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Kātyāyana
by Wikipedia
Accessed: 9/3/21

For the Buddhist monk, see Katyayana (Buddhist).

Kātyāyana
Born est. 2nd century BC[citation needed]
Southern India
Academic background
Academic work
Era Vedic period
Main interests Sanskrit grammarian, mathematician and Vedic priest
Notable works Vārttikakāra, Vyākarana, later Śulbasūtras

Kātyāyana (कात्यायन) also spelled as Katyayana (c. 2nd century BC)[citation needed] was a Sanskrit grammarian, mathematician and Vedic priest who lived in ancient India.

Origins

According to some legends, he was born in the Katya lineage originating from Vishwamitra, thus called Katyayana.

The Kathāsaritsāgara mentions Kātyāyana as another name of Vararuci, a re-incarnation of Lord Shiva's gana or follower Pushpadanta. The story also mentions him learning grammar from Shiva's son Kartikeya which is corroborated in the Garuda Purana where Kartikeya (also called Kumara) teaches Katyayana the rules of grammar in a way that it could be understood even by children.[1] It may be that his full name was in fact Vararuci Kātyāyana.[2]

Relation to Goddess Katyayini

In texts like Kalika Purana, it is mentioned that he worshipped Mother Goddess to be born as his daughter hence she came to be known as Katyayani or the "daughter of Katyayan" who is worshipped on the sixth day of Navratri festival.[3] According to the Vamana Purana once the gods had gathered together to discuss the atrocities of the demon Mahishasura and their anger manifested itself in the form of energy rays. The rays crystallized in the hermitage of Kātyāyana Rishi, who gave it proper form therefore she is also called Katyayani. [4]

Works

He is known for two works:

• The Vārttikakāra, an elaboration on Pāṇini grammar. Along with the Mahābhāṣya of Patañjali, this text became a core part of the Vyākaraṇa (grammar) canon. This was one of the six Vedangas, and constituted compulsory education for students in the following twelve centuries.
• He also composed one of the later Śulbasūtras, a series of nine texts on the geometry of altar constructions, dealing with rectangles, right-sided triangles, rhombuses, etc.[5]

Views

Kātyāyana's views on the sentence-meaning connection tended towards naturalism. Kātyāyana believed, that the word-meaning relationship was not a result of human convention. For Kātyāyana, word-meaning relations were siddha, given to us, eternal. Though the object a word is referring to is non-eternal, the substance of its meaning, like a lump of gold used to make different ornaments, remains undistorted, and is therefore permanent.

Realizing that each word represented a categorization, he came up with the following conundrum (following Bimal Krishna Matilal):

"If the 'basis' for the use of the word 'cow' is cowhood (a universal) what would be the 'basis' for the use of the word 'cowhood'?

Clearly, this leads to infinite regress. Kātyāyana's solution to this was to restrict the universal category to that of the word itself — the basis for the use of any word is to be the very same word-universal itself."

This view may have been the nucleus of the Sphoṭa doctrine enunciated by Bhartṛhari in the 5th century, in which he elaborates the word-universal as the superposition of two structures — the meaning-universal or the semantic structure (artha-jāti) is superposed on the sound-universal or the phonological structure (śabda-jāti).

In the tradition of scholars like Pingala, Kātyāyana was also interested in mathematics. Here his text on the sulvasutras dealt with geometry, and extended the treatment of the Pythagorean theorem as first presented in 800 BCE by Baudhayana.[6]

Pythagoras, one of the most famous and controversial ancient Greek philosophers, lived from ca. 570 to ca. 490 BCE. He spent his early years on the island of Samos, off the coast of modern Turkey. At the age of forty, however, he emigrated to the city of Croton in southern Italy and most of his philosophical activity occurred there. Pythagoras wrote nothing, nor were there any detailed accounts of his thought written by contemporaries. By the first centuries BCE, moreover, it became fashionable to present Pythagoras in a largely unhistorical fashion as a semi-divine figure, who originated all that was true in the Greek philosophical tradition, including many of Plato's and Aristotle's mature ideas. A number of treatises were forged in the name of Pythagoras and other Pythagoreans in order to support this view.

The Pythagorean question, then, is how to get behind this false glorification of Pythagoras in order to determine what the historical Pythagoras actually thought and did. In order to obtain an accurate appreciation of Pythagoras' achievement, it is important to rely on the earliest evidence before the distortions of the later tradition arose. The popular modern image of Pythagoras is that of a master mathematician and scientist. The early evidence shows, however, that, while Pythagoras was famous in his own day and even 150 years later in the time of Plato and Aristotle, it was not mathematics or science upon which his fame rested. Pythagoras was famous (1) as an expert on the fate of the soul after death, who thought that the soul was immortal and went through a series of reincarnations; (2) as an expert on religious ritual; (3) as a wonder-worker who had a thigh of gold and who could be two places at the same time; (4) as the founder of a strict way of life that emphasized dietary restrictions, religious ritual and rigorous self discipline.

It remains controversial whether he also engaged in the rational cosmology that is typical of the Presocratic philosopher/scientists and whether he was in any sense a mathematician. The early evidence suggests, however, that Pythagoras presented a cosmos that was structured according to moral principles and significant numerical relationships and may have been akin to conceptions of the cosmos found in Platonic myths, such as those at the end of the Phaedo and Republic. In such a cosmos, the planets were seen as instruments of divine vengeance (“the hounds of Persephone”), the sun and moon are the isles of the blessed where we may go, if we live a good life, while thunder functioned to frighten the souls being punished in Tartarus. The heavenly bodies also appear to have moved in accordance with the mathematical ratios that govern the concordant musical intervals in order to produce a music of the heavens, which in the later tradition developed into “the harmony of the spheres.” It is doubtful that Pythagoras himself thought in terms of spheres, and the mathematics of the movements of the heavens was not worked out in detail. There is evidence that he valued relationships between numbers such as those embodied in the so-called Pythagorean theorem, though it is not likely that he proved the theorem.

Pythagoras' cosmos was developed in a more scientific and mathematical direction by his successors in the Pythagorean tradition, Philolaus and Archytas. Pythagoras succeeded in promulgating a new more optimistic view of the fate of the soul after death and in founding a way of life that was attractive for its rigor and discipline and that drew to him numerous devoted followers.

-- Pythagoras, by Carl Huffman, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Kātyāyana belonged to the Aindra School of Grammar and may have lived towards the Punjab region of the Indian Subcontinent.[citation needed]

Notes

1. [1]
2. Winternitz, Moriz (1920). Geschichte der indischen Literatur. Bd. 3: Die Kunstdichtung. Die wissenschaftliche Litteratur. Neuindische Litteratur. Nachträge zu allen drei Bänden. Leipzig: Amelang. p. 391.
3. Forms of Durga
4. [2]
5. Joseph (2000), p. 328
6. Pingree (1981), p. 6

References

• Joseph, George Gheverguese: The Crest of the Peacock: Non-European Roots of Mathematics
• Pingree, David. Jyotihsastra: Astral and Mathematical Literature. Otto Harrassowitz. Wiesbaden, 1981. ISBN 3-447-02165-9.

External links

• Katyayana and Advaita
• O'Connor, John J.; Robertson, Edmund F., "Kātyāyana", MacTutor History of Mathematics archive, University of St Andrews

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Part 1 of 2

Chapter 9: Caravanserais Along the Grand Trunk Road in Pakistan: A Central Asian Legacy
by Saifur Rayman Dar
from The Silk Roads: Highways of Culture and Commerce
Edited by Vadime Elisseeff
Published in association with UNESCO
©2000
Originally published Paris UNESCO, 1998
 
The famous Grand Trunk Road or Shahrah-i-'Azim connecting Calcutta (India) with Peshawar (Pakistan) has been in existence for the last 2,500 years. It has been variously described as "the muse of history,"1 or "a broad scratch across the shoulders of India and Pakistan."2 As the greatest highway in the world,3 it has been compared with the Pilgrim's Way in England, the Appian Way in Rome, and Jada-i-Shah of the Achaemenians.4 The strategic value of this grand highway and the correctness of its alignment have stood the test of time for more than 2,500 years. The rising British power withstood the ferocious war of independence -- the so-called Mutiny of 1857 -- thanks to this well-planned and well-maintained Grand Trunk Road (GTR).5

All along this highway, there once stood forts (qila), fortified towns (qila band shehr), army halting posts (parrao or chhaoni), caravanserais, dak-posts (chowki), milestones (kos minars), stepped wells (baoli) and, of course, shady trees for the convenience of travelers and passers-by. The present chapter deals briefly with a survey of existing remains of these facilities along the part of the GTR which runs through present-day Pakistan. This survey was carried out by the author during the years 1987-1989. The area interested me for three reasons:

(i) It covered one fifth of the total length of the GTR.

(ii) Part of the Silk Road passing through Pakistan also corresponds to the GTR,6 and

(iii) The portion of the GTR passing through Pakistan certainly comprises the most varied and difficult geographical and geological land mass ever encountered by a road builder7 or a merchant, or even a soldier. 
 
History
 
No one knows when the GTR [Grand Trunk Road] started. Presumably, it came into existence as soon as vehicular traffic started developing as a complement to river communication. There were numerous such major roads connecting different parts of the vast country. Panini, the famous grammarian (500 B.C.), mentions the existence of an Uttarpatha (Northern Road) as well as Dakshinapatha (Southern Road).8 There was also Vannupatha: The Road from Bannu from the Middle Country passing through a desert. Uttarpatha probably was the same as Kautilya’s Haimavatapath running from Vallika (Balkh or Bactria) to Taxila. Kautilya also gives detailed advice as to different types of roads which a king should build. These include the roads linking different national or provincial centers, those leading to military camps and forts, and roads for chariots, elephants, and other animals together with their respective widths and how to maintain them.9 There is a mention of trade routes (water routes and land routes) and it was the duty of the emperor to maintain them and keep them free from harassment by the king’s favorites, robbers, and herds of cattle.10 The width of a royal highway and those within a droonamukna and a sthaniya or a harbor town were fixed at eight dandas or forty-eight feet.11 The Royal Road of the Mauryans at the beginning of the 3rd century B.C., according to Megasthenes, used to run in eight stages from Purushupura (Peshawar) in the northeast to Pataluputra, the Mauryan capital, in the extreme east.12 Sarkar has given details of these eight stages, three of which fell within today’s Pakistan, namely Purushupura to Takshasila, Takshasila to Jhelum, and Jhelum to Alexander’s Altars on the Beas River.13 To help travelers on this Road, directions and distances were indicated with the help of stone pillars fixed every 10 stadia or one kos.14 These correspond to the medieval kos minar or modern milestone. It is quite possible that Chandra Gupta took this idea of a Royal Road from the Jada-i-Shah of the Achaemenians and this, along with other facts, became instrumental in bringing in the Persian influence which we encounter in Mauryan art. There were charitable lodging houses (dharma vasatha) inside the cities for heretical travelers, ascetics, and Brahmins15 but there is no mention of similar facilities alongside the highways. Chandra Gupta’s grandson Asoka improved upon this road system, as he proudly claims in one of his edicts, by planting trees, digging wells every half kos, and building nimisdhayas all along the Royal Road.16 The word nimisdhayas has been variously interpreted17 but is usually translated as rest-house. Sirkar has accepted it to mean a sarai or hostelry.18 If so, this is the earliest reference to halting stations provided on high roads. Still, Asoka was certainly not the originator of such facilities on the highways because he admits that such comforts were provided by previous kings as well. Earlier Kautilya had advised kings to provide sources of water (setu), land routes and waterways (varisthalapatha), groves (arama), and the like.19 Besides, from various jataka stories, we learn that each caravan was led by a caravan leader, the Sarthavaha, who would decide where to make halts for the night showing thereby that there were no fixed and permanent halting stations on the way.20
 
The introduction of baolis (or vapis) – stepped walls along the high roads in the subcontinent of Pakistan and India – is attributed to Central Asian people. It is believed that in the second century B.C., the Sakas, in their second wave, introduced here two types of wells – Sakandu and Karkandhu – the former being the stepped well whereas the latter was the Persian wheel.21
 
Kanishka definitely had control over the Uttarapatha which then formed a part of the Silk Road which now, thanks to the Roman Empire, turned towards the sea coast near Barbaricon or Barygaza. The presence of numerous Indian carved ivories and other works of art from western marts discovered at Begram22 near Hadda testify to this. Various Chinese pilgrims from the fifth to the seventh centuries A.D. also used various land routes to enter northern Pakistan – Fa Hien (c. A.D. 400) and Sung Yun (c. A.D. 521) through Udyana (modern Swat), and Hieun Tsang (seventh century A.D.) through Balkh-Taxlia.23 This also shows that these roads must have been quite busy in those times. It was along these routes that Buddhism and the influence of Gandhara art in particular and art of India in general penetrated Central Asia and far into mainland China.24 These Chinese travelers did not mention the existence of proper inns anywhere on this high road though such facilities had existed within the limits of cities since the time of Kautilya.25 Perhaps they never needed to stay in such places, as they normally stayed in Buddhist monasteries which they found on their way.
 
Even during early Muslim rule in the subcontinent we have very little knowledge as to how the ancient highways worked and what roadside facilities existed for the comforts of travelers prior to the coming of the Mughals. The first specific reference to roadside inns or sarais is found during the reign of Muhammad bin Tughlaq (A.D. 1324-1351) who contracted sarais, one at each stage, between Delhi and his new capital Daultabad.26 From Shams Siraj Afeef, author of Tarikh-li-Firoze Shahi, we also learn that his successor, Firoze Shah Tughlaq (A.D. 1351-1387), built several buildings including 120 hospices and inns, all in Delhi, for the comfort of travelers.27 In these sarais, travelers were allowed to stay and eat free of charge for three days. After this fashion, Mahmud Baiqara (A.D. 1458-1511) built numerous beautiful sarais in Gujrat for the comfort and convenience of travelers.28 Almost simultaneously, Sikander Lodhi (A.D. 1488-1517) of Delhi also built sarais, mosques, madrassahs, and bazaars at all such places where Hindus had their ritual bathing sites.29
 
But it was Sher Shah Suri who revived the glory of the Royal Road of Chandra Gupta Maurya and at the same time excelled in providing roadside facilities to the travelers to such an extent that today the Grand Trunk Road and Sher Shah Suri have become synonyms. He ensured that the road journeys between all important centers in his empire, particularly between Sonargaon in Bengal and Attock Banares on the Indus River, were safe and comfortable. He realigned the Grand Trunk Road and Sonargaon at Rhotas, widened it, planted fruit-bearing and shady trees at the sides, constructed sarais every 2 kos,30 and introduced kos minars and baolis at more frequent intervals in between two sarais. Along some other roads, Gaur to Oudh and one from Benaras, for example, besides sarais and fruit-bearing trees, he also planted gardens.31 It has been recorded that, in all Sher Shah built 1,700 sarais throughout the length and breadth of his empire. In some history books the total number is exaggerated to 2,500.32 Nadvi has estimated that there were 1,500 sarais between Bengal and the Indus alone. From some history books, we get a fair idea as to how these Suti sarais looked and how they were maintained. Briefly, these were state-run establishments used both as dak-posts and as resting places for travelers. In these sarais, free food and lodging were provided to all, irrespective of their status, creed, or faith.
 
Islam Shah (Saleem Shah) succeeded his father, Sher Shah Suri, and ruled from A.D. l1545 to 1552. Along the road to Bengal, he added one more sarai in between every two built by his father. Following traditions established by his father, he continued to serve food, both cooked and uncooked, to travelers.33 In Pakistan, the Kachi Sarai at Gujranwala (now demolished except for its mosque) and the so-called Akbari Sarai, adjacent to Jangir’s Mausoleum are attributable to the Suri period, the latter to Islam Shah Suri.34 During the reign of Akbar the Great (A.D. 1558-1605) the system of having halting places (sarais, dak-cowkis, and baolis) along important roads was further developed and perfected. Not only did the emperor himself build numerous new sarais at different locations, but his courtiers followed suit.35
 
Jahangir (A.D. 1605-1628), in particular, issued orders that the property of all such persons who die without issue be spent on the construction of mosques and sarais, the digging of wells and tanks, and the repairing of bridges. Simultaneously he ordered the landlords of all such far-off places where roads were not safe, to construct sarais and mosques and dig wells so that people were encouraged to settle near these places. Jahangiri sarais are said to have existed eight kos apart from one another. Jahangir ordered these sarais to be built of stone and burnt brick (pakkalpukhta sarais) and not of mud (kacha sarais). In each of his sarais there were proper baths and tanks of fresh water and regular attendants. Mulberry and other broad-leaved trees were planted at various halting stations between Lahore and Agra.36 Jahangiri kos minars -- such as one each at Manhiala near Jallo and at Shahu Garhi in Lahore -- were between twenty and thirty feet high. The emperor's courtiers too built rabats.37 Besides repairing the old bridges, Jahangir also constructed several new ones over all such rivers and nullahs which came in the way of his highways.38 On the highway leading to Kashmir, he built permanent houses at different stages so that he need not carry tentage with them.39

Shah Jahan's period (1628-1658) is renowned for its building activities. The emperor busied himself with constructing and embellishing royal buildings in Agra, Delhi, and Lahore. His courtiers followed suit.4o Several of his nobles, such as Wazir Khan, are renowned for patronizing building activities. The construction of roads and sarais did not lag behind, though these never had the same attention they received from Jahangir. The bridge of Shah Daula on Nullah Deg on the way from Lahore to Eminabad is definitely a construction from Shah Jahan's period.41 Wazir Khan sarai (now extinct) was built near his grand public hamam inside Delhi Gate. Lahore was also constructed during this period.

Despite this increased activity, the road between Lahore and Kabulthe most important of all highways in ancient India-never had enough sarais at the desired places. Consequently, travelers had to contend with many difficulties while traveling on this section. It was Aurangzeb Alamgir (1659-1707) who realized this. He ordered that, in all parts where there were no sarais and rabats, permanent (pukhta) and commodious sarais should be constructed at government expense. Each new sarai was required to comprise a bazar, a mosque, a well, and a hamam. Older sarais were equally properly attended to and were soon repaired whenever necessary. 42 Some of his noblemen, such as Shaista Khan also built new sarais.43 Khan-i-Khanan, a Wazir of Shah Alam Bahadur (1707-1712) had ordered that each city must have a sarai, a mosque, and a hospice constructed in his name.44 He even despatched funds for that purpose. Amirud Din Sambhli, a courtier of Muhammad Shah (1719-1748), built a beautiful sarai in Sambhal.45 Nawab Asif Jah, during the reign of the same king, built a caravanserai and bridge in Deccan.46 Hussain Ali Khan of Barha built a sarai and a bridge in his locality.47

After the death of Muhammad Shah in A.D. 1748, the Punjab suffered a severe political setback. Central power declined and provincial Subedars of Lahore fought incessantly against invading Durranies and Marathas and the rising power of the Sikhs. Roadways were no longer safe and sarais were unattended to. In A.D. 1799, the Punjab was entirely taken over by the Sikhs. Their rule is a story of inverse development as far as architectural activities are concerned. In a state of political anarchy that characterized most of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the highways became the wounded arteries of national life which drained the blood from the economic body of the country. I do not know if ever during this anarchical period a new sarai was constructed or orders were given to repair the old ones.

When the British occupied the Punjab in 1849, they did not fail to realize that it had always been the gateway to the whole of the subcontinent, and that the Grand Trunk Road was of special significance to this area in particular and to the whole subcontinent in genera1.48 If the danger from the northwest was to be checked and local reserves of fighting men were to be tapped properly to reinforce the British army, this highway must be kept in first-rate condition and further improved. The first twenty-seven years of their reign, therefore, were spent in realigning this highway, making it metaled, constructing bridges, causeways and culverts wherever needed, and building their own sarais. It has been said that the terrain as followed by this highway in the Punjab is perhaps the most difficult and varied ever met by a road-builder. The story of the reconstruction of this highway has been graphically told by K.M. Sarkar in the work quoted above. The new road thus reconstructed hardly differed from the original alignment of the Mughal Highway. More often than not, it followed the former alignment, while at other places it ran parallel to it. Almost all old stations on the GTR such as Sarai Kachi (Gujranwala), Gakharr Cheema, Wazirabad, Gujrat, Kharian, Sarai Alamgir, Rewat, Margalla, Sarai Kala, Sarai Hasanabdal, Begum-ki-Sarai, and Peshawar, still occupy strategic positions on the new GTR. A few others such as Sarai Sheikhan, Eminabad, Khawaspura, Rohtas, Sarai Sultan, Sir Jalal, and Sarai Pukka are not far from it. One has to read the account of the Mughal Highway as given by William Finch49 and compare it with the British Highway as rebuilt from 1849 to 188650 and see how, right from the beginning, the route from Kabul to Peshawar and from Peshawar to Lahore, from most ancient to modern times, has practically never changed. The neywork of the routes in medieval India and Pakistan and the Mughal period and even today passed the cities built during the Sultanate period, bearing in mind the course of ancient routes. If something has changed, it is the institutions of sarais. Better roads, improved means of communications, better transport facilities, lack of time available to individuals, and fast-moving life obliterated the need for caravans to move in groups, the necessity of having night stopovers on the way, short halts for shade under fruit-bearing trees or beside stepped wells, and for taking direction and distances from huge kos minars on the way. The course of the modern GTR has shifted slightly towards the south here and there because traveling in the cool shade of the Himalayan foothills is no longer necessary.

This is the reason why all old sarais, baolis, kos minars, and even ancient bridges have become derelict and are vanishing quickly. It is time for the department concerned to step forward and save these historical landmarks.

Features and Functions of Mughal Sarais

Thus, although the initial alignment of the present-day GTR in Pakistan may date back to a very remote age, provision of various kinds of facilities for travelers on this highway started quite late. We have seen how our information on the subject prior to the coming of the Mughals in the sixteenth century AD. is scanty and incomplete. However, with the coming of the Mughals, the vista of our information, visual and literary, broadens considerably. We now have a well-established empire, with emperors eager to provide their empire with a solid foundation based on a well-organized road system, safe and quick communication, and safe and comfortable road journeys for armies, caravans, and individuals. We now have sufficient, though still not ample, information on how the system worked. Besides, we still have sufficient structural remains scattered allover the country to assist us in visualizing the entire system and interpreting its various functions. Here is a brief account of the system from A.D. 1526 to 1886.

Transport system

To begin with, it should be clear that from the Mauryan to the Mughal periods, traveling within the country, both for local people as well as foreigners, was regulated and controlled through a system of passports (mudra) duly issued and sealed by the Superintendent of Passports (Mudradhyaksha). At various points, there were inspection houses manned by the Superintendent of Meadows (Vivitadhyaksha) who would examine the traveling document of each party passing through that post. What these Inspection Houses looked like, we have no idea. 51

Suri sarais

The first clear picture of a sarai-as an institution and a building -- emerges during the reign of Sher Shah Suri and his son Salim (Islam) Shah Suri (A.D. 1539-1552). Suri sarais were built a distance of two kos apart with stepped wells (baolis, vapis, van or vao) and kos minars at more frequent intervals between every two sarais. Structurally, a sarai comprises a space, invariably a square space, enclosed by a rampart with one gateway called darwazah. As these ramparts were built with sun-dried bricks, they were referred to in later years as kacha sarais and compared to pakka or pukhta sarais of the Mughal period which were built of burnt bricks or stone blocks. Each sarai had rows of cells (khanaha) on all four sides. There were special rooms, one in each corner, and invariably in the center of each wall as well. These were called Khanaha-i-Padshahi, i.e., King's House or Government House reserved for state personnel on the move. There were separate khanaha or cells for Muslims and non-Muslims -- each served by attendants of their respective faiths. Inside each sarai there was a mosque and a well. Revenue-free land (madad-i-maash) was attached to each sarai to meet the salaries of the staff and other contingent expenditure. 52

The sarai acted both as a wayside inn for travelers and an official dak-chowki. Each sarai was run by an official called Shahna or Shiqdar with a number of caretakers (nigehban or chaukidar) to assist him. There was an imam of the mosque and a muezzin to call to prayer. Hot and cold water, together with bed-steads (charpai), edibles (khurdanz), and grain and fodder for the horses (dana-i-asp) were provided by the Government (Sarkar) free of charge. A physician was stationed at every sarai to look after the health of the people of the locality. Bakers were also settled in the sarais.53

Although there are many sarais attributed to the Suri period, only one definite Suri sarai of the type described above is reported in Pakistan. It was in Gujranwala and was called Kachi Sarai. It was extant until the 1950s but has since vanished except for its mosque. The model laid down by the Suri kings was never forgotten by later rulers. What we can observe in later period sarais is only an improved reflection of the prototype of Suri sarais.

Rabats, sarais, and dak-chowkis

According to Arthur Upham Pope, rabats were fortified frontier posts which, during the early Islamic period, were set up as a necessary defense against hostile non-Muslim peoples.54

While discussing the recently discovered Ghaurid period Mausoleum of Khaliq Wali at Khati Chour, Holy Edwards, an American scholar, pronounced this unique fortress-like mausoleum as being a rabat in its original conception. She has described a rabat as a small military outpost on the frontier of a kingdom or state that also accommodates small groups of travelers. If we accept this definition, we have this exceptional example in Pakistan.

Many scholars, on the other hand, regard rabat and sarai as one and the same thing. But there is a minute difference between the two. In Ma'sr-ul-Umara, we learn that Shaikh Farid Murtaza Khan Bukhari, a courtier of Jahangir, built several rabats and sarais. 56 Maulana Nadvi57 has made it clear that sarais were built alongside the highways for temporary stopovers by travelers whereas rabats and khanqahs (hospices) were built inside cities where people could stay for a longer period. These can be considered as guesthouses (mehman khana) or some type of hostelry-although they have never been mentioned under this title.

The Sarais of Sher Shah served both as sarais and dak-chowki and for that purpose two horses were kept in every sarai to convey news to the next station. 58 However, some scholars regard caravanserais as distinct from sarais-cum-dak-chowkis. The former concept developed in Pakistan, northern India, and Gujrat only in the fifteenth century. Caravanserais were invariably private establishments or created by endowments, whereas dak-chowkis were state properties. The dak-post-cum-sarai were usually smaller in size than the sarais. Postal messengers and noblemen (Mirzas) were not supposed to stay in caravanserais which were usually reserved for middle-class people, businessmen, and merchants. In caravanserais, again, the clients were charged moderately but not so in sarais-cum-dak-posts. Caravanserais in cities were usually established by endowments by individuals, organizations, and even by governments but gradually these tended to become rent-yielding properties.

Purpose

The Mughal rulers took upon themselves the responsibility of building roads and bridges and providing halting stations along the way because such arrangements were beneficial militarily, economically, and socially. An efficient road system, with well-supplied halting stations, secure highways, and well-protected fortified places -- as these sarais always were-guaranteed easy passage for armies to guard their frontiers. It also encouraged the caravans and merchants to move along with their valuable merchandise from one place to another with a feeling of security. Establishment of sarais also provided people of the area with ample opportunities for employment and services. Major cities and towns subsequently developed around many sarais built in isolated places. Of course, in times of war and invasion, the villages and cities located on more frequented routes suffered a lot too. Sarais and dak-chowkis helped develop an efficient system of postal communication. Buildings which were just dak-chowkis were also constructed at certain places. One such dak-post, recently repaired under the supervision of the author, can be seen next to the roadside near Wazirbad. The sarais with their monumental gateways, baolis with their towering pavilions, and kos minars with cylindrical masonry columns, 20-30 feet high, guided travelers and caravans to their destinations and helped them cover long distances. Resting places and road-markers such as sarais, kos minars, and baolis were actually an outcome of the development of a centralized state.

Types

A cursory classification of existing remains of known caravanserais along the GTR from Peshawar to Delhi reveal at least five types according to their architectural features and functions:

The Fort-cum-Sarai

Every sarai was basically fortified in a sense that its gates or gate were closed at night and that its four wells usually had no other outlets except the main gate or gates. The earliest type we come across had only one gateway and four solid cornered bastions. Sarai Damdama, Mathura, of the sixteenth century but of pre-Mughal days, with solid pentagonal bastions, is one such example. No such example has survived in Pakistan. The Gakhar period Sarai Rewat, usually called Reway Fort near Rawalpindi can perhaps be classified in this category because it has merlons on the walls, high enough to conceal a soldier behind each, and rows of single cells below without having a veranda in front of each cell as is usual in all sarais. But it is unique in that it has three gates instead of one as in the pre-Mughal era.

The Wayside Sarai

This was perhaps the most common type seen along the roadsides running between big cities or urban centres. It differs from the fort-cum-sarai in two respects. It always had two gateways and usually a few larger rooms (Khanaha-i-Padshahi) in the four corners with side walls. The Akbar period sarai at Chapperghat, south of Kanauj,59 Sarai Nur Mahal in India, Begum-ki-Sarai (of the Akbar or Jahangir period, though with a single gateway), and Sarai Kharbuza Qahangir period) near Rawalpindi, in Pakistan, are good examples. In such sarais, there was usually a bazar, a mosque, and a well-all within the four walls of the sarai.

The town-sarai or rabat

This type of sarai was built as an integral part of an urban center. The Agra Gate Sarai at Fatehpur Sikri and Sarai Ekdilabad, District of Etawa (Shah Jahan period) in India are perhaps good examples. The Sarai Wazir Khan adjoining Delhi Gate in Lahore60 with its colossal public hamam is one example in Pakistan. But its full plan is difficult to exhume today owing to the erection of modern buildings on the site. At least one scholar has interpreted the original building of Khaliq Wali Tomb at Khati Chaur as a rabat with the meaning of a military border post-cumsarai (see above: rabat-sarai and dak-chowkis).

The custom-clearing sarai/sarai with double compound

The Badarpur Sarai near Delhi, with its two compounds, joined together through a common gateway, is unique. Here, entry to the bigger sarai would be through its northern gate, where the traveler waited before being allowed to pass into the adjoining smaller sarai through the connecting door and went out through the southern gate of the smaller sarai after his documents had been checked and clearance obtained. No such type has ever survived in Pakistan.

The mausoleum-cum-garden sarai

This type comprises sarais attached to a garden or mausoleum. The Arab sarai attached to Humayan's tomb in Delhi and the so-called Akbari Sarai attached to Dilamiz Garden (later the Jahangir's Mausoleum) at Shahdara near Lahore are such examples. The mosque of Sarai Akbari certainly belongs to the Suri period, though its rows of cells and three gates belong to the Shah Jahan period. One of the gates provides access to the mausoleum-garden of Jahangir.

The farood gah or royal halting station

Though this is not a typical caravanserai, it belongs to that category because it also served as a temporary halting station, though only for royalty. A typical example of such a halting station is the Wah Garden together with its hamam and an attached forood gah or resting-house. The Hiran Minar near Shaikhupura together with its royal residence, a vast tank and double story pavilion61 can also be regarded as such though it provided a temporary halt for the emperor and his entourage but for an altogether different purpose, namely hunting, shooting, and recreation.

Gateways

The earliest sarai of the Suri period, or even earlier, had only one gateway in one of its four walls. This type continued during the Akbar period as shown by the Arab Sarai at Delhi and Begum-i-Sarai at Attock with only one entrance gate. Normally, Mughal period sarais had two monumental gateways-one located in front of the other in two walls facing each other. Akbari Sarai at Shahdara, Sarai Kharbuza near Rawalpindi, and Pakka Sarai near Gujar Khan are such examples. Two nearer examples in the Indian Punjab are the Jahangir period sarai at Fatehbad62 and another at Doraha.63 A gateway seldom had a fixed size in relation to the size of the sarai itself. It was usually built high and monumental so that it was visible even at a distance, thereby serving the same purpose as that of a kos minar. As seen in the case of Fatehabad and Ooraha Sarais, the gateways were invariably decorated with variegated designs set in a mosaic of glazed tiles. Unfortunately, no such decoration has survived in any of the sarais recorded in Pakistan. These gateways were often two stories with enough rooms to accommodate the shiqdar or shahna and nigehbanl chowkidar. See for example the gateways of Akbari Sarai, Sarai Pakka, and Sarai Sheikhan. The main gateway of Sarai Rewat in its eastern wall looks as if it has two storeys but actually it is a single-storey structure without an elaborate system of attached rooms.

Shapes.

As a rule, all sarais were square in shape. However, in certain cases and depending on the lie of the ground, one side was slightly larger than the other. In Pakistan, Sarai Kharbuza (420' x 420'), Begum-ki-Sarai (323' x 323'), and Sarai Pakka (300 x 300 paces) are examples of perfect squares. The Gakkhar period sarai at Rewat (323.6' x 321.6') and Sarai Sultan (560' x 540') are almost square. Sarai Akbari at Shahdara (797' x 610') is oblongish, whereas Sarai Kala near Taxila is a perfect rectangle (137.5' x 375') with a single (?) gate in its eastern wall. This shape was by choice and not dictated by the terrain. The only other example of a perfect rectangle that has come to my knowledge so far is Raja-ki-Sarai (Agra) with its two gateways set in two shorter walls and one in a longer wall. The gateway of Sarai Kala has been set in one of the long walls. On the Ferozepur Road, near the Central Jail, there used to be a Jahangir period sarai called Sarai Gola Wala,64 which is reported to have been octagonal in layout like some Persian sarais.65 The Sarai Agra Oarwaza ar Fatehput Sikri is irregular in shape.

Disposition of Cells

Inside a sarai, living quarters comprised cells which were invariably of uniform size in all four walls. In front of each cell there was usually a veranda to provide protection from sun and rain as well as to admit indirect light into the cells. No window or ventilator was allowed inside the cell. Sarai Rewat is the exception where there is no veranda in front of the cells. The corner rooms (octagonal or round) were usually set inside the corner bastions and were always larger than the normal cells. These were used by dignitaries or even used as stores. Like ordinary cells, corner rooms too were not provided with a window or ventilator. However, the corner rooms of the Begum-ki-Sarai are exceptions to this rule. Here, all four corner rooms have openings. The openings in two octagonal corner bastions along the western wall provide a beautiful view of the mighty Indus river. The corner rooms of this sarai are the most elaborate. Each is a suite of one large elliptical hall with a veranda in front, an octagonal room at the back, two side rooms, and a set of two staircases leading to the roof We see the comparable arrangement at Sarai Rewat and Sarai Kharbuza. Only Sarai Sultan near Rohtas has a set of larger rooms in the center of the eastern and western walls like the ones in Ooraha Sarai already quoted. Sometimes, in one of the corner rooms, a Turkish hamam was installed such as in Ooraha Sarai just referred to. These hamams inside a sarai were first introduced by Jahangir and copied by some later rulers. But no sarai with a hamam has been reported in Pakistan. Only Oamdama Sarai, Mathura, had solid pentagonal corner towers. All others are either octagonal or circular and are always hollow. The corner tower rooms at Akbari Sarai are square with chambered corners from within and each has a set of two small adjoining oblong rooms. Sarai Kharbuza near Taxila, on the other hand, has two octagonal rooms one set behind the other in each corner. The back room is actually a corner bastion protruding outside the walls of the sarai.

Mosque, bazar, and well inside a Sarai

If there were two gates to a sarai, there was often a bazar in the center of each sarai running from gate to gate.66 It probably comprised of shops of makeshift materials as no permanent structure has ever been discovered inside a sarai. In Pakistan, probably, the Sarai Rewat, Serai Kharbuze, Akbari Sarai at Shahdara, and Sarai Sultan, Rohtas had this arrangement. Elsewhere only at Agra Gate Sarai, Fatehpur Sikri was there a row of permanent shops, but then these were along the outer facade of the sarai and not inside it.67

Somewhere in the open courtyard, a mosque was provided for the faithful such as in Pakka Sarai, Begum-ki-Sarai,68 Sultan Sarai, and Sarai Kharbuza. At times, such a mosque was constructed in the middle of the western wall of the Sarai-as in Akbari Sarai, Sarai Rewat, and Sarai Kala. At the last site, it is slightly off-center. The mosques inside the sarais ranged from a single-domed chamber (as in Sarai Pakka and Sarai Kharbuza) to imposing three-domed structures as seen in Sarai Akbari and Sarai Rewat. Sarai Pakka is unique in that it originally contained two mosques, one for men in the courtyard (it was intact until 1968 when I studied it for the first time but has now been rebuilt completely) and another for women in the western wall (now in complete ruins). Except in the case of sarais close to urban centers, mosques were excluded from the four walls of a sarai such as Chapperghat Sarai.

Invariably, close to the mosques inside the sarai was a burnt-brick well such as in Pakka Sarai, Sarai Sheikhan, Sarai Kharbuza, and Sultan Sarai. Wells catering for the needs of Begum-ki-Sarai, Akbari Sarai, and Sarai Rewat can be found outside the four walls of the sarais proper. The well inside Sarai Kharbuza was in the form of a baoli or vao. As in case of Sarai Sultan and Sarai Pakka, baolis are sometimes found immediately outside a sarai.

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Part 2 of 2

Staircases

At the main gateways, staircases of two stories were usually provided on either side. Usually staircases were also provided at one or both sides of the special rooms (Khanaha-i-Padshah) or the corner bastions such as at Pakka Sarai and Begum-ki-Sarai.

Parapets

Parapets were usually in the form of medium-sized battlements such as in Begum-ki-Sarai or Sarai Rewat. The merions in the case of Rewat give it the appearance of a fortress. But at other places, such as Sarai Kharbuza and Sarai Pakka, the parapets are simple and plain.

Inscriptions

No proper inscription has been found in any of the surviving sarais in Pakistan. Only some scribbling belonging to different periods has been reported from Begum-ki-Sarai at Attock.69 Outside Pakistan, two Persian inscriptions are known from Sarai Ekdilbad, near Etawa, commemorating the simultaneous construction of a mauza (villageltown), a sarai, and a garden by Shah Jahan.70 Sarai Amanat Khan, built in 1640-1641 by Ahmanat Khan himself, the famous calligrapher of the Taj Mahal, also bears a dedicatory inscription on the west gate71 Sarai Nur Mahal near Phillour (East Punjab, India), the most impressive of all sarais in the Punjab built by Empress Nur Jahan, also bears a dedicatory inscription with two dates A.H. 1028 (A.D. 1618) and A.H. 1030 (A.D. 1620).72

Hamams

Turkish hamams of the Roman thermae type were a speciality of the Mughals and were introduced by them into the subcontinent. Their palaces (Lahore Fort), gardens (Shalamar, Lahore, and Wah Gardens at Hasanabdal), and even some of their sarais (Sarai Itamadud Daula at Doraha), were provided with elaborate hamams. It was Jahangir (A.D. 1605-1628) who introduced hamam into sarais. This practice was continued by others. In none of the sarais in Pakistan is such a hamam known to have survived. However, we have a beautiful and colossal public hamam, attached to, though structurally detached from, Sarai Wazir Khan, inside Delhi Gate, Lahore. It has now been renovated. Wah Gardens, a place officially known as Farood Gah-i-Shahinshah-i-Mughalia or the Resting Place of the Mughal Emperors and therefore to be considered as a category of sarai or temporary residence, has an elaborate hamam of which only the foundations have survived.73

Distances

There is some confusion as regards the exact distance between two sarais, baolis, and kos minars of the Mughal period. The difficulty is due to the conversion of a kos or krohlkrosa into English miles. The former appears to have been measured differently at various times. We know from Sarwani that Sher Shah built his sarais at a distance of two kos.74 His son Salim Shah added one more sarai in between every two built by his father. Thus making the distance between two sarais equal to one koso Sarkar, on the other hand, states that Suri sarais were situated 10 kos apart75 whereas sarais of Jahangir's period according to his own decree were 8 kos apart on the road from Agra to Lahore?6 Following this, the East India Company established Dak bungalows on the highways at 10 mile intervals.77 But, on the other hand, we know from Akbar Nama that the distance between Sarai Hasanabdal and Sarai Zainuddin Ali on the way to Attock was 4.25 kroh and 5 mans (app. 5 krohs as usually accepted) which is usually estimated to equal 10.5 English miles.78 Now, the Akbari kroh has been estimated to equal 5,000 ilahi gaz (of 30" length) or 4,250 English yards.79 As the distance between Peshawar and Lahore is about 264 miles, there must have been at least 26 sarais between these two stations, of which 20 can easily be recognized or presumed to have existed.

Attendants

Nicholas Withington (1612-1616) while writing about a sarai between Ajmer and Agra talks about "hostesses to dress our victuals if we please."8o Peter Mundy also talks about female attendants in sarais.81 However, no such reference has ever been made by a native writer. Perhaps they refer to female attendants, who together with their males were appointed to cook food for travelers in these sarais and about whom Khafi Khan has written that all Bhatiaras and Bhatiarnain of India are the descendants of these very cooks (nan-bais).82

Charges

We know that in the early days of the sarais, both accommodation and food were free. During the Mauryan period, there used to be charitable lodging houses under government control wherein free accommodation was granted to heretical travelers and to ascetics and Brahmins, whereas artisans, artists, and traders were required to lodge with their co-professionals in what can be called as guest-houses attached to their places of work.83 During Feroze Shah Tughlaq's reign, travelers were provided with free board and lodging for three days. However, some of the sarais, especially those created out of endowments, tended to become rent-earning establishments. Sarai Wazir Khan, inside Delhi Gate, Lahore was certainly one such example whose income, together with that of the grand hamam nearby, supported Wazir Khan's Mosque.84 We also learn from some early western travelers that the charge per room around 1634 was about 1 to 3 pice and 3 dams per day inclusive of stabling for horses and cooking space.85

Caravanserais Remains

Our knowledge of caravanserais along the Grand Trunk Road between Calcutta and Agra-Oelhi is perfunctory. However, under Mughal rule -- particularly from Jahangir onward-we are not that poor as regards written information and even actual remains, particularly for the part of ancient GTR that stretched from Agra to Lahore and onward to Peshawar. We have an almost perfect alignment of the road from Agra to Lahore as it existed in 1611 and described by William Finch. He lists the following important stations on this section: Agra, Rankata, Bad-ki Sarai, Akbarpur, Hodal, Palwal, Faridabad, Delhi, Narela, Ganaur, Panipat, Karnal, Thanesar, Shahabad, Ambala, Aluwa Sarai, Sirhind, Ooraha (Sarai), Phillaur-kiSarai, Nakodar, Sultanpur, Fatehpur (Vairowal), Hogee Moheed (Taran Taran?), Cancanna Sarai (Khan-i-Sarai), and Lahore.86

Ruins of some interesting sarais are still traceable in that part of the GTR which once passed through Haryana and the East Punjab in India. These include Nur Mahal Sarai near Phillaur built by Empress Nur Jahan; the Sarai at Ghauranda between Panipat and Kamal; Sarai Amanat Khan on the Taran Taran-Attari Road built by Amanat Khan, the calligrapher of the Taj Mahal; Ohakhini Sarai south of the village of Mahlian Kalan on the Nakodar-Kapurthala Road; Ooraha Sarai at Ooraha south of the Ludhiana-Khanna Road; and Sarai Lashkari Khan twelve kilometers west of Khanna on the GTR in the Ludhiana district.87

Sarai Amanat Khan is probably the last existing stretch of the GTR, before the latter enters into present-day Pakistan via Burj and Raja Tall in India to Purani Bhaini in Pakistan and then straight to Manhala Khan-i-Khanan after the name of Abdul Rahim Khan-i-Khan, the famous general of Akbar and Jahangir. Our journey along the GTR in Pakistan begins here. Here once stood the Sarai Khan-i-Khan, most probably the Cancanna Sarai already mentioned by William Finch. This sarai is no more. But, outside the village, a Mughal period kos minar, one of a pair in the locality, still provides positive evidence of the ancient GTR. One of the two kos minars at Manhala has recently disappeared. The other is also not safe as it has a big hole whereby it could collapse without the slightest malevolent human interference.

From Manhala of Khan-i-Khana, the road used to go to Brahmanabad where an interesting baoli with a small pavilion is now in very poor state and will soon be filled in if no remedial action is taken. From here, the road goes to Mahfuzpura Cantonment where an elegant baoli with a double-ringed well and an imposing two-story domed pavilion has given the site its present name of Baoli Camp. It has been recently repaired by army personnel. Then the road goes to Shahu Garhi where the best-preserved kos minar near the railway line is being encroached upon by modern dwellings. Shahu Garhi is only a few minutes away from Chowk Dara Shikoh and then to the Delhi Gate for entry into the Walled City of Lahore. Here just beside the gate was Sarai Wazir Khan next to a grand public hamam also built by Wazir Khan.

Retracing our steps to mainland India, from Sarai Amanat Khan there was a shorter route which bypassed Lahore and directly reached Eminabad passing through Amritsar in India and Pull Shah Daula in Pakistan. At the latter site we have one of the best-preserved of all Mughal period bridges. This bridge was built on Nala Dek by the famous saint, Shah Jahan. We shall come back to this bridge later.

The Walled City of Lahore marked the starting point of three routes: the road to Delhi and Agra from Delhi Gate on the eastern side, the road to Multan to the south side from the Lahori Gate, and the road to Peshawar from the north side through the Khizri or Kashmiri Gate.

The ancient route to Multan has not so far been studied properly. A hurried survey by the author brought to light a number of remains of ancient sarai along this road, one each at Sarai Chheamba, Sarai Mughal, Sarai Harappa, Sarai Siddhu, and Sarai Khatti Chaur-the last named sarai is different from the rabat at the same site as mentioned above. The Mughal-period sarai at this site was partially excavated by the author during the conservation of the Mughal-period mosque which is probably part of the sarai.

The present study is confined to the GTR going towards the north. For this purpose, the ferry passage over the River Ravi was from the Khizri Gate over to Shahdara-the King's way to Lahore. The precise course of the ancient GTR between Shahdara and Gujranwala is not clear at all points, but it was certainly a little north of the present course. At Shahdara, we have the best-preserved sarais in all Pakistan. Originally built during the Suri period as its mosque still testifies, the present edifice with its three magnificent gateways dates back to Shah Jahan's period. As it was sandwiched between two great monuments -- the Mausoleum-garden ofJahangir and the Mausoleum-garden of Asif Khan -- it served both and hence was saved for posterity.

From Shahdara, the road moves northward passing through Rana Town where, until they were both filled in in 1987, there were two baolis next to the present GTR. From Rana Town, it takes a turn to cross Nullah Deg at Bahmanwali/Chak 46. The crossing is still marked by an ancient bridge and the ruins of a sarai nearby. From here it went straight to Sarai Shaikhan (also called Pukhta Sarai), where a magnificent paneled gateway and an ancient well stand in ruinous condition. From Sarai Shaikhan the road goes to Tapiala Dost Muhammad via Kot Bashir (Chhaoni site and a baoli) to Dera Kharaba (baoli), Tapiala Dost Muhammad (mausoleum) for the onward journey to Pull Shah Daula with an ancient bridge on Nallah Deg, and monuments at Baba Jamna. It continues on to Gunaur, Wahndoki (ancient mound), and Eminabad, where a number of monuments-ancient bridge, baoli, mosque, and tank-give the area some sanctity. Finally, it reaches Kachi Sarai at Gujranwala.88 This sarai, built of mud brick in the characteristic Suri fashion, was intact until about half a century ago. Today, it has totally vanished, leaving behind its central mosque. The baoli of the sarai has also been filled in. The huge vacant area nearby for army encampments (parao) has also been covered with modern constructions. From Eminabad to Gujranwala, I examined a few baolis and a portion of the ancient GTR, with brick-paved berms during my survey in 1987. From Gujranwala, it passes through Gakkhar Gheema, Dhaunkal (baoli, ancient mosque), and Wazirbad (dak-chowki), crosses Nullah Palkhow and the River Chenab, and reaches Gujrat. The dak-chowki at Wazirbad has recently been repaired by the author, but the Akbar-period fort and baoli and a public hamam inside the fort at Gujrat, are seriously threatened. Gujrat was an important station on the ancient GTR as it is on the present-day national highway. From here emanate four roads to Kashmir via Bhimber (where there is a sarai still today), to Lahore via Eminbad just described, and to Lahore by a loop road via Shaikhupura (with a hunting ground at Hiran Minar and an elegant baoli at Jandiala Sher Khan), Hafizabad, and then to Rasul Nagar. The fourth road goes to Peshawar via Khawaspura on Bhimber Nullah, passes through a village called Baoli Sharif (baoli), Kharian with two baolis, a British-period sarai (now partially filled in), on to Sarai Alamgir (sarai and mosque), and crosses the Jhelum River to reach Jhelum city with the Mangla Fort some miles north of it. From here the ancient road deviates a little to the south and goes to the Rohtas Fort with two baolis and an ancient mosque within the fort. Sarai Sultan with a small baoli on the opposite bank of the River Kahan is fully occupied by a modern village -- its main gate and the baoli are also endangered. Midway between Sarai Sultan and Domeli still stand the remains of a huge baoli but without a pavilion -- it is called Khoji baoli.

From Sarai Sultan to Sar Jalal or Jalal Khurd, the path of the ancient road is not clear. It certainly passed through Khojki (baoli) and Domeli where there are hot water springs and another baoli (reported) nearby. But where did the ancient road cross the hot water springs mountain? We are not sure. In historical accounts, at least four stations have been mentioned, namely Rohtas Khurd, Saeed Khan, Naurangabad, and Chokuha between Rohtas and Jalal Khurd. Rohtas Khurd may correspond to Sultan Sarai, but identification of the others remains uncertain. At Jalal Khurd (modern Sar Jalal) we come across the ruins of a sarai (?), an ancient pakka tank, and a T ughlaq-period mosque. From here, the ancient road led to Rewat passing on the way through Dhamyak (grave of Sultan Muhammad Ghori), Hattiya, Mahsa, and Pakka Sarai off Gujar Khan. The Pakka Sarai has survived on the high bank of a hilly torrent.89 It has a well and two mosques inside it and a small baoli outside. At Kallar Sayyidan too, two bao/is have been reported. From here the road reaches Rewat Fort which actually marks the site of a preMughal Sarai with a grand mosque inside it. At Rewat, the modern GTR joins up with the ancient road again.

The course of the ancient road from Rewat to Sarai Kharbuza, once again, is not clear. We once had two square stone bao/is within the fork of the Islamabad-Rawalpindi Road near Rewat, now filled in, and that is all. There are usually two stations in European accounts, namely Lashkari and Rawalpindi. The ancient road probably bypassed presentday Rawalpindi to the north and went straight first to the Pharwala fort and then across the Soan River to Golra Sharif. Two kos minars once stood near Golra railway station. These are still on the record of the Department of Archaeology as protected monuments but are there no more. Onward at Sarai Kharbuza near Tarnol and Sangjani we meet the remains of a saraiwith a baoli and mosque inside it.90 From Sarai Kharbuza, an off-shoot of the GTR went north through Shah Allah Ditta over the mountain to Kainthala for the onward journey to Dhamtaur near Abbotabad as a short cut to Kashmir. At Kainthala we still have a baoli with fresh drinking water and the remains of an ancient road and an ancient site called Rajdhani, a seat of government.

From Sarai Kharbuza, the main GTR goes to Margala Pass where the modern GTR meets it and Attock. At the Margala Pass and under the shadow of the towering Nicholson monument, we still have a considerable stretch of stone-paved road with a Persian inscription from the period of the Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb Alamgir (1658-1705). The stone slab has now been removed and preserved in the Lahore Fort. The historic Giri Fort is not far from the Margalla Pass. From Margalla, the modern GTR joins the ancient one at least as far as Hasanabdal. On the way there are the dilapidated remains of a sarai at Sarai Kala of which only the gateway and mosque remain. At Sarai Kala we meet the remains of an ancient bridge on Kalapani. From this bridge onward, the alignment of the ancient road is marked by the magnificent Laoser Baoli within the Wah Cantonment, the remains of the beautiful Wah Gardens with a Farood Gah-i-Shahinshah-i-Mughalia -- that is to say, the Resting Place of the Mughal Emperors built by Jahangir (1605-1628)-and then another square sarai at Hasanabdal with a sacred tank and two mausoleums. From Hasanabdal onward the road goes to Burhan where once stood to be Sarai Zainud Din Ali (not yet located), to Hattian (Saidan Baoli), to Kamra (Chitti Baoli), Behram Baradari (small walled garden), Begum-ki-Sarai (sarai, mosque, and a square kos minar), and finally Attock where there is still an impressive fort from the Akbar period (1556-1605) with a Persian inscription and an ancient well, a baoli on the bank of Dakhnir Nullah south of Rumain, and the pillars of a boat-bridge from the Akbar period on the Indus River.

Beyond Attock, the ancient road probably used to run northward as does the modern GTR, although the path of the ancient GTR between Attock and Peshawar is not very clear. Very few historical landmarks have so far been recorded between these two historic cities. I know of only one ancient stepped well or baoli just beside the modern GTR near Aza Khe! Payan (Pir Payai railway station), between Nowsherhra and Peshawar. Khushhal Khan Khattack's garden-pavilion at Vallai near Akora Khattack was also probably not far from the path of the ancient GTR. Otherwise, a few more baolis have recently been located between Peshawar and Attock by a team from Peshawar University but they are mostly modern. No report has so far been published. The only definite landmark in this region is the famous Sarai Jahan Aura Begum at Peshawar built by Princess Jahan Aura, daughter of Shah Jahan (1627- 1658), who after the death of her mother became the First Lady of the Empire. Her sarai is popularly known as Gop Khatri as it was built on top of an ancient site of the same name which dated from the second century B.C. The gateway to this sarai is currently being repaired. Very few original cells have been preserved. Qila Bala Hisar in the same city also provides a landmark and fixes a point on the GTR for the onward journey to Kabul. Beyond that point, there are only three more landmarks: Jamrud (Fort), Ali Masjid (famous for its Buddhist Stupa), and Landikotal (Shapoola Stupa). Whether there are remains of any sarai, baoli, kos minar, or dak-chowki between Peshawar and Jalalabad, I am not sure. No published information is available, but the author is hopeful that a survey may reveal some interesting information.

This section is a brief account of the ancient course of the Grand Trunk Road (and its halting stations) which has marked the history of the whole of Northern India as it is today. Along this road marched not only the mighty armies of conquerors, but also the caravans of traders, scholars, artists, and common folk. Together with people, moved ideas, languages, customs, and cultures, not just in one, but in both directions. At different meeting places -- permanent as well as temporary -- people of different origins and from different cultural backgrounds, professing different faiths and creeds, eating different food, wearing different clothes, and speaking different languages and dialects would meet one another peacefully. They would understand one another's food, dress, manners and etiquette, and even borrow words, phrases, idioms and, at times, whole languages from others. As a result of this exchange of people and ideas along this ancient road and in its caravanserais, beside the cooling waters of the stepped wells and in the cool shade of their pavilions, waiting at the crossroads and under the shadows of the mighty kos minars, the seeds of new ways of life, new cultures, and new peoples took root. This was the role of this mighty highway that connected Central Asia with the subcontinent of Pakistan and India. The devastation wrought by invading armies has been forgotten. Merchandise bought and sold has been lost. But the seeds of cultural exchange sown along this road have taken root and given shape to new cultural phenomena that have determined the course of life today along these routes. Here lies the value of the ancient Grand Trunk Road and the halting stations on it.

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Notes:

1. K.M. Sarkar, The Grand Trunk Road in the Punjab: 1849-1886 (Lahore: Punjab Government Record Office Publications, 1926), p. 8, (Monograph No. I).

2. John Wiles, The Grand Trunk Road in the Punjab: Kyber to Calcutta (London: 1972), pp. 7-16. Rudyard Kipling, as quoted by Wiles (p. 8), described this road as a mighty way "bearing, without crowding India's traffic for 1,500 miles such a River of life as nowhere else exists in the world. "

3. Sir James Douie, North West Frontier Province, Punjab and Kashimir, p. 126, see Sarkar, Grand Trunk Road, p. 7.

4. H.L.O. Garret in Sarkar, Grand Trunk Road, Prefatory Note.

5. John Wiles, Grand Trunk Road, p. 7.

6. The part of the Silk Road which passed through Pakistan corresponds to the Grand Trunk Road from Peshawar to Lahore. However, at Lahore, instead of going straight to Delhi, it bent southward and, while embracing the present-day National Highway, it used to terminate at Barbaricon near Karachi and joined the Sea Route. Alexander the Great also followed the same road up to the River Beas. Later invaders, almost without exception, followed the same road to reach the coveted throne of Delhi.

7. Sarkar, Grand Trunk Road, pp. 7-8.

8. See Preface by VS. Agrawala in Moti Chandra, Trade and Routes in Ancient India (New Delhi, 1977), p. vi.

9. Ibid., p. 78; Also see R.P. Kangle, The Kantiliya's Arthasastra, reprinted with Urdu translation by Shan-ul-Haq Haqqi, and Muqadama by Muhammad Ismail (Zabeeh Karachi, 1991), bk. 4, sec. 116, pp. 17-26 (Hamavata Path), and bk. 2. See 22.31 for width of roads.

10. Kangle, Kantiliya's Arthasastra, bk. 2, sec. 19.19 and 38.

11. Ibid., sec. 22, pp. 1-3. Asthaniya was located at the center of800 villages, whereas a dronamukha was at the center of 400 villages (sec. 19.

12. It was on account of and along this Royal Road that Megasthenes could travel to lands never before beheld by Greek eyes. It was maintained by a Board of Works (See Megasthenes' Indika, Fragments 3, 4 and 34, in J.W McCrindle, Ancient India as described by Megasthenes and Arrian (London, 1877), pp. 50, 86. XV I. II. According to Megasthenes, this Royal Road was measured by scheoni (1 scheonus = 40 stadia = one Indian yojana = 4 krosas or kos) and its total length was 10,000 stadia, i.e., about 1,000 koso He also states that there was an authoritative register of the stages on the Royal Road from which Erastothenes derived his estimates of distances between various places in India.

13. Sarkar, Grand Trunk Road, p. 2.

14. Megasthenes' Indika. Ten stadia are usually regarded as equal to 2,022.5 yards or one kos of 4,000 haths--according to some, 8,000 haths. These pillars were meant to show the by-roads and distances. There is great difference of opinion as to what the correct measure of one kos or krosa is-some regard it as less than 3 miles while others regard it as equal to 1.75 miles (2.8 kilometers). Traditionally and within our own memory, a koswas about 2.5 English miles (4 kilometers). For details see Radha Kumud Mookerjee Asoka, 3d ed. (Delhi, 1962), p. 188 wherein he regards 8 kosas equal to 14 miles i.e., I kos = 1.75 miles. Also see Moti Chandra, Trade and Trade Routes in Ancient India (New Delhi, 1977), p. 78.

15. Kangle, The Kautiliya Arthashastra, bk. 2, sec. 56.5.

16. "On the high roads, too, banyan trees were caused to be planted by me that they might give shade to cattle and men, mango-gardens (amba-vadikya) were caused to be planted and wells to be dug by me, at each half kos (adhakosikyam) nimisdhaya were caused to be built, many watering stations (aparani) were caused to be established by me, here and there, for the comfort of cattle and men." See the Seven Pillar Edicts, part 7, as on Dehli-Topra Pillar in Radha Kumud Mookerji, Asoka, pp. 186-93. Also see Dr. R. Bhandarkar, Asoka, 2d ed. (Calcutta, 1932), p. 353.

17. "Nimisdhaya" (Skt. nisdya) has often been translated as "rest-house." Luder, however, translates it as "Steps down to water." Hultzseh also follows Luder. But Woolner and some others do not accept this meaning and are probably right. See also discussion on this word in E. Hultzseh, Corpus Inscription Indicarum, vol. I.

18. Sarkar, Grand Trunk Road, p. 2.

19. Mookerji, Asoka, p. 189, note 3.

20. Moti Chandra, Trade, p. ix. He talks about wells and trees but not the "rest houses" built by Asoka, p. 79. He probably agrees with Luder as regards the meaning of "nimisdhaya" as "stepped well," i.e., baoli.

21. V.S. Agrawala, suggests that, as Kangs were the originators of a canal system in Central Asia in the seventh centuty B.C., Sakas (Scythians) from the same region introduced stepped wells or baolis in the second century B. C.

22. B. Rowland, Art in Ajghanistan. Objects from the Kabul Museum (London: Allen Lane the Penguin Press, 1971), p. 21.

23. Moti Chandra, Trade, p. 19.

24. Saifur Rahman Dar, "The Silk Road and Buddhism in Pakistani Contexts," Lahore Museum Bulletin, vol. I, no. 2 (July-December 1988): pp. 29-53.

25. Moti Chandra, Trade, p. 84. The silence of these travelers about these facilities can be easily explained. As devout Buddhists, they always preferred to stay in Buddhist monasteries which were numerous in those days. Their doors were always open to travelers-pious and lay alike.

26. Muhammad Qasim Farishta, Tarikh-i-Farishta, trans. Abdul Hayee Khawaja (Lahore, 1974), pan I, p. 136. See also MaulanaAbdul Salam Nadvi, Rafo-i-Ama ke kam, Darul Musanafeen, series no. 93 (Azim Garh: n.a.), p. 40. In Briggs' translation of Farishta's history, however, there is no mention of a sarai on the DelhiDaulatabad toad or elsewhere. Instead, Muhammad Tughlaq is reported to have planted shady trees in rows along this road to provide travelers with shade, while poor travelers were fed on this road at public expense. He is also said to have established hospitals for the sick and almshouses for widows and orphans; see Muhammad Qasim Farishta, History of the Rise of the Mahomedan Power in India till the Year 1612, English translation by John Briggs, 4 volumes (1829; reprint Delhi: Low Price Publications, 1990), vol. I, pp. 236 and 242.

27. Shams Siraj Afeef, Tarikh-i-Feroze Shahi, Urdu trans. by Maulvi Muhammad Fida Ali Talib (Karachi: Nafees Academy, 1%5), p. 23. See also R. Nath, History of Sultanate Architecture (New Delhi: Abhinav Publications, 1978), p. 59. From Muhammad Qasim Farishta we learn that Firoze Tughlaq not only repaired the caravanserais built by his predecessors but also built 100 sarais of his own; see Muhammad Qasim Farishta, History of the Rise of the Mohamedan Power in India, vol. 1, pp. 267-70. He also built several other public amenities such as dams, bridges, reservoirs, public wells, public baths and monumental pillars. He set aside lands for the maintenance of these public buildings.

28. Abdul Salam Nadvi, Rafi-i-Ama ke kam, p. 40 quotes Mirat-i-Sikandari, p. 75, for this information.

29. Nadvi, Rafo-i-Ama ke kam, p. 40. Also Qasim Farishta, History of the Rise of the Mohamedan Power in India, vol. 1, p. 186.

30. Abbas Khan Serwani, "Tarikh-i-Sher Shah" in History of India as told by its Historians, edited by H.M. Elliot and John Dowson, vol. 4 (London, 1872), pp. 417-18. See also Rizqullah Mushtaki, Waqiat-i-Mushtaki, in the same volume; Zulfiqar Ali Khan, Sher Shah Suri: Emperor of India (Lahore, 1925); and Hashim Ali Khan (alias Khaft Khan), Mutakhabut-Tawarikh, Urdu translation by Muhmud Ahmad Faruqui, vol. 1 (Karachi: Nafees Academy, 1963), pp. 127-28. The more important roads include the Grand Trunk Road from Sonargaon to the Nilab (Indus River) and those from Lahore to Multan via Harappa and from Agra to Mandu. On the Multan-Lahore Road, there still exist two sarais, namely Sarai Chheemba close to Bhai Pheru (Phul Nagar) and Sarai Mughal near Baloki Headworks. Another Pakka Sarai attributed to Sher Shah Suti was standing as late as 1964, almost in front of the present-day Harappa Museum. A considerable length of an ancient road, still shaded by old trees and called Safon Wali Sarrak, extends on either side of this sarai. This sarai has now been excavated and reported briefly. See Richard H. Meadow and Jonathan Mark Kenoyer, Harappa, 1994-95: Reprints of Reports of the Harappa Archaeological Research Project (December 1995), sec.: "Harappa Excavation 1994," p. 13, fig. 13. Though usually these sarais are attributed to Sher Shah Suri, on the authority of the author of Miasrul Umara, we learn that Khan Dautan Nusrat Jang and Qaleej Khan Torani built several sarais on the road from Lahore to Multan (see note 40 below). Another road linked Lahore with Khushab and onward to the Kurram Valley on the way to Afghanistan. Two beautiful baolis or stepped wells still exist on this road, one each at Gunjial near Quaid Abad and Van Bachran near Mianwali; both are attributed to Sher Shah Suri. See Saifur Rahman Dar, "Khushab-Monuments and Antiquities," Journal of the Research Society of Pakistan, vol. 15, no. 3, part 2 (Lahore, August 1978). There are three interesting baolis in the picturesque Son Valley marking some ancient routes linking Khushab with the Salt Range.

31. Shaikh Rizqullah Mushtaki, "Wakiat-i-Mushtaki," in Elliot and Dowson, History of India, vol. 4, appendix G, p. 550.

32. Elliot and Dowson, History of India, p. 417, footnote 2. This figure occurs in one of the manuscripts of Serwani, whereas Sher Shah is reported as having constructed 2,500 rather than 1,700 sarais. This they attribute to ignorance on two fronts, namely that the total distance between Bengal and the Indus is 2,500 kos, and there was a sarai at each instead of every second koso This tradition can be considered as partly true if it refers to the reign of Salim Shah Suri (A.D. 1545-1552), who is said to have added one more sarai between every two sarais built by his father. Shaikh Rizqullah Mushtaki, "Wakiat-i-Mushtaki," appendix G, p. 550, also puts Suri sarais after one rather than two koso See also Farishta, Tarikh-i-Farishta, vol. I, p. 228, as quoted by Maulana Abdul Salam Nadvi, Rafo-i-Ama ke kam, p. 41.

33. Nadvi, Rafo-i-Ama ke kam, p. 41. Also Qasim Farishta, Tarikh-i-Farishta, vol. 1, p. 332; and Khaft Khan, Muntakhab-ul-Lubab, translated by Muhammad Ahmad Faruqi (Karachi: Nafees Academy, 1963), part 1, p. 135.

34. Dr. M.A. Chaghatai, Tarikhi Masajid-i-Lahore (Lahore, 1976), pp. 29-31.

35. Abul Fazl, Ain-i-Akhbari, vol. 1, p. 115. Among such philanthropists were the widow of Shaikh Abdul Rahim Lukhnavi and Sadiq Muhammad Khan Harvi, who built sarais at Lukhnau and Dhaulpur respectively.

36. The Tuzk-i-Jahangiri or Memoirs of Jahangir, translated by Alexander Rogers, edited by Henry Beveridge (Lahore: Sang-e-Meel Publications, 1974), vol. 1, pp. 7-8, 75, and vol. 2, pp. 63-64, 98, 103, 220, 249; see also Sarkar, Grand Trunk Road, p. 49.

37. Sarkar, Grand Trunk Road, p. 43. Also see Tuzk-i-Jahangiri (Lahore: Nawal Kishore Press, n.d.), p. 5. Such courtiers include Halal Khan, Khawajasara, Saeed Khan Chagatta, the Subedar of Punjab, Shaikh Farid Murtaza Khan Bokhari, and Arnir Ullah Vardi Khan. See Samsamud Daula Shahnawaz Khan, Ma'asrul Umara, Urdu translation by Muhammad Ayub Qadri (Lahore: Urdu Markzi Board, 1%8), pp. 205,407,408,639 under names quoted here: vol. I, p. 205 (Amir Ullah); p. 407 (Halal Khan); vol. 2, p. 408 (Saeed Khan Chagatta); and p. 639 (Farid Murtaza Khan Bukhari). Sarais were built along the roadside whereas rabats were located inside the cities.

38. Rogers and Beveridge, Tuzk-i-jahangiri, p. 77 (Azim Khan). Beside sarais, Jahangir also ordered the preparation of bulghur-khana (free eating houses) where cooked food was served both ro the poor residents as well as travelers; see also A. Rogers and H. Beveridge, Tuzk-i-Jahangiri, vol. 1, p. 75.

39. Ibid, p. 406 and Khafi Khan, Muntakhab-ul-Lubab, p. 302. Jahangir also mentions the existence of several other sarais in his empire, mostly in the Punjab such as Sarai Qazi Ali near Sultanpur, Sarai Pakka near Rewat, Sarai Kharbuza near Tarnaul (also marked on Elphinston's map), Sarai Bara, Sarai Halalabad, Sarai Nur (Mahal) near Sirhind, Sarai Alwatur or Aluwa, and a grand baoli built by his mother at a cost of Rs. 20,000 at Barah. See Rogers and Beveridge, Tuzk-i-Jahangir, vol. 1, pp. 63, 98, and vol. 2, pp. 64, 103, 219, 220,2 49.

40. For example, Azim Khan built a sarai in Islamabad (Mathura) whereas Khan Dauran Nusrat Jang and Qaleeg Khan Torani built sarais every 10 kos on the road from Suraj to Burhanpur and several sarais on the road from Lahore to Multan respectively. See Kahn, Ma'asrul Umara, vol. I, p. 179 (Azim Khan), p. 758. See too previous note.

41. Tariq Masud, "Pull Shah Daula," Lahore Museum Bulletin, vol. 3, no. 2 (July-December 1990).

42. Nadvi, Rafa-i-Ama ke kam, p. 44

43. Shaista Khan, the Emir Umara of Aurangzeb, also built several rabats, mosques and bridges (Ma'asrul Umara, vol. 2, p. 705).

44. Nadvi, Rafa-i-Ama ke kam, p. 44.

45. Kahn, Ma'asrul Umara, vol. 1, p. 358.

46. Kahn, Ma'asrul Umara, vol. 3, p. 882. Also see Nadvi, Rafa-i-Ama ke kam, p. 45.

47. Kahn, Ma'asrul Umara, vol. 1, p. 358, and Nadvi, Rafa-i-Ama ke kam, pp. 44-45.

48. Sarkar, Grand Trunk Road, p. vii.

49. William Foster, ed., Early Travels in India, 1583-1619 (London, 1921; Lahore, 1978), pp. 167-68.

50. Sarkar, Grand Trunk Road, chap. 3-4, pp. 13-45.

51. Moti Chandra, Trade, p. 81, and Abul Fazl, Ain-i-Akbari, vol. 1 (Nawal Kishore Edition), p. 197 (under Ain-i-Kotwal).

52. Shaikh Rizqullah Mushtaki, "Wakiat-i-Mushtaki," in Elliot and Dowson, History of India, vol. 4, appendix G, p. 550; Ishwari Prasad, The Life and Times of Humayun (Bombay: Oriental Longmans, 1955), pp. 168-69; and Dr. Hussain Khan, Sher Shah Suri (Lahore: Ferozsons Ltd., 1987), pp. 332-40. Also see note 32 above.

53. Dr. Hussain Khan, Sher Shah Suri, p. 333.

54. Arthur Upham Pope, Persian Architecture: The Triumph of Form and Colour (New York: George Braziller, 1965), p. 238.

55. Khan, Ma'asrul Umara, vol. 2, p. 639 (see Farid Murtaza Khan Bukhari).

56. Nadvi, Rafa-i-Ama ke kam, p. 45.

57. Dr. Hussain Khan, Sher Shah Suri, p. 333.

58. Ebba Koch, Mughal Architecture: An Outline of Its History and Development (1576- 1858) (Munich: Prestel-Verlag, 1991), p. 67, fig. 65.

59. Catherine B. Asher, "Architecture of Mughal India," in The New Cambridge History of India, vol. 14 (Cambridge, 1992), p. 225.

60. Rogers and Beveridge, Tuzk-i-Jahangiri, vol. 2, p. 182.

61. Subash Parihar, "Two Little-known Mughal Monuments at Fatehbad in East Punjab," Journal of Research Society of Pakistan, vol. 38, no. 2 (Lahore) (April 1991): pp. 57- 62.

62. Subash Parihar, "The Mughal Sarai at Doraha-Architectural Study," East and West, vol. 37 (Rome, December 1987): pp. 309-25.

63. Nur Ahmad Chishti, Tehqiqat-i-Chishti (Lahore: Al-Faisal Printers, 1993), pp. 764-66.

64. Arthur Upham Pope, Persian Architecture, p. 238.

65. Ebba Koch, Mughal Architecture, p. 238.

66. Indian Archaeology, 1980-81, A review (1983): p. 67.

67. There is some controversy as regards the vaulted roof structure in the courtyard of Begum-ki-Sarai. For some it is a mosque, while for others it is not. On either side of the double row of chambers, there are two open platforms, both accessible from within the chamber. Thus, in the western wall, there are three openings in place of a mehrab. This has led some to believe that this structure is a baradari or pavilion rather than a mosque. See Lt. Col. K.A. Rashid, "An Old Serai Near Arrock Fort," reprinted from Pakistan Quarterly, vol. 12, no. 3 (Summer 1964): Plate 4. Bur this is certainly not true. In such deserted places, such as at Begum-ki-Sarai, a mosque was a must. The platform to the west of the Prayer Chamber and three openings in the western walls appear to have been a British-period innovation. Misuse of mosques by British residents for some mundane purpose is not an unknown phenomenon. The use of the famous Dai Anga Mosque, Lahore, as a residence by Mr. Henry Cope, and use of the verandahs of the Badshahi Mosque, Lahore, as a residence for British soldiers, are well-known examples.

68. Lt. Col. K.A. Rashid, "The Inscriptions of Begum Sarai (Arrock)," Journal of Research Society of Pakistan, vol. 1 (Lahore, October 1964): pp. 15-24.

69. Epigraphica India (1953 and 1954), pp. 44-45.

70. Wayne E. Begley, "Four Mughal Caravanserais Built During the Reigns of Jahangir and Shah Jahan," Muqarnas, vol. 1 (1983): p. 173.

71. Subash Parihar, Mughal Monuments in the Punjab and Haryana (New Delhi: Inter-India Publications, 1985), p. 19.

72. Bahadur Khan, "Mughal Garden Wah," Journal of Central Asia, vol. 11, no. 2 (December 1988): p. 154, illust. p. 158.

73. "Tarikh-i-Sher Shah," in Elliot and Dowson, The History of India, p. 140.

74. Sarkar, Grand Trunk Road, p. 48-49.

75. Memoirs of Emperor Jahangir, trans. by Major David Price (Delhi, n.d.), p. 157.

76. Subash Parihar, Mughal Monuments, p. 19 and Sarkar, Grand Trunk Road, p. 48-49.

77. Akbar Nama, vol. 3, p. 378, as quoted by Manzul Haque Siddiqui, Tarikh-i-Hasan Abdal (Lahore), pp. 64-65.

78. Manzar-ul-Haque Siddiqui, Tarikhai-i-Hasan Abdal, p. 65.

79. William Foster, ed., Early Travels, p. 255 and footnote.

80. R.C. Temple, ed., The Travels of Peter Mundy, vol. 2 (London: Hakluyt Society, 1914), p. 121; as quoted by William Foster, Early Travels, p. 225 (footnote).

81. Hussain Khan, Sher Shah Suri, p. 33, and Khafi Khan, Muntakhab-ul-Lubab, vol. I, p.127.

82. R.P. Kangle, Kautiliya Arthashatra, bk. 2. sec. 56, paras. 5-6.

83. Catherine B. Asher, Architecture of Mughal India, p. 225.

84. Foster, Early Travels, p. 225, and Temple, ed., The Travels of Peter Mundy, vol. 2.

85. Foster, Early Travels, pp. 155-60, and Subash Parihar, Mughal Monuments, pp. 19- 26 (footnote 16).

86. Subash Parihar, Mughal Monuments, pp. 19-26. Hugel clearly refers to the road Filor-Nakodar-Sooltanpur-Fatehbad-Noorooddeen Suraee (near Taran Taran), Khyroodden Suraee (near Rajah Ku) -- Manihala-Taihar (baoli nearby) -- Lahore as the "old Badshahee Road." See Baron Charles Hugel, Travels in Kashmir and the Punjab (1845; reprint Lahore: Qausain, 1976), Pocket Map.

87. Waheed Quraishi, "Gujranwala: Past and Present," Oriental College Magazine (Lahore, February-May 1958), p. 20. The first to mention this sarai in 1608 was William Finch under the name "Coojes Sarai." Present-day Gujranwala city actually encompasses the sites of the three ancient sarais and a settlement namely Sarai Kacha, Sarai Kamboh, Sarai Gujran, and a village called Thatta; see Waheed Quraishi, p. 21.

88. In 1607, Jahangir visited this sarai and described the site as "strangely full of dust and earth. The carts reached it with great difficulty owing to the badness of the road. They had brought from Kabul to this place riwaj (rhubarb), which was mostly spoiled" (Tuzk-i-Jahangiri, translated by A. Rogers, vol. 1, p. 99).

89. Sarai Kharbuza is marked on Elphinston's map. Jahangir visited it in 1607 and described it in these words: "On Monday the 10th, the village of Kharbuza was our stage. The Ghakhars in earlier times had built a dome here and taken a toll from travellers. As the dome is shaped like a melon it became known by that name" (Tuzk-i- Jahangiri, translated by A. Rogers, vol. 1, p. 98).

[admin]

An Altar of Alexander Now Standing at Delhi [REDUCED VERSION]
by Ranajit Pal (An expanded version of this paper appears in Scholia, vol. 15.)
January, 2006
© University of Otago, 2006

Apart from legends, today the fame of a historical figure is also determined by his archaeological relics. Alexander fell an easy prey to unwary critics mainly due to two factors; his image was tarnished by a vilification campaign launched by the Generals, [ i] who probably poisoned him, and secondly there appears to be very little archeological evidence of his historic voyage [ii]. Sir Mortimer Wheeler wrote with a touch of sorrow,

And yet it is astonishing how very little actual trace we have of his passing... his material presence has eluded us. It is as though a disembodied idea had come and gone as a mighty spiritual force with little immediate tangibility.

However, it has to be remembered that the survival of relics is often a matter of chance. To the layman the accounts of Arrian, Plutarch and others may appear insignificant in contrast to the lustre of the Taj Mahal or the splendour of the relics of Tutenkhamon but the historian must tread more cautiously. Natural disasters like earthquakes and floods, wilful destruction by political or religious reactionaries and at times plain misjudgment of historians may add up to diminish a legitimate hero. Lastly one must also take into account the effects of misappropriation. Had it not been for the ballasting of more than hundred miles of the Lahore-Multan railway with bricks from the monuments of Harappa, the task of reconstructing the glories of the Indus civilisation would have been far easier. This has other dimensions as well; Alexander was keenly aware of the importance of monuments and erected colossal stone altars to record for posterity his presence in northwest India yet nothing survives. In contrast one is confronted with the spectacular emergence of the pillars of Asoka a little more than fifty years later. If one notes that Asoka was an Indo-Greek whose native province was also the northwest [iii], it becomes natural to suspect a link between the sudden appearance of his Pillar edicts and the disappearance of Alexander's altars.


An Asokan pillar with a lion-capital

Who Erected Pillars In India Before Asoka?

The find-spot of a relic is of great importance in the reconstruction of history but one of the many problems in Indian history is that pillars were frequently re-written and re-erected at different locations. Unfortunately the effect of this misuse by later rulers has often been overlooked by gullible historians. Even though the weight of some of the Asokan pillars is about thirty tons, it is not safe to assume that these were erected in their present locations. In the fourteenth century Sultan Feroz Shah was so impressed by the Asokan pillars that he had two of them shifted to Delhi, one from Meerut and another from Topra in Ambala district, about 90 miles northwest of Delhi. F. J. Monahan[iv] wrote,

The fact that ten of the pillars bear inscriptions of Ashoka is proof they were erected not later than his reign; it does not prove that none of them was erected earlier.

The fame of Samudragupta as one of the greatest conquerors of India rests on his famous Allahabad inscription which was rewritten on an old Asokan pillar. Kulke and Rothermund[v] suggest that it was transported from Kausambi. In the Mudrarakshasa Chandragupta is called Piadamsana. From this H.C. Raychaudhuri concluded that

... it is not always safe to ascribe all epigraphs that make mention of Priyadarsana, irrespective of their contents, to Ashoka the Great.

Although Asoka was the first to use pillars and other monuments for the propagation of Dhamma, the intriguing fact that emerges from his edicts is that pillars similar to those bearing his edicts had been in existence in India before his time; in the seventh of his Pillar Edicts, after recording that he has erected 'pillars of the Sacred Law' (Dhamma-thambani), Asoka writes,

The Devanampiya speaks thus: this inscription of Dhamma is to be engraved wherever there are stone pillars or stone slabs, that it may last long.

The crucial question that arises now is who erected these pre-Asokan pillars?

Asoka's 13th Edict Echoes Nebuchadrezzar's Inscription

The thirteenth edict of Asoka occupies a special place for the poignancy of its diction. The humane tone of remorse and the account of the subsequent change of heart of the Emperor after victory in the bloody battle of Kalinga sounds very authentic and moving. One cannot but contrast it with the imperial and swaggering style of Darius' edicts. But as pointed out by Bhattacharya [vi] the reasons for which he fought the battle in the eighth year of his reign are not clear. Kalinga was most probably not modern Orissa [vii] as none of the Orissa edicts mention the war in which one hundred thousand men were killed and fifty thousand taken away as captives. From archaeological data regarding urbanism in the third century BC it can be said that deporting fifty thousand people (to Patna?) would have been an impossible task. Even if one considers a different geographical location, war on such a scale can safely be ruled out as there is no indication from other sources. There can be little doubt regarding victory in a war and the remorse and change of heart of the emperor but the propagandist element in the edict cannot be missed. Asoka is clearly emulating Nebuchadrezzar who also narrated his victory in his eighth year in which many thousands were killed and many more deported. In fact, as we know from the stories of the Old Testament Nebuchadrezzar was one of the greatest heroes whose fame had reached the farthest corners of the ancient world. D. J. Wiseman writes [viii],

His royal inscriptions are marked by the absence of war-like stances and, despite their reuse of paleo-Babylonian traditional epithets, they emphasise 'moral' qualities.

The similarity with Asoka's tone cannot be missed. The great king of Babylon was an easterner and it is likely that he was from Seistan [ix] which was also a primary area for Asoka or Diodotus-I.

Gomata Of Seistan Was The True Gotama

It is impossible to study a historical figure without first ascertaining his locale and his era. The Rumminidei edict is unique as it alone lends some credence to the theory that Gotama was an easterner but here also one cannot escape from the possibility that it was brought in from a different location[x]. Even though he was unable to pinpoint Jones' blunder, the eminent archaeologist A. Ghosh wrote in clear terms,

... the existence of kiln-burnt brick houses distinguished the town from the village.. . An application of this criterion would deny a civic status even to those places which were renowned cities at the time of the Buddha. [xi]

Very few Indologists were prepared to accept the consequences of the fact that the bricks from Lumbini date only from the third century BC [xii]. Vincent Smith [xiii] notes many curious aspects of the Rumminidei inscription; not only that it is not inscribed by Asoka, it does not even claim to have been incised by a royal command. Presumably it was both drafted and engraved by a local authority. A similar inscription found at Kapileswara in Orissa, on the basis of which Chakradhar Mahapatra [xiv] claims that the real home of the Buddha is Orissa, is of a later date.

The nothingness of the archeological finds at Lumbini and elsewhere can only be explained by noting that Gotama was not an easterner - Gomata of the Behistun inscriptions was the true Gotama. [xv] The Avesta speaks of clashes between Zoroaster and Buddha which shows that Gotama was from the northwest. One of the greatest failures of Assyriology was to gloss over the fact that Bagapa of Babylon was Gomata who was the same as Gotama Buddha whose title was Bhagava [xvi]. As early as 1915 Dr. Spooner wrote [xvii] that both Gotama and Chandragupta were from Persia. Although Piprahwa was called Kapilavastu in the Kanishka era, B. N. Mukherjee's enthusiasm [xviii] about its identification as Gotama's birth-place is entirely misplaced; no Buddhist artefacts datable to 6th century BC has been found here. Debala Mitra, who carried out excavations at Lumbini, writes,

In spite of the record of the activities of Ashoka at Kushinagara, nothing that is definitely earlier than the Kushan period, has been found in the excavations [xix].

Most of the problems disappear once Kuh-e-Khwaja is recognised as the true Kapilavastu. This is where Sir Aurel Stein discovered a Buddhist shrine in the early years of the last century [xx]. Both Herzfeld and Ghirshman described the frescoes of Kuh-e-Khwaja as the earliest known examples of Gandhara art which clearly shows its links with Buddhism.

Echo Of Alexander's Directives In The Rumminidei Edict

The identification of Kapilavastu is of great relevance in the history of Alexander. Historians have not pondered over the fact that Alexander spent nearly two months with the Ariaspians of the Kuh-e-Khwaja area in Seistan. This was when he was hotly pursuing Bessos, his hated enemy [xxi]. His naming of this area as Alexandria Prophthasia clearly shows that Stein's discovery was linked to the birth-place of Gotama. It is significant that the Greek historians also referred to the traditional sanctity of the district. It was said that the Ariaspians enjoyed special privileges as they had given succour to the starving army of Cyrus the great. This is surely not the full story as the holiness of Seistan is well recorded in the Iranian tradition, in particular, the Shahnama. The Indian texts throw more significant light on the history of Ariaspians or Hariasvas who are described as a lost tribe [xxii]. From the Mahabharata we learn that King Hariasva never ate flesh in his life [xxiii]. It is likely that the sage Asvaghosa (Calanus) whose name is given as Sphines or Aspines belonged to the clan of the Ariaspians. Alexander noted that their system of justice was very much like that of the Greeks [xxiv]. Impressed by their way of life and civic administration, Alexander extended their boundaries and conferred nominal freedom. Though not explicitly stated, waiving part of the taxes payable to the state must have been an element of his decree. It is important to note that Alexander's conflicts with his officers started after his stay in Seistan. The Philotas affair, the slaying of Cleitus and the Callisthenes tragedy are all linked with the Alexander's fascination for Gotama and Ariaspians.

The Lion Of Chaeronea And Asoka's Lions

Wheeler was amazed by the double-lion capitals at Persepolis but could not recognise that these could have been erected by Alexander. When the Sarnath pillar was first discovered it created a flutter of sensation on an international scale. Sir John Marshall wrote [xxv],

The Sarnath capital, on the other hand, though by no means a masterpiece, is the product of the most developed art of which the world was cognisant in the third century B.C.

But what puzzled scholars like Foucher was that if it assumed that Asoka was a native of Bihar as R. Thapar and other Indologists imagine, his fascination for the lion symbol remains an enigma. The lion is an intrusive element in Indian art. On the other hand the lion symbol was much favoured in Mycenae. It was also a symbol of great importance for the Macedonians.


Philip's lion statue at Chaeronea

When Phillip wanted to commemorate the great Macedonian victory at Chaeronea, he setup the famous lion statue. It is thus very likely that his illustrious son had also erected lion capitals in India; it is well known that he always carried a small golden lion. However, it can be argued that Asoka borrowed the lion symbol from Nebuchadrezzar's Babylon - lions guarded the famous E-Sagila - or from the Sumerians who also had a preference for the lion symbol; Gudea's double lion mace-head is well known [xxvi]. As Cumont noted, the lion was a symbol of ancient Lydia. Four lions also guarded the Meghazil tomb near Amrit, but the fact that Asoka was an Indo-Greek closely related to Seleucus' line makes it more likely that his lions were Greek-inspired. However, though truth is indestructible it is often stranger than fiction - the historians job has been made nearly impossible by Asoka who had no qualms about overwriting on the much-sought-after pillars of Alexander.

Alexander's Altar That Once Stood Near Hyphasis

The Englishman Thomas Coryat who came to Delhi in 1616 was one of the first westerners to notice the Asokan pillars after the middle ages. Coryat was greatly impressed by the superbly polished forty feet high monolithic column and presumed that it must have been erected by Alexander the Great 'in token of his victorie' over Porus. In Coryat's time the script of the inscriptions in the pillar was undeciphered but today, thanks to Prinsep, we know that it contains an inscription of Asoka; yet there is more to it than meets the eye. From Asoka's own inscription it is almost certain that some of his pillars were not erected by him.

After the mutiny at Hyphasis Alexander gave up his plans to march further east and to commemorate his presence in India erected twelve massive altars of dressed stone as a thanksgiving to the deities who had blessed his success. Arrian wrote,

He then divided the army into brigades, which he ordered to prepare twelve altars to equal in height the highest military towers, and to exceed them in point of breadth, to serve as thank offerings to the gods who had led him so far as a conqueror, and also as a memorial of his own labours. When the altars had been constructed, he offered sacrifice upon them with the customary rites, and celebrated a gymnastic and equestrian contest.

Surprisingly, although most of the writers place the altars on the right bank of the river, Pliny placed them on the left or the eastern bank. He wrote (vi, 21),

The Hyphasis was the limit of the marches of Alexander, who, however, crossed it, and dedicated altars on the further bank.

Alexander's altar was initially at Topra near Chandigarh

Pliny's information suggests a reappraisal of the age-old riddle of Alexander's altars. Precisely how far east had Alexander and his men come? This has been a matter of inconclusive debate; Sir E.H. Banbury held that the point where Alexander erected the twelve altars cannot be regarded as determined within even approximate limits but the Indian evidence now sheds new light on the problem. Masson placed the altars on the united stream of the Hyphasis and Sutlez[xxvii]. McCrindle also wrote that the Sutlez marked the limit of Alexander's march eastward[xxviii] and this is precisely the locality from which Feroze Shah transported a colossal pillar to Delhi. R. Thapar ignores Alexander's momentous voyage[xxix] and writes that though at present there is no archaeological evidence, Topra was probably an important stopping place on the road from Pataliputra to the northwest. This clearly skirts the central issue. It is impossible to think that anyone other than Alexander could have erected such a grand pre-Asokan pillar in this locality. There can be little doubt that the Delhi-Topra pillar [xxx] which now bears Asoka's seventh edict is in fact one of the missing altars of Alexander the Great [xxxi].

Who Was Asoka?

Asoka emerges as the first figure of Indian history about whose era and persona we are fairly well informed. His Edicts speak of a love and sympathy for men and other beings which has very few parallels in world history, [xxxii] yet some very important aspects of his life are still unknown [xxxiii]. Asoka is not known to be represented in any coin or statue. From his study of Buddhist art, Alfred Foucher, one of the greatest commentators on Indian art, raised many questions that apparently had no precise answer. Foucher was surprised to find that the symbols of Buddhism like the lion, the lotus etc. had no antecedents in the art of Eastern India where one must expect them. This is linked to the fact that no original Buddhist texts have been unearthed from modern India. G. Tucci pointed out that even the Stupa is of west Asian origin. Similar views were held by A. Coomaraswamy. "Mahalake hi vijitam" ('Vast is my empire'), proclaimed Ashoka. How extensive really was his dominion in the West? It is impossible to recognize the real Asoka without answering this question. Foucher was not aware of the blunder of Jones or the fact that Kuh-e-Khwaja in Seistan was Kapilavastu[xxxiv], yet solely from his profound study of art history he came to the very significant conclusion that the Mauryan empire must have extended in the north-west to the Hindu-Kush, and to the west as far as Aria and Seistan.

Foucher's remark, in a sense, opens a Pandora's box. If Seistan and Bactria were within the Maurya empire it is not unnatural to expect that the Indo-Greek rulers of Bactria and Seistan were somehow related to the Mauryas. From the fact that Seleucus' daughter became a member of the Mauryan royal family, it can be easily argued that Asoka could have been an Indo-Greek[xxxv]. Asoka's name Asoka Vardhana links him with Parthian Kings like Vardanes, Satibarzanes etc.. R. Thapar suggests that Antiochus could have been his half-brother. It turns out that Asoka's history matches that of Diodotus-I almost line by line.

Devanampiya And Devadatta

R. Thapar writes that the classical writers did not refer to Asoka [xxxvi]. This is clearly absurd ; they must have used a different name, not Asoka or Piyadassi. A careful study shows that Devanampiya, the most common name of Asoka in the Edicts is in fact the same as Devadatta[xxxvii] or Diodotus. The interpretation of Devanampiya as `beloved of the Gods' is superficial. Asoka states that his ancestors were Devanampiyas, which shows that it is a patronymic, not a title - even Chandragupta was a Devanampiya or Diodotus (of Erythrae). 'Nam' in Persian and 'Nomos' in Greek means 'law' another Persian word for which is 'Dat'. Thus Devanam is the same as Devadat. Piya or Priya may have had the sense of a redeemer as in the case of the name of Priam of Troy. Many Parthian Kings assumed the titles Priapatius and Assak. As can be seen from the Shahnama, the Avesta and Xerexes' inscriptions, `Deva' initially meant a clan, not god. Ignorance of this has led to senseless translations of Asoka's Edicts as `Gods mingled with men'. Only oblique scholarship has obscured that the name Devadatta occurring in the second line of Asoka's famous Taxila pillar inscription refers to Asoka himself. The line "l dmy dty `l " [xxxviii] which Marshall and Andreas translated as `for Romedatta', refers to Devadatta.

The Kandahar Edict clearly shows Asoka as the master of Arachosia, whereas the coins indicate that Diodotus was the sovereign of this region. The problem can be resolved only by assuming that Asoka was the same as Diodotus-I. Asoka died exactly when Diodotus died; Asoka's Edicts stopped appearing in 245 BC[xxxix] the year of Diodotus' death. According to Wheeler, the first Edicts were inscribed 'in and after 257BC'. A.K. Narain and others maintain that Diodotus proclaimed himself as king by about 256 BC. The great Indologist F. W. Thomas noted that in his Edicts Asoka did not mention Diodotus Theos who should have been his neighbour[xl]. It is difficult to imagine that the man whose religious overtures won the heart of nearly the entire civilized world failed to impress upon his god-like neighbour. Asoka does not mention Iran also in his Edicts; the nearest foreign king that he mentions being Antiochus. This may indicate that the Syrian King stationed at Seleucia near Babylon was indeed his neighbour. Asoka does not refer to Devadatta because he was Devadatta himself.

Hellenistic Influence On Mauryan Art

The Indo-Greek identity of Asoka throws a flood of light on the history of Mauryan art. Here one must pay tribute to scholars like Sir John Marshall, Alfred Foucher and Niharranjan Ray who were not aware that Asoka was Diodotus-I yet made no mistake in recognising the Hellenistic content of Mauryan art. Marshall realised that the lion capitals of Asoka represent a new era in Indian art that has no precursors. Their fixed expression, authentic spirit, canon-based form and stylisation all betray a strong Hellenistic inspiration. Niharranjan Ray echoes a similar sentiment[xli]. Ray doubted that the impetus could be from Achaemenid Persia and traced it to Hellenistic art. The history of the Topra pillar leaves no doubt about how this stimulus was transmitted. The failure to recognize that Chandragupta was in fact Sasigupta who was once a satrap of Alexander has been at the root of many problems in the interpretation of Gandhara art and Mauryan art. However, though Marshall and Ray came very close to the truth, they failed to see Alexander's hand behind the lions of Asoka.

11-3i. Lion capital of column erected by Emperor Asoka (272-232 B.C.) from Patna (ancient Pataliputra), India. Polished sandstone, 7’ high. Archeological Museum, Sarnath

Nebuchadrezzar And Brotherhood Of Man

Although there is considerable Achaemenian influence[xlii] in Asoka's writing and art it is not difficult to see that his true hero was Nebuchadrezzar whose history is linked with Jainism- Buddhism. As already indicated, Asoka's 13th Edict echoes the campaign of the Babylonian king in his 8th year. Nebuchadrezzar was widely seen as a universal liberator, not a national hero. He was a captor of the Jews yet Jewish Prophets like Jeremiah hailed him as a saviour. Like Asoka, NebuChadrezzar also changed his religion, gave up animal food, was a great temple builder and propagator of religion based on righteousness, (Dhamma) not priestly cults.

Gotama was also strongly influenced by Nebuchadrezzar. The Emperor's horror of the withering tree as told by Daniel in the Old Testament reminds one Gotama's horror of withering, decay and death which played a central role in his renunciation. The same impulse can be seen behind the quest for immortality of Gilgamesh. The great king of Babylon was an easterner and it is likely that the dream is in some way related to the defoliation of the Seistan area which was once a granary of Iran. A strong sentiment against defoliation is also discernible in Buddhist literature and art.

The true significance of Alexander's fascination for Nebuchadrezzar has largely remained unappreciated. Critics who have scoffed at Alexander's call for Brotherhood of Man are not aware that Nebuchadrezzar also wanted to establish a Brotherhood of Man based on righteousness as contrasted to the hegemony of a holy priesthood. Woolley suggested that he introduced a religious reformation that involved congregational worship as contrasted to the priestly rituals. Only Tarn suspected that there may be some religious background to the fact that the Brahmans (the priestly party) were always the strong opponents of Alexander. He was, like Alexander, one of the greatest conquerors of history yet he became a great builder of temples, gave up all animal food and chose to live like a hermit in the forest and courted death by refusing food. This has been senselessly interpreted as madness by some writers unfamiliar with eastern religions. Many Greeks, not only Alexander, saw Nebuchadrezzar as a saviour. Antimenides, brother of the poet Alcaeus fought on behalf of Nebuchadrezzar. Apart from Greek military superiority this is why Alexander was so heartily welcomed in Babylon[xliii].

Alexander And Asoka

The corpus of Asoka's inscriptions is extensive but one is mystified by some things he did not say. Curiously he never names his father or his illustrious grandfather[xliv]. He also maintains a measured silence on Alexander. He opens the famous seventh edict with the sentence,

In the past, kings searched for means whereby people's interest in Dhamma would increase, but the people did not respond accordingly with a greater devotion to Dhamma.

Who are these kings? The most probable answer is Alexander and Nebuchadrezzar . Plutarch writes that in his days the altars of Alexander were held in much veneration by the Prasiians, whose kings, he says, were in the habit of crossing the Ganges every year to offer sacrifices in the Grecian manner [xlv] upon them. It can be seen from the Mudrarakshasa that even though he played a part in his poisoning, Sasigupta [Sisikottos; Sisocostus !!!] had great respect for Alexander who was once his master. From whatever little we know of Bindusara he probably had the same attitude. This could also have been true of Asoka [xlvi]. His proscription of samajas or revelling parties may be due to his horror of Alexander's poisoning in such a party.

Like Cambyses, Alexander got a very bad press. If his hands were stained by the blood of Cleitus, Asoka was the ruthless terminator of 99 brothers in his youth. This may be echoed by the 'Brother's war' of the classical historians. Susima, Asoka's elder brother who was killed by him before accession to the throne, may be a close relative of Susina (Abd Susin) whose coins have been found from Persepolis. Only Tarn recognised the links between Alexander and Asoka, [xlvii]

For when all is said, we come back at the end to his personality; not the soldier or the statesman, but the man. Whatever Asia did or did not get from him she felt him as she scarcely felt any other; she knew that one of the greatest of the earth had passed. Though his direct influence vanished from India within a generation, and her literature does not know him, he affected Indian history for centuries; for Chandragupta saw him and deduced the possibility of realising in actual fact the conception, handed down from Vedic times, of a comprehensive monarchy in India; hence Alexander indirectly created Asoka's empire and enabled the spread of Buddhism.

Had he been alive, Tarn would have been delighted to learn that it is mainly due to Jones' blunder that Alexander's true legacy remains hidden; his direct influence did not vanish from India within a generation, it only assumed a highly embellished Asokan garb. It is very likely that excavations near the Topra area would yield relics of Alexander which are of crucial importance in world history.

_______________

Notes:

[i] The very existence of the junta depended on a falsification and defamation campaign which was extensive and thoroughgoing. That Ptolemy had to defend Alexander only shows the extent of such a campaign. Needless to say Sasigupta could justify his role only by blackening Alexander. Some Athenian Greeks swayed by Demosthenes' fiery rhetoric spared no effort to belittle Alexander.

[ii] Jones' false discovery of Palibothra at Patna shifted the focus to the east and misled such erudite scholars as Rostovtzeff and Tarn into believing that Alexander is not mentioned in Indian literature and had little influence on Indian civilisation. For an elaboration of the consequences of Jones' mislocation of Palibothra at Patna in lieu of Kahnuj in Gedrosia see 'Sasigupta and the Poisoning of Alexander', to be published.

[iii] See Pal, R., 'Non-Jonesian Indology and Alexander', Minerva Press, New Delhi, 2002.

[iv] Like Vincent Smith, Monahan was a distinguished British historian who was a member of the Indian Civil Service, 'The Early History of Bengal', 1925, p.227.

[v] Kulke, H., and Rothermund, D., 'A History of India', Rupa, 1991, p. 86.

[vi] 'A Dictionary of Indian History', University of Calcutta, 1972, p.70.

[vii] Three Kalingas are mentioned in the Inscriptions. This is natural in view of the fact that early Magadha was in the north-west. The present writer has suggested that there were two Bengals, the earlier one being in the Gulf area. See Pal, R., 'Non-Jonesian Indology and Alexander', Minerva Press, New Delhi, to be published.

[viii] "Nebuchadrezzar and Babylon", British Academy, 1985, p. 98.

[ix] There is a lot of controversy about the correct form of the name which is probably NebuChandressar. The Chandresvaras were an ancient tribe of India. See B.C. Law.

[x] Although some of the points made by Monahan can now be seen to be untrue, his statement is still relevant, "The monoliths in question are believed to have been quarried in the neighbourhood of Chunar in the district of Mirzapur. Quarries yielding the same kind of sandstone are worked there to this day, and no other place is known where the huge blocks required for the purpose could have been obtained. When it is considered that the weight of each of the monoliths is estimated at about 50 tons, it will be apparent that their transport to and erection at such distant sites as Topra near Umballa, Sanchi in Bhopal, and the Nepalese Terai, were no mean engineering feats". 'The Early History of Bengal", Varanasi, 1975 (reprint), p.225.

[xi] Ghosh, A., `The City in Early Historical India', Simla,1972, p70.

[xii] This is not an isolated phenomenon. Christmas Humphreys writes, 'The Lumbini Gardens where Gotama was born, lie in the difficult Nepal Terai, and Kusinara where the Buddha passed away has little to show ...". 'Buddhism', Penguin Books, 1990, p. 42. S.K. Saraswati wrote about Rajagriha in Bihar, `The Buddhist remains, except for stray and isolated images, are scanty..'. Even the identification of the Sattapani cave, the site of the first Council, is not beyond doubt'. Saraswati blamed this to religious bigotry, a precipice much used by Indian scholars but disproved by the example of Babylon which provided archaeological proof of textual history even after countless acts of destruction. Saraswati, S.K., in "2500 years of Buddhism", ed. Bapat, P.V.,1956, p. 279. Debala Mitra writes about Bodh-Gaya, 'The earliest vestiges that are visible now are of the first century BC...'. About Sarnath she writes, 'The earliest remains at Sarnath date from the days of Ashoka, who erected a pillar....'.

[xiii] 'Asoka', Arihant Publishers, Jaipur, 1988 (reprint), p. 223.

[xiv] 'The Real Birthplace of Buddha', Cuttack, Grantha Mandir, 1977.

[xv] The location of Kapilavastu has been so hotly debated. "The mystery of Kapilavastu will continue for many years to be the sport of unverified conjecture", wrote Vincent Smith, a keen observer of the Indian scene. Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics, vol. ,p .

[xvi] A.L. Oppenheim saw the wide gaps in the studies on Mesopotamian religion.

[xvii] J.R.A.S., 1915, p. 63-89, p. 405-455.

[xviii] "The identification of Kapilavastu, the capital of the Sakyas, with Piprahwa in the Basti district of UP is nearly confirmed by the discovery of thirty- one seals during the excavations at that place which bear the inscriptions of the Kushana period referring to 'the community of the monks of Kapilavastu (residing) in the Devaputra vihara'. An inscription on the lid of a pot also mentions the same monastery, which should have been in Kapilavastu, must have been located in the area of the discoveries of the seals. In other words, the city itself was in the Piprahwa area." P.H.A.I., O.U.P. '96, p. 577. Nalanda has been identified in an equally reckless manner.

[xix] Debala Mitra, 'Buddhist Monuments', \par 20 Geog. Jour., Aug 1916, p. 362. Though both Herzfeld and Ghirshman dated the temple to the Parthian era, this was rejected by Tarn. Scholars are not aware that what goes as Buddhist art today is in fact Hellenised Indian Buddhist art that was patronised by Alexander and Asoka and dates only from the 4th century BC. Only Stein could imagine what pre-Asokan or pre-Alexandrite Buddhist art could look like.

[xx] Geog. Jour. (Aug. 1916) p. 362.

[xxi] Lane Fox notes the event but fails to read the significance of the name Prophthasia. 'Alexander the Great', p. 282.

[xxii] 'Puranic Encyclopedia', by Vettam Mani, Motilal Banarasidas, p.57.

[xxiii]Anusasana Parva, ch. 11, verse 67.

[xxiv] This cannot but remind one of the Lichchavis who had close connections with Gotama.

[xxv] 'Cambridge History of Ancient India', ed. E.J. Rapson, p.562.

[xxvi] Pal, R., 'Gotama Buddha in West Asia', Annals of Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute, vol. 77.

[xxvii] In this context it has to be borne in mind that in ancient times the two rivers united at a point forty miles below their present junction.

[xxviii] McCrindle, J.W., "Invasion of India by Alexander the Great", New Delhi, p. 120.

[xxix] "Asoka and the Decline of the Mauryas", Oxford University Press", 1961, p.230. For both Raychaudhuri and Thapar, Alexander does not belong to Indian history proper.

[xxx] The precise location is Firozabad near Delhi.

[xxxi] Philostratos' statement that Apollonius of Tyana on his journey into India in the second century A.D. found the altars still intact and their inscriptions still legible probably indicates that they were in places where Alexander had erected them. It is almost certain that Apollonius could not read the inscriptions as they were not in Greek.

[xxxii] H. G. Wells described his reign as one of the brightest interludes in the troubled history of mankind, 'A Short History of the World', p. Wheeler wrote, 'This book is not a history, but in its last chapter the impersonal disjecta of prehistory may fittingly be assembled for a moment in the in the likeness of a man. Ashoka came to the throne about 268 B.C. and died about 232 B.C. Spiritually and materially his reign marks the first coherent expression of the Indian mind, and, for centuries after his empire had crumbled, his work was implicit in the though t and art of the subcontinent. It is not dead today.' 'Early India and Pakistan', Thames and Hudson, 1968, p. 170.

[xxxiii] Apart from his Edicts, archaeology has unearthed very little inscribed material and though some punch-marked coins have been associated with him, this has been disputed. Palaces unearthed near Patna have been said to be his, but in the absence of inscriptions this is clearly unacceptable. Even Taxila, so often mentioned together with his name in the texts, has proved disappointing.

[xxxiv] Pal, R., 'Non-Jonesian Indology and Alexander, op. cit.

[xxxv] Wheeler wrote, 'It is just possible that Ashoka had Seleukid blood in his veins; at least his reputed vice-royalty of Taxila in the Punjab during the reign of his father could have introduced him to the living memory of Alexander the Great, and, as king, he himself tells us of proselytizing relations with the Western powers'. Wheeler came very near the truth yet he narrowly missed the true face of Asoka. 'Early India and Pakistan', Thames and Hudson, 1968, p. 170.

[xxxvi] D.C. Sircar added that Asoka was unknown because there was no foreign representative in his court. This is clearly absurd; the emperor who claims to have sent emissaries no distant corners of the globe cannot have been unknown to the western world.

[xxxvii] After his conversion to Buddhism Asoka had to change his name Devadatta as it was a hated name among the Buddhists.

[xxxviii] B.N. Mukherjee works into the name proper and translates it by the senseless phrase 'for the creation of law '. 'The Aramaic Edicts of Asoka', Indian Museum, p. 26.

[xxxix] R. Thapar is unaware that the reason why Asoka's edicts stopped appearing after 245 BC is that he died in that year. The year of Asoka's death given by Thapar and others is 232 BC but this is clearly a mistake. Diodotus' son, who was also a Diodotus, died in 232 BC.

[xl] 'Asoka', in Cambridge History of Ancient India, p. 453.

[xli] 'Compared with later figural sculptures in the round of Yakshas and their female counterparts or the reliefs of Bharhut, Sanchi and Bodhgaya, the art represented by these crowning lions belongs to an altogether different world of conception and execution, of style and technique, altogether much more complex, urban and civilised. They have nothing archaic or primitive about them, and the presumption is irresistible that the impetus and inspiration of this art must have come from outside.' 'Age of the Nandas and Mauryas', Motilal Banarasidas, 1967, p. 376.

[xlii] Many scholars felt that Asoka was influenced by Darius' inscriptions though his spirit was nobler. The picture at Persepolis of a lion devouring a bull may be Mauryan. Darius or Xerexes could never show the bull, the pride of the Achaemenians, being devoured. Darius always depicted scenes of lion-hunting. Asoka used some words from Darius' Edicts. Barua held that the habitual script of Asoka's scribes was not Brahmi but west Asian Kharoshti and that his artists followed the style of Persepolis. Even the mason's marks were Persepolitan.

[xliii] Alcaeus' lines may well have inspired Alexander and his men.

From the ends of the earth you are come,
With your sword hilts of ivory bound with gold ....
Fighting beside the Babylonians you accomplished a great labour,
And delivered them from distress,
For you slew a warrior who wanted only a palm's breadth of five royal cubits.

[xliv] This could be due to two reasons. As Taranatha wrote he may have been a nephew of Bindusara, not a son. Another reason could be his silent disapproval of Chandragupta's role in the murder of Alexander.

[xlv] This could only be a reference to Buddhistic worship which understandably had many similarities with Greek practices.

[xlvi] As a member of Chandragupta's family it is likely that Asoka did not know the full truth about Alexander's poisoning by the Generals and his grandfather or did he?

[xlvii] Tarn, 'Alexander', p.142

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Part 1 of 3

An Altar of Alexander Now Standing at Delhi [EXPANDED VERSION]
by Ranajit Pal
Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute,
Pune, India.
January, 2006
© University of Otago, 2006

That the history of Asoka matches that of Diodotus I line by line can only imply that they were one and the same person....

The Parthian Prince An-shih-kao, who dedicated his life to the spread of Buddhism, is clearly Diodotus...

Asoka does not refer to Diodotus because he was Diodotus himself...

Historians have denied Diodotus his true place in world history.

-- An Altar of Alexander Now Standing at Delhi [EXPANDED VERSION], by Ranajit Pal

Diodotus was born between 315-300 BC, likely to parents established as nobles in Bactria. His father (also Diodotus) was believed to have been a dignitary and Diadochi of Alexander the Great, awarded land in Bactria.

The region of Bactria, which encompassed the Oxus river Valley in modern Afghanistan and Tajikistan, was conquered by Alexander between 329 and 327 BC and he settled a number of his veterans in the region. In the wars which followed Alexander's death in 323 BC, the region was largely left to its own devices, but it was incorporated in the Seleucid empire by Seleucus I between 308 and 305 BC, along with the rest of the territories that Alexander had conquered in Iran and Central Asia. Seleucus entrusted the region to his son and co-regent, Antiochus I, around 295 BC. Between 295 and 281 BC, Antiochus I established firm Seleucid control over the region. The region was divided into a number of satrapies (provinces), of which Bactria was one. Antiochus founded or refounded a number of cities on the Greek model in the region and he opened a number of mints to produce coinage on the Attic weight standard. After Antiochus I succeeded his father as ruler of the Seleucid empire in 281 BC, he entrusted the east to his own son, Antiochus II who remained in this position until he in turn succeeded to the throne in 261 BC.[8]

Diodotus became Seleucid satrap (governor) of Bactria during Antiochus II's reign, thus about a generation after the original establishment of Seleucid control over the region .... Archaeological evidence for the period comes largely from excavations of the city of Ai-Khanoum, where this period saw the expansion of irrigation networks, the construction and expansion of civic buildings, and some military activity...

At some point, Diodotus seceded from the Seleucid empire, establishing his realm as an independent kingdom, known in modern scholarship as the Graeco-Bactrian kingdom. The event is mentioned briefly by the Roman historian Justin:

Diodotus, the governor of the thousand cities of Bactria, defected and proclaimed himself king; all the other people of the Orient followed his example and seceded from the Macedonians [i.e. the Seleucids].

— Justin Epitome of Pompeius Trogus 41.4...

The limited archaeological evidence reveals no signs of discontinuity or destruction in this period. The transition from Seleucid rule to independence thus seems to have been accomplished peacefully....

The literary sources stress the prosperity of the new kingdom. Justin calls it "the extremely prosperous empire of the thousand cities of Bactria.", while the geographer Strabo says:

The Greeks who caused Bactria to revolt grew so powerful on account of the fertility of the country that they became masters, not only of Ariana, but also of India, as Apollodorus of Artemita says: and more tribes were subdued by them than by Alexander... Their cities were Bactra (also called Zariaspa, through which flows a river bearing the same name and emptying into the Oxus), and Darapsa, and several others.

— Strabo Geography 11.11.1

[A]rchaeological evidence makes clear that goods and people continued to move between Bactria and the Seleucid realm.

Diodotus died during the reign of Seleucus II, sometime around 235 BC, probably of natural causes. He was succeeded by his son Diodotus II. The new king concluded a peace with the Parthians and supported Arsaces when Seleucus II attacked him around 228 BC. Diodotus II was subsequently killed by an usurper, Euthydemus [a Greco-Bactrian king], who founded the Euthydemid dynasty....

Diodotus appears also on coins struck in his memory by the later Graeco-Bactrian kings Agathocles and Antimachus. These coins imitate the original design of the tetradrachms issued by Diodotus I, but with a legend on the obverse identifying the king as Ancient Greek: ΔΙΟΔΟΤΟΥ ΣΩΤΗΡΟΣ ('Of Diodotus Soter' [saviour]).

-- Diodotus I, by Wikipedia

In my ten months journey between Aleppo and this court, I spent just three pounds sterling, yet fared reasonably every day; victuals being so cheap in some of the countries through which I travelled, that I often lived competently for one penny a-day. Of that three pounds, I was actually cozened out of ten shillings, by certain evil Christians of the Armenian nation; so that in reality I only expended fifty shillings in all that time. I have been in a city of this country called Delee, where Alexander the Great joined battle, with Porus king of India, and defeated him; and where, in memory of his victory, he caused erect a brazen pillar, which remains there to this day. At this time I have many irons in the fire, as I am learning the Persian, Turkish, and Arabic languages, having already acquired the Italian. I have been already three months at the court of the Great Mogul, and propose, God willing, to remain here five months longer, till I have got these three languages; after which I propose to visit the river Ganges, and then to return to the court of Persia.

-- A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Arranged in Systematic Order: Forming a Complete History of the Origin and Progress of Navigation, Discovery, and Commerce, by Sea and Land, From the Earliest Ages to the Present Time, by Robert Kerry, F.R.S. & F.A.S. Edin., Illustrated by Maps and Charts, Vol. IX, 1824

Asoka’s Lat. —

The next object of interest in the palace of Firoz Shah is the pillar on which Asoka, king of Magadha, published his tolerant edicts to the world. It was put up here by Firoz Shah, in the year 757 A.H. (1356 A D.) It stands on a pyramidal building of rubble stone, with domes of rubble stone irregularly set in mortar of admirable quality, and arches with ribs. [Beglar.]

The pyramid consists of terraces standing on an exterior platform, on the top-most of which the pillar stands; these terraces have cells with arches all round. [Muhammad Anim Razi in his Haft-i-Kalim, describes the pillar, as it was in the time of Akbar, as standing on a house three-storeyed high, being “a monolith of red-stone tapering upwards.” “The three storeys,” says Franklin, “were partly a menagerie, and partly an aviary.” From where this idea was got hold of, I am unable to say.] I agree with Mr. Beglar that there was not another storey over the highest storey now in existence; the presence of two stumps of pillars near the edge of the upper-most storey does not argue, as a matter of even strong probability, that they were parts of pillar- supports, but I am of opinion, that the addition of another storey which would serve to dwarf the size of the pillar would be an ill advised addition for men who were setting up a lofty monument to the glory of their king. The fact that the domes over the four corner towers of the third storey are on a level with the present main roof, is decidedly in favour of the theory that the building was never higher than it is now. “Vertically beneath the base of the pillar, a gallery has been broken through in the top-most storey, disclosing a sort of rough chamber, covered by a rubble dome 4 feet in diameter, on which consequently, the entire weight of the pillar rests. [ Beglar.]

Asoka, king of Magadha, subsequently known as Dhammasoka, was the son of Bindusara, and grandson of Chandra Gupta, “the king of Hindusthan, from Kashmir to Kanauj.” He was born in the orthodox faith, and was a worshipper of Shiva, but became a convert to Bhuddism, and a powerful propagandist of his new faith. He commemorated his conversion and his desire that his new faith should be spread over his empire, by the promulgation of edicts which still stand as undying memorials of his faith, on granite pillars which were erected from Kabul to Orissa. Asoka is the Piyadasi of the pillar inscriptions and Pali records; the contemporary of Antiochus Theos, and his age may be placed between 325-200 B.C.

The pillar under notice is a sand-stone monolith, 42 feet 7 inches high, of which the upper portion of 35 feet is polished and the rest is left rough; the buried portion of the pillar is 4 feet 1 inch long. [Beglar.] Its upper diameter is 25-3 inches and its lower diameter 38-8 inches, the diminution being -39 inches per foot. [Cunningham.] The pillar is supposed to weigh 27 tons. The colour of the stone is pale pink, having black spots outside, something like dark quartz. The usual amount of inaccuracies has found its way in the measurements of this pillar: Major Burt, who examined it in 1837, gives its length as about 35 feet, and diameter as 3-1/4 feet; Franklin gives 50 feet as its length; Von Orlich, 42 feet; William Finch, 24 feet; Shams-i-Siraj, 24 gaz or 34 feet, and its circumference 10 feet. As regards the material of the monolith and the inscriptions it bears, some very curious mistakes have also been made: the Danish Councillor, de Laet, describes it as “a very high obelisk (as some affirm) with Greek characters and placed here (as it is believed) by Alexander the Great;" the eccentric Tom Coryat also ascribes the pillar to Alexander and describes it as “brazen;" the confiding Chaplain Edward Terry, who was so charmed with Coryat’s improbable stories, improves on his informant and calls it a "very great pillar of marble” of Alexander the Great; but strange to say, that the observant Bishop Heber describes it as a pillar of “cast metal,” and, that the description was not an ordinary slip of the pen, is evident from the fact that the Bishop refers to it, to explain the material of the Iron Pillar, both being, in his lordship’s opinion, of “cast metal."

-- Archaeology and Monumental Remains of Delhi, by Carr Stephen, 1876

Delhi is situated in a fine plain; and about two coss [3.6 miles] from thence are the ruins of a hunting seat, or mole, built by Sultan Bemsa, a great Indian sovereign [NOT "Togall Shah"]. It still contains much curious stone-work; and above all the rest is seen a stone pillar, which, after passing through three several stories, rises twenty-four feet above them all, having on the top a globe, surmounted by a crescent. It is said that this stone stands as much below in the earth as it rises above, and is placed below in water, being all one stone. Some say Naserdengady, a Patan king, wanted to take it up, but was prevented by a multitude of scorpions. It has inscriptions.6 [Purchas alleges that these inscriptions are in Greek and Hebrew; and that some affirm it was erected by Alexander the Great.—E.] In divers parts of India the like are to be seen....

From Sirhind, in five stages, making forty-eight coss [86.4 miles], I came to a serai called Fetipoor, built by the present king Shah Selim, in memory of the overthrow of his eldest son, Sultan Cussero, on the following occasion. On some disgust, Shah Selim took up arms in the life of his father Akbar, and fled into Purrop, where he kept the strong castle of Alobasse7 [Purrop, or Porub, has been formerly supposed the ancient kingdom of Porus in the Punjab, and Attobass, here called Alobasse, to have been Attock Benares. — E.] but came in and submitted about three months before his father’s death.

-- A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Arranged in Systematic Order: Forming a Complete History of the Origin and Progress of Navigation, Discovery, and Commerce, By Sea and Land, From the Earliest Ages to the Present Time, by Robert Kerr, F.R.S. & F.A.S. Edin., Vol. VIII, 1824

Abstract. The vanishing of the twelve magnificent altars set up by Alexander the Great has intrigued many scholars. This article shows that one of the Altars was reinscribed by Emperor ASHOKA, WHO WAS THE FAMOUS INDO-GREEK KING DIODOTUS I. There is an indication that Alexander may have tried to promote brotherhood in these altars. It is just possible that the four-lion emblem of India may be linked to Alexander.

Even in the heyday of Assyriology, when the lure of grand discoveries drew archaeologists to Sumer and Akkad, some eminent figures opted for India. Apart from the enigma of the Indus culture, a prime attraction was the undiscovered altars of Alexander cited in several ancient texts. Alexander was the greatest ambassador of the West, and the failure to locate the altars saddened eminent archaeologists like Sir Mortimer Wheeler, who writes:

And yet it is astonishing how very little actual trace we have of his passing... his material presence has eluded us. It is as though a disembodied idea had come and gone as a mighty spiritual force with little immediate tangibility. 2

The vanishing of the altars was seen by some as an index of the insignificance of Alexander’s legacy, and was at the root of much ignorant criticism levelled against him. However, survival of relics is often a matter of chance; to the layman the accounts of Arrian, Plutarch and others may appear trivial in contrast to the lustre of the Taj Mahal or the splendour of Tutenkhamun’s relics, but the historian must tread cautiously. Natural disasters like earthquakes and floods, wilful destruction by political or religious reactionaries, and at times plain misjudgment of historians, may accumulate in order to diminish a legitimate hero. Lastly one must consider the effects of misappropriation. Had it not been for the ballasting of more than one hundred miles of the Lahore-Multan railway with bricks from the monuments of Harappa, the task of reconstructing the glories of the Indus civilisation would have been far easier.

This background has other dimensions as well: only a little more than fifty years after the construction of the altars, all of which apparently disappeared, one encounters the majestic Asokan pillars. Since Asoka has a very strong presence in the northwest, it is natural to suspect a link between the vanishing of all the altars of Alexander and the simultaneous emergence of nearly the same number of his pillar edicts, many of which had lion-capitals. It can be recalled that when Philip wanted to commemorate the momentous victory at Chaeronea he set up the famous lion statue. It is more than likely that his illustrious son had also erected lion capitals in India.

Who Erected Pillars In India before Asoka?

The find-spots of relics are of great importance in the reconstruction of history; but one of the recurrent problems in Indian history is that pillars were often rewritten and re-erected at different locations. Unfortunately this has been totally ignored by gullible historians like H. C. Raychaudhuri and R. Thapar. Even though the weight of some of these pillars is about thirty tons, it is not safe to assume that they were erected in their present locations. Keay writes:

The question of how these pillars had originally been moved round India, and whether they were still in their ordained positions, was an intriguing subject by itself. It was now apparent that they were all of the same stone, all polished by the same unexplained process, and therefore all from the same quarry. 3 [J. Keay, India Discovered: The Achievement of the British Raj (London 1988) 55.]

Thanks largely to Hodgson's discoveries along the Nepalese frontier, Prinsep knew of five Ashoka columns. As he deciphered their messages a sixth came to light in Delhi (the second to be found there). Broken into three pieces and buried in the ground, it was thought to have been the casualty of an explosion in a nearby gunpowder factory sometime in the 17th century. The inscription was badly worn, though evidently the same as that on the other pillars. In due course the whole pillar was offered to the Asiatic Society for their new museum. They accepted it but found the difficulties and cost of transporting it to Calcutta to be prohibitive; eventually they settled for just the bit with the inscription on it.

The question of how these pillars had originally been moved round India, and whether they were still in their ordained positions, was an intriguing subject in itself. It was now appreciated that they were all of the same stone, all polished by the same unexplained process, and therefore all from the same quarry. Prinsep thought this was somewhere in the Outer Himalayas, although we now know their source to have been Chunar on the Ganges near Benares. Either way, they had somehow been moved as much as 500 miles, no mean feat considering that the heaviest weighed over 40 tons.

-- India Discovered, by John Keay

Significantly, although most writers placed this quarry at Chunar near Benares, Prinsep located it somewhere in the outer Himalayas. The altars of Alexander were grand structures. Plutarch writes that in his day these were held in much veneration by the Prasiians, whose kings were in the habit of crossing the Ganges every year to offer sacrifices in the Grecian manner upon them (Plut. Alexander, 62). What happened thereafter? Was there a scramble among the later rulers to use these splendid monuments for their own purposes? The fame of Samudragupta as one of the greatest rulers of India rests on his famous Allahabad inscription which was rewritten on an old Asokan pillar. Kulke and Rothermund suggest that it was shifted from Kausambi. In the fourteenth4 century, Sultan Feroz Shah was so impressed by the Asokan pillars that he had two of them shifted to Delhi, one from Meerut and another from Topra in Ambala district, about 90 miles northwest of Delhi.

-- Pergamon [The Pergamon Altar of Zeus], Hellenistic Period: c. 323-31 BCE, by Christopher L.C.E. Witcombe, Greek Art & Archaeology, arthistoryresources.net, 175 BCE

Monahan writes:

The fact that ten of the pillars bear inscriptions of Ashoka is proof they were erected not later than his reign; it does not prove that none of them was erected earlier.5

In the Sanskrit drama Mudrarakshasa, Chandragupta is called Piadamsana.6 From this, Raychaudhuri concludes that it is not always safe to ascribe all epigraphs that mention Priyadarsana to Ashoka the Great. The intriguing fact7 is that Asoka says that pillars bearing edicts had been in existence in India before his time; he was not the first to use pillars for the propagation of Dhamma (Eusebia). In the seventh Pillar Edict, after recording that he has erected ‘pillars of the Sacred Law’ (dhammathambani), Asoka writes:

Etaṃ devānaṃpiye āhā: iyaṃ dhaṃma-libi ata athi silā-thaṃbānii vā, silā phalakāni vā tata kaṭaviyā ena esa cila-ṭhitike siyā.

The Devānamṃpiya said: wherever there are either stone pillars or stone slabs, thereon this Dharma rescript is to be engraved, so that it may long endure.8

This shows that there were already pillars in India before the Asokan era and also implies that, like Samudragupta, Asoka also had engraved his own message on at least some of them. To realise that no one other than Alexander could have erected these pre-Asokan pillars, one has to take a close look into an age-old blunder in Indology that has greatly falsified world history.

The Location of Palibothra

Alexander historians have often been baffled by the scarcity of new sources, archaeological or textual, and new writers are usually content with reinterpretation of old documents. Unfortunately this is due to a faulty9 perspective; too much stress has been laid on the Greek and Roman sources at the expense of crucial data from Sanskrit and Pali documents. Moreover, the value of the Indian sources has been impaired by one fatal error—Jones’s location of Palibothra at Patna. This has not only blurred the identity of major10 conspirators in the history of Alexander, but has also left room for much injudicious criticism against him. Once Jones’s idea is rejected and the scenario is shifted to the northwest, important clarifications emerge in the history not only of India but also that of Iran and Afghanistan. It turns out that Alexander11 was chasing through Gedrosia a very powerful adversary, and that he was not quite the villain that he has been made out to be.

Gedrosia is a dry, mountainous country along the northwestern shores of the Indian Ocean. It was occupied in the Bronze Age by people who settled in the few oases in the region. Other people settled on the coast and became known in Greek as Ichthyophagi.

The country was conquered by the Persian king Cyrus the Great (559-530 BCE), although information about his campaign is comparatively late. The capital of Gedrosia was Pura, which is probably identical to modern Bampûr, forty kilometers west of Irânshahr.

Gedrosia became famous in Europe when the Macedonian king Alexander the Great tried to cross the Gedrosian desert and lost one third of his men.

-- Gedrosia (satrapy), by Wikipedia

Recounting the scenario after the Hyphasis mutiny (Arr. 5.25, Diod. 17.93-5, Curt. 9.2.1-3.19), Badian writes with an air of definiteness:

For the moment, he tried to use the weapon that had succeeded before. He withdrew to his tent, for three days. But this time it did not help. The men were determined, and as Coenus had made clear, they had the officers’ support. Alexander could not divide them. All that remained was to save face.12

Badian not only finds Alexander in an awkward position, but also casually notes his subsequent declaration that he would go on nonetheless and his ordering of sacrifices for crossing the river. Alexander’s vow to fight against the Prasii in13 the face of stiff opposition from both the soldiers and officers does appear somewhat comical but here lies a trap—where was their capital Palibothra? Could it really have been at Patna, so far removed from the northwest—the centre of early India?

The significance of this question has been glossed over by all. Only Hammond, discoverer of Aegai, recognises the crucial role of geography in history, and states that ‘Patna is too far east’ to be a Palibothra. Renowned14 archaeologists like A. Ghosh also point out that Jones’s discovery has no archaeological basis. Kulke and Rothermund likewise doubt the Jonesian15,16 story. It is well known that the Maurya empire extended to the west as far as Aria, Seistan and Makran and this makes it likely that Palibothra was in this17 region. Elisseeff remarks that from the archaeological viewpoint, eastern Iran18 was closer to India. Bivar is unaware of Jones’ error or the appalling frauds in19 Nepalese archaeology and his view about the Persepolis tablets is heedless and 20 empty:

So far as India is concerned, the Fortification Tablets attest an active and substantial traffic, though they shed no light on the geography of that province. 21

The tablets not only throw invaluable light on the geography of greater India but provide data that revolutionise Indology. Sedda Saramana of the tablets appears to be Siddhartha (Sedda-Arta) Gotama and the ubiquitous Suddayauda Saramana seems to be his father Suddo-dhana. Al-beruni writes that Gotama’s real name was Buddho-dana which puts him in the same bracket as Daniel.22 Nunudda of the tablets may be Nanda, a relative of Gotama.
 
Alexander’s Return Through Gedrosia After the Hyphasis Mutiny

Through the mist of vague reports and geographical misconceptions, it is difficult to probe into the Hyphasis revolt, which came as a serious jolt to Alexander. After this, even though there were safer routes, Alexander chose to return to Iran through the desert of Gedrosia, suffering heavy losses in soldiers and civilians from lack of water, food and the extreme heat. That the motive behind this voyage has appeared so perplexing is due to two crucial lapses—the false location of Palibothra, capital of the Prasii, and the concomitant failure to recognise the mysterious Moeris of Pattala who played a determinant role.

‘Alexander, of course, had read Herodotus’, writes Badian, but misses23 the purport of his reference to Indians in the Gedrosia area. Toynbee writes on world history and makes no mistake to note the shifting nature of India’s boundary:

... and we can already see the beginnings of this progressive extension of the name ‘Indian’ in Herodotus’s usage.24

The reports of Alexander’s historians clearly indicate that southeast Iran was within Greater India in the fourth century BC. As Prasii was in the Gedrosia area, the question arises—did the army refuse to fight the Prasii or only to march eastwards? If Alexander wanted to move eastward it was not to defeat the Prasii. Tarn writes that he had nothing to do with Magadha on the Ganges. If25 he had learnt that the fertile Gangetic plains were only a few days’ march away, and wanted to be there for mere expansion of empire, he would have met little resistance. Reluctance of the army could be due to the lack of any tangible gain, not fear of the mighty Easterners. If this was the case, then Alexander bowed down to the wishes of his men. However, if the reluctance was to confront the Prasii, it appears sensible due to their formidable strength. As Moeris had fought beside Porus, the Prasiian army cannot have been left intact, though it could still have been a fighting force. It is probable that Moeris and his agents fomented discord among Alexander’s officers and soldiers. The magicians and26 other secret agents of Moeris probably overblew the might of the Prasii in order to frighten the invaders. From this point onwards, if not earlier, Eumenes, Perdikkas and Seleucus may have been in touch with Moeris.

Porus himself, mounted on a tall elephant, not only directed the movements of his forces but fought on to the very end of the contest; he then received a wound on his right shoulder, the only unprotected part of his body, all the rest of his person being rendered shot-proof by a coat of mail remarkable for its strength and closeness of fit; he now turned his elephant and began to retire. Alexander who had observed and admired his valour in the field was anxious to save his life and sent Taxiles after him on horseback to summon him to surrender; but the sight of this old enemy and traitor roused the indignation of the Paurava, who gave him no hearing and would have killed him, had not Taxiles instantly put his horse to the gallop and got beyond the reach of Porus’. Even this Alexander did not resent; he sent other messengers till at last Meroes (Maurya ?), an old friend of Porus, persuaded him to hear the message of Alexander.

-- Chapter II: Alexander's Campaigns in India, Excerpt from "Age of the Nandas and Mauryas", by K.A. Nilakanta Sastri

Victory Over Moeris At Palibothra

Only Justin (Just. xii, 8) reports that Alexander had defeated the Prasii.

There was one of the kings of India, named Porus, equally distinguished for strength of body and vigour of mind, who, hearing of the fame of Alexander, had been for some time before preparing for war against his arrival. Coming to battle with him, accordingly, he directed his soldiers to attack the rest of the Macedonians, but desired that their king should be reserved as an antagonist for himself. Nor did Alexander decline the contest; but his horse being wounded in the first shock, he fell headlong to the ground, and was saved by his guards gathering round him. Porus, covered with a number of wounds, was made prisoner, and was so grieved at being defeated, that when his life was granted him by the enemy, he would neither take food nor suffer his wounds to be dressed, and was scarcely at last prevailed upon to consent to live. Alexander, from respect to his valour, sent him back in safety to his kingdom. Here he founded two cities, one called Nicaea, and the other, from the name of his horse, Bucephale.

He then overthrew the Adrestae, the Gesteani, the Presidae, and the Gangaridae, with great slaughter among their troops. When he had reached the Cuphites, where the enemy awaited him with two thousand cavalry, the whole army, wearied not less with the number of their victories than with their toils in the field, besought him with tears that “he would at length make an end of war, and think on his country and his return; considering the years of his soldiers, whose remainder of life would scarcely suffice for their journey home.” One pointed to his hoary hairs, another to his wounds, another to his body worn out with an age, another to his person disfigured with scars,6 saying “that they were the only men who had endured unintermitted service under two kings, Philip and Alexander;” and conjuring him in conclusion that “he should restore their remains at least to the sepulchres of their fathers, since they failed not in zeal but in age; and that, if he would not spare his soldiers, he should yet spare himself, and not wear out his good fortune by pressing it too far.” Moved with these reasonable supplications, he ordered a camp to be formed, as if to mark the termination of his conquests, of greater size than usual, by the works of which the enemy might be astonished, and an admiration of himself be left to posterity. No task did the soldiers execute with more alacrity. After great slaughter of the enemy, they returned to this camp with mutual congratulations.

-- Just. xii, 8

Delu is said to have been a prince of uncommon bravery and generosity; benevolent towards men, and devoted to the service of God. The most remarkable transaction of his reign is the building of the city of Delhi, which derives its name from its founder, Delu. In the fortieth year of his reign, Phoor, a prince of his own family, who was governor of Cumaoon, rebelled against the Emperor, and marched to Kinoge, the capital. Delu was defeated, taken, and confined in the impregnable fort of Rhotas.

Phoor immediately mounted the throne of India, reduced Bengal, extended his power from sea to sea, and restored the empire to its pristine dignity. He died after a long reign, and left the kingdom to his son, who was also called Phoor, and was the same with the famous Porus, who fought against Alexander.

The second Phoor, taking advantage of the disturbances in Persia, occasioned by the Greek invasion of that empire under Alexander, neglected to remit the customary tribute, which drew upon him the arms of that conqueror. The approach of Alexander did not intimidate Phoor. He, with a numerous army, met him at Sirhind, about one hundred and sixty miles to the north-west of Delhi, and in a furious battle, say the Indian historians, lost many thousands of his subjects, the victory, and his life. The most powerful prince of the Decan, who paid an unwilling homage to Phoor, or Porus, hearing of that monarch's overthrow, submitted himself to Alexander, and sent him rich presents by his son. Soon after, upon a mutiny arising in the Macedonian army, Alexander returned by the way of Persia.

Sinsarchund, the same whom the Greeks call Sandrocottus, assumed the imperial dignity after the death of Phoor, and in a short time regulated the discomposed concerns of the empire. He neglected not, in the mean time, to remit the customary tribute to the Grecian captains, who possessed Persia under, and after the death of, Alexander. Sinsarchund, and his son after him, possessed the empire of India seventy years. When the grandson of Sinsarchund acceded to the throne, a prince named Jona, who is said to have been a grand-nephew of Phoor, though that circumstance is not well attested, aspiring to the throne, rose in arms against the reigning prince, and deposed him.

-- The History of Hindostan, In Three Volumes, Volume I, by Alexander Dow, Esq., Lieutenant-Colonel in the Company's Service, 1812

Palibothra, the Prasiian capital was famous for peacocks. Lane Fox writes:

... Dhana Nanda's kingdom could have been set against itself and Alexander might yet have walked among Palimbothra's peacocks.27

Curiously, Arrian writes that Alexander was so charmed by the beauty of peacocks that he decreed the severest penalties against anyone killing them (Arrian, Indica, xv.218). The picture of Alexander amidst peacocks appears28 puzzling: where did he come across the majestic bird? Does this fascination lead us to Palibothra? The height of absurdity is reached when we are told that eighteen months after the battle with Porus, Alexander suddenly remembered his ‘victory over the Indians’ in the wilderness of Carmania and set upon to celebrate it with fabulous mirth and abandon. Surprisingly it did not jar with the common sense of anyone why this was not celebrated in India. The ‘victory over the Indians’ in southeast Iran can lead to only one judicious conclusion—this was India in the fourth century BC. Moreover, if Alexander had indeed defeated the Indians, who could have been their leader but Moeris or Maurya? This clearly indicates that Alexander had indeed conquered the Prasii in Gedrosia.

Excerpt from Ptolemy's 9th Asian Map, depicting the lands just west of the Indus River during classical antiquity.

Carmania (Greek: Καρμανία, Karmanía, Old Persian: [x] Karmanā, Middle Persian: Kirmān) is a historical region that approximately corresponds to the modern Iranian province of Kerman, and was a province of the Achaemenid, Seleucid, Arsacid, and Sasanian Empire. The region bordered Persia in the west, Gedrosia in the south-east, Parthia in the north (later known as Abarshahr), and Aria to the north-east. Carmania was considered part of Ariana.

-- Carmania (region), by Wikipedia

Bosworth writes that the name of the place where the victory was celebrated was Kahnuj. The name tells all, for Kanauj was the chief city of the29 Indians, the name of which is echoed in the famous city in eastern India which later became most important.
[29. A. B. Bosworth, Conquest and Empire: The Reign of Alexander the Great (Cambridge 1988) 150, who gives the name Khanu (maps usually give the name Kohnouj or Kahnuj). Nearby Patali may have been Palibothra.]

As the winter deepened, Alexander approached the Carmanian capital, which Diodorus (xvii.106.4) names Salmus. It was, according to Nearchus (Arr. Ind. 33.7), five days' journey from the coast. The site remains a mystery,386 but it was probably at the western side of the valley of the Halil Rud, in the general vicinity of the modern town of Khanu. The army was in an area of relative plenty but close enough to the coast to receive news of the progress of Nearchus' fleet. There Alexander sacrificed to commemorate his Indian victory and the emergence from the Gedrosian desert, and he held a musical and athletic festival, a drunken and festive affair, notable for the general acclaim achieved by Alexander's favourite Bagoas when he entered the winning chorus.387 During the celebrations, if not before, news came of Nearchus' safe arrival at Harmozeia, the principal seaport of Carmania. The details are supplied for us by Nearchus, and they are open to justifiable suspicion. Nearchus has a rich story, full of dramatic peripeteia, in which he unexpectedly learns of the king's presence in the near vicinity, marches up county with a small escort, strangely missing the search parties sent out by his anxious king, and is finally retrieved, unrecognisable from brine and fatigue, to give the glad news of the fleet's survival to Alexander in person. The details of this Odyssey are beyond verification and there is very probably a good deal of imaginative embellishment.388 What is certain is that the fleet arrived at Harmozeia without serious loss and that its arrival was announced to Alexander by Nearchus in person. It was a moment of general exaltation, and, if we may believe Nearchus (Arr. Ind. 36.3), Alexander renewed the sacrifices and prolonged the games. The celebrations which had begun commemorating the delivery of the army from Gedrosia ended with thanks-offerings for the safe arrival of the fleet.

-- A. B. Bosworth, Conquest and Empire: The Reign of Alexander the Great (Cambridge 1988), p. 150

Kahnuj (Persian: كهنوج‎, also Romanized as Kahnūj) is a city and capital of Kahnuj County, Kerman Province, Iran.

-- Kahnuj, by Wikipedia

***


Patali (Persian: پاتلي‎, also Romanized as Pātalī; also known as Kheyrābād-e Pātelī) is a village in Jahadabad Rural District, in the Central District of Anbarabad County, Kerman Province, Iran.

-- Patali, Anbarabad, by Wikipedia

Pataligram to Patna -- The Historical Journey Of The 'City of Flowers'

The cities, towns or villages that once occupied the site of modern Patna had carried quite a large number of names in different periods of history and most of them were in the name of 'FLOWERS.' The earliest to exist at the site seems to have been a small sprawling village with the name of Patali, Pataligrama, Padali or Padalipura as mentioned in Buddhist and Jain traditions.

Vayupurana mentions the name of Pataliputra as Kusumapura. In Tattvarthasutra of Umasvati, a celebrated Jain Author who lived here in the first-second centuries A.D., the place is described as Kusumapura. It literally means a 'city of flowers.' Gargi-Samhita names Pataliputra as Kusum-Dhvaja or Pushpapura -- variant of Kusumapura. The modern name of Phulwarisharif of a small hamlet near Patna is obviously a survival of the ancient name. One tradition says that in the time of Nandas, the name was Padmawati. It is under the Mauryans that the name of Pataliputra came in common use. Megasthenes, the Greek ambassador, at the court of Chandragupta Maurya, mentioned Pataliputra with the Greek utterance of 'Palibothra.' The celebrated Buddhist monk, Hiuen-Tsang who came to India in the seventh century A.D., also knew it by the name of Pataliputra.

-- The Wonder That Was Pataliputra, by brandingbihar.com

"Karavira, Jati, Champaka, Lotus, and Patali, are the five flowers (275)."

-- Mahanirvana Tantra: Tantra of the Great Liberation, Translated by Arthur Avalon (Sir John Woodroffe)

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Part 2 of 3

Smith is aware that Kanauj in eastern India was not the city mentioned in the ancient texts [??]; yet he does not suspect that the30 same could be true of Jones’ Palibothra. Dow identifies Sandrocottos with31 Sinsarchund who, according to Firista, ruled from Kanauj [Kinoge].

It is affirmed, by the Brahmins, that it was in the time of this dynasty that the worship of emblematical figures of the divine attributes, was first established in India. The Persians, in their invasions, say they introduced the worship of the Sun, and other heavenly bodies, together with the proper symbol of God, the element of fire; but the mental adoration of the Divinity, as one Supreme Being, was still followed by many: The great city of Kinoge, so long the capital of Hindostan, was built by one of the Surajas, on the banks of the Ganges. The circumference of its walls are said to have been near one hundred miles.

Sirhind / Patiala / Delhi / Kannauj / "Pataliputra"

After the extinction or deposition of the royal house of Suraja, Baraja acceded to the throne of Hindostan, which he possessed thirty-six years. We know little concerning him, but that he built the city of Barage, still remaining in India. He had a genius for music, and wrote some books upon that subject, which were long in high repute. He, at last, grew disordered in his senses, became tyrannical, and was deposed by Keidar, a Brahmin, who assumed the empire.

Keidar, being a man of learning and genius, became an excellent prince. He paid the customary tribute to the King of Persia, and so secured his kingdom from foreign invasion. A domestic enemy, however, arose, that at length deprived him, in the nineteenth year of his reign, of his life and empire. This was Sinkol, a native of Kinoge, who breaking out into open rebellion, in Bengal and Behâr, defeated, in several battles, the imperial army, and mounted the throne.

Sinkol was a warlike and magnificent prince. He rebuilt the capital of Bengal, famous under the names of Lucknouti and Goura, and adorned it with many noble structures. Goura is said to have been the chief city of Bengal for two thousand years; and the ruins that still remain, prove that it has been an amazingly magnificent place. The unwholesomeness of the air prevailed upon the imperial family of Timur to order its being abandoned, and Tanda became the seat of government two hundred and fifty years ago.

Sinkol, keeping an immense army in pay, was induced to withhold the tribute from the King of Persia, and to turn the ambassador of that Monarch, with disgrace, from his court. Fifty thousand Persian horse, under their general, Peiran, invaded India, and advanced without much opposition to the confines of Bengal, where they came to battle with the imperial army, under Sinkol. Though the bravery of the Persians was much superior to that of the Hindoos, they were, at last, by the mere weight of numbers, driven from the field, and obliged to take shelter, in a strong post, in the neighbouring mountains, from whence the victors found it impossible to dislodge them. They continued to ravage the country, from their strong hold, and dispatched letters to Persia, to inform the King of their situation.

Affrasiab, for that, say the Brahmins, was the name of the monarch who reigned, in the days of Sinkol, over Persia and a great part of Tartary, was at the city of Gindis, near the borders of China, when he received intelligence of the misfortune of his army in India. He hastened to their relief with one hundred thousand horse, came to battle with the Emperor Sinkol, whom he totally defeated, and pursued to the capital of Bengal. Sinkol did not think it safe to remain long at that place, and therefore took refuge in the inaccessible mountains of Turhat. Affrasiab, in the mean time, laid waste the country with fire and sword. Sinkol thought it prudent to beg peace and forgiveness of Affrasiab, and he accordingly came, in the character of a suppliant, to the Persian camp, with a sword and a coffin carried before him, to signify that his life was in the disposal of the King. Sinkol was carried prisoner to Tartary, as an hostage for the obedience of his son Rohata, who was placed upon the throne of Hindostan.

Sinkol died in the 731 year before the Christian æra, and Rohata continued his reign over India. He was a wise, religious, and affable prince. The revenues of the empire, which extended from Kirmi to Malava [The Malavas or Malwas were an ancient Indian tribe. Modern scholars identify them with the Malloi who were settled in the Punjab region at the time of Alexander's invasion in the 4th century BCE. -- Malavas, by Wikipedia], he divided into three parts; one he expended in charities, another he sent to Persia, by way of tribute, and to support his father, and a third he appropriated to the necessary expences of government. The standing army of the empire was, upon this account, small, which encouraged the prince of Malava to revolt, and to support himself in his rebellion, Rohata built the famous fort of Rhotas, and left what remained to him of the empire, in peace, to his son. The race of Sinkol held the sceptre of India 81 years after his death, and then became extinct.

After a long dispute about the succession, a chief of the Raja-put tribe of Cutswa, assumed the dignities of the empire, under the name of Maraja. The first act of the reign of Maraja, was the reduction of Guzerat, where some disturbances had happened in the time of his predecessor. He built a port in that country, where he constructed vessels, and carried on commerce with all the states of Asia. He mounted the throne, according to the annals of India, in the 586 year before the birth of Christ, and reigned forty years. He is said to have been cotemporary with Gustasp, or Hystaspes, the father of Darius, who mounted the throne of Persia after the death of Smerdis. It is worthy of being remarked in this place, that the chronology of the Hindoos agrees, almost exactly, with that established by Sir Isaac Newton. Newton fixes the commencement of the reign of Darius in the 521 year before the Christian æra; so that, if we suppose that Hystaspes, who was governor of Turkestan, or Transoxiana, made a figure in Tartary twenty-five years before the accession of his son to the throne of Persia, which is no way improbable, the chronology of India agrees perfectly with that of Sir Isaac Newton.

Keda-raja, who was nephew, by a sister, to the former emperor, was nominated by him to the throne. Rustum Dista, the Persian governor of the ceded Indian provinces, being dead, Keda-raja turned his arms that way, reduced the countries upon the Indus, and fixed his residence in the city of Bera. The mountaineers of Cabul and Candahar, who are now called Afgans, or Patans, advanced against Keda-raja, and recovered all the provinces of which he had possessed himself upon the Indus. We know no more of the transactions of Keda-raja. He died after a reign of forty-three years.

Jei-chund, the commander in chief of Keda-raja's armies, found no great difficulty in mounting the throne after the death of his sovereign. We know little of the transactions of the reign of Jei-chund. A pestilence and famine happened in his time, and he himself was addicted to indolence and pleasure. He reigned sixty years, and his son succeeded him in the empire, but was dispossessed by Delu, the brother of Jei-chund. Bemin and Darâb, or Darius, say the Indians, were two successive Kings of Persia, in the days of Jei-chund, and he punctually paid to them the stipulated tribute.

Delu is said to have been a prince of uncommon bravery and generosity; benevolent towards men, and devoted to the service of God. The most remarkable transaction of his reign is the building of the city of Delhi, which derives its name from its founder, Delu. In the fortieth year of his reign, Phoor, a prince of his own family, who was governor of Cumaoon, rebelled against the Emperor, and marched to Kinoge, the capital. Delu was defeated, taken, and confined in the impregnable fort of Rhotas.

Phoor immediately mounted the throne of India, reduced Bengal, extended his power from sea to sea, and restored the empire to its pristine dignity. He died after a long reign, and left the kingdom to his son, who was also called Phoor, and was the same with the famous Porus, who fought against Alexander.

The second Phoor, taking advantage of the disturbances in Persia, occasioned by the Greek invasion of that empire under Alexander, neglected to remit the customary tribute, which drew upon him the arms of that conqueror. The approach of Alexander did not intimidate Phoor. He, with a numerous army, met him at Sirhind, about one hundred and sixty miles to the north-west of Delhi, and in a furious battle, say the Indian historians, lost many thousands of his subjects, the victory, and his life. The most powerful prince of the Decan, who paid an unwilling homage to Phoor, or Porus, hearing of that monarch's overthrow, submitted himself to Alexander, and sent him rich presents by his son. Soon after, upon a mutiny arising in the Macedonian army, Alexander returned by the way of Persia.

Sinsarchund, the same whom the Greeks call Sandrocottus, assumed the imperial dignity after the death of Phoor, and in a short time regulated the discomposed concerns of the empire. He neglected not, in the mean time, to remit the customary tribute to the Grecian captains, who possessed Persia under, and after the death of, Alexander. Sinsarchund, and his son after him, possessed the empire of India seventy years. When the grandson of Sinsarchund acceded to the throne, a prince named Jona, who is said to have been a grand-nephew of Phoor, though that circumstance is not well attested, aspiring to the throne, rose in arms against the reigning prince, and deposed him.

Jona was an excellent prince, endued with many and great good qualities. He took great pains in peopling and in cultivating the waste parts of Hindostan, and his indefatigable attention to the police of the country established to him a lasting reputation for justice and benevolence. Jona acceded to the throne of India little more than two hundred and sixty years before the commencement of the Christian æra; and, not many years after, Aridshere, whom the Greeks call Arsaces, possessing himself of the Eastern provinces of Persia, expelled the successors of Alexander, and founded the Parthian, or second Persian empire. Arsaces assumed the name of King about two hundred and fifty-six years before Christ, according to the writers of Greece, which perfectly agrees with the accounts of the Brahmins. Aridshere, or Arsaces, claimed and established the right of Persia to a tribute from the empire of India, and Jona, fearing his arms, made him a present of elephants and a vast quantity of gold and jewels. Jona reigned long after this transaction, in great tranquillity, at Kinoge; and he and his posterity together possessed the throne peaceably, during the space of ninety years.

Callian-chund, by what means is not certain, was in possession of the empire of Hindostan about one hundred and seventy years before the commencement of our æra. He was of an evil disposition, oppressive, tyrannical, and cruel. Many of the best families in Hindostan, to avoid his tyrannies, fled beyond the verge of the empire; so that, say the Brahmin writers, the lustre of the court, and the beauty of the country, were greatly diminished. The dependent princes at length took arms, and Callian-chund, being deserted by his troops, fled, and died in obscurity.

With him the empire of India may be said to have fallen. The princes and governors assumed independence, and though some great men, by their valour and conduct, raised themselves afterwards to the title of Emperors, there never was a regular succession of Kings. From the time of Callian-chund, the scanty records we have, give very little light in the affairs of India, to the time of Bicker-Majit, King of Malava, who made a great figure in that part of the world.

Bicker-Majit is one of the most renowned characters in Indian history. In policy, justice, and wisdom, they affirm that he had no equal. He is said to have travelled over a great part of the East, in the habit of a mendicant devotee, in order to acquire the learning, arts, and policy of foreign nations. It was not till after he was fifty years of age that he made a great figure in the field; and his uncommon success, justified, in some measure, a notion, that he was impelled to take arms by divine command. In a few months he reduced the kingdoms of Malava and Guzerat, securing with acts of justice and sound policy what his arms obtained. The poets of those days praise his justice, by affirming that the magnet, without his permission, durst not exert its power upon iron, nor amber upon the chaff of the field; and such was his temperance and contempt of grandeur, that he slept upon a mat, and reduced the furniture of his apartment to an earthen pot, filled with water from the spring. To engage the attention of the vulgar to religion, he set up the great image of Macâl, or Time, in the city of Ugein, which he built, while he himself worshipped only the infinite and invisible God.

The Hindoos retain such a respect for the memory of Bicker-Majit, that the most of them, to this day, reckon their time from his death, which happened in the 89th year of the Christian æra. Shawpoor, or the famous Sapor, king of Persia, is placed, in the Indian chronology, as cotemporary with this renowned king of Malava. He was slain in his old age, in a battle against a confederacy of the princes of the Decan.

The empire of Malava, after the demise of Bicker. Majit, who had raised it to the highest dignity, fell into anarchy and confusion. The great vassals of the crown assumed independence in their respective governments, and the name of Emperor was, in a great measure, obliterated from the minds of the people. One Raja-Boga, of the same tribe with Bicker-Majit, drew, by his valour, the reins of general government into his hands. He was a luxurious, though otherwise an excellent prince. His passion for architecture produced many magnificent fabrics, and several fine cities in Hindostan own him for their founder. He reigned in all the pomp of luxury, about fifty years, over a great part of India.

The ancient empire of Kinoge was in some measure revived by Basdeo, who, after having reduced Bengal and Behâr, assumed the imperial titles. He mounted the throne at Kinoge about 330 years after the birth of Christ, and reigned with great reputation. Byram-gore, king of Persia, came, in the time of Basdeo, to India, under the character of a merchant, to inform himself of the power, policy, manners, and government of that vast empire. This circumstance is corroborated by the joint testimonies of the Persian writers; and we must observe upon the whole, that, in every point, the accounts extracted from the Maha-barit agree with those of foreign writers, when they happen to treat upon the same subject: which is a strong proof, that the short detail it gives of the affairs of India is founded upon real facts. An accident which redounded much to the honour of Byram-gore brought about his being discovered. A wild elephant, in rutting-time, if that expression may be used, attacked him in the neighbourhood of Kinoge, and he pierced the animal's forehead with an arrow, which acquired to him such reputation, that the Emperor Basdeo ordered the merchant into his presence; where Byram-gore was known by an Indian nobleman, who had carried the tribute, some years before, to the court of Persia. Basdeo, being certainly assured of the truth, descended from his throne, and embraced the royal stranger.

Byram-gore being constrained to assume his proper character, was treated with the utmost magnificence and respect while he remained at the Indian court, where he married the daughter of Basdeo, and returned, after some time, into Persia. Basdeo and the princes, his posterity; ruled the empire in tranquillity for the space of eighty years.

Upon the accession of a prince of the race of Basdeo in his non-age, civil disputes arose, and those soon gave birth to a civil war. The empire being torn to pieces by civil dissensions, an assembly of the nobles thought it prudent to exclude the royal line from the throne, and to raise to the supreme authority Ramdeo, general of the imperial forces. Ramdeo was of the tribe of Rhator, the same with the nation, well known in India, under the name of Mahrators. He was a bold, wise, generous and good prince. He reduced into obedience the chiefs, who, during the distractions of the empire, had rendered themselves independent. He recovered the country of Marvar from the tribe of Cutswa, who had usurped the dominion of it, and planted it with his own tribe of Rhator, who remain in possession of Marvar to this day.

Ramdeo was one of the greatest princes that ever sat upon the throne of Hindostan. In the course of many successful expeditions, which took up several years, he reduced all India under his dominion, and divided the spoil of the vanquished princes among his soldiers. After a glorious reign of fifty-four years, he yielded to his fate; but the actions of his life, says our author, have rendered his name immortal. Notwithstanding his great power, he thought it prudent to continue the payment of the usual tribute to Feros-sassa, the father of the great Kei-kobâd, king of Persia.

After the death of Ramdeo, a dispute arose between his sons concerning the succession, which afterwards terminated in a civil war. Partab-chund, who was captain-general to the Emperor Ramdeo, taking advantage of the public confusions, mounted the throne, and, to secure the possession of it, extirpated the imperial family. Partab was cruel, treacherous and tyrannical. He drew by fair, but false promises, the princes of the empire from their respective governments, and, by cutting off the most formidable, rendered the rest obedient to his commands. An uninterrupted course of success made Partab too confident of his own power. He neglected, for some years, to send the usual tribute to Persia, returning, says our author, the ambassadors of the great Noshirwan, with empty hands, and dishonour, from his court. A Persian invasion, however, soon convinced Partab, that it was in vain to contend with the Lord Paramount of his empire. He was, in short, forced to pay up his arrears, to advance the tribute of the ensuing year, and to give hostages for his future obedience.

Partab mounted the imperial throne of India about the 500th year of Christ; and though he left the empire in the possession of his family, it soon declined in their hands. The dependent princes rendered themselves absolute in their respective governments; and the titular Emperor became so insignificant, with regard to power, that he gradually lost the name of Raja, or Sovereign, and had that of Rana substituted in its place. The Ranas, however, possessed the mountainous country of Combilmere, and the adjacent provinces of Chitor and Mundusir, till they were conquered by the Emperors of Hindostan of the Mogul race.

Soon after the death of Partáb-chund, Annindeo, a chief of the tribe of Bise, seized upon the extensive kingdom of Malava, and, with rapidity of conquest, brought the peninsula of Guzerat, the country of the Mahrattors, and the whole province of Berâr, into the circle of his command. Annindeo was cotemporary with Chusero Purvese, king of Persia; and he reigned over his conquests for sixteen years. At the same time that Annindeo broke the power of the empire, by his usurpation of the best of its provinces, one Maldeo, a man of an obscure original, raised himself into great power, and took the city of Delhi and its territory, from the imperial family. He soon after reduced the imperial city of Kinoge, which was so populous, that there were, within the walls, thirty thousand shops, in which arreca, a kind of nut, which the Indians use as Europeans do tobacco, was sold. There were also in Kinoge, sixty thousand bands of musicians and singers, who paid a tax to government. Maldeo, during the space of forty years, kept possession of his conquests, but he could not transmit them to his posterity. Every petty governor and hereditary chief in Hindostan rendered themselves independent, and the name of universal empire was lost, till it was established, by the Mahommedans, on the confines of India and Persia. The history of this latter empire comprehended the whole plan of Ferishta's annals; but to understand them properly, it may be necessary to throw more light, than he furnishes, upon the origin of that power which spread afterwards over all India.

-- The History of Hindostan, In Three Volumes, Volume I, by Alexander Dow, Esq., Lieutenant-Colonel in the Company's Service, 1812

It is therefore clear that Alexander did not run away from the Prasii, as Badian imagines, but had in fact pursued Moeris, their leader, through Gedrosia. The palace at Kahnuj where Alexander rejoiced must have been the fabled one which, according to Aelian, excelled those at Susa and Ekbatana (Aelian, xiii.18).

The Royal Parks of India and Their Birds

18. In the royal residences in India where the greatest of the kings of that country lives, there are so many objects for admiration that neither Memnon's city of Susa with all its extravagance, nor the magnificence of Ecbatana is to be compared with them. (These places appear to be the pride of Persia, if there is to be any comparison between the two countries.) The remaining splendours it is not the purpose of this narrative to detail; but in the parks tame peacocks and pheasants are kept, and they <live> in the cultivated shrubs to which the royal gardeners pay due attention. Moreover there are shady groves and herbage growing among them, and the boughs are interwoven by the woodman's art. And what is more remarkable about the climate of the country, the actual trees are of the evergreen type, and their leaves never grow old and fall: some of them are indigenous, others have been imported from abroad after careful consideration. And these, the olive alone excepted, are an ornament to the place and enhance its beauty. India does not bear the olive of its own accord, nor if it comes from elsewhere, does it foster its growth.

Well, there are other birds besides, free and unenslaved, which come of their own accord and make their beds and resting-places in these trees. There too Parrots are kept and crowd around the king. But no Indian eats a Parrot in spite of their great numbers, the reason being that the Brahmins regard them as sacred and even place them above all other birds. And they add that they are justified in so doing, for the Parrot is the only bird that gives the most convincing imitation of human speech. There are also in these royal domains beautiful lakes, the work of man's hands, which contain fish of immense size and tame. And nobody hunts them, only the king's sons during their childhood; and in calm waters, quite free from danger, they fish and sport and even learn the art of sailing as well.

-- Aelian, Characteristics of animals, book XIII, Chapter 18

Nearchus certainly had other tasks than scientific fact-finding; the army was ordered to keep close to the shore and the navy moved in tandem. This orchestration and the large number of troops and horses on ships (quite unnecessary for a scientific mission) show that the navy was not only carrying provisions for the army which was engaged in a grim and protracted battle with a mighty adversary, but that the troops on the ships were also ready to support the army if needed. This is why the navy waited for twenty-four days near Karachi. The names Pataliputra and Pattala and Moeris and Maurya leave little32 to imagination.

Nearchos.

Among all the great men associated with Alexander no one has left a reputation more noble and unsullied than that of Nearchos. The long and difficult voyage in unknown seas which he successfully accomplished ranks as one of the greatest achievements in the annals of navigation. He was free from the mad ambition to rule which gave rise to the deadly feuds between Alexander’s other great generals, and stained the records of their lives with so many dark crimes. He was a native of Crete, but settled at Amphipolis, a Macedonian city near the Thracian border. He held a high position at the court of King Philip, where he attached himself to the party of the young prince, and was banished along with Ptolemy, Harpalos, and others, who had involved themselves in his intrigues. Alexander, on mounting the throne, recalled his former partisans, and did not neglect their interests. Nearchos accompanied him into Asia, where he was appointed governor of Lykia and other provinces south of the Tauros. This post he continued to hold for five years. He rejoined Alexander before he left Baktria to invade India, and in India he was appointed commander of the fleet which was built on the Hydaspes. He conducted it down that river and the Akesines and the Indus to Patala (now Haidarabad), a naval station at the apex of the Indus Delta. He arrived at that place about the time when the south-west monsoon usually sets in. Alexander, on returning to Patala from the excursions he made to the ocean, removed the fleet to Killouta, an island in the western branch of the Indus, which possessed a commodious haven. He then set out on his return to Persia, leaving the fleet with Nearchos, who had relieved Alexander’s mind of a load of anxiety by voluntarily proffering his services to conduct the expedition by sea to the head of the Persian Gulf. When we consider, as Bunbury remarks, the total ignorance of the Greeks at this time concerning the Indian seas, and the imperfect character of their navigation, it is impossible not to admire the noble confidence with which Nearchos ventured to promise that he would bring the ships in safety to the shores of Persia, “if the sea were navigable and the thing feasible for mortal man.” Nearchos wished to defer his departure till the monsoon had quite subsided, but as he was in danger of being attacked by the natives, who were no longer overawed by Alexander’s presence, he set sail on the 21st of September, 325 B.C.. He was forced, however, by the violence of the weather, when he had reached the mouth of the Indus, to take refuge in a sheltered bay at a station which he called Alexander’s Haven, and which is now known as Karachi, the great emporium of the trade of the Indus. After a detention here for twenty-four days, he resumed his voyage on the 23rd of October. Coasting the shore of the Arabies for 80 miles, he reached the mouth of the river Arabis (now the Purali), which divides the Arabies from the Oreitai. The coast of the latter people, which was 100 miles in extent, was navigated in eighteen days. At one of the landing-places the ships were supplied by Leonnatos with stores of corn, which lasted ten days. The navigation of the Mekran coast which succeeded occupied twenty days, and the distance traversed was 480 miles English, though Nearchos in his journal has set it down at 10,000 stadia or 1250 miles. The expedition in this part of the voyage suffered great distress for want of provisions. The coast was barren, and its savage inhabitants, the Ichthyophagi,1 [According to Dr. Bellew this name is the Greek equivalent of the Persian Mahikhoran, "fish-eaters,” still surviving in the modern Makran. (Since the above note was written the cause of Eastern learning and research has suffered a grievous loss by the death of this distinguished Orientalist, whose work on the Ethnology of Afghanistan will prove a lasting monument to his fame. The work discusses inter alia the ethnic affinities of the various races with which Alexander came into contact during his Asiatic expedition.)] had little else to subsist on than fish, which some of them ate raw.2 [Major E. Mockler, the political agent of Makran, contributed some years ago to the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society a valuable paper on the identification of places on this coast mentioned by Arrian, Ptolemy, and Marcian, in which he corrected some errors into which the commentators on these authors had fallen.] The Karmanian coast, which succeeded, was not so distressingly barren, but was even, in certain favoured localities, extremely fertile and beautiful. Its length was 296 miles, and the time taken in its navigation was nineteen days, some of which, however, were spent at the mouth of the river Anamis (now the Minab), whence Nearchos made a journey into the interior to apprise Alexander of the safety of his fleet. The coasts of Persis and Sousis were navigated in thirty-one days. Nearchos had intended to sail up the Tigris, but having passed its mouth unawares, continued sailing westward till he reached Diridotis (Teredon), an emporium in Babylonia on the Pallocopas branch of the Euphrates. He thence retraced his course to the Tigris, and ascended its stream till he reached a lake through which at that time it flowed and which received the river Pasitigris, the Ulai of Scripture, and now the Karun. The fleet proceeded up this river till it met the army near a bridge on the highway from Persis to Sousa. It anchored at the bridge on the 24th of February, 324 B.C., so that the whole voyage was performed in 146 days. Nearchos received appropriate rewards for the splendid service he had so successfully performed. Alexander was sending him away on another great maritime expedition when the illness which carried off the great conqueror broke up the enterprise. In the discussions which followed regarding the succession to the throne, Nearchos unsuccessfully advocated the claims of Herakles, the son of Alexander by Barsine, who was the daughter of Artabazos and the widow of Memnon the Rhodian. He acquiesced, however, in the arrangements made by the other generals, and was content with receiving his former government, even though he was to hold it subject to the authority of Antigonos. He accompanied his superior when he marched against Eumenes, and interceded for the life of the latter when he fell into the hands of his enemies. Nothing is known of his history after the year 314 B.C., when he was selected by Antigonos to assist his son Demetrios with his counsels when left for the first time in command of an army.

-- The Invasion of India by Alexander the Great as described by Arrian Q. Curtius Diodorus Plutarch and Justin: Being Translations of Such Portions of the Works of These and Other Classical Authors as Describe Alexander's Campaigns in Afghanistan the Panjab Sindh Gedrosia and Karmania With An Introduction Containing a Life of Alexander, Copious Notes Illustrations Maps and Indices, by J.W. McCrindle M.A., Late Principal of the Government College Patna and Fellow of the Calcutta University Member of the General Council of the University of Edinburgh

Yet Badian fails to recognise that Moeris was Chandragupta33 Maurya of Prasii; and his allusions to Alexander’s insanity, Dyonisius and Semiramis, et cetera are complete non-sequiturs from what can be legitimately inferred from available data. Badian has no idea that the food crisis was due to34 the collusion of Alexander’s officers with Moeris. As a general, Alexander can hardly be blamed for imposing a levy in order to arrange for the supplies for his army; this is the reason why the people of Pattala had fled. In his unseemly haste to cast Alexander in a stereotype, Badian overturns the whole episode and goes on to compare him with Chengiz Khan. Further clarifications in35 Alexander’s history come from an unexpected quarter – the history of Asoka.

The first kings of the Dynasty of the Barhadrathas being omitted in the table, are given here from the Harivansa. The famous Uparichara was the sixth in lineal descent from Curu; and his son was

Vrihadratha
Cushagra
Vrishabha
Pushpavan
Satyasahita
Urja
Sambhava
Jara-Sandha.

Jara-Sandha, literally old Sandha or Sandhas, was the lord paramount of India or Maha Raja, and in the spoken dialects Ma-Raj. This word was pronounced Morieis by the Greeks; for Hesychius says, that Morieis signifies king in India, and in another place, that Mai in the language of that country, signified great. Nonnus, in his Dionysiacs, calls the lord paramount of India, Morrheus, and says that his name was Sandes, with the title of Hercules. Old Sandha is considered as a hero to this day in India, and pilgrimages, I am told, are yearly performed to the place of his abode, to the cast of Gaya, in south Bahar, It is called Raja-Griha, or the royal mansion, in the low hills of Raja-giri, or the royal mountains; though their name I suspect to be derived from Raja-Griha The Dionysiacs of Nonnus are really the history of the Maha Bharata, or great war, as we shall see hereafter.

-- Essay III. Of the Kings of Magadha; their Chronology, by Captain Wilford, Asiatic Researches, Volume 9, 1809.

Who Ruled Arachosia — Asoka the Saviour or Diodotus I Soter?

A powerful heuristic in artificial intelligence research is ‘coalesce’, which consists in assigning the same value to two different variables. In ancient 36 history also a similar approach at times leads to great simplification. It is not often that Soters rub shoulders with Saviours, but at first sight this is what seems to have happened in Arachosia. Macdonald writes:

Who was the lord of Arachosia when it was traversed by the Seleucid troops, it is difficult to say. It had once been Asoka.37

That Asoka was the ruler of Arachosia is clear from his bilingual Kandahar38 edict; but curiously evidence from coins seems to suggest that the Indo-Greek39 king Diodotus I was the master of this area. To unravel this seemingly unsolvable mystery one has to delve deep into the persona of the two men. The picture of Asoka in the Indian sources is that of a fearsome warrior who later turned into a pious missionary king, a matchless propagator of Dhamma.40

Tradition has it that in his youth he had a very violent disposition and killed his elder brother Susima on his way to the throne. Indeed, in the thirteenth Rock41 Edict the Emperor himself recalls his enterprises with the sword, and admits that he found pleasure rather in conquests by the Dhamma than in conquests by the sword. In the edict, he writes that he had sent emissaries to distant kingdoms, including that of Epirus. The circumstance of a king of Patna writing to the King of Epirus, of all persons, is a jarring incongruity which under normal circumstances would have led the investigators to a valuable clue regarding the true identity of Asoka; but so stodgy was the prevailing scholarship that no one suspected that Jones’ identification Palibothra could be wrong. Even such a great scholar as Rhys Davids chooses to distrust the king’s account instead.42

Three languages were used, Prakrit, Greek and Aramaic. The edicts are composed in non-standardized and archaic forms of Prakrit. Prakrit inscriptions were written in Brahmi and Kharosthi scripts, which even a commoner could read and understand. The inscriptions found in the area of Pakistan are in the Kharoshthi script. Other Edicts are written in Greek or Aramaic. The Kandahar Greek Edict of Ashoka (including portions of Edict No.13 and No.14) is in Greek only, and originally probably contained all the Major Rock Edicts 1-14...

The Major Pillar Edicts of Ashoka refer to seven separate major Edicts inscribed on columns, the Pillars of Ashoka, which are significantly detailed and extensive.

These edicts are preceded chronologically by the Minor Rock Edicts and the Major Rock Edicts, and constitute the most technically elegant of the inscriptions made by Ashoka. They were made at the end of his reign, from the years 26 and 27 of his reign, that is, from 237-236 BCE. Chronologically they follow the fall of Seleucid power in Central Asia and the related rise of the Parthian Empire and the independent Greco-Bactrian Kingdom circa 250 BCE. Hellenistic rulers are not mentioned anymore in these last edicts, as they only appear in Major Rock Edict No.13 (and to a lesser extent Major Rock Edict No.2), which can be dated to about the 14th year of the reign of Ashoka circa 256–255. The last Major Pillar Edicts (Edict No.7) is testamental in nature, making a summary of the accomplishments of Ashoka during his life.….

Proselytism beyond India

Now, it is the conquest by the Dharma that the Beloved of the Gods considers as the best conquest. And this one (the conquest by the Dharma) was won here, on the borders, and even 600 yojanas (leagues) from here, where the king Antiochos reigns, and beyond where reign the four kings Ptolemy, Antigonos, Magas and Alexander [Alexander II of Epirus], likewise in the south, where live the Cholas, the Pandyas, and as far as Tamraparni.

— Extract from Major Rock Edict No.13.

….
It is not clear in Hellenic records whether these emissaries were actually received, or had any influence on the Hellenic world. But the existence of the edicts in a very high-level Greek literary and philosophical language testifies to the high sophistication of the Greek community of Kandahar, and to a true communication between Greek intellectuals and Indian thought. According to historian Louis Robert, it becomes quite likely that these Kandahar Greeks who were very familiar with Indian culture could in turn transmit Indian ideas to the philosophical circles of the Mediterranean world, in Seleucia, Antioch, Alexandria, Pella or Cyrene. He suggests that the famous Ashoka emissaries sent to the Western Hellenistic Courts according to Ashoka's Major Rock Edict No.13 were in fact Greek subjects and citizens of Kandahar, who had the full capacity to carry out these embassies.….

Proselytism within Ashoka's territories

Inside India proper, in the realm of Ashoka, many different populations were the object of the King's proselytism. Greek communities also lived in the northwest of the Mauryan empire, currently in Pakistan, notably ancient Gandhara, and in the region of Gedrosia, nowadays in Southern Afghanistan, following the conquest and the colonization efforts of Alexander the Great around 323 BCE. These communities therefore seem to have been still significant during the reign of Ashoka. The Kambojas are a people of Central Asian origin who had settled first in Arachosia and Drangiana (today's southern Afghanistan), and in some of the other areas in the northwestern Indian subcontinent in Sindhu, Gujarat and Sauvira. The Nabhakas, the Nabhapamkits, the Bhojas, the Pitinikas, the Andhras and the Palidas were other people under Ashoka's rule:

Here in the king's domain among the Greeks, the Kambojas, the Nabhakas, the Nabhapamkits, the Bhojas, the Pitinikas, the Andhras and the Palidas, everywhere people are following Beloved-of-the-Gods' instructions in Dhamma.

-- Rock Edict No.13 (S. Dhammika)

-- Edicts of Ashoka, by Wikipedia

Epirus (/ɪˈpaɪrəs/) is a geographical and historical region in southeastern Europe, now shared between Greece and Albania. It lies between the Pindus Mountains and the Ionian Sea, stretching from the Bay of Vlorë and the Acroceraunian Mountains in the north to the Ambracian Gulf and the ruined Roman city of Nicopolis in the south. It is currently divided between the region of Epirus in northwestern Greece and the counties of Gjirokastër, Vlorë, and Berat in southern Albania. The largest city in Epirus is Ioannina, seat of the region of Epirus, with Gjirokastër the largest city in the Albanian part of Epirus.

A rugged and mountainous region, Epirus was the north-west area of ancient Greece. It was inhabited by the Greek tribes of the Chaonians, Molossians, and Thesprotians. It was home to the sanctuary of Dodona, the oldest oracle in ancient Greece, and the second most prestigious after Delphi. Unified into a single state in 370 BC by the Aeacidae dynasty, Epirus achieved fame during the reign of Pyrrhus of Epirus who fought the Roman Republic in a series of campaigns. Epirus subsequently became part of the Roman Republic along with the rest of Greece in 146 BC, which was followed by the Roman Empire and Eastern Roman Empire.

-- Epirus, by Wikipedia

The Ceylonese chronicles give the exaggerated story of his killing of ninety-nine brothers in his youth.

It is astonishing that the picture of Diodotus I has exactly the same mien. As already noted, the Mauryas ruled Aria and Seistan. This in a way opens up a Pandora’s box, for if Seistan and Aria were within the Mauryan kingdom it immediately follows that some of the Indo-Greek kings of Bactria and Seistan were Mauryas. Was Diodotus I a Maurya? Diodotus belonged to the same space and time as Asoka, and just like the latter he was a fierce warrior in his youth. An unsuspecting Macdonald writes:

The spectacle of the greatness of the Maurya empire would not be lost upon a satrap of such force of character as the elder Diodotus. 43

The figure of Zeus wielding the thunderbolt in his coins is perhaps awesome, but there is much more to Diodotus than just brute power. On his gold and silver coins he sometimes calls himself Soter, ‘the saviour’. That he was regarded as a saviour long after his death is clear from the coins struck in his memory by the later Graeco-Bactrian kings Agathocles and Antimachus, which mention Diodotus Soter. The title has baffled all scholars. Tarn dismisses it as mere44 royal rhodomontade, but this is unwarranted. Narain also grapples with the45 problem, and gives the simplistic explanation that Diodotus I took the title Soter as he considered himself as the saviour of the Bactrian Greeks. Turning a blind46 eye to the very real likelihood that Diodotus the warrior may have transcended into a great missionary, Narain holds the myopic view that his name Theodotus (Theos = God) quoted by Justin (Justin, xli.4) was just a scribal error. The47 story of civilisation is replete with instances of fierce men and women who later responded to higher callings, but due to Jonesian delusions, writers like Holt48 have missed that the image of Diodotus wielding the thunderbolt is not at all irreconcilable with that of a Bodhisatva-like Soter spreading the message of homonoia. That the history of Asoka matches that of Diodotus I line by line can only imply that they were one and the same person.

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Part 3 of 3

Devanampiya was the Same as Devadatta

As Seleucus’ daughter had come to the Mauryan household, there is general agreement among scholars that Asoka could have been an Indo-Greek; yet his true face remains veiled because he has been dumped at Patna. Wheeler writes:

It is just possible that Ashoka had Seleukid blood in his veins; at least his reputed vice-royalty of Taxila in the Punjab during the reign of his father could have introduced him to the living memory of Alexander the Great, and, as king, he himself tells us of proselytizing relations with the Western powers. 49

Wheeler misses that there is not a single archaeological relic that links Asoka with Patna but notes the strong Achaemenian influence on him. Tarn is almost50 awed by the very wide scatter of Diodotus’ coins, but fails to recognise the true bearings of Diodotus. His assertion is at best a hasty oversight:

... coins of Diodotus, for example, have been found in Seistan and in Taxila, places where he never ruled and never even was.51

Narain remarks with greater acuity:

It may be more than coincidence that almost at the same time as Euthydemus established his authority in Bactria Asoka died in India. It is not impossible that he was among those who tried to feed on the carcass of the dead Mauryan empire. 52

Due to Jonesian illusions, Narain cannot even dream that if he had not tried to feed on a carcass, Euthydemus had in fact killed a Maurya—Diodotus II, son of Asoka.53

By which name was Asoka known in the West? From the fact that the Greco-Roman writers do not refer to Asoka or his other name Piyadassi, Thapar concludes rather simplistically that he was unknown in the West. This is54 absurd: Asoka was one of the greatest emperors of history, and had sent religious emissaries to the farthest corners of the civilised world. The classical writers must have used a different name—the name Asoka is rare even in his edicts. Only Jones’s blunder obscured that, apart from Piyadassi and Devanampiya, Devadatta was also a name of Asoka. The name dmydty in55 Asoka's famous Taxila pillar Aramaic inscription refers to Devadatta. The line l dmy dty `l’, which Marshall and Andreas translated as ‘for Romedatta’, in fact refers to Damadatta or Devadatta (‘M’ and ‘B’ were often interchanged). Tarn56 notes that Diodorus of the Greeks can be the same as Devadatta of the Indians.57

In fact, Devanampiya, his most common name in the edicts, has the same meaning as Devadatta. Its literal Sanskrit rendering, ‘beloved of the Gods’, is only a secondary sense aimed at his subjects in the sub-continent. Like the Greek word nÒmoj (nomos), the word Nam in Persian means ‘law’, another Persian word for which is Dat. Thus Devanam has the same meaning as Devadat; Piya stands for a redeemer (like Priam of Troy). This clearly shows that Asoka was the same as Diodotus I. After embracing Buddhism, Asoka had to change his name Devadatta as it was the name of Gotama’s hated adversary. In the eighth rock edict he states that his ancestors were also Devanampiyas, which shows that it is a cognomen, not a title—thus even Chandragupta could have been a Devadat or Diodotus (of Erythrae). The term Deva, as known from the Shahnama,(div) the Avesta and Xerxes’ daiva inscription, initially meant a clan, not god. Ignorance of this has led to senseless translations of Asoka's edicts as ‘Gods mingled with men’.

Asoka Ruled Parthia

That Diodotus could have ruled Parthia is natural, but it is difficult to place Asoka so far west. Mahalake hi vijitam (‘vast is my empire’), he proclaims majestically in an edict (RE XIV).2: but how vast really was his kingdom? Asoka’s voice reverberates throughout the length and breadth of India, and his edicts usher in a new era in Indian history; but a careful study reveals that his dominion in the West was far more extensive than anyone could imagine. A perplexed Macdonald writes that the first Arsaces

... is sometimes a Parthian, sometimes a Bactrian, sometimes even a descendant of the Achaemenids.58

Significantly, Asoka is also sometimes a Parthian, sometimes a Bactrian, and sometimes even a descendant of the Achaemenids. Many Parthian Kings assumed the title Arsaces, which was also written as Assak. The similarity of Assak with Asoka may appear fortuitous, but it is not so. Another Parthian royal title, Priapati(us) also resembles Piadassi, Asoka’s title. Asoka’s hold on Bactria is beyond dispute, and great scholars like Wheeler note the strong Achaemenian imprint on his architecture. Furthermore, in the Indian texts the Mauryas are said to be descendants of the Nandas. Due to Jones’ blunder, no59 one realised that the Nandas were great Indo-Iranian kings. Darius II whose title was Nonthos, and Artaxerexes III who is cited in the Babylonian records as Nindin, were Nanda kings. Ignoring the bleak archaeological scenario, Thapar60 places Asoka at faraway Patna but, rummaging among the heap of Jonesian absurdum, she wonders why there are no edicts at his so-called capital. She61 also has no difficulty in asserting that the king of Patna could have been a second cousin of the Syrian king Antiochus II. Was Diodotus a descendant of the great Vedic hero Divodasa the Parthava? Indeed, Hillebrandt asserts that Parthia was once within the sphere of greater India. Rostovtzeff’s suggestion62 of Parthian influence on Buddhist art has been greeted with quiet disbelief in academic circles, but this scepticism is groundless. Another great art critic,63 Yazdani, also makes no mistake to identify the characteristic Parthian dress of some women in Ajanta paintings. Busagli writes:64

It should be borne in mind that at the time of its maximum expansion the Parthian kingdom covered an area far greater than that of Iran proper and included the Indian subcontinent [emphasis added], Mesopotamia, Armenia and some of the regions where Indian and Iranian influences overlap.65

Armed with this definition of Parthia, one can turn to an invaluable clue in Asoka’s edicts on the Mauryas and the Bactrian Greeks. In the Minor Rock Edict I, Asoka explicitly calls himself the ‘king of Pathavi’—an unmistakable allusion to Parthia (Parthava of the Achaemenian records). The word Pathavi66 has been confused by uninformed writers with Prithvi, the Sanskrit word for the Earth, and the statement has been dismissed as just another instance of royal vainglory. This, however, is disproved comprehensively by the fact that his name, Asoka Vardhana, links him with Parthian Kings like Vardanes. Rostovtzeff’s suggestion of Parthian influence becomes only natural if one notes that the king of Pathavi was Asoka. Smith is certain that Seleucus surrendered to Chandragupta the districts of Aria (Herat area), Gedrosia (Baluchistan area), Arachosia (Kandahar region) and Paropamisadae (Kabul region). But, despite his great erudition, Tarn maintained rashly that Asoka67 received no part even of the Paropamisadae. Tarn’s view became untenable in the light of the discovery of Asoka’s Kandahar edict, and even he had to concede that Asoka ‘established some sort of suzerainty over Paropamisadae’.68 Asoka’s own claim of being the king of Pathavi in a way lays the controversy to rest. The Parthian Prince An-shih-kao, who dedicated his life to the spread of Buddhism, is clearly Diodotus. Tsung Ping (AD 375-443) writes in his69 Ming-fo-lun that Buddhism was first brought to China by Asoka. The great70 Indologist F. W. Thomas notes that in his edicts Asoka does not mention his neighbour Diodotus Theos. Thomas tries to explain this within the Jonesian71 framework; but it is strange that the man whose religious overtures won the heart of the entire civilised world failed to impress upon his god-like neighbour. Asoka also does not mention Iran in his edicts; the nearest foreign king that he mentions is Antiochus. This shows that the Syrian King stationed at Selucia72 near Babylon was indeed his neighbour. Asoka does not refer to Diodotus because he was Diodotus himself. According to Wheeler, the first edicts were inscribed ‘in and after 257 BC’. Narain holds that Diodotus proclaimed73 himself as king by about 256 BC. Macdonald points out that Chaldaean74 records indicate that by about 273 BC, Diodotus sent twenty elephants to assist Antiochus I in his war against Ptolemy Philadelphus. The elephants remind75 one of the gift of five hundred elephants by Chandragupta to Seleucus in return for suzerainty over Aria, Arachosia, Paropamisadae and Gedrosia. It is judicious to assume that Diodotus also extracted some favours from Antiochus I in return, and this may correspond to Smith’s view that Asoka became king in 273 BC.76

Asoka seems to have died when Diodotus died. His edicts stopped appearing by about 245 BC. Thapar writes:

The issuing of the pillar edicts was the next known event of Asoka’s reign, and these are dated to the twenty-seventh and twenty-eighth year... It is indeed strange that for the next years until his death in 232 B.C. there were no major edicts. For a man so prolific in issuing edicts this silence of ten years is difficult to explain.77

Significantly, according to most scholars, Diodotus died in 245 BC, and this may be the reason why the edicts stopped appearing. The year of Asoka’s death given by Thapar and others is 232 B.C. but this may be a mistake. Diodotus’78 son, who was also a Diodotus, died in 232 B.C. However, an alternative scenario is also possible: some writers give 232 B.C. as Diodotus’ death, which agrees79 with the Indian texts, but the Indian accounts of Asoka after the death of his wife Asandhimitta (ca. 245 B.C.) are so fanciful that it is more sensible to infer that he had died by ca. 245 B.C. The Indian sources blame Asoka’s Queen Tissarakshita for ordering the death of his son Kunala, which may be an echo80 of the alleged marriage of Diodotus with a Seleucid princess.

Lion of Chaeronea and Lions on Asokan Pillars

The vanishing of the altars and the true bearings of Sasigupta and Diodotus cast a flood of light on a vexing problem of art history. When the Sarnath pillar with a lion-capital was discovered, it created a flutter all over the world. Marshall,81 an able and unprejudiced writer on Indian art, writes that ‘the Sarnath capital, on the other hand, though by no means a masterpiece, is the product of the most developed art of which the world was cognisant in the third century B.C’.82 However, despite its Indian symbolism, it bespeaks a strange fusion of Hellenic as well as Achaemenian traditions which has baffled all. At first sight there seems to be nothing unnatural for Asoka, alleged by Thapar to be a native of Bihar, to appoint Greek or Persian artisans; but a little circumspection shows83 the absurdity of the proposition. Apart from Jones’s assertion, nothing links84 Asoka to Patna. Wheeler notes the strong Achaemenian influence on Asoka, and recognises the double-lion capitals at Persepolis as the precursors of Asoka’s lions, yet misses the crux of the problem. Ray, another learned critic, writes85 that the Mauryan artists owed much to the Achaemenians, but attributes the stylistic impetus to Hellenistic art. Marshall points out that Asoka’s lion86 capitals represent a totally new era in Indian art; their fixed expression, authentic spirit, canon-based form and stylisation all betray a strong Hellenistic influence. Foucher is also at a loss to explain how the lion symbol sprang up in87 Sarnath. Both Marshall and Smith hold that the finest of the Asokan pillars88,89 were the work of foreign artists. In retrospect, one must pay tribute to scholars like Marshall, Foucher and Ray who were not aware of the true identity of Diodotus I yet made no mistake in recognising the Hellenistic content of Mauryan art.

Surprisingly, no one seems to remember that Alexander had come to Punjab. After the Middle Ages, the first Westerner to notice the Asokan pillars was the Englishman Thomas Coryat who, in AD 1616, was greatly impressed by the superbly polished forty feet-high monolithic column, and presumed that it must have been erected by Alexander the Great ‘in token of his victorie’ over Porus. Moreover, although the lion is an intrusive symbol in India, it was90 common in Macedonia. Not many years before Alexander’s arrival in India, his father Philip had erected a famous lion statue after the historic victory at Chaeronea. Even though we know nothing about the artistic pedigree of the altars, it is sensible to assume that the son had also erected lion capitals in India. It is known that Alexander’s sword had a golden lion head. Were the inscriptions in Greek? This may explain why all of them were summarily reinscribed. The history of the altars throws a flood of light on not only Mauryan and Gandhara art but also the nature of the Hellenistic phenomenon spearheaded by Alexander—a world-citizen. Herzfeld, the famous Orientalist, writes with great insight:

There is no deeper Caesura in the 5000 years of history of the Ancient East than the conquest of Alexander the Great, and there is no archaeological object produced after that period that does not bear its stamp.91

An Altar of Alexander from the Beas Area

It turns out that Coryat was right—truth may be indestructible but at times it is stranger than fiction—as it was Asoka who had re-inscribed the much sought-after pillars of Alexander. In Coryat’s time, the inscriptions on the pillar were unreadable. But today, thanks to Prinsep, we know that it contains an inscription of Asoka. Yet there is more to it than meets the eye—it is known92 that many of Asoka’s pillars were not erected by him. One has to recall that after the Hyphasis mutiny, Alexander gave up his plans to march further east, and to commemorate his Indian expedition he erected twelve massive altars of dressed stone. Arrian writes:

Ο ἱ δ ὲ ἐ βόων τε ο ἷ α ἂ ν ὄ χλος ξυμμιγ ὴ ς χαίρων
βοήσειε κα ὶ ἐ δάκρυον ο ἱ πολλο ὶ α ὐ τ ῶ ν· ο ἱ δ ὲ κα ὶ τ ῇ
σκην ῇ τ ῇ βασιλικ ῇ πελάζοντες η ὔ χοντο
Ἀ λεξάνδρ ῳ πολλ ὰ κα ὶ ἀ γαθά, ὅ τι πρ ὸ ς σφ ῶ ν μόνων
νικηθ ῆ ναι ἠ νέσχετο. ἔ νθα δ ὴ διελ ὼ ν κατ ὰ
τάξεις τ ὴ ν στρατι ὰ ν (5)
δώδεκα βωμο ὺ ς κατασκευάζειν προστάττει, ὕ ψος
μ ὲ ν κατ ὰ το ὺ ς μεγίστους πύργους, ε ὖ ρος δ ὲ
μείζονας ἔ τι ἢ κατ ὰ πύργους, χαριστήρια το ῖ ς
θεο ῖ ς το ῖ ς ἐ ς τοσόνδε ἀ γαγο ῦ σιν α ὐ τ ὸ ν νικ ῶ ντα
κα ὶ μνημε ῖ α τ ῶ ν α ὑ το ῦ (2.) πόνων. ὡ ς δ ὲ
κατεσκευασμένοι α ὐ τ ῷ ο ἱ βωμο ὶ ἦ σαν, θύει δ ὴ ἐ π’
α ὐ τ ῶ ν ὡ ς νόμος κα ὶ ἀ γ ῶ να ποιε ῖ γυμ-νικόν τε κα ὶ
ἱ ππικόν.

He then divided the army into brigades, which he ordered to prepare twelve altars to equal in height the highest military towers, and to exceed them in point of breadth, to serve as thank offerings to the gods who had led him so far as a conqueror, and also as a memorial of his own labours. After erecting the altars he offered sacrifice upon them with the customary rites, and celebrated a gymnastic and equestrian contest. (V.29.1-2)

The Hypanisis also there, a very noble river, which formed the limit of Alexander's march, as the altars erected on its banks prove. See Arrian's Anab. V. 29, where we read that Alexander having arranged his troops in separate divisions ordered them to build on the banks of the Hyphasis twelve altars to be of equal height with the loftiest towers, while exceeding them in breadth. From Curtius we learn that they were formed of square blocks of stone. There has been much controversy regarding their site, but it must have been near the capital of Sopithes, whose name Lassen has identified with the Sanskrit Akapati, 'lord of horses.' These Asvapati were a line of princes whose territory, according to the 12th book of the Ramayana, lay on the right or north bank of the Vipasa (Hyphasis or Bias), in the mountainous part of the Doab comprised between that river and the Upper Iravati. Their capital is called in the poem of Valmiki Rajagriha, which still exists under the name of Rajagiri. At some distance from this there is a chain of heights called Sekandar-giri, or 'Alexander's mountain.'— See St. Martin's E'tude, &c. pp. 108-111.]

-- Ancient India as Described by Megasthenes and Arrian; Being a Translation of the Fragments of the Indika of Megasthenes Collected by Dr. Schwanbeck, and of the First Part of the Indika of Arrian, by J.W. McCrindle

Curiously, unlike most writers who place the altars on the right bank of the river, Pliny places them on the left or the eastern bank:

The Hyphasis was the limit of the marches of Alexander, who, however, crossed [emphasis added] it, and dedicated altars on the further bank. (Plin. HN 6.21)

Pliny’s crucial hint suggests a reappraisal of the riddle of the altars. Precisely how far east had Alexander and his men come? Although Bunbury holds that93 the location of the altars cannot be regarded as known even approximately, the Indian evidence sheds new light. Masson places the altars at the united stream of the Hyphasis and Sutlez. McCrindle also writes that the Sutlez marked the94 limit of Alexander’s march eastward; and this is precisely the locality from95 where Feroze Shah brought the pillar to Delhi.

Thapar ignores Alexander’s voyage and writes heedlessly that, although at present there is no archaeological evidence, Topra must have been an important stopping place on the road from Pataliputra to the north. This not96 only skirts the central issue but also exposes the poverty of Jonesian Indology. There can be little doubt that the Delhi-Topra pillar at Firozabad near Delhi, which bears Asoka’s seventh edict, is a missing altar of Alexander the Great. The very name Chandigarh (Chandragarh) may be an echo of Alakh Chandra, Alexander’s Indian name. In the thirteenth Rock Edict of Asoka, the name Alexander is given as Alika Su(n)dalo.

Alexander and Asoka

Only misjudgment of historians has denied Diodotus his true place in world history. If almost no words seem to be commensurate for the description of Alexander, the same is true of Asoka who swept away all, as it were. His impact on the civilisations of both the East and the West is immense. As Droysen holds, Christianity grew out of an intercourse between Hellenism and the Eastern97 cultures. There can be no doubt that the chief architect of the great expansion of Hellenism and Buddhism, which ultimately paved the way to the rise of Christianity and Islam, was Diodotus. Toynbee writes:

At its maximum extent, Hellenism had expanded in Latin dress as far westward as Britain and Morocco, and in Buddhist dress, as far eastwards as Japan.98

Smith is more specific:

Finally, the central religious literature of both traditions—the Jewish Talmud (an authoritative compendium of law, lore, and interpretation), the New Testament, and the later patristic literature of the Early Church Fathers—are characteristic Hellenistic documents both in form and content. 99

If Alexander was the harbinger of this Hellenistic revolution, Diodotus was its greatest champion. In the thirteenth edict, after declaring that he had himself100 found pleasure rather in conquests by the Dhamma than in conquests by the sword, he says that he had already made such conquests in the realms of the kings of Syria, Egypt, Macedonia, Epirus, and Kyrene, among the Cholas and Pandyas in South India, in Ceylon and among a number of peoples dwelling in the borders of his empire. This was, as Asoka saw it, the Kingdom of God:

… devāṃpiyasā dhaṃmānuṣathi anuvataṃti. Yata pi dutā devāṃpiyasā no yaṃti – te pi sutu devāṃpiyasā dhaṃma-vutaṃ vidhanaṃ dhaṃmānusathi dhaṃmam anuvidhiyaṃti anuvidhiyisaṃti cā. Ye se ladhe etakenā hoti savatā vijaye, piti-lase se.

Everywhere are followed the instructions of the Devānaṃpiya. Even where the envoys of the Devānaṃpiya do not go they (the people of those countries) too, having heard of the Dharma practices, the (Dharma) prescriptions and the Dharma instructions of the Devānaṃpiya follow the Dharma and will continue to follow (it). That conquest which has been won everywhere by this, generates the feeling of satisfaction.101

Diodotus not only utilised Alexander’s monuments, but in many other respects he trod in the latter’s footsteps. In the Rumminidei edict, Asoka reduced taxes102 for the local people as this was the birthplace of Gotama. This has a very distant echo linked with Alexander and Gomata. Impressed by their way of life and civic administration, Alexander extended the boundary of the Ariaspians of Prophthasia and conferred nominal freedom (Arrian III.27). Waiving part of103 the taxes may have been a part of his decree. In the prelude to his famous seventh pillar edict, Asoka states:

Devānaṃpiye Piyadasi lājā hevaṃ āhā: ye atikaṃtaṃ aṃtalaṃ lājāne husu, hevaṃ ichisu - kathaṃ jane dhaṃma-vaḍhiyā vaḍheyā. No cu jane anulupāyā dhaṃma-vaḍhiyā vaḍhithā.

King devānaṃpiya piyadasi spoke thus: The kings who were in times past, desired thus, (viz.) that the people might progress by the promotion of Dharma. But the people did not progress by the adequate progress of Dharma.104

Who are these kings? Despite Asoka’s measured silence on Alexander, it is possible that he is referring to him. Asoka not only used Alexander’s pillars,105 but also undertook to spread the message of homonoia championed by Alexander with a greater resolve.

The Mission of Alexander the Great

In so far as it failed to rout the Prasii, and in view of the great losses in human lives that it caused, Alexander’s Gedrosian operation cannot be called an all-round success. Nevertheless, this unique expedition achieved its goals and marks a high point in world history having no parallel in any other age. That it greatly augmented world trade and ushered in a new era of East-West intercourse cannot be denied. No one could have combined a scientific and a military expedition in the manner Alexander did. It is here that one can recognise the student of Aristotle. His Titanic voyage across so many continents and seas to mingle with the exotic peoples of Africa and Asia appears truly mind-boggling. Nothing could deter him, not the huge Prasiian army or the elephants, not the desert heat, not even the lack of water and food. His emergence from the desert inferno of Gedrosia was a superhuman feat. It is said that he had wept after seeing Nearchus in Carmania (Arrian, Indica xxxv).

When the Macedonians and Greeks first set out with the mandate of the Corinthian League, they were probably guided by simple nationalist motives. But after Alexander was declared a Son of Amon at Siwa, and also under the affectionate guidance of the great Buddhist philosopher Asvaghosa (Calanus)106, this changed into something far more pregnant. More than just a lure for Persian gold or a yearning for the unknown (pÒqoj), Alexander and his followers were driven by a mission to usher in a new world. Russell, one of the towering minds of the last century, squarely reproved Aristotle for his shallow outlook in his Politics:

There is no mention of Alexander, and not even the faintest awareness of the complete transformation that he was effecting in the world.107

Like Cambyses, Alexander got a very bad press. Writers like Badian and Green stress the need for demythologizing, but this demands a precise knowledge of history and geography. It necessary to carefully analyse history to perceive108 Alexander’s greatness, which has been acknowledged through the ages. Like109 many Eastern gods, he was not above sin; his role in his father’s death is far from clear, and his killing of Cleitus and his treatment of Callisthenes were unfortunate yet not inhuman acts. He was certainly less prone to violence than Diodotus in his youth. It is important to consider the possibility that his alienation from his compatriots may have been due to his reinterpretation of Hellenic religion.

For about a century after the voyage, the Orient was witness to momentous events that altered human destiny. It was here that Hellenistic culture and religion were born. It is needless to say that no study of the Hellenistic phenomenon can be complete without reference to Diodotus/Asoka. His edicts indicate that apart from recording his achievements, Alexander’s messages in the altars were also meant for the propagation of homonoia. This is the goal that Asoka took up with a greater zeal. Bevan writes with insight:

One may notice first that nothing was further from Alexander’s own thoughts than that his invasion of India was a mere raid.110

Material evidence for Buddhism in India starts appearing from the fourth century B.C., and this is the era of Alexander. It is impossible to deny Alexander’s role in this renaissance in Indian culture. Only Tarn can see a link between Alexander and Asoka:

For when all is said, we come back at the end to his personality; not the soldier or the statesman, but the man. Whatever Asia did or did not get from him she felt him as she scarcely felt any other; she knew that one of the greatest of the earth had passed. Though his direct influence vanished from India within a generation, and her literature does not know him, he affected Indian history for centuries; for Chandragupta saw him and deduced the possibility of realising in actual fact the conception, handed down from Vedic times, of a comprehensive monarchy in India; hence Alexander indirectly created Asoka’s empire and enabled the spread of Buddhism.111

The influence of Alexander’s pillars, which were later modified by Asoka, on world history is inestimable. Although it cannot be proven conclusively, from considerations of art history, it is not impossible that the Sarnath pillar is also a timeless relic of Alexander the Great modified by Asoka. Due to Jones’s112 error, great scholars like Tarn and Rostovtzeff underrate Alexander’s role. Yet the staggering possibility that the four-lion emblem of India may in fact be a work of Alexander calls for a drastic reassessment of his true legacy. Alexander’s direct influence did not vanish from India. It was due to his vision that East and West first met, and the myriad effects of this fraternisation are beyond any estimate. If homonoia is still a living creed, the credit for part of it must be ascribed to Alexander’s wisdom and tireless energy. His dream of a Brotherhood of Man may forever remain unfulfilled, yet he remains the finest symbol of our vision of a United Nations.

_______________

Notes:

1* In the preparation of this article, the author gratefully remembers the kind encouragement of the late Prof. N. G. L. Hammond.

2 R.E.M. Wheeler, Flames Over Persepolis, Wiedenfeld & Nicholson (London 1968) 129.

3 J. Keay, India Discovered: The Achievement of the British Raj (London 1988) 55.

4 H. Kulke and D. Rothermund, A History of India (London 1990) 86.

5 F. J. Monahan, The Early History of Bengal (Delhi 1974) 225. Monahan (like Vincent Smith, to whom I refer later) was a distinguished British Indologist who was a Civil Servant.

6 Mudrarakshasa, Act vi. Piadamsana is a colloquial error for of Priyadarshana.

7 H.C. Raychaudhuri, Political History of Ancient India (Calcutta 1972) 240.

8 A. C. Sen, Asoka’s Edicts (Calcutta 1956) 168.

9 Archaeologists have found little in India or Iran that can be directly linked to Alexander, and reference to him in Indian literature is scanty though not non-existent. There were about twenty contemporary accounts of Alexander but these are not extant. Aristoboulos and Ptolemy wrote many years later. Historians have been forced to use the later accounts of Arrian, Plutarch and other secondary sources.

10 William Jones, On Asiatick History, Civil and Natural, The Tenth Anniversary Discourse, delivered 28 th February, 1793, by the President at the Asiatick Society of Bengal.

11 Jones’s mistake misled such erudite scholars as Rostovtzeff and Tarn into believing that Alexander is not mentioned in Indian literature and had little impact on Indian civilisation: see D. Musti, The Cambridge Ancient History, vol vii pt.1, ed. F. W. Walbank, A. E. Astin, M. W. Frederiksen and R. M. Ogilvie (Cambridge 1984) 217.; W. W. Tarn, Alexander the Great (Cambridge 1948) 1.142

12 E. Badian, ’Alexander in Iran’, in I. Gershevitch (ed.) The Cambridge History of Iran 2: The Median and Achaemenian Periods (Cambridge 1985) 467. Ptolemy also reported that the omens were unfavourable (Arr., Anab., v. 29). But that may not have been the reason why he turned westwards.

13 ibid.

14 I am indebted to Prof. Hammond for this private communication to me.

15 A. Ghosh, The City in Early Historical India (Simla 1973) 66: ‘... of Pataliputra which is mainly known from non-archaeological sources’. For a more detailed discussion, see R. Pal, Non-Jonesian Indology and Alexander (New Delhi 2002).

16 Kulke and Rothermund [3] 61.

17 V.A. Smith, Ashoka, The Buddhist Emperor of India, (Jaipur 1988) 75.

18 V. Elisseeff, ‘Asiatic Prehistory’, in Encyclopedia of World Art (New York 1960) 3. ‘The Iranian region, with its affinity for the Orient, permitted the development of two different cultural areas: the northwestern one, more properly Iranian, with the localities of Tepe Giyan, Tepe Sialk, Tepe Hissar, and Anau; and the southeastern one, which can be considered Indian, of Baluchistan and the centers of the valley of the Zhob and of Quetta and Amri’. R. N. Frye, on the other hand, stresses only the linguistic diversity of Indo-Iranians, not their common heritage: ‘To the south the Persians and other Iranian invaders found the land occupied by Elamites and related non-Indo-European speakers. Further east were probably Dravidian peoples in Makran, Seistan and Sind, represented today by their descendants, the Brahuis’. R. N. Frye, The Heritage of Persia (London 1962) 27.

19 R.T. Hallock, Persepolis Fortification Tablets, (Chicago 1969). See laso M. B. Garrison and M. C. Root, Seals on the Persepolis Fortification Tablets. I: Images of Heroic Encounter, vol.1 (Chicago 2001). In a private communication to the present writer Prof. Garisson writes, “Too often one feels as if one is working in a vacuum. Good luck on your research”.

20 See the online resource http://www.lumkap.org.uk.

21 A. D. H. Bivar, ‘The Indus Lands’, in The Cambridge Ancient History, ed. I. E. S. Edwards, J. Boardman, N. G. L. Hammond, D. M. Lewis, (Cambridge 1988) 205.

22 E. C. Sachau, Alberuni’s India, vol. 1(London 1910) 40, 380. Apart from his father Suddhodana, Siddhartha’s uncles all had dana-names - Amitodana, Dhotodana, Sukkodana and Sukkhodana. See E. J. Thomas, The Life of Buddha (Delhi 1993) 24.

23 Badian [11] 2.462. Herodotus writes:.. oƒ d ¢pÕ ¹l…ou ¢natolšwn A„q…opej (dixoˆ g¦r d¾ ™strateÚonto) prosetet£cato to‹si 'Indo‹si... oátoi d oƒ ™k tÁj 'As…hj A„q…opej t¦ m n plšw kat£ per 'Indoˆ ™ses£cato... (‘The eastern Ethiopeans—for two nations of this name served in the army—were marshalled with the Indians... Their equipment was in most points like that of the Indians’, Hdt. 7.70.1-7).

24 A. J. Toynbee, A Study Of History 7, Universal States; Universal Churches (Oxford 1979) 650. Toynbee remarks that Herodotus’ India did not include Panjab and Gandhara.

25 W. W. Tarn, Alexander The Great, vol. 2, (Cambridge, 2003) 281. Despite some errors, Tarn’s wide knowledge of both European and Asiatic history gave him a deep insight which remains unmatched.

26 This can be inferred from the Sanskrit drama Mudrarakshasa which recounts the rise of Chandragupta. The fabulous strength of the Nanda army disagrees with the archaeological scenario of fourth century Bihar, and reminds one of the powerful Prasiian army. A century later the Jats and other fierce fighters of Seistan under the Surens humbled the Roman army.

27 R. Lane Fox, Alexander The Great, (London 1974) 372.

28 Asoka's Edicts hint that ritual slaughter of the bird (Mayura) was practised by the Mauryas.

29 A. B. Bosworth, Conquest and Empire: The Reign of Alexander the Great (Cambridge 1988) 150, who gives the name Khanu (maps usually give the name Kohnouj or Kahnuj). Nearby Patali may have been Palibothra. http://www.chnpress.com/news/?section=2&id=6623.

30 V. Smith, Early History of India (Oxford 1961) 181.

31 A. Dow, The History of Hindostan (London 1772). The famous geographer Rennel was the first to identify Patna as Palibothra but later opted for Kanauj. J. Rennel, Memoir of a Map of Hindoostan (London 1778) 49. William Francklin disagreed with Jones and placed Palibothra at Bhagalpur. W. Francklin, Inquiry concerning the site of ancient Palibothra (London 1815) 47. See also S. N. Mukherjee, Sir William Jones: A Study in Eighteenth Century British Attitudes to India 2 (London 1987) 97.

-- Inquiry Concerning the Site of Ancient Palibothra, Conjectured to Lie Within the Limits of the Modern District of Bhaugulpoor According to Researches Made on the Spot in 1811 and 1812, by William Francklin, Major in the Service of the Honourable East-India Company; Author of a Tour to Persia, the History of Shah Aulum, &c. &c. &c., 1815

32 J. W. McCrindle (ed. and tr.), The Invasion of India by Alexander the Great as Described by Arrian, Q. Curtius, Diodorus, Plutarch and Justin (New Delhi 1973) 396.

33 Pattala is said to have been a great city and could have been another Mauryan capital.

34 M. Wood, In the Footsteps of Alexander the Great: A Journey from Greece to Asia (Berkeley 1997) 214 discards the Dionysius-Semiramis stories, and proposes that Alexander may have been exploring whether cities could be founded along the coast for trade with India.

35 There may have been a smear campaign launched by the generals who took over after Alexander. The very existence of the junta depended on an extensive falsification and defamation campaign. That Ptolemy had to defend Alexander only shows the extent of such a campaign. Needless to say, Sasigupta could justify his role only by blackening Alexander. The expedition did not immediately bring economic prosperity in Greece, and some Athenians led by the Peripatetics and Demosthenes spared no effort to belittle Alexander.

36 D. B. Lenat, ‘Computer Software for Intelligent Systems’, Scientific American 251 (1984) 157.

37 G. Macdonald, The Hellenic Kingdoms of Syria, Bactria and Parthia in The Cambridge History of India, ed. E. J. Rapson, (New Delhi 1962) 398.

38 Many aspects of Asoka’s life are obscure. Although some punch-marked coins have been associated with his name, this has been disputed. Apart from the edicts, archaeology has unearthed few inscriptions. Palaces unearthed near Patna have been said to be his, but in the absence of inscriptions this is uncertain. Even Taxila, so often associated with his name in the texts, has proved disappointing. Recently inscribed relics of Asoka have been found from Kanganhalli in Karnataka which are said to belong to a later period.

39 While Diodotus-I has numerous coins but no inscriptions, Asoka has many inscriptions but no coins. H.P Ray’s satisfaction about Asoka’s coins is bizzare. H. P. Ray, Ancient India (N. Delhi 2001), 55. Kulke and Rothermund [3] 75, on the other hand, write, “Whereas the Maurya emperors had only produced simple punch-marked coins, even petty Indo-Greek kings issued splendid coins with their image”.

40 E. J. Thomas, The History of Buddhist Thought (London 1933) 154.

41 Coins of Abd Susim, probably a relative of Asoka, have been found at Persepolis. This again hints that Asoka belongs to the northwest.

42 T. W. Rhys Davids, Buddhist India (London 1903) 298.

43 Macdonald [36] 393.

44 P. Gardner, Catalogue of Indian Coins in the British Museum: Greek and Scythic Kings of Bactria and India (London 1886). See also A. von Sallet, ‘Die Nachfolger Alexanders des Grossen in Baktrien und Indien’, Zeitschrift für Numismatik (1879).

45 W. W. Tarn Greeks of Bactria and India (Cambridge 1951) 73.

46 A. K. Narain, The Indo-Greeks (Oxford 1957) 18.

47 Narain ibid, 12.

48 F. L. Holt, Thundering Zeus: The Making of Hellenistic Bacteria (Berkeley 1999), writes much on the Bactrian Greeks but fails to recognise the true Diodotus. Tarn was also an able commentator on the Indian scene, yet he did not recognise Diodotus.

49 R. E. M. Wheeler, Early India and Pakistan to Ashoka (London 1959) 170. See also R. Thapar, Aśoka and the Decline of the Mauryas (Oxford 1961) 20.

50 Ibid, p. 174.

51 Tarn [44] 216.

52 Narain, [45] 20.

53 That cats and dogs fed on the carcass of Artaxerxes III was reported by the Greek sources. It is uncanny that this is also confirmed by the Mudrarakshasa.

54 R. Thapar’s remark that ‘Greek sources mention Sandrocottus and Amitrochates but do not mention Ašoka’ presupposes that the Greeks would also use the name Ašoka current among the Indians. See Thapar [48] 20.

55 B. N. Mukherjee, Studies in the Aramaic Edicts of Asoka (Calcutta 1984) 26.

56 J. H. Marshall A Guide to Taxila (Delhi 1936) 90.

57 Tarn [44] 392.

58 Macdonald [36] 394. Although nearly all scholars reject the Achaemenian link as a fabrication, this is unwarranted. The name Arsaces or Assak could also have been used by Chandragupta who may be Ashkh of the Shahnama; the eldest son of Darius II was Arsaces.

59 Smith [16] 13

60 A. L. Oppenheim, The Babylonian Evidence for Achaemenian Rule in Mesopotamia, in Gershevitch [11] 533.

61 Thapar [48] 233, writes, without any warrant, that the identification of Pataliputra is certain but remains silent on the fact that not a single relic of the Mauryas or the Nandas has been found at Patna. She fails to realise that the wooden palace unearthed at Patna cannot have belonged to Asoka whose architecture lays such stress on stone.

62 A. Hillebrandt, Vedische Mythologie, I (Breslau 1929) 96.

63 M. Busagli, ‘Parthian Art’, in Encyclopedia of World Art.114.

64 M. K. Dhavalikar, in D. C. Sircar (ed.) Foreigners in Ancient India and Lakshmi and Sarasvati in Art and Literature (Calcutta 1970).

65 Busagli [62]106.

66 In this edict, Asoka describes his dominion as Jambudvipa, which is usually assumed to be the same as modern India. In the version of the edict found at Nittur in Tumkur district of Karnataka, the emperor calls it Pathavi. Some scholars have suggested that Jambudvipa was a much wider territory covering nearly the whole of civilised Asia.

67 Smith [16] 75.

68 Tarn [44] 101.

69 R. N. Frye [19] 172 writes that An-hsi is the same as Arshak. As Ghirshman notes, the name is also given as Assak. R. Ghirshman, Iran (Harmondsworth 1954) 243.

70 W. Lai, The Three Jewels in China, in T. Yoshinori (ed.), Buddhist Spirituality (Delhi 1995) 275.

71 F. W. Thomas, ‘Ashoka’, in E. J. Rapson (ed.), Cambridge History of India 1: Ancient India (Cambridge 1922) 453.

72 From Asoka’s references to Antiochus, the relation between the two appears to be cordial. It is not impossible that he also took a favourable view of Asoka’s Dharmavijaya.

73 Wheeler [48], 176.

74 Narain [45] 16.

75 Macdonald [36] 393.

76 Smith [16] 19.

77 Thapar [48] 51.

78 Ibid.

79

80 Thapar [48] 52.

81 It can be argued that Asoka’s lions were borrowed from Nebuchadrezzar’s Babylon—lions guarded the famous E-Sagila—or from the Sumerians who also preferred the lion symbol. As Cumont notes, the lion was a symbol of ancient Lydia; See A. H. Krappe, The Anatolian Lion God, Journal of the American Oriental Society, Vol. 65, No. 3 (Jul. - Sep., 1945), pp. 144-154. Four lions also guarded the Meghazil tomb near Amrit, but Gudea’s double lion mace-head is well known. See R. Pal, ‘Gotama Buddha in West Asia’, Annals of the Bhandarkar Research Institute 77 (1996); R. Pal and T. Sato, Gotama Buddha in West Asia (Osaka 1995) 69.

82 J. H. Marshall, ‘The Monuments of Ancient India’, in Rapson [70] 562.

83 Thapar [48].

84 B. M. Barua, Indian Culture, vol.X, p. 34 sees no link between Chandragupta, Asoka’s grandfather, and Bihar. He writes that the language of Asoka’s stone masons was the West Asian Kharosthi. Only two names of Asoka’s governors are known, and by no stretch of imagination can they be linked to Patna: Tushaspa was surely from the northwest. Smith [29]103, writes that the elaborate hair-washing ceremony of the Mauryas is a Persian custom.

85 R. E. M. Wheeler [48] 174: ‘It has long been recognised that these columns, without precedent in Indian architectural forms, represent in partibus the craftmanship of Persia. Actually, the name ‘Persepolitan’ which is commonly given to them by writers on Indian architecture is not altogether happy, since the innumerable columns of Persepolis are invariably fluted, whereas those of Ashoka are unfluted, as indeed was the normal Persian custom. But if for ‘Persepolitan’ we substitute ‘Persian’ or, better still ‘Achaemenid’, there can be no dispute’.

86 N. Ray, Mauryan Art in Age of the Nandas and Mauryas, ed. N. Sastri (Delhi 1967) 346, indirectly hints, with uncommon boldness, at Jones’s error: ‘The fact remains therefore that we have no examples extant of either sculpture or architecture that can definitely be labelled chronologically as pre-Mauryan or perhaps even as pre-Asokan’. He adds later (376) that: ‘Compared with later figural sculptures in the round of Yakshas and their female counterparts or the reliefs of Bharhut, Sanchi and Bodhgaya, the art represented by these crowning lions belongs to an altogether different world of conception and execution, of style and technique, altogether much more complex, urban and civilised. They have nothing archaic or primitive about them, and the presumption is irresistible that the impetus and inspiration of this art must have come from outside’.

87 Marshall [81]

88 A. Foucher, The Beginnings of Buddhist Art

89 V. Smith, A History of Fine Art in India and Ceylon (Oxford 1930) 16. Marshall [81] 564

90 R. E. Pritchard, Odd Tom Coryate: The English Marco Polo. (Stroud 2004). Philostratos’ statement that Apollonius of Tyana, on his journey into India in the second century AD, found the altars still intact and their inscriptions still legible probably indicates that they were in places where Alexander had erected them. See E. H. Bunbury, A History of Ancient Geography Among the Greeks and Romans (London 1883) 503.

91 E. Herzfeld, Iran in The Ancient East (New York 1941) 303.

92 J. Prinsep, Essays on Indian Antiquities: Historic, Numismatic and Palaeographic, (London 1858).

93 E. H. Bunbury, A History of Ancient Geography among the Greeks and Romans from the Earliest Ages till the Fall of the Roman Empire, (London 1883) 444.

94 McCrindle [32] 120

95 ibid.

96 Thapar [48] 230. Authors like Raychaudhuri and Thapar do not treat Alexander’s voyage in detail and hold that Alexander does not belong to Indian history proper.

97 R. Southard, Droysen and the Prussian School of History (Kentucky 1995), 24.

98 A. J. Toynbee, The Greeks and Their Heritage (Oxford 1981) 44.

99 J. Z. Smith, Hellenistic Religions, in P. W. Goetz et al. (edd.), Encyclopedia Britannica (Chicago 1979) 8.751.

100 Wheeler, writes: ‘This book is not a History, but in its last chapter the impersonal disjecta of prehistory may fittingly be assembled in the likeness of a man. Ashoka came to the throne about 268 B.C. and died about 232 B.C. Spiritually and materially his reign marks the first coherent expression of the Indian mind, and, for centuries after the political fabric of his empire had crumbled, his work was implicit in the thought and art of the subcontinent, it is not dead today’. Wheeler [48] 170.

101 Sen [7] 102.

102 This edict has to be examined in view of the widespread frauds in Nepalese archaeology as pointed by T. A. Phelps. See the online resource http://www.lumkap.org.uk. It is more than likely that this pillar was brought from the northwest. A careful study shows that Gomata of the Behistun inscriptions was the true Gotama. See Pal [14]

103 The Ariaspians are the Hariasvas of the Indian texts, who were a lost tribe. The Mahabharata says that King Haryasva never ate flesh in his life (Anusasana Parva 11.67). See V. Mani (ed.), Puranic Encyclopedia (New Delhi 1975) 57. Alexander noted the similarity of their system of justice with that of the Greeks. It is said that the Ariaspians enjoyed special privileges as they had given succour to the starving army of Cyrus, but this cannot be the full story as the holiness of Seistan is well recorded in the Shahnama.

104 Sen [7] 160.

105 The corpus of Asoka’s inscriptions is vast, but one is mystified by what he did not say. He never names his father or his illustrious grandfather. Was he a nephew of Bindusara? See Taranatha’s History of Buddhism in India (Delhi, 1990) 50. Was Asoka’s proscription of samajas (revelling parties) due to his horror of Alexander’s poisoning in such a party?

106 The name given as Sphines by Plutarch is the same as Aspines or Asvaghosa (Plut. Alexander, 65). Asvaghosa may have been an Ariaspian.

107 B. Russell, History of Western Philosophy (London 1969) 196.

108 Badian [11]3.420; See also P. Green, Alexander of Macedon 356-323 B.C.: A Historical Biography (California 1992).

109 I. Worthington, How ‘Great’ was Alexander the Great?, AHB 13.2 (1999) 39-55, attempts, relying almost exclusively on the Greek and Roman sources, to analyse why Alexander was called ‘Great’ even in ancient sources.

110 E. R. Bevan, Alexander The Great, in Rapson [70] 343.

111 Tarn, [10] 1.142

112 Wheeler writes: ‘Equally Persian are the famous lions which crowned the Ashokan column at Sarnath, near Benaras, and have been assumed as the republican badge of India’. Wheeler [48] 174.

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Part 1 of 3

Chapter 1: India – Diplomacy and Ethnography at the Mauryan Empire
Excerpt from "The Land of the Elephant Kings: Space, Territory, and Ideology in the Seleucid Empire"
by Paul J. Kosmin
©  2014 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College

In the year 305 BC, Seleucus I Nicator went to India and apparently occupied territory as far as the Indus, and eventually waged war with the Maurya Emperor Chandragupta Maurya.[citation needed]

Only a few sources mention his activities in India. Chandragupta (known in Greek sources as Sandrokottos), founder of the Mauryan empire, had conquered the Indus valley and several other parts of the easternmost regions of Alexander's empire. Seleucus began a campaign against Chandragupta and crossed the Indus.[39] Most western historians note that it appears to have fared poorly as he did not achieve his goals[citation needed], even though what exactly happened is unknown. The two leaders ultimately reached an agreement,[40] [Kosmin, Paul J. (2014). The Land of the Elephant Kings: Space, Territory, and Ideology in Seleucid Empire. P. 98.] and through a treaty sealed in 305 BC,[41] [John Keay (2001). India: A History. Grove Press. pp. 85–86.] Seleucus abandoned the territories he could never securely hold in exchange for stabilizing the East and obtaining elephants, with which he could turn his attention against his great western rival, Antigonus Monophthalmus.[40] The 500 war elephants Seleucus obtained from Chandragupta were to play a key role in the forthcoming battles, particularly at Ipsus [42] against Antigonus and Demetrius. The Maurya king might have married the daughter of Seleucus.[43] [Majumdar, Ramesh Chandra (2003) [1952]. Ancient India. P. 105.]

-- Seleucus I Nicator, by Wikipedia

Chapter 1: India – Diplomacy and Ethnography at the Mauryan Empire

From Alexander the Great's death at Babylon in 323 until the first decades of the third century the lands over which he had ruled were convulsed by the ambitions, assassinations, and alliances of his greatest generals. With almost forty years of warfare and betrayal, vertiginous collapse and unexpected rise, it is no surprise that Tyche, capricious Fate, achieves new causal prominence in the historiography of this period.1 [ ] But if we stand at a distance from what Braudel called history's "crests of foam," we can understand the playing out of the succession crisis as the birth pangs of a new, but not unfamiliar, world order: the peer-kingdom international system.

Alexander's kingdom, like the Achaemenid imperial structure he conquered and reelaborated, was a hegemonic world empire characterized by an emphasis on totality and exclusivity.2 [ ] The Persian Great King and Alexander monopolized legitimate sovereignty and recognized no entity as external and equivalent. The fragmentation of this all-embracing imperial formation after Alexander's death and the stabilization of independent kingdoms multiplied the royal persona and state. A diachronic succession of world-empires (Achaemenids to Alexander) was replaced with the synchronic coexistence of bounded kingdoms. The emergence of a few "Great Powers" (Antigonid Macedonia, Ptolemaic Egypt, Seleucid Asia, as well as Attalid Pergamum, Mauryan India, the Anatolian kingdoms, and Rome) gradually developed into a system of peer states with semiformalized procedures of interaction. In other words, the east Mediterranean-west Asian region settled back into the multipolarity that had characterized it in the Neo-Babylonian period, immediately before Cyrus' conquests and the foundation of the Persian empire, and in the famous Late Bronze Age of Amarna.3 [ ]

This historical process of division and multiplication can be traced throughout the Wars of Succession that followed Alexander's death.4 [ ] By the third century, a developed and unquestioned international order was operating within the broader Hellenistic world; multipolarity was the assumed framework for everything from asylia (recognition of a city's inviolability)5 [ ] and festival requests6 [ ] to benefactions following natural disasters.7 [ ] Of paramount importance to such a system was the "border," both in its technical definition and its ideological implications. Kingdoms had to be recognized as spatially limited units, as bounded territories with shared frontiers. In this first part of The Land of the Elephant Kings I investigate the construction of the Seleucid empire's political boundary in the east.

In 305 or 304, Macedonian forces once again issued out of the Hindu Kush, more than two decades after they had first entered the Indus valley behind Alexander the Great:8 [ ] for Seleucus I Nicator, who over the previous half decade had extended his authority from Babylonia to Bactria, now led his army in a second Indian invasion. This campaign and the diplomatic agreement that concluded it formed the foundational moment of Seleucid imperial space. For the first time, Seleucus I's rule was formally bounded and thereby territorialized, fixing the empire's southeastern border for at least a century. Furthermore, the encoding of this new political situation in Seleucid court ethnography -- specifically, the Indica of Megasthenes, Seleucus' ambassador to the Indian court -- demonstrates the profound impact of this historical moment on traditional geographical and ethnological ideas.

The Treaty of the Indus

In contrast to the untidy patchwork of rival principalities and gana-sangha oligarchies encountered by Alexander, the land Seleucus entered had recently been annexed and united by Chandragupta Maurya, the new ruler of the first pan-north Indian imperial entity.9 [ ]

Chandragupta had defeated the remaining Macedonian satrapies in the northwest of the Indian subcontinent by 317 BCE.

-- Chandragupta Maurya, by Wikipedia

Seleucus apparently minted coins during his stay in India, as several coins in his name are in the Indian standard and have been excavated in India. These coins describe him as "Basileus" ("King"), which implies a date later than 306 BC. Some of them also mention Seleucus in association with his son Antiochus as king, which would also imply a date as late as 293 BC.

-- Seleucus I Nicator, by Wikipedia

Chandragupta, appearing in classical sources as (S)androcottus,10 [ ] was a peer of the Macedonian Successors and integrated into their world and its struggles.11 [ ] Like them, the new Indian potentate is shown emphasizing his links to Alexander: Plutarch records that king Sandrocottus claimed to have met Alexander as a youth,12 [ ] compared himself to the great Macedonian,13 [ ] and sacrificed on the altars erected by Alexander on the bank of the Hyphasis (mod. Beas) whenever he crossed the river.14 [ ]

Through the mist of vague reports and geographical misconceptions, it is difficult to probe into the Hyphasis revolt, which came as a serious jolt to Alexander. After this, even though there were safer routes, Alexander chose to return to Iran through the desert of Gedrosia, suffering heavy losses in soldiers and civilians from lack of water, food and the extreme heat. That the motive behind this voyage has appeared so perplexing is due to two crucial lapses—the false location of Palibothra, capital of the Prasii, and the concomitant failure to recognise the mysterious Moeris of Pattala who played a determinant role.

‘Alexander, of course, had read Herodotus’, writes Badian, but misses the purport of his reference to Indians in the Gedrosia area.

Territory of Gedrosia, among the eastern territories of the Achaemenid Empire.

-- Gedrosia, by Wikipedia

Toynbee writes on world history and makes no mistake to note the shifting nature of India’s boundary:

... and we can already see the beginnings of this progressive extension of the name ‘Indian’ in Herodotus’s usage.

The reports of Alexander’s historians clearly indicate that southeast Iran was within Greater India in the fourth century BC. As Prasii was in the Gedrosia area, the question arises—did the army refuse to fight the Prasii or only to march eastwards? If Alexander wanted to move eastward it was not to defeat the Prasii. Tarn writes that he had nothing to do with Magadha on the Ganges. If he had learnt that the fertile Gangetic plains were only a few days’ march away, and wanted to be there for mere expansion of empire, he would have met little resistance. Reluctance of the army could be due to the lack of any tangible gain, not fear of the mighty Easterners. If this was the case, then Alexander bowed down to the wishes of his men. However, if the reluctance was to confront the Prasii, it appears sensible due to their formidable strength. As Moeris had fought beside Porus, the Prasiian army cannot have been left intact, though it could still have been a fighting force. It is probable that Moeris and his agents fomented discord among Alexander’s officers and soldiers. The magicians and other secret agents of Moeris probably overblew the might of the Prasii in order to frighten the invaders. From this point onwards, if not earlier, Eumenes, Perdikkas and Seleucus may have been in touch with Moeris.

Victory Over Moeris At Palibothra

Only Justin (Just. xii, 8) reports that Alexander had defeated the Prasii. Palibothra, the Prasiian capital was famous for peacocks....

Curiously, Arrian writes that Alexander was so charmed by the beauty of peacocks that he decreed the severest penalties against anyone killing them (Arrian, Indica, xv.218). The picture of Alexander amidst peacocks appears puzzling: where did he come across the majestic bird? Does this fascination lead us to Palibothra? The height of absurdity is reached when we are told that eighteen months after the battle with Porus, Alexander suddenly remembered his ‘victory over the Indians’ in the wilderness of Carmania and set upon to celebrate it with fabulous mirth and abandon. Surprisingly it did not jar with the common sense of anyone why this was not celebrated in India. The ‘victory over the Indians’ in southeast Iran can lead to only one judicious conclusion—this was India in the fourth century BC. Moreover, if Alexander had indeed defeated the Indians, who could have been their leader but Moeris or Maurya? This clearly indicates that Alexander had indeed conquered the Prasii in Gedrosia.

Bosworth writes that the name of the place where the victory was celebrated was Kahnuj. The name tells all, for Kanauj was the chief city of the Indians, the name of which is echoed in the famous city in eastern India which later became most important.

Smith is aware that Kanauj in eastern India was not the city mentioned in the ancient texts [??]; yet he does not suspect that the same could be true of Jones’ Palibothra. Dow identifies Sandrocottos with Sinsarchund who, according to Firista, ruled from Kanauj [Kinoge].

Nearchus certainly had other tasks than scientific fact-finding; the army was ordered to keep close to the shore and the navy moved in tandem. This orchestration and the large number of troops and horses on ships (quite unnecessary for a scientific mission) show that the navy was not only carrying provisions for the army which was engaged in a grim and protracted battle with a mighty adversary, but that the troops on the ships were also ready to support the army if needed. This is why the navy waited for twenty-four days near Karachi. The names Pataliputra and Pattala and Moeris and Maurya leave little to imagination.

Yet Badian fails to recognise that Moeris was Chandragupta Maurya of Prasii.

-- An Altar of Alexander Now Standing at Delhi [EXPANDED VERSION], by Ranajit Pal

Greek scholars often mentioned that Sandrocottus was the king of the country called as Prasii (Prachi or Prachya). Pracha or Prachi means eastern country. During the Nanda and Mauryan era, Magadha kings were ruling almost entire India. Mauryan Empire was never referred in Indian sources as only Prachya desa or eastern country. Prachya desa was generally referred to Gupta Empire because Northern Saka Ksatrapas and Western Saka Ksatrapas were well established in North and West India. Megasthenes mentioned that Sandrocottus is the greatest king of the Indians and Poros is still greater than Sandrocottus which means a kingdom in the North-western region is still independent and enjoying at least equal status with the kingdom of Sandrocottus...

-- Who was Sandrocottus: Samudragupta or Chandragupta Maurya?, The Chronology of Ancient India, Victim of Concoctions and Distortions, by Vedveer Arya

Megasthenes says that he often visited Sandrokottos, the greatest king (maharaja: v. Bohlen, Alte Indian, I. p. 19) of the Indians, and Poros, still greater than he: — Arrian, Lid. c. 5 (Fragm. 24).

-- Ancient India as Described by Megasthenes and Arrian; Being a Translation of the Fragments of the Indika of Megasthenes Collected by Dr. Schwanbeck, and of the First Part of the Indika of Arrian, by J.W. McCrindle

The course of Seleucus’ campaign against this Indian emperor is not known in detail – an obscurity that has tempted modern historians to political allegory and forgery.15 [ ] Certainly, Seleucus crossed his forces over the river Indus, so invading India proper,16 [ ] but whether Seleucid and Mauryan armies fought a pitched battle is still debated. Whatever happened, at some point, in a momentous and foundational act of the new world order, Seleucus and Chandragupta decided to make peace. The ancient historians Justin, Appian, and Strabo ...

Justinus (XV. 4) says of Seleukos Nikator,

"He carried on many wars in the East after the division of the Makedonian kingdom between himself and the other successors of Alexander, first seizing Babylonia, and then reducing Baktriane, his power being increased by the first success. Thereafter he passed into India, which had, since Alexander's death, killed its governors, thinking thereby to shake off from its neck the yoke of slavery. Sandrokottos had made it free: but when victory was gained he changed the name of freedom to that of bondage, for he himself oppressed with servitude the very people which he had rescued from foreign dominion. Sandrokottos, having thus gained the crown, held India at the time when Seleukos was laying the foundations of his future greatness. Seleukos came to an agreement with him, and, after settling affairs in the East, engaged in the war against Antigonos (302 B.C.).'

Besides Justinus, Appianus [c. 95 – c. AD 165)] (Syr. c. 55) makes mention of the war which Seleukos had with Sandrocottos or Chandragupta king of the Prasii, or, as they are called in the Indian language, Prachyas: [The adjective [x] in Aelianus On the Nature of Animals, xvii. 39 (Megasthen. Fragm. 13. init.) bears a very close resemblance to the Indian word Prachyas (that is 'dwellers in the East'). The substantive would be [x], and Schwanbeck (Megasthenis Indica, p. 82) thinks that this reading should probably be restored in Stephanus of Byzantium, where the MSS. exhibit [x], a form intermediate between [x] and [x]. But they are called [x] by Strabo, Arrianus, and Plinius; [x] in Plutarch (Alex. chap. 62), and frequently in Aeliauna; [x] by Nicolaiis of Damascus, and in the Florilegium of Stobaeus, 37, 38; [x] and [x] are the MS. readings in Diodorus, xvii. 93; Pharranii in Curtius, IX. ii. 3; Praesidae in Justinus, XII. viii. 9. See note on Fragm. 13.]—

'He (Seleukos) crossed the Indus and waged war on Sandrokottos, king of the Indians who dwelt about it, until he made friends and entered into relations of marriage with him.'

So also Strabo (xv. p. 724): —

'Seleukos Nikator gave to Sandrokottos' (sc. a large part of Ariane). Conf. p. 689: — 'The Indians afterwards held a large part of Ariane, (which they had received from the Makedonians), 'entering into marriage relations with him, and receiving in return five hundred elephants' (of which Sandrakottos had nine thousand— Plinius, vi. 22-5);

and Plutarch, Alex. 62:—

'For not long after, Androkottos, being king, presented Seleukos with five hundred elephants, and with six hundred thousand [600,000] men attacked and subdued all India.

Phylarchos (Fragm. 28) in Athenaeus, p. 18 D., refers to some other wonderful enough presents as being sent to Seleukos by Sandrokottos.

"Diodorus [90 B.C.-30 B.C.] (lib. xx.), in setting forth the affairs of Seleukos, has not said a single word about the Indian war. But it would be strange that that expedition should be mentioned so incidentally by other historians, if it were true, as many recent writers have contended, that Seleukos in this war reached the middle of India as far as the Ganges and the town Palimbothra, — nay, even advanced as far as the mouths of the Ganges, and therefore left Alexander far behind him. This baseless theory has been well refuted by Lassen (De Pentap. Ind. 61), by A. G. Schlegel (Berliner Calendar, 1829, p. 31 yet see see Benfey, Ersch. n. Gruber. Encycl. v. Indien, p. 67), and quite recently by Schwanbeck, in a work of great learning and value entitled Megasthenis Indica (Bonn 1846). In the first place, Schwanbeck (p. 13) mentions the passage of Justinus (I. ii. 10) where it is said that no one had entered India but Semiramis and Alexander; whence it would appear that the expedition of Seleukos was considered so insignificant by Trogus as not even to be on a par with the Indian war of Alexander. [Moreover, Schwanbeck calls attention (p. 14) to the words of Appianus (i. 1), whom when he says, somewhat inaccurately, that Sandrakottos was king of the Indians around the Indus([x]) he seems to mean that the war was carried on on the boundaries of India. But this is of no importance, for Appianus has [x], 'of the Indians around it,' as Schwanbeck himself has written it (p. 13).] Then he says that Arrianus, if he had known of that remote expedition of Seleukos, would doubtless have spoken differently in his Indika (c. 5. 4), where he says that Megasthenes did not travel over much of India, 'but yet more than those who invaded it along with Alexander the son or Philip.' Now in this passage the author could have compared Megasthenes much more suitably and easily with Seleukos. [The following passage of the Indian comedy Mudrarakshasa seems to favour the Indian expedition: — "Meanwhile Kusmuapura (i.e. Pataliputra, Palimbothra) the city of Chandragupta and the king of the mountain regions, was invested on every side, by the Kiratas, Yavanas, Kambojas, Persians, Baktrians, and the rest." But "that drama" (Schwanbeck, p. 18), "to follow the authority of Wilson, was written in the tenth century after Christ,— certainly ten centuries after Seleukos. When even the Indian historians have no authority in history, what proof can dramas give written after many centuries? Yavanas, which was also in later times the Indian name for the Greeks, was very anciently the name given to a certain nation which the Indians say dwelt on the north-western boundaries of India; and the same nation (Manu, x. 44) is also numbered with the Kambojas, the Sakas, the Paradas, the Pallavas, and the Kiratas as being corrupted among the Kshatriyas. (Conf. Lassen, Zeitschrift fur d. Kunde des Morgentandes, III p. 245). These Yavanas are to be understood in this passage also, where they are mentioned along with those tribes with which they are usually classed.] I pass over other proofs of less moment, nor indeed is it expedient to set forth in detail here all the reasons from which it is improbable of itself that the arms of Seleukos ever reached the region of the Ganges.

Let us now examine the passage in Plinius which causes man to adopt contrary opinions. Plinius (Hist. Nat. vi. 21), after finding from Diognetos and Baeto the distances of the places from Portae Caspiae to the Huphasis, the end of Alexander's march, thus proceeds: — 'The other journeys made for Seleukos Nikator are as follows: One hundred and sixty-eight miles to the Hesidrus, and to the river Jomanes as many (some copies add five miles); from thence to the Ganges one hundred arid twelve miles. One hundred and nineteen miles to the Rhodophas (others give three hundred and twenty-five miles for this distance). To the town Kalinipaxa one hundred and sixty-seven. Five hundred (others give two hundred and sixty-five miles), and from thence to the confluence of the Jomanes and Ganges six hundred and twenty-five miles (several add thirteen miles), and to the town Palimbothra four hundred and twenty-five. To the mouth of the Ganges six hundred and thirty-eight' (or seven hundred and thirty-eight, to follow Schwanbeck's correction), — that is, six thousand stadia, as Megasthenes puts it.

"The ambiguous expression reliqua Seleuco Nicatori peragrata suat, translated above as 'the other journeys made, for Seleukos Nikator,' according to Schwanbeck's opinion, contain a dative 'of advantage,' and therefore can bear no other meaning. The reference is to the journeys of Megasthenes, Deimachos, and Patrokles, whom Seleukos had sent to explore the more remote regions of Asia. Nor is the statement of Plinius in a passage before this more distinct. ('India,') he says, 'was thrown open not only by the arms of Alexander the Great, and the kings who were his successors, of whom Seleucus and Antiochus even travelled to the Hyrcanian and Caspian seas, Patrocles being commander of their fleet, but all the Greek writers who stayed behind with the Indian kings (for instance, Megasthenes, and Dionysius, sent by Philadelphus for that purpose) have given accounts of the military force of each nation.' Schwanbeck thinks that the words circumsectis etiam ... Seleuco et Antiocho et Patrocle are properly meant to convey nothing but additional confirmation, and also an explanation how India was opened up by the arms of the kings who succeeded Alexander."

-- Ancient India as Described by Megasthenes and Arrian; Being a Translation of the Fragments of the Indika of Megasthenes Collected by Dr. Schwanbeck, and of the First Part of the Indika of Arrian, by J.W. McCrindle

preserve the three main terms of what I will call the Treaty of the Indus:17 [ ]

(i) Seleucus transferred to Chandragupta’s kingdom the easternmost satrapies of his empire, certainly Gandhara, Parapamisadae, and the eastern parts of Gedrosia,18 [ ] and possibly also Arachosia and Aria as far as Herat.19 [ ]

Some authors say that the argument relating to Seleucus handing over more of what is now southern Afghanistan is an exaggeration originating in a statement by Pliny the Elder referring not specifically to the lands received by Chandragupta, but rather to the various opinions of geographers regarding the definition of the word "India":

Most geographers, in fact, do not look upon India as bounded by the river Indus, but add to it the four satrapies of the Gedrose, the Arachotë, the Aria, and the Paropamisadë, the River Cophes thus forming the extreme boundary of India. According to other writers, however, all these territories, are reckoned as belonging to the country of the Aria. — Pliny, Natural History VI, 23

Nevertheless, it is usually considered today that Arachosia and the other three regions did become dominions of the Mauryan Empire.[citation needed]

(ii) Chandragupta gave Seleucus 500 Indian war elephants.20 [ ]

(iii) The two kings were joined by some kind of marriage alliance ([x] or [x]); most likely Chandragupta wed a female relative of Seleucus.21 [ ]

The alliance between Chandragupta[??] and Seleucus was affirmed with a marriage (Epigamia). Chandragupta[??] or his son may have married a daughter of Seleucus, or perhaps there was diplomatic recognition of intermarriage between Indians and Greeks.

-- Seleucus I Nicator, by Wikipedia

Having punished with a stern hand the misrule of his satraps, Macedonian and Persian alike, Alexander began to carry out schemes which he had formed. He had unbarred and unveiled the Orient to the knowledge and commerce of the Mediterranean peoples, but his aim was to do much more than this; it was no less than to fuse Asia and Europe into a homogeneous unity. He devised various means for compassing this object. He proposed to transplant Greeks and Macedonians into Asia, and Asiatics into Europe, as permanent settlers. This plan had indeed been partly realised by the foundation of his numerous mixed cities in the Far East. The second means was the promotion of intermarriages between Persians and Macedonians, and this policy was inaugurated in magnificent fashion at Susa. The king himself espoused Statira, the daughter of Darius; his friend Hephaestion took her sister; and a large number of Macedonian officers wedded the daughters of Persian grandees. Of the general mass of the Macedonians 10,000 are said to have followed the example of their officers and taken Asiatic wives; all those were liberally rewarded by Alexander. It is to be noticed that Alexander, already wedded to the princess of Sogdiana, adopted the polygamous custom of Persia; and he even married another royal lady, Parysatis, daughter of Ochus. These marriages were purely dictated by policy; for Alexander never came under the influence of women.

-- Chapter XVIII: The Conquest of the Far East, Excerpt from "History of Greece for Beginners", by J. B. Bury, M.A.

The Greek writers relate that the father of Sandrocottus was a man of low origin, being the son of a barber, whom the queen had married after putting her husband the king to death. He is called by Diodorus Siculus (16.93, 94) Xandrames, and by Q. Curtius (9.2) Aggrammes, the latter name being probably only a corruption of the former. This king sent his son Sandrocottus to Alexander the Great, who was then at the Hyphasis, and he is reported to have said that Alexander might easily have conquered the eastern parts of India, since the king was hated on account of his wickedness and the meanness of his birth. Justin likewise relates, that Sandrocottus saw Alexander, and that having offended him, he was ordered to be put to death, and escaped only by flight. Justin says nothing about his being the king's son, but simply relates that he was of obscure origin, and that after he escaped from Alexander he became the leader of a band of robbers, and finally obtained the supreme power...The name of Sandrocottus is written both by Plutarch and Appian Androcottus without the sibilant, and Athenaeus gives us the form Sandrocuptus (Σανδρόκυπτθς), which bears a much greater resemblance to the Hindu name than the common orthography. (Plut. Alex. 62 ; Justin, 15.4 ; Appian, Syr. 55 ; Strab. xv. pp. 702, 709, 724 ; Athen. 1.18e.; Arrian, Arr. Anab. 5.6.2; Plin. H. N. 6.17.)

-- Sandrocottus, by William Smith, A Dictionary of Greek and Roman biography and mythology

The discovery that the Sandrokottos of the Greeks was identical with the Chandragupta who figures in the Sanskrit annals and the Sanskrit drama was one of great moment, as it was the means of connecting Greek with Sanskrit literature, and of thereby supplying for the first time a date to early Indian history, which had not a single chronological landmark of its own. Diodoros distorts the name into Xandrames, and this again is distorted by Curtius into Agrarimes...

According to Eratosthenes, and Megasthenes who lived with Siburtios the satrap of Arachosia, and who, as he himself tells us, often visited Sandrakottos, the king of the Indians...

According to Megasthenes the mean breadth (of the Ganges) is 100 stadia, and its least depth 20 fathoms. At the meeting of this river and another is situated Palibothra, a city eighty stadia in length and fifteen in breadth. It is of the shape of a parallelogram, and is girded with a wooden wall, pierced with loopholes for the discharge of arrows. It has a ditch in front for defence and for receiving the sewage of the city. The people in whose country this city is situated is the most distinguished in all India, and is called the Prasii. The king, in addition to his family name, must adopt the surname of Palibothros, as Sandrakottos, for instance, did, to whom Megasthenes was sent on an embassy....

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. Megasthenes 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 drachmae, 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. [This wine was probably Soma juice.] Their beverage is a liquor composed from rice instead of barley, and their food is principally a rice-pottage. [Curry and rice, no doubt.] 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. These things indicate that they possess good, sober sense; but other things they do which one cannot approve: for instance, that they eat always alone, and that they have no fixed hours when meals are to be taken by all in common, but each one eats when he fools inclined. The contrary custom would be better for the ends of social and civil life....

The wild men could not be brought to Sandrakottos, for they refused to take food and died. Their heels are in front, and the instep and toes are turned backwards. [These wild men are mentioned both by Ketesias and Baeto. They were called Antipodes on account of the peculiar structure of their foot, and were reckoned among Aethiopian races, though they are often referred to in the Indian epics under the name Paschadangulajas, of which the [x] of Megasthenes is an exact translation. Vide Schwanb. 68.]

Some were brought to the court who had no mouths and were tame. They dwell near the sources of the Ganges, and subsist on the savour of roasted flesh and the perfumes of fruits and flowers, having instead of mouths orifices through which they breathe. They are distressed with things of evil smell, and 6 hence it is with difficulty they keep their hold on life, especially in a camp.

-- Ancient India as Described by Megasthenes and Arrian; Being a Translation of the Fragments of the Indika of Megasthenes Collected by Dr. Schwanbeck, and of the First Part of the Indika of Arrian, by J.W. McCrindle

Sir William Jones (1746-1794) deliberately identified 'Sandrocottus" mentioned by the Greeks as #ChandraguptaMaurya and declared that he was the contemporary of Alexander in 327-326 BCE...

Puranas tell us that Chandragupta Maurya ascended the throne by defeating the last Nanda king around 1500 BCE....

Therefore, #Samudragupta was the contemporary of Alexander in 327-326 BCE not Chandragupta Maurya...

The Greek scholars recorded the names of kings of India as Xandrames, and Sandrocottus. Western historians deliberately identified these names with those of Mahapadmananda or Dhanananda and Chandragupta Maurya. Xandrames was said to be the father of Sandrocottus. According to John W. McCrindle, Diodorus distorted the name "Sandrocottus" into Xandrames and this again is distorted by Curtius into Agrammes...

Seleucus Nikator also sent Deimachos on an embassy to Allitrocades or Amitrocades, the son of Sandrocottus. Western historians identified Allitrocades or Amitrocades to be Bindusara, the son of Chandragupta and concocted that Bindusara was also known as "Amitraghata". None of the Indian sources ever referred Bindusara as Amitraghata. Western historians deliberately created the word "Amitraghata" with some sort of resemblance...

Megasthenes described the system of city administration of Pataliputra but there is no similarity between the system described by Megasthenes and the system of city administration given in Kautilya Arthasastra. Megasthenes also stated that there was no slavery in India but Kautilya Arthasastra's Chapter 65 named "Dasakalpa" is solely devoted to the status of slaves among the Aryans and the Mlecchas. Probably, the slavery system that existed during Mauryan era has gradually declined by Gupta era. Thus, Megasthenes cannot be contemporary to Chandragupta Maurya.

Megasthenes not only often visited Palibothra but also stayed in the court of Sandrocottus for a few years. But he did not even mention about Kautilya or Chanakya who was the real kingmaker and also the patron of Chandragupta. No Greek scholar ever mentioned about Kautilya. Therefore, Megasthenes cannot be the contemporary to Chandragupta Maurya.

Greek scholars often mentioned that Sandrocottus was the king of the country called as Prasii (Prachi or Prachya). Pracha or Prachi means eastern country. During the Nanda and Mauryan era, Magadha kings were ruling almost entire India. Mauryan Empire was never referred in Indian sources as only Prachya desa or eastern country. Prachya desa was generally referred to Gupta Empire because Northern Saka Ksatrapas and Western Saka Ksatrapas were well established in North and West India. Megasthenes mentioned that Sandrocottus is the greatest king of the Indians and Poros is still greater than Sandrocottus which means a kingdom in the North-western region is still independent and enjoying at least equal status with the kingdom of Sandrocottus...

The Greek historian Plutarch mentioned that Androkottus (Sandrocottus) marched over the whole of India with an army of 600 thousand men. Chandragupta Maurya defeated Nandas under the leadership of Chanakya. There was no need for him to go on such expedition to conquer the whole of India because he has already inherited the Magadha kingdom of Nandas covering entire India. Actually, it was Samudragupta who overran the whole of India as details given in Allahabad pillar inscription.

According to Greek historians like Justinus, Appianus etc., Seleukos made friendship with Sandrocottus and entered into relations of marriage with him. Allahabad pillar inscription tells us that Samudragupta was offered their daughters in marriage (Kanyopayanadana ... ) by the kings in the North-west region. There is nothing in Indian sources to prove this fact with reference to Chandragupta Maurya...

The Jain work "Harivamsa" written by Jinasena gives the names of dynasties and kings and the duration of their rule after the nirvana of Mahavira. Jinasena mentions nothing about Mauryas but he tells us that Gupta kings ruled for 231 years. Western historians fixed the date of Mahavira-nirvana in 527 BCE which means Mauryas ruled after Mahavira-nirvana but Jaina Puranas and Jaina Pattavalis had no knowledge of Mauryas after Mahavira-nirvana. Thus, Mauryas ruled prior to Mahavira-nirvana. Therefore, Sandrocottus can only be identified with Samudragupta.

If Sandrocottus was indeed Chandragupta Maurya, why do none of the Greek sources mentioned about Asoka, the most illustrious and greatest of Mauryan kings? It is evident that Greek sources had no knowledge of Asoka. Therefore, the ancient Greeks were contemporaries to Gupta kings not Mauryas...

Interestingly, there is no reference of Alexander's invasion in Indian literary sources because it was actually a non-event for Indians...

Strabo once stated:

"Generally speaking, the men who have hitherto written on the affairs of India were a set of liars. Deimachos holds the first place in the list; Megasthenes comes next; while Onesikritos and Nearchos with others of the same class, manage to stammer out a few words of truth."...

If Samudragupta is accepted as Sandrocottus the contemporary Indian king of Alexander and the epoch of Saka coronation era in 583 BCE, there will be no conflict in the traditional Indian records and epigraphic records.

-- Who was Sandrocottus: Samudragupta or Chandragupta Maurya?, The Chronology of Ancient India, Victim of Concoctions and Distortions, by Vedveer Arya

I cannot help mentioning a discovery which accident threw in my way, though my proofs must be reserved for an essay which I have destined for the fourth volume of your Transactions. To fix the situation of that Palibothra (for there may have been several of the name) which was visited and described by Megasthenes, had always appeared a very difficult problem, for though it could not have been Prayaga, where no ancient metropolis ever stood, nor Canyacubja, which has no epithet at all resembling the word used by the Greeks; nor Gaur, otherwise called Lacshmanavati, which all know to be a town comparatively modern, yet we could not confidently decide that it was Pataliputra, though names and most circumstances nearly correspond, because that renowned capital extended from the confluence of the Sone and the Ganges to the site of Patna, while Palibothra stood at the junction of the Ganges and Erannoboas, which the accurate M. D'Anville had pronounced to be the Yamuna; but this only difficulty was removed, when I found in a classical Sanscrit book, near 2000 years old, that Hiranyabahu, or golden armed, which the Greeks changed into Erannoboas, or the river with a lovely murmur, was in fact another name for the Sona itself; though Megasthenes, from ignorance or inattention, has named them separately. This discovery led to another of greater moment, for Chandragupta, who, from a military adventurer, became like Sandracottus the sovereign of Upper Hindustan, actually fixed the seat of his empire at Pataliputra, where he received ambassadors from foreign princes; and was no other than that very Sandracottus who concluded a treaty with Seleucus Nicator; so that we have solved another problem, to which we before alluded, and may in round numbers consider the twelve and three hundredth years before Christ, as two certain epochs between Rama, who conquered Silan a few centuries after the flood, and Vicramaditya, who died at Ujjayini fifty-seven years before the beginning of our era.

-- Discourse X. Delivered February 28, 1793, P. 192, Excerpt from "Discourses Delivered Before the Asiatic Society: And Miscellaneous Papers, on The Religion, Poetry, Literature, Etc. of the Nations of India", by Sir William Jones

The terms are interrelated: Seleucus’ receipt of elephants is framed as an exchange (Strabo’s verb is [x], “I take in return”) for the territory or the marriage, and the marriage itself may have functioned as the security and guarantee of the treaty, with the ceded land considered a dowry.22 [ ]

In ancient Greek, diadochos is a noun (substantive or adjective) formed from the verb, diadechesthai, "succeed to," a compound of dia- and dechesthai, "receive." The word-set descends straightforwardly from Indo-European *dek-, "receive", the substantive forms being from the o-grade, *dok-. Some important English reflexes are dogma, "a received teaching," decent, "fit to be received," paradox, "against that which is received." The prefix dia- changes the meaning slightly to add a social expectation to the received. The diadochos expects to receive it, hence a successor in command or any other office.

-- Diadochi, by Wikipedia

Seleucus I Nicator was a Greek general and one of the Diadochi, the rival generals, relatives, and friends of Alexander the Great who fought for control over his empire after his death.

-- Seleucus I Nicator, by Wikipedia

This territory-for-elephants was mutually beneficial. Geopolitically, Seleucus abandoned territories he could never securely hold in favor of peace and security in the east: the treaty and elephants allowed him to turn his attention to his rival, Antigonus Monophthalmus, Syria and the Mediterranean.23 [ ] Chandragupta gained unchallenged expansion into India’s northwest corridor.24 [ ] His gift of elephants may have alleviated the burden of fodder and the return march. Ambassadors and caravans, not conquering armies, would now pass through the intermediate zone. Moreover, the fact and terms of the treaty were a recognition of equal, royal status for kings who lacked the legitimacy of appointment or inheritance. It is even possible that Seleucus used the occasion of this treaty – a wedding on the Indus? – for formally completing his long march from satrap to king.25 [ ]

The Treaty of the Indus was a constitutive act of the Hellenistic state system, creating the Seleucid empire’s eastern frontier by transferring land out of Seleucus’ control. This act of delimitation marked the boundary of Seleucid power and sovereign claims. As such, it was a radical departure from two centuries of Achaemenid and Alexandrian universalist pretensions. Persian kings had recognized no independent, equal monarchy to its east, and in Achaemenid geography, as far as it can be grasped through its Herodotean and Ctesian refractions, the world simply faded into nothingness beyond Persia’s imperial possessions in India. The eastern boundary of Alexander’s conquests was more problematic. From its outset, his anabasis had been a relentless march toward the eastern edge of the world; he was halted only at the Hyphasis river by an army mutiny, a form of internal historical agent entirely consistent with his empire’s effacement of external powers. By contrast, the termination of Seleucus’ eastern conquest was externally motivated. Seleucus, like Alexander, crossed the river Indus (a metonymy for royal invasion),26 [ ] but he met his equal, Chandragupta. In other words, diplomacy is to bounded political space what mutiny is to universal political space. The new world order’s multicentrism results in a historical narrative of multiple agency.

The terms of the treaty, no doubt much negotiated, indicate an economy of exchange. Space is convertible. Seleucid power was not yet embedded in a defined territory: its eastern lands function, like Chandragupta’s elephants, as one resource of the kingdom. The very fact of the treaty’s territorial clause indicates that land was still a possession to be negotiated over and divided up unproblematically. Moreover, the treaty created new spatial units, ignoring the boundaries of ethnic communities and the historical precedents of Achaemenid and Alexandrian imperialism.

The Treaty of the Indus satisfactorily secured the eastern periphery of the Seleucid empire and the western periphery of the Mauryan empire. The Seleucid frontier with the Indian kingdom, settled once and for all, never became an important location for the legitimating of monarchic identity through territorial claims or military aggression: there was no attempt to reconquer the ceded territories or to redraw the border, a clear contrast to the ping-pong regions of Coele Syria and Asia Minor. Likewise, the Mauryan kingdom, satisfied with its territorial gains in the northwest, appears to have turned its attentions eastward and southward.27 [ ] Friendly contacts were maintained by Seleucid diplomats resident in the Mauryan capital. Pataliputra (Gr. Palimbothra, mod. Patna), including, as we will see, Seleucus I’s envoy Megasthenes, and it is very probable that Chandragupta’s representatives were attached to the Seleucid court; his grandson Ashoka certainly sent them.28 [ ] Relations continued into the kingdoms’ second generation: Strabo reports that Megasthenes was replaced by Deimachus, ambassador of Seleucus’ successor, Antiochus I, to Chandragupta’s successor, Amitrochates (Bindusara).29 [ ]

In the new context of permanent, amicable diplomacy opened by the Treaty of the Indus, the land-for-elephants agreement was reperformed as regular, ceremonial gift-giving, exchanges that generated solidarity and renewed equality of rank, as in the Bronze Age “Great Powers” system of Amarna diplomacy,30 [ ] rather than functioning as unidirectional signs of subservience, as in Persepolitan imperialism.31 [ ] The Hellenistic historian Phylarchus, in a passage preserved by Athenaeus, indicates that Chandragupta sent Seleucus a gift package, including Indian aphrodisiacs.32 [ ] The incense trees that Seleucus attempted to import by sea from India33 [ ] and the tigers he sent to the Athenians (see Chapter 4) may well have originated as Chandragupta’s diplomatic gifts. Athenaeus repeats Hegesander’s report that Chandragupta’s son, Amitrochates (Bindusara), requested from Antiochus I wine, figs, and a sophist. Antiochus responded, [x], “The figs and sweet wine we will send you, but it is not lawful among the Greeks for a sophist to be sold.”34 [ ] This delightful passage demonstrates not only that the diplomatic gift exchange between the Seleucid and Mauryan kings was well known and recorded by contemporary authors but also that it was imagined to be open to curiosity, request, negotiation, and refusal: giving is complemented by keeping.35 [ ] The frequency with which the exchanged gifts appear to be of an ethnographic character may be a consequence of our sources’ paradographical preferences, but the sending of figs eastward or tigers westward could only reinforce the new world order’s assertion of independent, essentially external territories.

After Alexander’s conquest of Bactria and Sogdiana, the Indian satrapy was the only province of the Persian empire into which he had not carried his arms.

Satraps were the governors of the provinces of the ancient Median and Achaemenid Empires and in several of their successors, such as in the Sasanian Empire and the Hellenistic empires. The satrap served as viceroy to the king, though with considerable autonomy. The word came to suggest tyranny or ostentatious splendour. A satrapy is the territory governed by a satrap.

-- Satrap, by Wikipedia

Of this province he must have gained some valuable knowledge from Sisikottos (Sasigupta), the Indian mercenary leader who transferred his services from Bactria to her conqueror. Alexander also received an embassy in Sogdiana from Omphis (Ambhi) of Takshasila (Taxila) which offered him the alliance of the Indian prince and sought the foreigner’s aid against his powerful neighbour Porus, the first recorded instance of an Indian seeking foreign aid against fellow Indians....

Alexander then proceeded to Nikaia (Greek for ‘city of victory’), a place that lay most likely on his route to the river Kabul. Here he offered a sacrifice to the goddess Athena, and met an Indian embassy headed by the king of Takshasila which ‘brought him such presents as are most esteemed by the Indians’ and gave him also all the elephants they had with them, twenty-five in number....

After the subjugation of the Aspasians, Alexander moved, according to Curtius, to the city of Nysa; Arrian records the visit in detail, but gives no indication of the position of Nysa, and is openly sceptical not only of the legendary details, but of the existence of the city itself. The inhabitants of Nysa offered no resistance, but sent an embassy with presents and claimed kinship with the Greeks on the score that their city had been founded by Dionysus and named after his nurse, Nysa, and that the Nysans were the descendants of his followers; the mountain near the city also bore the name Meros (thigh) because Dionysus grew, before his birth, in the thigh of Zeus. Nysa had remained a free city with its own laws ever since, and Alexander should permit them to continue as they were. ‘It gratified Alexander to hear all this' from Akuphis, the leader of the Nysan deputation, and he was not inclined to be too critical of legends that were pleasing to the ears of his soldiers, and promised him the glory of excelling the achievements of Dionysus. So he offered a sacrifice to his divine predecessor and confirmed his colony in the enjoyment of its ancient laws and liberty as an aristocratic republic....

Alexander now appointed Nicanor satrap of the country west of the Indus, and received the submission of Peucelaotis (Pushkalavati), the ancient capital of Gandhara, stationing a garrison of Macedonian soldiers in the city under the command of Philip....

When Alexander reached the bridge at Ohind, at the end of sixteen marches, he gave his army a rest of thirty days, entertaining them with games and contests. Here he was met by an embassy from Ambhi of Takshasila who had recently succeeded to his father’s throne, but was awaiting the arrival of Alexander to assume sovereignty. The embassy brought presents consisting of 200 talents of silver, 3,000 fat oxen, 10,000 sheep or more and 30 elephants; a force of 700 horsemen also came to the assistance of Alexander from the same prince and brought word that Ambhi surrendered into Alexander’s hands his capital Takshasila, ‘the greatest of all the cities between the river Indus and Kydaspes’....

As the invader approached Takshasila a strange incident occurred. When he was at a distance of some four miles from the city, he was met by a whole army drawn in battle order and elephants ranged in a line; Alexander suspected treachery and instructed his troops to prepare for a battle; but Ambhi seeing the mistake made by the Macedonians, left his army with a few friends and contrived to explain to Alexander, with the aid of an interpreter, that he meant not to fight, but to honour his foreign ally whose protection he had been soliciting for so long and with so much persistence. He surrendered himself, his army and kingdom into the hands of Alexander, and got them back as his favoured protege....

Alexander was entertained in Takshasila for three days with lavish hospitality, and on the fourth day he and his friends received presents of golden crowns and eighty talents of coined silver (Curtius). In his turn Alexander showed his gratification by sending to Ambhi a thousand talents from his spoils of war ‘along with many banqueting vessels of gold and silver, a vast quantity of Persian drapery, and thirty chargers from his own stalls, caparisoned as when ridden by himself'. Thus did a fraction of the loot from the store-houses of the old Persian kings find its lodgement in the palace of Takshasila....it secured for him an additional force of five thousand men and the unfailing loyalty of a most useful ally. Embassies from Indian princes met Alexander here with presents and declared their submission to him; even Abhisares of the hill country sent his brother....

He posted Philip, the son of Machatus, at the head of a garrison, as satrap of Takshasila and its neighbourhood, and began his march to the Jhelum with his own army and the Taxilan contingent of 5,000 men commanded by their king in person....

The generals soon developed a stout opposition to further advance into India, and Seleucus, who had seen something of the Indian elephants in the battle of the Jhelum, when he became king, was ready to cede whole provinces in order to secure an adequate number of these noble animals for his army....

Porus himself, mounted on a tall elephant, not only directed the movements of his forces but fought on to the very end of the contest; he then received a wound on his right shoulder, the only unprotected part of his body, all the rest of his person being rendered shot-proof by a coat of mail remarkable for its strength and closeness of fit; he now turned his elephant and began to retire....at last Meroes (Maurya?), an old friend of Porus, persuaded him to hear the message of Alexander....Alexander, who was the first to speak, requested Porus to say how he wished to be treated. ‘Treat me, O Alexander! as befits a king’ was the answer of Porus. Pleased with it, Alexander replied; ‘For mine own sake, O Porus! thou shalt be so treated, but do thou, in thine own behalf, ask for whatever boon thou pleasest' to which Porus said that everything was included in what he had asked. Alexander not only reinstated Porus in his kingdom, but added to it territory of still greater extent. Thus the Paurava took his place in the world-empire of Alexander for a time by the side of his old enemy, the king of Takshasila. Possibly Alexander meant that they should be a check on each other....

When Alexander took the field again with a select division of horse and foot, he invaded the land of the Glausai or Glauganikai (Glauchukayanas) as they were called, a free tribe on the western bank of the Akesines (Chenab) living in thirty-seven cities of between five and ten thousand inhabitants each and a multitude of villages. These people were now placed under the rule of the Paurava against whom they had maintained their independence for so long. From here Taxiles, now reconciled to Porus, was sent back to his capital. The Raja of Abhisara, who could not join the Paurava before the battle of the Jhelum, now sent his brother with forty elephants and a money present to renew the protestations of his friendship to Alexander and offer the surrender of himself and his kingdom into his hands; Alexander demanded the presence of Abhisares in person, adding that if he failed to come Alexander might go himself with his army to look for him. Envoys came also from another Porus across the Chenab, perhaps a relative, but no friend, of the great Paurava....

Alexander now pressed on to the next river, Hydraotes (Ravi), ‘not less in breadth than the Akesines, but not so rapid', leaving garrisons at suitable places along his route to secure his communications. From the banks of that river he despatched Hephaestion with enough troops into the territory of the younger Porus, who had abandoned his country with a handful of followers when he learned of the esteem of Alexander for the other Paurava. Hephaestion was to reduce the territory of the fugitive Porus and of all the independent tribes on the banks of the Ravi, and add it to the kingdom of the great Paurava...

Within two days of his crossing the Ravi, Alexander had received the submission of Pimprama (unidentified), the city of the Adraistai (Adhrshtas or, according to Jayaswal, Arishtas), But the Kathaians of Sangala camped under shelter of a low hill outside the city and offered a determined resistance from behind a triple barricade of wagons. Finding his cavalry of no avail against the enemy, Alexander led the infantry on foot and after much hard fighting, compelled the Indians to seek refuge behind the city walls. Alexander now closely invested the city, and Porus joined him with a force, of 5,000 Indians and several elephants...

While he was encamped on the Beas, Alexander was told by a chieftain named Bhagala (Panini knew the name) about the extent and power of the Nanda empire, and Porus confirmed his statements. Such information whetted Alexander’s eagerness to advance further; but his troops, especially the Macedonians, had begun to lose heart at the thought of the distance they had travelled from their homes and the hardships and dangers they had been called upon to face after their entry into India. And at the Beas the army mutinied and refused to march further....

The country west of the Beas was committed to the charge of Porus—‘Seven nations in all, containing more than 2,000 cities’. While he was making preparations on the Chenab for his voyage to the sea, he received another embassy from Abhisares accompanied by Arsakes, ruler of the neighbouring country of Urasa; Abhisares himself was ill and could not come, as the ambassadors Alexander had sent to him attested. Abhisares was now made satrap of his own dominions and Arsakes placed under him.

-- Chapter II: Alexander's Campaigns in India, Excerpt from "Age of the Nandas and Mauryas", by K.A. Nilakanta Sastri

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Part 2 of 3

Almost a century after Seleucus I had given land for peace, the greatest of his successors, Antiochus III, led a new imperial army into India. No Seleucid ruler had penetrated to the distant eastern borders of the kingdom since Seleucus Nicator had delineated them at the Treaty of the Indus. Polybius describes this second encounter of Seleucid and Indian monarchs:

[Antiochus III] crossed the Caucasus and descended into India, renewed his friendship ([x]) with Sophagasenus, king of the Indians ([x]), and received more elephants, raising their number to a total of one hundred and fifty, and provisioned his army once more on the spot. He himself broke camp with his troops, leaving behind Androsthenes of Cyzicus to bring back the treasure which the king (Sophagasenus) had agreed to give him.36 [ ]

King Sophagasenus, a name probably derived from Subhagasena,37 [ ] is here identified as [x], "the king of the Indians." This title falsely suggests a unified Indian kingdom such as Chandragupta's: a projection of imperial stability in line with Antiochus III's own internally rejuvenating objectives. In fact, the Mauryan state entity had disintegrated, for various reasons, following the death of Ashoka in 232; Sophagasenus was ruler of a northwestern splinter kingdom. Without doubt, the "renewal of friendship" was imposed from a position of strength on the Indian king by the sudden arrival of a large, well-tested, recently reinforced and rested army. In practical terms, it was not an alliance between equals: Androsthenes of Cyzicus was left behind to transport Sophagasenus' own treasure, while king Antiochus simply took the elephants (compare his [x] "taking the elephants" with Seleucus I's [x] "taking in return the elephants"; that is, seizure versus reciprocal exchange38 [ ]). Given his immediate, on-the-ground advantages, it is striking that Antiochus III neither claimed superiority of status nor attempted to integrate these trans-Caucasian territories into his imperial structure, a clear contrast with his actions earlier in his eastern expedition, where he had framed a similar payment from Xerxes, the local ruler of Armenia, as the legitimate extraction of long-overdue tribute39 [ ] and had made an extraordinary, but ultimately unsuccessful, effort to avoid recognizing the royal status and independence of Euthydemus of Bactria.40 [ ]Antiochus' activities in India are explicitly considered an act of renewal. The encounter of Antiochus and Sophagasenus is very clearly framed as a historical reenactment of the Seleucus-Chandragupta Treaty of the Indus ([x], "he renewed the friendship"), guaranteeing amicable relations and uncontested boundaries between the Seleucid and Indian kingdoms by means of, as before, mutual recognition of equivalent status and the gift of elephants. The continuity is, as we have seen, an engineered ideological fiction. Antiochus' actions in northwestern India, a curious combination of compulsion and renunciation, demonstrate his unproblematic acceptance of the Treaty of the Indus and its century-old territorial transfer. Despite marching his army over the Hindu Kush, Antiochus made no attempt to "conquer" India. Rather, he acknowledged the spatial limitation of his own sovereignty, which is to say, the boundedness of Seleucid imperial territory. As we will see in Chapter 5, Antiochus' changed behavior on crossing the border constitutes a kind of threshold ritual: the king distinguished, in his own person, interior from exterior, Seleucid from non-Seleucid territory.

Demonstrably, the Treaty of the Indus retained its salience within the kingdom's official dynastic memory, both as a magnificent episode of grand royal encounter and as a first act of territorial delimitation.41 [ ] In addition to its continued geopolitical importance, the peace treaty also provided the ideological motivation and diplomatic conditions for perhaps the greatest and most influential literary work of the Seleucid court -- the Indica of Megasthenes, Seleucus' envoy to the Mauryan court -- to which we now turn.

Megasthenes' Indica

Seleucus 1's relationship with India was complex. On the one hand, his kingdom's security and ultimate success were founded on his relationship with the Mauryan empire: the 500 war elephants received from Chandragupta defeated Antigonus Monophthalmus at Ipsus in 301.42 [ ] Seleucus' coinage and the kingdom's official historiography depicted the Treaty of the Indus as a success and celebrated it accordingly.43 [ ] On the other hand, Seleucus had abandoned the very territories in which he had first achieved prominence; he had diminished, not extended, Macedonian rule; Alexander's Graeco-Macedonian settlers in the Hindu Kush would now be Yona minorities on the periphery of the Indian kingdom. So when Seleucus was toasted as [x], "elephant-commander," at the banquets of his rival, Demetrius Poliorcetes, the son of Antigonus Monophthalmus, it is likely that he was being mocked for his withdrawal from India, much as Agathodes of Syracuse, whose dream to expand from Sicily to Africa had recently collapsed, was hailed as [x] "island-commander," at the same feast.44 [ ]

I will argue here that Megasthenes' ethnography of India, as a sensitive engagement with the new, multipolar world order, attempted to neutralize this embarrassing, ideologically confusing contradiction. We will see that the ethnography legitimized Seleucus' formal renunciation of the Macedonian conquests in India, reformulated Indian geography to naturalize the post-treaty Mauryan-Seleucid border, and established India as an analogous kingdom for thinking through Seleucid state formation. More generally, an examination of Megasthenes' Indica, the best known and preserved of a host of ethnographies written for the Seleucid kingdom in its pioneering phase, will uncover the considerable energies devoted to generating, ordering, and deploying a governmentally useful spatial knowledge.

Even though historical narrative and monarchic ideology inevitably emplot the Treaty of the Indus as the meeting of two great rulers, it cannot be doubted that the negotiations were parleyed by Indian and Graeco-Macedonian regional experts. It is possible that Megasthenes was Seleucus' main negotiator in 305/4,45 [ ] probable that he was the main literary source for the diplomatic terms,46 [ ] and certain that he was the Seleucid ambassador to the court of Chandragupta Maurya, at Pataliputra on the Ganges; the Appendix discusses the testimonia for Megasthenes' career. At some point during or after his tenure as ambassador, Megasthenes published an ethnographic treatise, titled Indica. The work, like so much of Hellenistic literature, has not survived from antiquity in its own right47 [ ] and so must be reconstructed from the quotations, paraphrases, and allusions of later, extant authors. But we are unusually lucky: the rise of Parthia, the emancipation of Graeco-Bactria, and the collapse of the Mauryan empire after Ashoka's death restricted land access to the Ganges; the discovery of the Gulf trade winds (and the consequent commerce in Indian luxuries) in the first century exploited the west Indian littoral rather than the country's interior. As a result, Megasthenes' Indica was established as the most authoritative ethnography of the Gangetic basin, quickly becoming the standard description of the Indian interior.48 [ ] Extensive and overlapping portions of the Indica have been preserved in Diodorus Siculus, Strabo, and Arrian, as well as brief but eye-catching passages in the Jewish/Christian and paradoxographical literary traditions.49 [ ] Broad similarities of content as well as specific equivalences of vocabulary and phrase permit a relatively unproblematic identification of Megasthenes' material even when he is not explicitly named. 50 [ ] The reconstruction of the work's structure and internal logic is greatly aided both by the unity of Diodorus' epitome and by a basic similarity to Hecataeus of Abdera's Aigyptiaca.51 [ ] It is likely that Megasthenes wrote the Indica in three books:52 [ ] the first discussed India's geography, natural history, and climate; the second, the country's primitive life, early civilization, and historical developments; the third, the customs and administration of the contemporary Mauryan state.

The Indica's historical account narrated a culture myth, explicitly represented as indigenous Indian tradition, of the transformation of Indian society by a conquering Dionysus and an autochthonous Heracles.53 [ ] Such "ascent of man" narratives were regularly treated in universal histories and ethnographic treatises.54 [ ] The Indica's Kulturgeschichte establish the important ethnographic principles and patterns of historical causation that the work will systematically deploy. Accordingly, they playa central role in the logic of Megasthenes' Seleucid apology: as the modalities of cultural formation play out over the course of Indian history, Seleucus' territorial abandonment is made inevitable.

Prehistoric India, that is, India before the arrival of Dionysus and the beginnings of cultural memory, is a world without cities. In the characterization of primitive India's state of nature, this absence is mentioned first and functions as the primary and determinant condition for all other barbarous behaviors:

Long ago the Indians were nomads, just like the nonagricultural Scythians, who, wandering in their wagons, exchange one part of Scythia for another at one time or another ([x]), neither inhabiting cities nor honoring shrines of the gods ([x]). 55 [ ]

In Megasthenes' stagist model, the earliest condition of Indian man was indicated not only by a lack of urbanism or religious piety but also by an absence of territoriality. Indian space was unmarked and expansive and, like the Scythian steppe, uninvested with meaning; it could be abandoned willy-nilly (effectively underlined by the juxtaposition [x]). The Indica's language here is strikingly Herodotean, and the comparison clearly points toward Herodotus' Scythian ethnography.56 [ ] Megasthenes' account moves on emphatically to associate the absence of cities and religion with the stock elements of a generic barbarity: wearing skins, not clothes; eating bark, not grain; devouring meat raw, not cooked.57 [ ] This absence of cities is, for Megasthenes, the very condition of Dionysus' conquest. India is an open, accessible space: "[Dionysus] overran all of India, since there was no important city ([x]) powerful enough to oppose him.58 [ ] India could be conquered because the Indians were nomads. Megasthenes establishes a connection between urban power and resistance to conquest that resonates throughout his treatise.

Dionysus' invasion puts an end to this timeless, primitive India. Arrian paraphrases:

When Dionysus came and became master of the Indians he founded cities and established laws in the cities ([x]), he dispensed wine to the Indians, just as to the Greeks, he taught them to sow the land, giving them seeds . .. Dionysus was the first to yoke the oxen to the plough, and made the majority of Indians agriculturalists instead of nomads; he also armed them with weapons of war. Dionysus also taught them to worship other gods, but himself most of all, clashing cymbals and playing drums.59 [ ]

Megasthenes has avoided the naturalistic, impersonal, random, and gradualist historical anthropology associated with Democritus, Protagoras, and Dicaearchus60 [ ] in favor of Dionysus' momentous role as benefactor, teacher, and inventor. Culture arrives with monarchy: Megasthenes' Kulturgeschichte construct, with other early Hellenistic texts, an image of the monarchic monopoly of historical agency, the royal profile of master-builder, and the cocreation of a political and spatial centrality.61 [ ] And, as in much of Hellenistic literature, Dionysus' violence is suppressed; though bearing the cult-title [x] or [x] ("devourer of raw flesh") in the Greek world, he leads Megasthenes' Indians from the raw to the cooked.62 [ ] Alongside the standardly Bacchic satyric dance, long hair, perfumery, invention of wine, and visibility of women, the continued performances of which were witnessed in India at the time of Alexander's invasion, it is Dionysus' role as city founder that is most unusual and striking. Just as the lack of cities was primitive life's first mentioned and fundamental absence, so the creation of cities is the first mentioned act of civilization and the requirement for associated cultural processes. In Diodorus' parallel account, Dionysus' urban foundations invest the landscape with difference: the unstriated space of prehistoric India is now marked with value ([x], "well-placed sites") where the cities are located.63 [ ] Moreover, Diodorus' Dionysus is an oecist of [x], "important cities": the diction here responds directly to primitive India's absence of a single important city, which was, as we have seen, the precondition of Dionysus' very conquest.

Dionysus' city-founding activities abolish the very circumstance that permitted the success of his own invasion, making it a unique episode in Indian history. Dionysus is also the inventor of Indian warfare, arming the population with weapons of war and influencing their battle order, which obviously goes hand in hand with the land's new urban defensibility. Alongside its generic civilizing function, therefore, the invasion of Dionysus operates as a guarantee of India's future isolation and impregnability, characteristics which Megasthenes' ethnographic descriptions and continued historical narrative repeatedly emphasize. As demonstrated by the failure of all subsequent invasions (see later), this foundational act transforms a penetrable, open space into a closed, fortified, and unconquerable territory.

The Indica introduces a second civilizing superman, Heracles, fifteen generations after Dionysus' invasion; as before, the account is attributed to Indian authority.64 [ ] In accordance with the now established ethnographic principle, Heracles is no invader. Despite the similarity of his clothing and weapon to those of the Theban hero,65 [ ] the new impregnability and inaccessibility of the land require that he be an autochthonous son of India. In addition to purging land and sea of wild beasts,66 [ ] we are told that Heracles "was the founder of not a few cities ([x]), the most distinguished and largest of which he called Palimbothra. In it he built an expensive palace and established a great number of settlers; he fortified the city with worthy ditches filled with river water ([x]."67 [ ] Heracles continues the urbanization, and thus fortification, of India on a grand scale ([x]). Palimbothra, the Mauryan capital. Pataliputra, stands out as the only named city. That it is founded by Heracles, not Dionysus (i.e., its emergence in the second, not the first, stage of cultural development), may encode the city's late rise to primacy under the last Nandas and Chandragupta.68 [ ] The adjective [x], appears again, here qualifying the city's defensive works ([x]) -- precisely the feature of urbanism that Megasthenes' ethnographic principle should underline.

The ethnographic logic outlined in Indian prehistory -- the correlation of urbanism and unconquerability -- plays out in Megasthenes' discussion of contemporary India. By the time of Megasthenes' sojourn there, he reports that progressive urbanization has transformed India from an empty expanse of aimless nomadic wanderings into a land garrisoned by countless cities: "One cannot enumerate accurately the cities in India because of their number."69 [ ] The Indica's description of Palimbothra should be understood as the culminating instantiation of this development. Having established the city as the index of indigenous power, Megasthenes deploys this principle in the synchronous ethnography of his third book to demonstrate the might of the new Mauryan kingdom:

At the junction of this (the Ganges) and the other river (the Erranoboas, mod. Son), Palimbothra was established, eighty stades in length, fifteen in width, in the shape of a parallelogram, surrounded by a perforated wooden construction, such that arrows can be shot through the holes. A ditch lies in front, as a defense and as a reservoir for the sewerage from the city. The ethnos in which the city is located is called the Prasii, and is the most distinguished of all. The ruler must be named after the city ([x]), called "Palimbothros'" in addition to his family name, such as Sandrocottus to whom Megasthenes was sent.70 [ ]

The capital city of the Mauryan kingdom is the largest of all Indian urban foundations, populated by the most distinguished of all Indian tribes. We can note Megasthenes' careful enumeration of Palimbothra's unimaginably large size.71 [ ] As in the account of its foundation by Heracles (given earlier), the city's defenses receive the most attention. The large wooden palisade, uncovered by the late nineteenth-century excavations,72 [ ] the 570 towers,73 [ ] the network of arrow slits, and the encircling ditch [x], "for defense," make this city a bastion against foreign conquest. Importantly, a direct identification is made between city and king: the Mauryan emperor takes the city's name as a royal title, eliding the city's impregnability with his own invincibility. Moreover, the Indica, describing the contemporary Mauryan administration, delineated six groups of city administrators, assigned to various tasks of urban construction and upkeep74 [ ] and so underscores the importance of a city bureaucracy. The city/Palimbothra is the fixed and unmoving point that makes it possible for Indian space to constitute itself as a territory ruled by a power.

In the context of earlier Greek Indography, Megasthenes' urbanism is doubly radical. First, city foundation gives a temporal structure to Indian history. Herodotus' India is populated by nomadic and settled peoples concurrently: [x], "There are many tribes of Indians, and they do not all speak the same language; some are nomads, others not."75 [ ] Megasthenes transforms this uncomplicated and synchronic [x] opposition into a diachronic stagism. Indian history can now be periodized into preurban and urban eras. In doing so, he gives India the chronological depth it was denied in earlier paradoxographical, edge-of-the-earth ethnographies. It is important to note that the cultural heroism of Dionysus and Heracles and the urban trajectory of Indian history do not eradicate nomadism in its entirety. Megasthenes, describing contemporary Mauryan Society in the Indica's third book, observes that nomadism has been shifted to the mountainous margins of the Mauryan kingdom and incorporated as a specific economic occupation within the monarch-centered "caste system": the shepherds and hunters, the third [x] or "class," "live a wandering tent-living existence";76 [ ] "they do not live in cities or villages, but are nomads and live up in the mountains,"77 [ ] They receive a regular food allowance from the king in return for freeing the land from wild beasts. That is to say, the single civilizing act of Heracles has become the socially embedded caste identity of a particular group, whose marginal, nomadic existence guarantees the settled, urban life for the rest of the kingdom. The Mauryan kingdom accomplishes its own ever-renewing cultural heroism through occupational differentiation. Similarly, Megasthenes tells of ascetic Garmanes, who enact a conscious primitivism, living in the wild, gathering fruit, refraining from wine, clothed in the bark of trees.78 [ ] The primitive lifestyle functions here, just as for the Cynics in Greece, as an entirely modern rejection of the urban; its cultural forms depend on the Kulturgeschichte outlined earlier.

Second, Megasthenes has inverted a key and ubiquitous principle of Greek ethnography. As we have seen, his description of primitive India makes clear reference to Herodotus' Scythian logoi, paralleling early Indian and contemporary Scythian nonagricultural nomads. One of the most famous passages in all of Herodotus' histories is his statement that Scythian nomadism was the greatest of all human discoveries because it was the key to unconquerability:

But the Scythian people has made the cleverest discovery that we know in what is the most important of all human affairs; I do not praise the Scythians in all respects, but in this, the most important: that they have contrived that no one who attacks them can escape, and no one can catch them if they do not want to be found. For when men have no established cities or forts ([x]), but are all nomads and mounted archers, not living by tilling the soil but by raising cattle and carrying their dwellings on wagons, how can they not be invincible and unapproachable ([x])?79 [ ]

The causation could not be clearer. Herodotus' Scythians are [x], "invincible and unapproachable," because they are nomads. Scythian nomadism is a cultural discovery, a strategy of space, and a deliberate choice. It is not associated, as in Megasthenes, with primitivism: the Scythians sacrifice, cook, and wear clothes. Rather, in Hartog's felicitous formulation, nomadism is a strategy which is in addition a way of life.80 [ ] And it works: Herodotus is emphatic that Darius I's great invasion of Scythia failed because of the absence of cities. Comparable assertions of nomadic unconquerability recur throughout post-Herodotean ethnography and historiography. In Arrian's Bithynica, for example, contemporary Scythian nomadism is represented as a historically situated rejection of an earlier farming and urban phase, when the settled Scythians had been overrun by the Thracians.81 [ ] Similarly, for Hieronymus of Cardia, a peer of Megasthenes, the Nabataeans of Arabia secured their independence from Antigonid aggression by means of their dogmatic opposition to settled habitation and agriculture;82 [ ] for Agatharchides, nomadism had allowed the Nabataeans to successfully resist Assyrian, Persian, and Macedonian imperial ambitions.83 [ ] A passage in Quintus Curtius Rufus, most likely deriving from Cleitarchus84 [ ] (another contemporary), depicts a Sacan embassy's use of this trope in an attempt to deter Alexander from crossing the Iaxartes river in Central Asia.85 [ ] Greek ethnographic literature in general characterized the nomadic life as permanently hostile and aggressive.86 [ ] In striking contrast, nomadism in Megasthenes' Indica functions as a vulnerability. It is an aberrant way of life, defined only by its deficiencies. Megasthenes represents Indian nomadism as anterior, primitive, and unmarked. It is the baseline of existence, superseded by cultural discovery. Nomadism, that is to say, the absence of cities, allows Dionysus' invasion to succeed.

Can we trace the genealogy of Megasthenes' inversion? I would suggest that the Indica's principle of urban defensibility is a sensitive response to two, perhaps three, traditions. In the historiographical tradition's accounts of prehistory, the civilizing quality of city foundation appears in several instances of comprehensive cultural heroism but does not have a defensive function.87 [ ] We must look, instead, to strands of fifth- and fourth-century Greek Kulturgeschichte. Here the independent city-state naturally manifested the telos of the civilizing process, and nomadism the primordial state of nature out of which humanity laboriously dragged itself. The primitive nomad was an exposed, vulnerable being, culturally naked, and defenseless against beast and nature.88 [ ] For certain naturalistic models, perhaps deriving from Democritean anthropology,89 [ ] city foundation was motivated by communal defensive requirements, albeit of a limited and local nature.90 [ ] Aristotle's model of heroic kingship's benefactions focuses, like that of Megasthenes, on synoecism and defensibility.91 [ ]

Political and military activities of the fourth century manifest a growing awareness of the transformative potential of urban foundations. The first major demonstrations of a deliberate urbanistic strategy within Greece were the Theban general Epaminondas' synoecisms of Messene and Megalopolis in the 360s as bastions against Sparta: Megalopolis is considered explicitly a defensive foundation to strengthen Arcadian resistance.92 [ ] However, this is not quite the urbanism of Megasthenes' ethnography. Peloponnesian synoecism was more a matter of politics than space, associated with people power and an anti-Spartan foreign policy, which threatened the alliance of oligarchic interests on which Lacedaemon's soft imperialism in the Peloponnese depended.93 [ ] Moreover, there is an important distinction between city foundation as the generating act of a single, independent political community, such as Megalopolis or Messene, and urbanization as a form of nodal, defensible power in the creation of an expansive, territorial. monarchic state. This second type, separating a city's military function from any autonomous political pretensions, developed as a spatial strategy of the Macedonian kingdom.94 [ ] Philip II's numerous fortified settlements, concentrated in Thrace and Upper Macedonia, were primary foundations of previously nonurbanized peoples, designed to bring security to rugged areas.95 [ ]

It seems that Megasthenes combined the practical motivation behind Macedonian kings' urbanization and the theoretical musings of prehistoric anthropology into an ethnographic causal principle. Moreover, the possibility of Mesopotamian influence should not be ignored. The primacy of city foundation, the single moment of cultural heroism, the divine identity of the founder figure, the co creation of urbanism and religion, the polarity of nomad and city, and the coexistence of multiple urban foundations within a single kingdom are all elements, albeit not explicitly theorized, of Babylonian genesis accounts.96 [ ] It is not impossible, given Megasthenes' praise of Nebuchadnezzar II (see later) and his attachment to the Seleucid court, as well as Seleucus' own participation in Babylonian religious culture, that these Near Eastern myths helped to shape the Indica's prehistory.

The Indica's emphatic urbanism, a historical trajectory culminating in the contemporary Mauryan empire and its megalopolis of Palimbothra, has an apologetic function. The founding of cities means the closing of India. By the time of Megasthenes, the country is, quite simply, unconquerable and Seleucus' treaty with "Sandrocottus-Palimbothros" is a recognition of this basic power reality.97 [ ] Moreover, the ethnographic principle encoded in the Indica's Kulturgeschichte, historical narrative, and contemporary ethnography is an eminently suitable representation of Seleucus' own city-founding activities. That is to say, Megasthenes does not merely legitimate a territorial retreat but also, perhaps more importantly, transforms this limiting of Seleucid imperial space into an act of cultural self-identification. The Indica's urbanism is a valorizing affirmation of one of the central acts of early Seleucid monarchy-city foundation. The identity of city and king is a reflection of early Hellenistic practice: the Indian monarch was named after his capital, the Seleucid cities were named after their monarchs. As we will see in Chapter 7, Megasthenes' transformative, civilizing, territorializing, defensive, royal, administrative city is the Seleucid colony in its essence. In addition to rewriting Indian history, Megasthenes reformulated Indian geography. His ethnography created the spatial field in which his account of India's historical, cultural, and political dynamics play out,98 [ ] and this cartography differed strikingly from both classical-period Indographers and the Alexander Historians. Pre-Megasthenic Indian geography displays a broadly stable structure: the most civilized core of "India" is the Indus river basin, paradoxically frontier, center, and main artery of travel;99 ] ] to the river's east and south one meets a progressively increasing strangeness, utopianism, or barbarism, as is to be expected from the edge of the world. For Herodotus, presumably using the report of Scylax of Caryanda, who had been commissioned by the Achaemenid king Darius I to explore the region, 100 [ ] the land beyond the Indus just fades away:101 [ ] black-skinned vegetarians to the south, nomads to the east, and eventually an impenetrable, waterless desert.102 [ ] For Ctesias of Cnidus, writing a generation later, India was still the territory watered by the river Indus103 [ ] and enclosed by the great sand desert in the east104 [ ] but was now a unified vassal kingdom of Persia.105 [ ] Ctesias, in an important precedent for Megasthenes, linked the freakish margins to the ruler: the Pygmies, found deep in the heart of India, serve in the royal army,106 [ ] and the Dogheads, who live between the Indus and the mountains, receive gifts from the royal court every five years.107 [ ] Alexander's campaigning in India (326-325) had permitted, for the first time since Scylax' expedition, autopsy and firsthand investigation,108 [ ] and therefore in the Alexander Historians the land's geography has a finer grain and wider horizons;109 [ ] however, the Macedonian army's restriction to the Punjab maintained the primacy of the Indus valley in narrative and geography. In sum, then, Indian geography before Megasthenes reproduced the Indus-centered Achaemenid dahayaus, or provincial district, of Hindus:110 [ ] Herodotus and Ctesias respond to Persian imperial structures, the Alexander Historians to the revitalization of Achaemenid territory and Herodotus' relevance in the new world.111 [ ] As we will see elsewhere, the seismic rupture in the classical worldview occurs not with Alexander but after his death.112 [ ]

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Part 3 of 3

Megasthenes changed the shape of India, rotating it ninety degrees and reducing its size.113 [ ] The country no longer fades off toward an impenetrable desert or an undetermined margin. India now has a terminal, Oceanic boundary to the south and east as well as the long-recognized one to the west:114 [ ] where Alexander's unrelenting quest for the eastern edge of the world had failed, Megasthenes' diplomatic mission succeeds. That one can now circumnavigate India and sail from the ocean up the Ganges to the Mauryan capital, Palimbothra,115 [ ] will prove important for the imaginary voyage of the Seleucid geographer Patrocles, discussed in Chapter 2. Most important of all, India is now centered on the Ganges, not Indus, valley: the first and third books in particular privilege the ethnos of the Prasii, the city of Palimbothra, and the royal administration located there. This is the inevitable geographical consequence of Chandragupta's unification of northern India around the Gangetic core of Maghada and Megasthenes' diplomatic residence in Pataliputra, the imperial capital: Megasthenes' eye gazes out from the Mauryan heartland. We have seen that in earlier Indography, the river Indus was made to function, oddly, as both center and border. Megasthenes resolves this awkwardness. Whereas the Indus flowed at the edge of the country, the Ganges meandered through its core, with India on both sides.116 [ ] Palimbothra, stretching along the northern bank of India's main river, functions as the point from which geographical distance is now measured.117 [ ] Indeed, the notion of a capital city abutting a central river is familiar from the new urban foundations of the Seleucid empire: Seleucia-on- the-Tigris, with which Palimbothra suggestively shares some basic characteristics, 118 [ ] and Antioch-by-Daphne.

The spatializing operation of the Indica not only focalizes a new center but also delineates a periphery. No Indica would be complete, or believable, without its wonders. Just as the Gangetic core of the Mauryan state is associated with normative humanity in its recognizable form, so the kingdom's boundaries are the site of various freakish phenomena. This is achieved, in part, through a Herodotean zoning of information by autopsy or report. For example, the gold-digging ants, whose skins had been observed by Alexander's general Nearchus in the Macedonian camp on the Indus are known to Megasthenes through [x], "oral report," alone.119 [ ] The gynocracy of Pandaea, where nature is accelerated, is found to the south of the Mauryan kingdom: women give birth at age six or seven, men die before their fortieth year, fruits mature and decay more quickly.120 [ ] The gold and pearls of Taprobane (Sri Lanka) are larger and more abundant than elsewhere in India.121 [ ] Megasthenes populates the mountains of India's northwestern frontier with peoples freakish in nomos (human custom), such as having sex in public or eating their dead relatives, and bizarre in physis (nature), such as having no mouths or noses, sleeping in their giant ears, or walking on inverted feet.122 [ ]

Megasthenes links the core and peripheries of his Indian kingdom through a deliberate centripetal policy. The spatial dynamics of Sandrocottus' court reverse the more standard royal procession from center to edge (see Chapter 6); in India, the borders are transported to the king. For example, the Astomoi, the mouthless people who live at the source of the Ganges in the northwest123 [ ] and nourish themselves with smells, "were brought" ([x]) to the royal camp, where they could barely survive the bad odors of military life;124 [ ] the Wild Men, with their feet back to front, "could not be conveyed" ([x]) to the king because they would starve themselves to death.125 [ ] Similarly, Aelian reports that beasts and birds of all kinds were gathered and presented to the Indian monarch.126 [ ] We may even see an echo of the Mauryan king's magnetic pull, as well as Megasthenes' career at court, in a fragment of the almost entirely lost utopian novel of Iambulus:127 [ ] the Odyssean hero, shipwrecked upon a sandy and marshy coast of India, "was brought by the natives into the presence of the king at Palimbothra, many days' journey from the sea" ([x]), from where he was granted safe conduct back to Greece.128 [ ] If this is a parody of the Indica, Iambulus, the normative Greek man, functions as one of the marginal oddities to be brought to court from the kingdom's far periphery.129 [ ]

Megasthenes' restructuring of Indian space transforms the nature of the land. It is no longer the eastern margin of an imperial structure whose capital district lies far to the west or the bizarre, hypertrophic fringe of a Greece-centered oikoumene. Rather, India is now an organized space, a territorialized kingdom with its own center and its own peripheries. The classical and Alexandrian ethnographers and historians had located India within a geographical model of the world, which, in its fundamental Oceanic structure, was organized as a smoothly graded circle around a single center, from which increasing distance correlated with increasing weirdness: the farther from Greece, the more peripheral the region.130 [ ] In this light, Alexander's expedition was a journey outward, into margin and myth, and India's strangeness merely affirmed his achievement. Megasthenes has fragmented this model and reproduced it in miniature. India has its center at Palimbothra and its peripheral circumference. The key point is that one of India's peripheries now lies between its center and the Greek world. The Seleucid and Mauryan empires have different centers but a shared periphery in the mountains of northwestern India. In short, Megasthenes has made India its own continent. In part, as we will see, this must represent a shift from the imperial discourse of the Achaemenids and Alexander to that of the Mauryas.131 [ ] But more importantly, it is a sensitive geographical response to the fragmentation of the Achaemenid-Alexandrian empire in the Successor period and the consequent multiplication of king, state, and capital.

The apologetic function we have observed in the Indica's prehistory can be detected here as well. The spatial operation performed by the Indica encodes in ethnographic discourse the terms of the Seleucus-Chandragupta peace. Just as Indian territory is unconquerable, so Indian space is self-contained and relatively isolated. This plays itself out in the Indica's insistence on economic autarky and the absence of adventures into the outside world.132 [ ] Megasthenes draws India more fully into the oikoumene in order to exclude it from Seleucid space. The sovereign, mutually recognized Mauryan and Seleucid political landscapes that followed the Treaty of the Indus, with their shared mountainous border, are refashioned by Megasthenes into natural geographical units. Moreover, the new geography reinterprets Alexander's Indian conquests: like Seleucus, he crossed the Indus but never conquered the heartland; like Seleucus, he turned back in the face of the Gangetic kingdom, a state which subsequently had expanded westward.133 [ ] India is as much a separate spatial entity as Ptolemaic Egypt or mainland Greece. In between them all lies the Seleucid empire.

This new geography changed the function of Indian ethnography. Megasthenes transformed India from a site of freakish difference and symmetrical opposition, to be wondered at or assimilated by imperial expansion, into a space of similarity and submerged cultural identity. India is now good to think with. The land has become an analogue of the Seleucid state and the Indica a text for working through issues of Seleucid state formation.

While Chandragupta Maurya's multiethnic, polyglot, expansionist kingdom certainly resembled the Seleucid state in outline134 and probably generated parallel mechanisms of territorial control, Megasthenes' ethnography went beyond this to emphasize consonance with the Seleucid world:135 [ ] certain of India's characteristics, appearing for the first time in ethnography, resemble Seleucid state structures too closely to be anything but observations or fabrications of similarity. The strongest case is the existence of autonomous, democratically governed cities within Megasthenes' Indian kingdom.136 [ ] The coexistence of independent and dependent cities within the same realm is one of the most striking characteristics of the Seleucid empire; it is unattested for the Mauryan kingdom.137 [ ] Megasthenes seems to have deliberately constructed a parallel system of irregular political sovereignty to better support the analogy between the two states. Other parallels include royal land ownership, the capital-on-the-river, the construction of roads and milestones, and various duties of the monarch.

That Asoka was the ruler of Arachosia is clear from his bilingual Kandahar edict; but curiously evidence from coins seems to suggest that the Indo-Greek king Diodotus I was the master of this area...

Indeed, in the thirteenth Rock Edict the Emperor himself recalls his enterprises with the sword, and admits that he found pleasure rather in conquests by the Dhamma than in conquests by the sword. In the edict, he writes that he had sent emissaries to distant kingdoms, including that of Epirus. The circumstance of a king of Patna writing to the King of Epirus [NW area of ancient Greece], of all persons, is a jarring incongruity which under normal circumstances would have led the investigators to a valuable clue regarding the true identity of Asoka; but so stodgy was the prevailing scholarship that no one suspected that Jones’ identification Palibothra could be wrong. Even such a great scholar as Rhys Davids chooses to distrust the king’s account instead....

It is astonishing that the picture of Diodotus I has exactly the same mien [as Ashoka]. As already noted, the Mauryas ruled Aria and Seistan. This in a way opens up a Pandora’s box, for if Seistan and Aria were within the Mauryan kingdom it immediately follows that some of the Indo-Greek kings of Bactria and Seistan were Mauryas. Was Diodotus I a Maurya? Diodotus belonged to the same space and time as Asoka, and just like the latter he was a fierce warrior in his youth. An unsuspecting Macdonald writes:

The spectacle of the greatness of the Maurya empire would not be lost upon a satrap of such force of character as the elder Diodotus.

The figure of Zeus wielding the thunderbolt in his coins is perhaps awesome, but there is much more to Diodotus than just brute power. On his gold and silver coins he sometimes calls himself Soter, ‘the saviour’. That he was regarded as a saviour long after his death is clear from the coins struck in his memory by the later Graeco-Bactrian kings Agathocles and Antimachus, which mention Diodotus Soter. The title has baffled all scholars. Tarn dismisses it as mere royal rhodomontade, but this is unwarranted. Narain also grapples with the problem, and gives the simplistic explanation that Diodotus I took the title Soter as he considered himself as the saviour of the Bactrian Greeks. Turning a blind eye to the very real likelihood that Diodotus the warrior may have transcended into a great missionary, Narain holds the myopic view that his name Theodotus (Theos = God) quoted by Justin (Justin, xli.4) was just a scribal error. The story of civilisation is replete with instances of fierce men and women who later responded to higher callings, but due to Jonesian delusions, writers like Holt have missed that the image of Diodotus wielding the thunderbolt is not at all irreconcilable with that of a Bodhisatva-like Soter spreading the message of homonoia. That the history of Asoka matches that of Diodotus I line by line can only imply that they were one and the same person....

In fact, Devanampiya, his most common name in the edicts, has the same meaning as Devadatta. Its literal Sanskrit rendering, ‘beloved of the Gods’, is only a secondary sense aimed at his subjects in the sub-continent. Like the Greek word nÒmoj (nomos), the word Nam in Persian means ‘law’, another Persian word for which is Dat. Thus Devanam has the same meaning as Devadat; Piya stands for a redeemer (like Priam of Troy). This clearly shows that Asoka was the same as Diodotus I. After embracing Buddhism, Asoka had to change his name Devadatta as it was the name of Gotama’s hated adversary. In the eighth rock edict he states that his ancestors were also Devanampiyas, which shows that it is a cognomen, not a title—thus even Chandragupta could have been a Devadat or Diodotus (of Erythrae).

Diodotus was born between 315-300 BC, likely to parents established as nobles in Bactria. His father (also Diodotus) was believed to have been a dignitary and Diadochi of Alexander the Great, awarded land in Bactria.

-- Diodotus I, by Wikipedia

-- An Altar of Alexander Now Standing at Delhi [EXPANDED VERSION], by Ranajit Pal

More fundamentally, a new and central characteristic of the Megasthenic India, consequent on the spatializing operation described earlier, is the normalization of the land. In contrast to the timeless, idealized, edge-of-the-earth qualities that had characterized India in earlier ethnographies, the key to the land's new analogous function is that it is not utopian.138 [ ] The idealized utopias of the Greek imagination were a function of distance, temporal or geographical, and thereby inaccessibility.139 [ ] The tendency to correlate peripheral geography with a flattening of historical time fashioned the most distant. enormous kingdoms of ethnography-including India-into static and unchanging moral paradeigmata.140 [ ] For example, Ctesias contrasts a visitable, historical Persia, where Achaemenid monarchs suffer treason and defections, with an eternal India of perfect justice, devoted subjects, and natural abundance.141 [ ] Megasthenes' ethnography contains certain well-paralleled utopian tropes: India's gentle climate and fertile superabundance guarantees a double harvest, removing all danger of famine;142 the earth is well veined with precious metals;143 [ ] the land's inhabitants are beautiful, skilled, and autochthonous;144 [ ] none is a slave;145 [ ] a seven-tiered "caste system" institutionalizes hierarchy, endogamy, occupational fixity and exclusivity, with philosophers on top;146 [ ] the Indians honor truth and virtue and so trust to leave their houses unguarded, rely on unwritten law, and avoid unnecessary litigation.147 [ ] However, the new Indian geography prevents a mere flight into fantasy. India is now an accessible land148 [ ] with chronological depth, historical development,149 [ ] and some negative social forms. The land's great productivity is the result of, not spontaneous or toilless production of food, but the developed state structure of the Mauryan kingdom, in which irrigation is widespread, agriculture is an exclusive and unavoidable social [unction for part of the population, and, in times of war, farmers are inviolate and agricultural lands unravaged.150 [ ] Crime and misdemeanor exist and are kept in check by a harsh sanctioning system of somatic punishments. 151 [ ] More strikingly, the monarch's lot is not a happy one: a spying network of overseers and courtesans informs in secret from the capital and the military camp;152 [ ] the king is forced to change beds at night because of plots.153 [ ] The sense of reality and recognizability in Megasthenes' India is achieved -- what an indictment! -- through war, violence, corruption, and law. The land resembles Ctesias' Persia much more closely than his India. Simply put, India is no longer too good to be true.154 [ ]

The Indian analogy is about recognition, not aspiration. In this light, recalling that the text was written soon after Seleucus' adoption of the royal diadem and self-transformation from satrap to king, the Indica's unproblematic and casually assumed monarchism is noteworthy. The monarchic thread runs right through the ethnography: in the Kulturgeschichte, culture arrives with kingship; in the description of contemporary India, every aspect of Indian society is structured for and by Sandrocottus: he is the source of all administrative and military employment, the node around which society articulates itself, and the purpose for which all activity is undertaken. In classical-period Greek ethnography, kingship was a fundamental element in the construction of ethnic alterity: "all barbarian power, without further specification of its exact nature or the manner in which it is exercised, simply because it is power, tends to appear as royalty."155 [ ] Kingship is otherness. The basic political development of the early Hellenistic period was the creation of large territorial states under Graeco-Macedonian kings. To most Near Eastern populations this could be seen as an exchange of one foreign dynasty for another, but to the Greek world it was revolutionary. Monarchy, formerly of ethnographic interest as foreign and exotic, is now the court author's own environment and must be naturalized. A key element of the Megasthenic analogy is that monarchy is described in a rhetoric of likeness, not difference. This is, of course, most apparent in Megasthenes' description of Sandrocottus and the world he visits.156 [ ] But it is also found in India's earlier history and in nature. One of the most important of Megasthenes' fragments, preserved by Strabo and Arrian in parallel passages, lists a catalogue of unsuccessful royal expeditions against India:

Megasthenes, moreover, agrees with this point of view when he urges disbelief in the ancient accounts of India, for no army was ever sent outside by the Indians, nor did any from outside invade and conquer them, except that with Heracles and Dionysus and now with the Macedonians. But Sesostris the Egyptian, and Tearcon the Ethiopian advanced as far as Europe, and Nebuchadnezzar, esteemed more among the Chaldaeans than Heracles, went as far as the Pillars and Tearcon also went that far and led an army from Iberia into Thrace and to Pontus. Idanthyrsus the Scythian overran Asia as far as Egypt, but none of these touched India, and Semiramis died before her attempt. The Persians sent for the Hydracae from India as mercenaries, but did not take an expedition there, only coming near it when Cyrus attacked the Massagetae.157 [ ]

The chronicle of never undertaken or failed invasions, even effacing Darius I's actual conquest, repeatedly confirms the Indica's ethnographic principle of post-Dionysus unconquerability. The apologetic force is evident: by inventing precedents for Seleucus' territorial withdrawal, Megasthenes normalizes and vindicates the Treaty of the Indus.158 [ ] The new careers of Semiramis, Sesostris, and Idanthyrsus demonstrate the Indica's creative engagement with its literary environment;159 [ ] Tearcon and Nebuchadnezzar are Megasthenes' own discovery, perhaps from Babylonian or Jewish sources.160 [ ] Megasthenes' chronicle of invasions generates a historical rhythm of power and its limits in Asia, in which monarchy is figured as the entirely standard, unquestionable form of government. Seleucus can be slipped unproblematically into the catalogue.

Kingship, existing throughout the world and in the past, is also found below the waves. A passage in Arrian's Indica, directly attributed to Megasthenes, gives the natural history of the Indian pearl:

There is also a king or queen among the pearls, just like bees. Should anyone happen to catch him, a net can easily be thrown over the rest of the pearls, but if the king escapes, the others can no longer be caught.161 [ ]

This account appears in the context of early Indian monarchy. Having discovered pearls in the sea, the autochthonous culture-hero Heracles considers them a suitable adornment for Pandaea, his daughter-wife and queen of the south.162 [ ] The single attestation of pearls in all extant earlier Greek literature, a short description in the de lapidihus of Theophrastus,163 [ ] merely locates their point of origin in India and the islands of the Persian Gulf. So, the Indica's natural history of the pearl is most likely Megasthenes' own creation. Megasthenes' pearls inhabit a social structure of absolute, total monarchy: the fate of the swarm depends in its entirety on the independence of the king or queen. As Megasthenes observed, the pearls behave like bees,164 [ ] which have a well-established function as a metaphor for good kingship.165 [ ] Such natural monarchy is transferred in the Indica to a geographically appropriate species. It is difficult to imagine a stronger idealization of early Hellenism's philosophy of monarchy;166 [ ] the pearl king could justly boast, "L'etat, c'est moi."

Kings in Egypt, Ethiopia, Assyria, Scythia, and Babylonia; king Seleucus and king Chandragupta; kings under the sea. By asserting the geographical and historical ubiquity of monarchy, the Indica denies its ethnic salience; by finding kingship in the animal world, the Indica naturalizes it. Megasthenes conventionalizes royal power.

To assert that ethnography speaks to ourselves while describing The Other has become a banality. Nonetheless, the relationship between the Seleucid and Mauryan kingdoms, as between historical reality and ethnographic textuality, works here in a specific and novel way. Megasthenes enacts analogy, not allegory, tempering the utopian fables of his generic inheritance with the realistic tones of the Hellenistic world. The early Seleucid ethnography of India is in many ways similar to classical Athenian writings on Sparta: both describe a legitimate, parallel, and equivalent state, capable of peer relations, whose territorial independence is beyond question, and whose externality turns it into a site of political theorizing. Such treatment of India as an analogous kingdom is not merely a narrative device for thinking through Seleucid state formation. In very real terms, this was the inescapable implication of the transformed political spaces brought about by the Treaty of the Indus. The meeting of kings, acts of exchange, and marriage alliance in themselves established India as an equivalent state and separate territory. So, India's ethnographic function as an analogue is, in an important sense, an epiphenomenon of the high-level diplomacy that brought about Megasthenes' mission. The Indica is a textual reproduction of the very condition of its own creation.

The Reproduction of the Boundary

To an engage' and influential hermeneutic, the (European) investigation and categorization of foreign peoples is implicated in the broader project of western colonial oppression, in which space is to be possessed and consumed by an imperial cartography of illegitimate seizure.167 [ ] But Megasthenes could not be further from this profile. The historical context and biographical condition of the Indica's very creation is Seleucid withdrawal, not expansion. Megasthenes is an envoy of renunciation, and this is both a historical fact and a rhetorical choice. The fragments give no hint of Megasthenes' renaming the landscape, populations, or cities of India; they entirely lack the linguistic baptisms found in, say, Seleucid Syria, where Macedonian or dynastic names were superimposed on indigenous ones (see Chapter 4). Megasthenes never registers the problem of cross-cultural communication.168 [ ] Nor was the Indica's spatializing operation unidirectional, for the new southeastern border of the Seleucid kingdom was recognized, acknowledged, and reperformed by the Mauryan state.

The evidence for this is in fact rather exciting. Following the death in 273/2 of Chandragupta's successor, Bindusara (Greek Amitrochates), and a subsequent struggle for succession among his sons,169 [ ] king Ashoka acceded to his father's throne in 269/8 as the third king of the Mauryan dynasty. Ashoka is one of the more outstanding figures of the ancient world. In brief, his conquest of the east Indian state of Kalinga in his eighth regnal year so horrified the king that henceforth he forsook all wars of aggression, converted to a pacifist form of Buddhism, and pursued, with obsessive and missionary zeal, dhamma -- a broad social ethic and practice including abstinence from killing, considerate family relations, and welfare programs.170 [ ] Importantly, the king's devotion to the propagation of dhamma generated an unprecedented epigraphic habit -- fourteen Major Rock Edicts, numerous Minor Rock Edicts, and seven Pillar Edicts survive from his reign -- that demonstrates, among other things, the Mauryan empire's own spatial ideology.171 [ ] We see this in two ways: the findspots of the inscriptions and their content.

The locations of Ashoka's Major Rock Edicts (see Map 2) beat the boundaries of Mauryan imperial territory: the eastern seaboard of conquered Kalinga, the southern Deccan, the western coast, and the northwestern periphery of the Mauryan state, where it bordered the Seleucid empire. At Alexandria-in-Arachosia (mod. Kandahar) a bilingual Greek-Aramaic text, urging vegetarianism and filial piety, was cut into the cliff face by the side of the main trade road. The inscription demonstrates a keen awareness of the culturally specific traditions and languages of the region's "Yona and Kamboja" (Greek and Persian) populations: the Greek version combines vocabulary appropriate to oracular pronouncement and contemporary philosophy,172 [ ] while the Aramaic version, heavily influenced by Old Persian, assimilates dhamma to Zoroastrian truth.173 [ ] Another inscription, found on a stone block at Kandahar, freely translates into Greek parts of Ashoka's Twelfth and Thirteenth Rock Edicts: it is probable that all fourteen Major Rock Edicts of the Indian king were recorded on some kind of stone construction, perhaps with a full Aramaic version.174 [ ] Aramaic inscriptions of Ashoka's edicts have been found at Taxila (in Pakistan), Lampaka, and Laghman (both in Afghanistan). Two more inscriptions, in Karoshti (a script derived from Imperial Aramaic), have been found in the North West Frontier Province of Pakistan (at Shahbazgarhi and Mansehra). These inscriptions, while constituting direct evidence for Mauryan control of this region by the reign of Ashoka, indicate through their use of local languages its frontier status within the Mauryan polity, as Megasthenes' ethnography had implied: all other Ashokan inscriptions from the subcontinent, including those of the southern Deccan, are in the Prakrit language and the Brahmi script.175 [ ]

The region's marginality within Mauryan political geography is confirmed by the content of several of Ashoka's edicts. In the king's own speech-act, the Gandharas, Kambojas, and Yonas are explicitly identified as his empire's 'borderers." The Thirteenth Edict, in a quasi-ethnographic observation, states: 'Except among the Yon as, there is no land where the religious orders of brahmans and srama1Jas are not to be found, and there is no land anywhere where men do not support one sect or another."176 [ ] Similarly, the Majjhima Nikaya, a composition most likely of the Mauryan period, has the Buddha expound in ethnographic mode on the strangely fluid and simple social order of the Greek and Iranian world: 'In Yona-Kamboja and adjacent regions (janapada) there are only two vanyas: masters and slaves. One who has been a master may become a slave, and one who has been a slave may become a master."177 [ ] The Thirteenth Edict continues, in a passage of exceptional historical importance:

The Beloved of the Gods considered victory by dhamma to be the foremost victory. And moreover the Beloved of the Gods has gained this victory on all his frontiers to a distance of six hundred yojanas, where reigns the Yona king named Antiyoko, and beyond the realm of that Antiyoko in the lands of the four kings (a sasu pi yojanasatesu yatra Amtiyoko nama Yonaraja param ca tena Atiyokena chature 4 rajani) named Turumaye, Antikini, Maka, and Alikasudaro; and in the south over the Cholas and Pandyas as far as Tamraparni. Likewise here in the imperial territories among the Yonas and the Kambojas, Nabhakas and Nabhapanktis, Bhojas and Pitinikas, Andhras and Parindas, everywhere the people follow the Beloved of the Gods' instructions in dhamma.178 [ ]

The king of India lists five peers in the Hellenistic west: Antiochus II Theos of the Seleucid empire, Ptolemy II Philadelphus of Egypt, Antigonus II Gonatas of Macedon, Magas of Cyrene, and Alexander of Epirus (or Corinth). The overlap of kings determines the chronology for this inscription and so for Ashoka's entire reign: the only possible dates are between 260 and 258. The universalist notion of dhammavijaya, dhamma-conquest, contrasting with simple vijaya, (territorial) conquest, generated this description of the western and southern worlds beyond the horizon of Mauryan political sovereignty. The passage pivots on the opposition of exterior and interior: Ashoka expounds on the total victory of dhamma first outside his kingdom ("on all his frontiers to a distance of six hundred yojanas") and then within his kingdom ("here in the imperial territories"). The Mauryan empire, like the Seleucid, was bounded to the west by peer kingdoms. The Seleucid kingdom performs an important spatial function here. 11 is the point to which distance is measured: 600 yojanas translate to between 4,800 and 6,000 miles.179 [ ] Accordingly, Antiochus II is held to rule an astonishingly large kingdom, several thousand miles from the Mauryan frontier in the Hindu Kush to his distant residence. It is significant that, paralleling the spatializing operation of Megasthenes' Indica, the Seleucid empire holds a position of centrality, situated between Mauryan India to the east and the four other Hellenistic states to the west. The ptolemaic, Antigonid, Cyrenean, and Epirote kingdoms are located by reference to the Seleucid monarch ("to a distance of six hundred yojanas, where reigns the Yona king named Antiyoko, and beyond the realm of that Antiyoko in the lands of the four kings"). The Seleucid kingdom, bounded to the east and west, occupies the same place in the Second Major Rock Edict, which describes Ashoka's welfare programs throughout the world. Here, too, Antiochus appears both in his own right and as place marker for the more distant Hellenistic powers:

Everywhere in the dominions of king Priyadarshin, Beloved of the Gods, and likewise in the bordering territories (amta) of the Cholas, Pandyas, the Satika-putra, Tamraparni, the Yona king named Antiyoka and also the kings who are the neighbors of the said Antiyoka (Amtiyoge nama Yonalaja ye ca amne tasa Amtiyogasa samamta lajano) -- everywhere king Priyadarshin, Beloved of the Gods, has arranged for two kinds of medical treatment, medical treatment for men and medical treatment for animals.180 [ ]

In both the Second and Thirteenth Edicts, Antiochus, alone of the Hellenistic kings, is termed the Yonaraja, the "Greek king."181 [ ] The inscriptions, therefore, present Greek populations living both within and outside the Mauryan kingdom: the political frontier between the Mauryan and Seleucid sovereignties divides an ethnic community, a result of the Treaty of the Indus and the westward retreat of Macedonian sovereignty. Finally, by recognizing the distant Antiochus II as his direct neighbor Ashoka acknowledges the legitimacy of Seleucid sovereignty in the Upper Satrapies. The powerful, nearby satraps -- soon to revolt from the kingdom -- are not even mentioned.

The Indian evidence, supporting the Greek, points to a cooperative and mutual process of delineation. Each kingdom recognized the territorial independence and legitimate sovereignty of the other. In the spatial ideology of Ashoka, as in that of Antiochus III, the Treaty of the Indus retained practical effect and ideological salience. Seleucid diplomacy and Megasthenes' ethnography had closed an imperial boundary at the kingdom's southeast and opened a dialogue with Mauryan India of profound historical significance.

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Map 2: Central Asia and India, with Ashoka’s inscriptions.