized by Google 167 the elephant, which answers to this character, and the parrot^ and apes- of the sphinx kind, and the creatures called satyrs. ”

“ But of their cities it is said that the number is so great that it cannot be stated with precision, but that such cities as are situated on the banks of rivers or on the sea-coast are built of wood instead of brick, being meant to last only for a time, — so destructive are the heavy rains which pour down, and the rivers also when they overflow their banks and inundate the plains, — while those cities which stand on commanding situations and lofty eminences are built of brick and mud ”