Freda Bedi Cont'd (#3)

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Re: Freda Bedi Cont'd (#3)

Postby admin » Fri Jul 16, 2021 1:16 am

Quintus Curtius Rufus
by Wikipedia
Accessed: 7/15/21

[T]here is solid testimony linking the Gandaridae with the Ganges plain. One important qualification needs to be made. Latin authors almost invariably refer to the people as Gangaridae. Why that is the case is obscure, but the fact is certain and proved by Curtius who clearly follows the same source as Diodorus and reads Gangaridae... [I suspect that Vergil (Georg. 3. 27) became canonical for the Latin tradition. The form Gangaridae may even have been his creation, to suggest the Ganges as a counterpart to the Nile (Georg. 3. 29).

In gold and solid ivory, on the doors, I’ll fashion battles
with the tribes of Ganges, the weapons of victorious Quirinus,
and the Nile surging with war, in full flow,
and door columns rising up with ships in bronze.


-- Georg. 3. 27-30


If so it inevitably influenced Curtius the rhetorician, and Pompeius Trogus, who wrote immediately after Vergil.] whereas Diodorus and Plutarch refer to Gandaridae. What is more, the vulgate tradition associates both Gandaridae and Gangaridae with the Prasii, whom the eyewitness Megasthenes attests in the vicinity of the capital of the Ganges kingdom.

-- Appendix: Alexander and the Ganges: A Question of Probability, Excerpt from Alexander and the East: The Tragedy of Triumph, by A.B. Bosworth


Highlights:

Quintus Curtius Rufus was a Roman historian... author of his only known and only surviving work, "Histories of Alexander the Great"...Much of it is missing. Apart from his name on the manuscripts, nothing else certain is known of him...

Curtius' work is uniquely isolated. No other ancient work refers to it, or as far as is known, to him...

Peter Pratt pointing... Pratt conjectures... Pratt conjectures...

The dating available relies entirely on internal evidence, which is not certain...

The candidates for the historical identity of the author are but few....

Historiae survives in 123 codices, or bound manuscripts, all deriving from an original in the 9th century. As it was a partial text, already missing large pieces, they are partial as well. They vary in condition. Some are more partial than others, with lacunae that developed since the 9th century. The original contained ten libri, "books," equivalent to our chapters. Book I and II are missing, along with any Introduction that might have been expected according to ancient custom. There are gaps in V, VI, and X. Many loci, or "places," throughout are obscure, subject to interpretation or emendation in the name of restoration.

The work enjoyed popularity in the High Middle Ages. It is the main source for a genre of tales termed the Alexander Romance (some say romances); for example, Walter of Chatillon's epic poem Alexandreis, which was written in the style of Virgil's Aeneid. These romances spilled over into the Renaissance, especially of Italy, where Curtius was idolized. Painters, such as Paolo Veronese and Charles Le Brun, painted scenes from Curtius...

Curtius mainly does not identify sources....

The lesser known Pratt was a clerk in the library of East India House. His employment was to research and publish documents on the East Indies trade. He expanded that process into writing universal history books, such as the History of Japan. He did some writing to gratify his own interests, such as the translation of Curtius... He remained so unself-confident that he did not put his name on the work. In the Preface he begins one footnote with “As a stranger to antiquarian studies, I hesitate to point out ....”


-- Quintus Curtius Rufus, by Wikipedia


Image
Quintus Curtius Rufus
Quintus Curtius Rufus. Historia Alexandri Magni. Leiden: Elzevier, 1664.
Occupation: Historian
Language: Latin
Citizenship: Roman Empire
Period: 1st century
Genres: Biography, history
Subject: Life and times of Alexander the Great
Literary movement: Silver age of Latin literature
Notable work: Histories of Alexander the Great

Image
Qui. Curse En La Vie Alexand. Le Grand, illumination from manuscript located at the Laurentian Library of Florence

Quintus Curtius Rufus (/ˈkwɪntəs ˈkɜːrʃiəs ˈruːfəs/) was a Roman historian, probably of the 1st century, author of his only known and only surviving work, Historiae Alexandri Magni, "Histories of Alexander the Great", or more fully Historiarum Alexandri Magni Macedonis Libri Qui Supersunt, "All the Books That Survive of the Histories of Alexander the Great of Macedon." Much of it is missing. Apart from his name on the manuscripts, nothing else certain is known of him. This fact alone has led philologists to believe that he had another historical identity, to which, due to the accidents of time, the link has been broken. A few theories exist. They are treated with varying degrees of credibility by various authors. Meanwhile, the identity of Quintus Curtius Rufus, historian, is maintained separately.

The historical alter ego

Curtius' work is uniquely isolated. No other ancient work refers to it, or as far as is known, to him.[1] Peter Pratt[2] pointing out that the Senate and emperors frequently proscribed or censored works, suggests that Curtius had not published the manuscript before his death, but left it in care of the emperor. The emperors intended to publish it posthumously but did not find a political opportunity. They had adopted the identity of Alexander for themselves. The provinces fashioned from the Macedonian Empire were difficult to govern, always on the point of rebellion. The work of Curtius, Pratt conjectures, was not politically appropriate because it would have encouraged independence.

The earliest opportune moment was the year 167, when the campaign of the emperor Marcus Aurelius against the Parthian Empire had failed, and the returning troops were in bad morale and infected with the Antonine Plague. The emperor attempted to build national pride among the former Macedonian states. Avidius Cassius, commandant of Legio III Gallica, returning veterans, was promoted to Consul. He claimed descent from the Seleucids of Macedonia. New coins and medals were issued in Macedonia on Alexandrian themes. Pratt conjectures that the manuscript in storage, by this time damaged and partly destroyed, was published finally, accounting for the previous lack of references to it. It is also possible Books I and II along with other loci were censored out. As the emperors probably had surmised, it was immediately popular.

Most credible date

Image
Claudius

The dating available relies entirely on internal evidence, which is not certain, but offers some degree of preponderance. In Book X Curtius digresses to give an encomium on blessings of peace under empire, citing the Roman Empire with the implication of contemporaneity.[3] In essence he reasserts the policy of Augustus, which casts the empire as the restoration of monarchy for the suppression of the civil wars fomented by the contention of powerful noblemen vying for control of the Republic. Curtius' glowing endorsement of the policy dates him to the Roman Empire.

He also mentions the Parthian Empire.
It was formed by the eastern satrapies recusing themselves from Macedonian overlordship and restoring a purely Iranian empire. It defended itself successfully against Rome, even though Rome absorbed what was left of the Macedonian kingdoms. The dates of the Parthian Empire are 247 BC through 224 AD. Although Curtius may have been writing about an empire vanished in his own day, the most straightforward approach assumes that he wrote in a window, 63 BC (start of the Roman Empire) through 224 AD.[4]

For further localization, the same imperial purple passage contrasts the civil wars of the Macedonians (Diadochi wars) due to failure to obtain a stable emperor, with an incident of the Roman Empire in which the risk of civil war was avoided by the appointment of a new emperor in a single night. Not very many incidents fit the description. Baynham summarizes the argument of Julius Nützell that the crisis might be the night of January 24/25, 41 AD, following the assassination of Caligula on that day.
The Senate met on an emergency basis to debate whether the Roman Republic should be restored. The Praetorian Guard forced its way in to insist on the appointment of Caligula's uncle, Claudius. His reign concentrated on the restoration of the rule of law. A lawyer, he issued up to 20 imperial edicts per day, re-establishing the Pax Romana. If this argument is correct, Curtius' work must be dated to after 41 AD.[5]

The upper limit is provided by a passage that mentions the "continued prosperity of Tyre under Roman dominion."[6] The peace of the empire came to an end in 43 AD when Claudius invaded Britain. None of these dates are certain, but the union of all the ranges presents a credible view of Curtius' date. Baynham says: "many modern scholars now accept a date in the middle to late part of the first century A.D. as a likely floruit for Curtius."[7]

Most credible identity

By his name, Quintus Curtius Rufus was a member of the Curtii Rufi branch of the Curtii family, one of the original nobility of Rome. Due to the frequently used institution of adoption, people of the name Curtius (or female Curtia) might not be consanguineous. Moreover, the same name tended to be repeated, typically from grandfather to grandson. After centuries of Curtii, a Curtius might turn up in history at any location or in any period.

The candidates for the historical identity of the author are but few. Given the time frame of the mid-1st century, however, there is a credible candidate. He is a certain Curtius Rufus (The praenomen has been omitted. Presumably it is Quintus.) In the List of Roman consuls he served as Consul Suffectus for October through December, 43 AD under the emperor Claudius. He had been a protégé of Tiberius.[8]

He must have written the Histories in the year or two before the consulship.
Tacitus says that he was on the staff of the Quaestor of Africa during that time, which would have given him the opportunity to use the Library of Alexandria.[9] Tiberius had died in 37; Caligula was emperor then. Curtius’ relations with Caligula are not mentioned. But Caligula was not in his vicinity.

On Curtius’ return, a book such as the Historiae unless politically incorrect would have impressed the scholarly Claudius. Tiberius already had been an admirer before the book: he said that Curtius Rufus was his own ancestor; i.e., a self-made man. Tacitus hints that Curtius was of low birth, possibly the son of a gladiator. The story is only compatible with the name if one assumes adoption, which Tiberius could easily have arranged,

If Curtius took office at the minimum age of 25, and Tiberius made his comment in the year of his own death, Curtius would have been 19 or younger when described as a self-made man. In an age when Alexander had become regent of Macedon at 16, a rise to fame at 19, and consulship at 25, would not have been incredible. Tiberius would have been a senior emperor when Curtius came to his attention. What his qualifications were for the patronage remain obscure. If, on the other hand, Quintus Curtius Rufus is to be identified with Curtius Rufus, Consul Suffect of 43, then the most likely circumstantial evidence places his birth in the early years of the 1st century, in the reign of Augustus.[10]

The Historiae

Main article: Histories of Alexander the Great

Manuscripts and editions

Historiae survives in 123 codices, or bound manuscripts, all deriving from an original in the 9th century. As it was a partial text, already missing large pieces, they are partial as well. They vary in condition. Some are more partial than others, with lacunae that developed since the 9th century. The original contained ten libri, "books," equivalent to our chapters. Book I and II are missing, along with any Introduction that might have been expected according to ancient custom. There are gaps in V, VI, and X. Many loci, or "places," throughout are obscure, subject to interpretation or emendation in the name of restoration.[11]

The work enjoyed popularity in the High Middle Ages. It is the main source for a genre of tales termed the Alexander Romance (some say romances); for example, Walter of Chatillon's epic poem Alexandreis, which was written in the style of Virgil's Aeneid. These romances spilled over into the Renaissance, especially of Italy, where Curtius was idolized.[12] Painters, such as Paolo Veronese and Charles Le Brun, painted scenes from Curtius.


The Editio Princeps, or first printed edition, was published in 1470 or 1471 at Venice by Vindelinus Spirensis. A slow but steady stream of editions appeared subsequently until more of a need for standardization was perceived. In 1867 Edmund Hedicke instigated a convention that persists yet. He based his edition of that year on the five best manuscripts.[13]

The vulgate authors

In what remains of his work, Curtius mainly does not identify sources. They were, perhaps, stated in the missing books. Speculations of what they were based on thorough analysis of the content and style vary widely. Yardley and Heckel say: "The internal evidence for Curtius' sources is disappointing."[14] He does, however, mention Cleitarchus, a historian in camp, twice,[15] Ptolemy once, and Timagenes once. These men were participants in the Alexander story and therefore are counted as eyewitnesses, or primary sources. All accounts based on them are by analogy also termed "primary."[16] These works are also called "the Vulgate."

See also

• Curtius Rufus

Notes

1. Baynham 1998, p. 2
2. Pratt 1809, pp. xvi-xxi The lesser known Pratt was a clerk in the library of East India House. His employment was to research and publish documents on the East Indies trade.

Just two years before hiring [James] Mill, [The East India Company] had abolished the office of Company historiographer and transferred its functions to one Peter Pratt, “a literary Hack” known hitherto for a cheap edition of a chess manual. A corporation that employed Charles Lamb in its accounting department need not have looked far for a writer of more conspicuous talents. Yet according to the ousted historiographer, John Bruce, the court’s only concern was “to save my Salary.”

-- The East India Company and the Politics of Knowledge, A dissertation presented by Joshua Ehrlich to the Department of History, in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the subject of History, Harvard University, August 2018


He expanded that process into writing universal history books, such as the History of Japan.

THE CHARTERED COMPANIES

The following associations were allied to the guilds, and traded abroad:-

The Trading Companies included:
The African Companies
The Hudson’s Bay Company
The East India Company
The Levant or Turkey Company
The Russia or Muscovy Company

***

THE EAST INDIA COMPANY

Origins and Constitution. A charter was granted by Elizabeth I to the East India Company in 1600. It was renewed in 1730 and 1744, and for the last time in 1853. The East India Company ruled over nearly one-fifth of the world’s population; it possessed its own army and navy, its own civil service, even its own church; it became the most powerful military force in Asia, and had a revenue greater than that of Britain itself; a government owned by businessmen, whose shares were daily bought and sold.

***

332. Pratt, Peter
HISTORY OF JAPAN - COMPILED FROM THE RECORDS OF THE ENGLISH EAST INDIA COMPANY
AT THE INSTANCE OF THE COURT OF DIRECTORS.

Edited by M. Paske-Smith.
Curzon Press, London 1931; 2 Volumes. Facsimile Edition 1972 in 1 Volume: xxviii+488; v+339 pages.
[GL: S 952]

-- Guilds and Related Organisations in Great Britain and Ireland: A Bibliography, Part III, The Chartered Companies; The United Kingdom General; Miracle Plays Performed by the Guilds; Other Bibliographies, compiled by Tom Hoffman, 7 October 2011


'China materials' from 1702 to 1704 (compiled 1821): Correspondence; Memorandum 1702-1704

Summary:

Description: IOR/G/12: Factory Records: China and Japan, 1614-1843. Materials for a history on Company relations with China and Japan, 1596-1759; ship diaries, 1721-1751; Canton diaries and consultations, 1751-1834; Canton agency consultations, 1834-1840; China select committee's secret consultations, 1793-1832; Letters received from China, 1823-1834; Secret letters received from China, 1821-1830; Despatches to China, 1829-1832; and various miscellaneous records.310 volumes. IOR/G/12/1-14, Compilations from the Company's archives, 1596-1830 (14 volumes) were put together mainly by Peter Pratt, a clerk in the Register Department of the Company's library, employed in June 1817 to make catalogues, indexes and extracts. After the Company's charter renewal of 1813 reduced its monopoly to China, Pratt's work was intended to provide the historical background for any future defence of the China trade. His main compilation (G/12/1-8) was finished in 1821 and was followed by supplementary volumes. This sub-sub-series, 'China materials', 1596-1725 (8 volumes), is described as 'Materials for a history of the rise & progress of the trade to China consisting of extracts and abridgments from books and papers in the Indian Record Office and from the Court's Letter Book, with a few passages from Purchas his Pilgrimes citing papers in the Company's Records of which all the articles referred to have not been found or identified, including also abstracts of all the passages in Bruce's Annals relating to the subject or references to them.' The volumes consist of extracts written on slips of papers and then pasted up, with some margin annotations and summaries between the slips. Pratt notes that 'incidental notices of Japan, Tonquin, Cochinchina, Bantam and other places exterior to China and not dependencies of it, are admitted during the period which preceded the acquisition of a direct trade to China, and while the Company were aiming only to establish a circuitous trade to China, by intermediate stations in the neighbouring archipeligo and continent'.

Japan: To supply funds for its trade at Bantam, the Company set out to sell large quantities of English woollens in Japan. The Clove, a ship of the Company's eighth voyage, visited the port of Firando in 1613. A factory was established there and factors were sent to neighbouring islands and ports including Nangasaki, Edo, Osaca, Shrongo, Miaco and Tushma. As the Dutch and Spanish were already supplying woollens, however, trade did not flourish. Conflict with the Dutch and the increasing hostility of the Japanese to foreign trade led to the factory's closure in 1623.

China: From an early date the Company had made efforts to trade with China to obtain silks and porcelain. Voyages were attempted intermittently over the first half of the seventeenth century but the first foothold on mainland China was not gained until 1676, when Company merchants were given permission to trade at Amoy. A little later, ships were allowed to trade at Canton and tea began to be purchased. Trade began on a fairly regular basis at Amoy, Canton and Chusan to the north of the country. Ships were despatched yearly with a supercargo appointed to each ship; the supercargoes stayed in the same house at Canton and organised the country trade from there. In 1757 an imperial edict confined all foreign trade to the one port, Canton. The Company, its activities officially acknowledged, obtained permission to establish a factory there in 1762. The main product purchased was tea, which quickly came to dominate the Company's trade, its value by the end of the century almost equalling the value of all other commodities put together. The Company's monopoly on the China trade was finally abolished in 1833. An agent remained at Canton until 1840.

Publications: Anthony Farrington, The English Factory in Japan, 1613-1623, 2 vols (London, 1991); Chang Hsiu-Jung et al, The English Factory in Taiwan, 1670-1685 (Taipei, 1995); Hosea Ballou Morse, The Chronicles of the East India Company trading to China, 1635-1834, 5 vols (Oxford, 1926-1929).

Note: IOR/G: East India Company Factory Records (1608-1858). A 'factory' was a trading post where a number of merchants, or factors, resided. When company ships arrived at the factories, ships' merchants were thus enabled to exchange goods for trading immediately instead of having to wait to make deals with local merchants. Factories were run by a chief factor and a council of factors. The 'Factory Records' is an artificially created sub-fonds; the records of individual Company factories consist mainly of consultations (records of administrative decisions and of correspondence), diaries (records of daily activities), letters received, copies of letters sent and collections of papers on particular subjects. and AMDigital Reference: IOR/G/12/7.

Original Version: Reproduction of: 'China materials' from 1702 to 1704 (compiled 1821) 1821.
Location of Originals: The British Library
Copyright Note: The British Library Board


The East India company and Japan in the early seventeenth century

...

The East India Company was a business whose raison d'etre was the pursuit of profit not the study of comparative government, statecraft or cultural anthropology, and, after ten years of frustration and disappointment over their trade with Japan, the directors decided to cut their losses and close the factory, part of an overall strategy to disengage from their unprofitable trade eastwards of Bantam, the company's regional headquarters. During the seventeenth century a number of suggestions were put forward to reopen the trade. It is surprising that, when considering such proposals, the directors did not refer to their predecessors' experience in Hirado. Documents which have provided a treasure trove of information for modern scholars about so many aspects of the company's intercontinental and inter-Asian trade, and indirectly about social, political and anthropological matters, were bundled together, tossed into the equivalent of the backshop, and forgotten about. It was not until the early nineteenth century that the early records were examined. In 1810, John Bruce produced the Annals of the Honourable East India Company. This was essentially a public relations exercise on behalf of the directors to justify the company's privileges which were under attack yet again. Bruce's comments on the Hirado factory were superficial and garbled. In 1822, under instructions from the directors, Peter Pratt, a clerk in the Registrar's department, produced a messy, confusing compilation of material from the Hirado factory. Shortly after, however, the directors considered that the utility of the early records for the company's business activity had ceased. Much of importance for historians was sold off by the ton as bulk waste paper. Fortunately, some documents, such as the original trade privileges, the shuinjo under Ieyasu's seal, were never part of the company's archive anyway.

-- The History of Anglo-Japanese Relations, Vol. 1: The Political-Diplomatic Dimension, 1600-1930, edited by Ian Nish and Yoichi Kibata


He did some writing to gratify his own interests, such as the translation of Curtius, which reveals the depth of his education and research. He remained so unself-confident that he did not put his name on the work. In the Preface he begins one footnote with “As a stranger to antiquarian studies, I hesitate to point out ....” He was certainly no stranger. The book received professional reviews, becoming popular.

3. Chapter 9, 1-6.
4. Baynham 1998, p. 7
5. Baynham 1998, pp. 205–207
6. Curtius 1896, p. xii On Book IV, Chapter 4, 21.
7. Baynham 1998, p. 8
8. Yardley & Atkinson 2009, pp. 9–14.
9. Annales, Book XI, Section 21.
10. Hamilton 1988
11. Baynham 1998, p. 1
12. Baynham 1998, p. 3
13. Baynham 1998, pp. 3–4. They are B for Bernensis, F for Florentinus, L for Leidensis, P for Parisinus, and V for Vosianus.
14. Yardley & Heckel 2004, Introduction: C. Curtius' Sources and Models.
15. 9.5.21, 9.18.15.
16. Yardely & Atkinson 2009, p. 1 identifies five: Curtius, Diodorus Siculus Book 17; Gnaeus Pompeius Trogus, "Philippic History," Books 11-12 (in epitome by Justin); Arrian, Anabasis Alexandri, and Plutarch, "Life of Alexander."

References

• Baynham, Elizabeth (1998). Alexander the Great: The Unique History of Quintus Curtius. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
• Curtius, Rufus Quintus (1896). Humphreys, Willard (ed.). Selections from the History of Alexander the Great. Boston: Ginn & Co.
• Hamilton, J.R. (1988). "The Date of Quintus Curtius Rufus". Zeitschrift für alte Geschichte. Bd. 37: 445–456.
• Lucarini, Carlo M. (2009). Q. Curtius Rufus: Historiae. Bibliotheca scriptorum Graecorum et Romanorum Teubneriana (in Latin). Berolini [Berlin]; Novi Eboraci [New York]: Walter De Gruyter.
• Pratt, P. (1809). The History of the Life and Reign of Alexander the Great. Volume I. London: Samuel Bagster.
• Rolfe, John C. (1971A) [1946]. Quintus Curtius, with an English Translation. Volume I, Books I-V. Cambridge; London: Harvard University Press; William Heinemann Ltd.
• Yardley, J.C., Translator; Atkinson, J.E., Commentator (2009). Curtius Rufus, Histories of Alexander the Great, Book 10. Clarendon Ancient History Series. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press.
• Yardley, J.C., Translator; Heckel, Waldemar, Commentator (2004) [1984]. Quintus Curtius Rufus: The History of Alexander. London: Penguin Books.

External links

• Latin text of Curtius on LacusCurtius website.
• Latin text of Curtius. A slightly different version on the ForumRomanum website.
• Quintus Curtius Rufus. "Historiarum Alexandri Magni Libri Qui Supersunt" (in Latin). The Latin Library.
• "Quintus Curtius [History of Alexander] with an English translation by John C. Rolfe (2 voll., Cambridge, Massachusetts, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd, 1971-76)" (in Latin and English). Hathi Trust Digital Library.
• Huyse, Philip (1993, updated 2011). "Curtius Rufus, Quintus". Encyclopaedia Iranica, VI/5, pp. 464–465.
• Lendering, Jona (2014) [2004]. "Quintus Curtius Rufus". Livius.org.
• Quintus Curtius Rufus. Amir-Hussain Khunji (ed.). "Events Immediately After Alexander's Death; Curt. 10.6-10". History of the Persian Empire. irantarikh.com. Archived from the original on 2003-12-20.
• Sébastien, Barbara (2010). "Quinte-Curce, Histoires, VIII-X, orientations bibliographiques". Bibliothèque des Sciences de l'Antiquité. Université Lille. Archived from the original on 2009-06-17.
• Works by Quintus Curtius Rufus at Open Library
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Re: Freda Bedi Cont'd (#3)

Postby admin » Fri Jul 16, 2021 4:36 am

Virgil
by Wikipedia
Accessed: 7/15/21

[T]here is solid testimony linking the Gandaridae with the Ganges plain. One important qualification needs to be made. Latin authors almost invariably refer to the people as Gangaridae. Why that is the case is obscure, but the fact is certain and proved by Curtius who clearly follows the same source as Diodorus and reads Gangaridae... [I suspect that Vergil (Georg. 3. 27) became canonical for the Latin tradition. The form Gangaridae may even have been his creation, to suggest the Ganges as a counterpart to the Nile (Georg. 3. 29).

In gold and solid ivory, on the doors, I’ll fashion battles
with the tribes of Ganges, the weapons of victorious Quirinus,
and the Nile surging with war, in full flow,
and door columns rising up with ships in bronze.


-- Georg. 3. 27-30


If so it inevitably influenced Curtius the rhetorician, and Pompeius Trogus, who wrote immediately after Vergil.] whereas Diodorus and Plutarch refer to Gandaridae. What is more, the vulgate tradition associates both Gandaridae and Gangaridae with the Prasii, whom the eyewitness Megasthenes attests in the vicinity of the capital of the Ganges kingdom.

-- Appendix: Alexander and the Ganges: A Question of Probability, Excerpt from Alexander and the East: The Tragedy of Triumph, by A.B. Bosworth


Image
Virgil
Bust depicting Virgil
Born: Publius Vergilius Maro, 15 October 70 BC, Near Mantua, Cisalpine Gaul, Roman Republic
Died: 21 September 19 BC (age 50), Brundisium, Italy, Roman Empire
Occupation: Poet
Nationality: Roman
Genre: Epic poetry, didactic poetry, pastoral poetry
Literary movement: Augustan poetry

Publius Vergilius Maro (Classical Latin: [ˈpuːbliʊs wɛrˈɡɪliʊs ˈmaroː]; traditional dates 15 October 70 BC – 21 September 19 BC),[1] usually called Virgil or Vergil (/ˈvɜːrdʒɪl/ VUR-jil) in English, was an ancient Roman poet of the Augustan period. He composed three of the most famous poems in Latin literature: the Eclogues (or Bucolics), the Georgics, and the epic Aeneid. A number of minor poems, collected in the Appendix Vergiliana, were attributed to him in ancient times, but modern scholars consider his authorship of these poems as dubious.[2]

Virgil's work has had wide and deep influence on Western literature, most notably Dante's Divine Comedy, in which Virgil appears as the author's guide through Hell and Purgatory.[3]

Virgil has been traditionally ranked as one of Rome's greatest poets. His Aeneid is also considered a national epic of ancient Rome, a title held since composition.

Life and works

Birth and biographical tradition


Virgil's biographical tradition is thought to depend on a lost biography by the Roman poet Varius. This biography was incorporated into an account by the historian Suetonius, as well as the later commentaries of Servius and Donatus (the two great commentators on Virgil's poetry). Although the commentaries record much factual information about Virgil, some of their evidence can be shown to rely on allegorizing and on inferences drawn from his poetry. For this reason, details regarding Virgil's life story are considered somewhat problematic.[4]:1602

According to these accounts, Publius Vergilius Maro was born in the village of Andes, near Mantua[ i] in Cisalpine Gaul (northern Italy, added to Italy proper during his lifetime).[5] Analysis of his name has led some to believe that he descended from earlier Roman colonists. Modern speculation, however, ultimately is not supported by narrative evidence from either his own writings or his later biographers. Macrobius says that Virgil's father was of a humble background, though scholars generally believe that Virgil was from an equestrian landowning family who could afford to give him an education. He attended schools in Cremona, Mediolanum, Rome, and Naples. After briefly considering a career in rhetoric and law, the young Virgil turned his talents to poetry.[6]

According to Robert Seymour Conway, the only ancient source which reports the actual distance between Andes and Mantua is a surviving fragment from the works of Marcus Valerius Probus. Probus flourished during the reign of Nero (AD 54–68).[7] Probus reports that Andes was located 30 Roman miles from Mantua. Conway translated this to a distance of about 45 kilometres or 28 miles.[7]

Relatively little is known about the family of Virgil. His father reportedly belonged to gens Vergilia, and his mother belonged to gens Magia.[7] According to Conway, gens Vergilia is poorly attested in inscriptions from the entire Northern Italy, where Mantua is located. Among thousands of surviving ancient inscriptions from this region, there are only 8 or 9 mentions of individuals called "Vergilius" (masculine) or "Vergilia" (feminine). Out of these mentions, three appear in inscriptions from Verona, and one in an inscription from Calvisano.[7]

Conway theorized that the inscription from Calvisano had to do with a kinswoman of Virgil. Calvisano is located 30 Roman miles from Mantua, and would fit with Probus' description of Andes.[7] The inscription, in this case, is a votive offering to the Matronae (a group of deities) by a woman called Vergilia, asking the goddesses to deliver from danger another woman, called Munatia. Conway notes that the offering belongs to a common type for this era, where women made requests for deities to preserve the lives of female loved ones who were pregnant and were about to give birth. In most cases, the woman making the request was the mother of a woman who was pregnant or otherwise in danger. Though there is another inscription from Calvisano, where a woman asks the deities to preserve the life of her sister.[7] Munatia, the woman whom Vergilia wished to protect, was likely a close relative of Vergilia, possibly her daughter. The name "Munatia" indicates that this woman was a member of gens Munatia, and makes it likely that Vergilia married into this family.[7]

Other studies[8] claim that today's consideration for ancient Andes should be sought in the area of Castel Goffredo.[9]

Early works

Main article: Appendix Vergiliana

According to the commentators, Virgil received his first education when he was five years old and he later went to Cremona, Milan, and finally Rome to study rhetoric, medicine, and astronomy, which he soon abandoned for philosophy. From Virgil's admiring references to the neoteric writers Pollio and Cinna, it has been inferred that he was, for a time, associated with Catullus' neoteric circle. According to Servius, schoolmates considered Virgil extremely shy and reserved, and he was nicknamed "Parthenias" or "maiden" because of his social aloofness. Virgil also seems to have suffered bad health throughout his life and in some ways lived the life of an invalid. According to the Catalepton, he began to write poetry while in the Epicurean school of Siro in Naples. A group of small works attributed to the youthful Virgil by the commentators survive collected under the title Appendix Vergiliana, but are largely considered spurious by scholars. One, the Catalepton, consists of fourteen short poems,[4]:1602 some of which may be Virgil's, and another, a short narrative poem titled the Culex ("The Gnat"), was attributed to Virgil as early as the 1st century AD.

The Eclogues

Main article: Eclogues

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Page from the beginning of the Eclogues in the 5th-century Vergilius Romanus

The biographical tradition asserts that Virgil began the hexameter Eclogues (or Bucolics) in 42 BC and it is thought that the collection was published around 39–38 BC, although this is controversial.[4]:1602 The Eclogues (from the Greek for "selections") are a group of ten poems roughly modeled on the bucolic hexameter poetry ("pastoral poetry") of the Hellenistic poet Theocritus. After defeating the army led by the assassins of Julius Caesar in the Battle of Philippi (42 BC), Octavian tried to pay off his veterans with land expropriated from towns in northern Italy, which—according to tradition—included an estate near Mantua belonging to Virgil. The loss of Virgil's family farm and the attempt through poetic petitions to regain his property have traditionally been seen as his motives in the composition of the Eclogues. This is now thought to be an unsupported inference from interpretations of the Eclogues. In Eclogues 1 and 9, Virgil indeed dramatizes the contrasting feelings caused by the brutality of the land expropriations through pastoral idiom but offers no indisputable evidence of the supposed biographic incident. While some readers have identified the poet himself with various characters and their vicissitudes, whether gratitude by an old rustic to a new god (Ecl. 1), frustrated love by a rustic singer for a distant boy (his master's pet, Ecl. 2), or a master singer's claim to have composed several eclogues (Ecl. 5), modern scholars largely reject such efforts to garner biographical details from works of fiction, preferring to interpret an author's characters and themes as illustrations of contemporary life and thought. The ten Eclogues present traditional pastoral themes with a fresh perspective. Eclogues 1 and 9 address the land confiscations and their effects on the Italian countryside. 2 and 3 are pastoral and erotic, discussing both homosexual love (Ecl. 2) and attraction toward people of any gender (Ecl. 3). Eclogue 4, addressed to Asinius Pollio, the so-called "Messianic Eclogue", uses the imagery of the golden age in connection with the birth of a child (who the child was meant to be has been subject to debate). 5 and 8 describe the myth of Daphnis in a song contest, 6, the cosmic and mythological song of Silenus; 7, a heated poetic contest, and 10 the sufferings of the contemporary elegiac poet Cornelius Gallus. Virgil is credited[by whom?] in the Eclogues with establishing Arcadia as a poetic ideal that still resonates in Western literature and visual arts, and setting the stage for the development of Latin pastoral by Calpurnius Siculus, Nemesianus and later writers.

The Georgics

Main article: Georgics

Sometime after the publication of the Eclogues (probably before 37 BC),[4]:1603 Virgil became part of the circle of Maecenas, Octavian's capable agent d'affaires who sought to counter sympathy for Antony among the leading families by rallying Roman literary figures to Octavian's side. Virgil came to know many of the other leading literary figures of the time, including Horace, in whose poetry he is often mentioned,[10] and Varius Rufus, who later helped finish the Aeneid.

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Late 17th-century illustration of a passage from the Georgics by Jerzy Siemiginowski-Eleuter

At Maecenas' insistence (according to the tradition) Virgil spent the ensuing years (perhaps 37–29 BC) on the long didactic hexameter poem called the Georgics (from Greek, "On Working the Earth") which he dedicated to Maecenas. The ostensible theme of the Georgics is instruction in the methods of running a farm. In handling this theme, Virgil follows in the didactic ("how to") tradition of the Greek poet Hesiod's Works and Days and several works of the later Hellenistic poets. The four books of the Georgics focus respectively on raising crops and trees (1 and 2), livestock and horses (3), and beekeeping and the qualities of bees (4). Well-known passages include the beloved Laus Italiae of Book 2, the prologue description of the temple in Book 3, and the description of the plague at the end of Book 3. Book 4 concludes with a long mythological narrative, in the form of an epyllion which describes vividly the discovery of beekeeping by Aristaeus and the story of Orpheus' journey to the underworld. Ancient scholars, such as Servius, conjectured that the Aristaeus episode replaced, at the emperor's request, a long section in praise of Virgil's friend, the poet Gallus, who was disgraced by Augustus, and who committed suicide in 26 BC.

The Georgics' tone wavers between optimism and pessimism, sparking critical debate on the poet's intentions,[4]:1605 but the work lays the foundations for later didactic poetry. Virgil and Maecenas are said to have taken turns reading the Georgics to Octavian upon his return from defeating Antony and Cleopatra at the Battle of Actium in 31 BC.

The Aeneid

Main article: Aeneid

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A 1st-century terracotta expressing the pietas of Aeneas, who carries his aged father and leads his young son

The Aeneid is widely considered Virgil's finest work, and is regarded as one of the most important poems in the history of Western literature (T. S. Eliot referred to it as 'the classic of all Europe').[11]The work (modelled after Homer's Iliad and Odyssey) chronicles a refugee of the Trojan War, named Aeneas, as he struggles to fulfill his destiny. His intentions are to reach Italy, where his descendants Romulus and Remus are to found the city of Rome.

Virgil worked on the Aeneid during the last eleven years of his life (29–19 BC), commissioned, according to Propertius, by Augustus.[12] The epic poem consists of 12 books in dactylic hexameter verse which describe the journey of Aeneas, a warrior fleeing the sack of Troy, to Italy, his battle with the Italian prince Turnus, and the foundation of a city from which Rome would emerge. The Aeneid's first six books describe the journey of Aeneas from Troy to Rome. Virgil made use of several models in the composition of his epic;[4]:1603 Homer, the pre-eminent author of classical epic, is everywhere present, but Virgil also makes special use of the Latin poet Ennius and the Hellenistic poet Apollonius of Rhodes among the various other writers to which he alludes. Although the Aeneid casts itself firmly into the epic mode, it often seeks to expand the genre by including elements of other genres such as tragedy and aetiological poetry. Ancient commentators noted that Virgil seems to divide the Aeneid into two sections based on the poetry of Homer; the first six books were viewed as employing the Odyssey as a model while the last six were connected to the Iliad.[13]

Book 1[ii] (at the head of the Odyssean section) opens with a storm which Juno, Aeneas' enemy throughout the poem, stirs up against the fleet. The storm drives the hero to the coast of Carthage, which historically was Rome's deadliest foe. The queen, Dido, welcomes the ancestor of the Romans, and under the influence of the gods falls deeply in love with him. At a banquet in Book 2, Aeneas tells the story of the sack of Troy, the death of his wife, and his escape, to the enthralled Carthaginians, while in Book 3 he recounts to them his wanderings over the Mediterranean in search of a suitable new home. Jupiter in Book 4 recalls the lingering Aeneas to his duty to found a new city, and he slips away from Carthage, leaving Dido to commit suicide, cursing Aeneas and calling down revenge in symbolic anticipation of the fierce wars between Carthage and Rome. In Book 5, funeral games are celebrated for Aeneas' father Anchises, who had died a year before. On reaching Cumae, in Italy in Book 6, Aeneas consults the Cumaean Sibyl, who conducts him through the Underworld where Aeneas meets the dead Anchises who reveals Rome's destiny to his son.

Book 7 (beginning the Iliadic half) opens with an address to the muse and recounts Aeneas' arrival in Italy and betrothal to Lavinia, daughter of King Latinus. Lavinia had already been promised to Turnus, the king of the Rutulians, who is roused to war by the Fury Allecto, and Amata Lavinia's mother. In Book 8, Aeneas allies with King Evander, who occupies the future site of Rome, and is given new armor and a shield depicting Roman history. Book 9 records an assault by Nisus and Euryalus on the Rutulians; Book 10, the death of Evander's young son Pallas; and 11 the death of the Volscian warrior princess Camilla and the decision to settle the war with a duel between Aeneas and Turnus. The Aeneid ends in Book 12 with the taking of Latinus' city, the death of Amata, and Aeneas' defeat and killing of Turnus, whose pleas for mercy are spurned. The final book ends with the image of Turnus' soul lamenting as it flees to the underworld.

Reception of the Aeneid

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Virgil Reading the Aeneid to Augustus, Octavia, and Livia by Jean-Baptiste Wicar, Art Institute of Chicago

Critics of the Aeneid focus on a variety of issues.[iii] The tone of the poem as a whole is a particular matter of debate; some see the poem as ultimately pessimistic and politically subversive to the Augustan regime, while others view it as a celebration of the new imperial dynasty. Virgil makes use of the symbolism of the Augustan regime, and some scholars see strong associations between Augustus and Aeneas, the one as founder and the other as re-founder of Rome. A strong teleology, or drive towards a climax, has been detected in the poem. The Aeneid is full of prophecies about the future of Rome, the deeds of Augustus, his ancestors, and famous Romans, and the Carthaginian Wars; the shield of Aeneas even depicts Augustus' victory at Actium against Mark Antony and Cleopatra VII in 31 BC. A further focus of study is the character of Aeneas. As the protagonist of the poem, Aeneas seems to waver constantly between his emotions and commitment to his prophetic duty to found Rome; critics note the breakdown of Aeneas' emotional control in the last sections of the poem where the "pious" and "righteous" Aeneas mercilessly slaughters Turnus.

The Aeneid appears to have been a great success. Virgil is said to have recited Books 2, 4, and 6 to Augustus;[4]:1603 and Book 6 apparently caused the emperor's sister Octavia to faint. Although the truth of this claim is subject to scholarly skepticism, it has served as a basis for later art, such as Jean-Baptiste Wicar's Virgil Reading the Aeneid.

Unfortunately, some lines of the poem were left unfinished, and the whole was unedited, at Virgil's death in 19 BC.

Virgil's death and editing of the Aeneid

According to the tradition, Virgil traveled to the senatorial province of Achaea in Greece in about 19 BC to revise the Aeneid. After meeting Augustus in Athens and deciding to return home, Virgil caught a fever while visiting a town near Megara. After crossing to Italy by ship, weakened with disease, Virgil died in Brundisium harbor on 21 September 19 BC. Augustus ordered Virgil's literary executors, Lucius Varius Rufus and Plotius Tucca, to disregard Virgil's own wish that the poem be burned, instead of ordering it published with as few editorial changes as possible.[14]:112 As a result, the text of the Aeneid that exists may contain faults which Virgil was planning to correct before publication. However, the only obvious imperfections are a few lines of verse that are metrically unfinished (i.e. not a complete line of dactylic hexameter). Some scholars have argued that Virgil deliberately left these metrically incomplete lines for dramatic effect.[15] Other alleged imperfections are subject to scholarly debate.

Later views and reception

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A 3rd-century Roman mosaic of Virgil seated between Clio and Melpomene (from Hadrumetum [Sousse], Tunisia)

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A 5th-century portrait of Virgil from the Vergilius Romanus

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Virgil in His Basket, Lucas van Leyden, 1525

In antiquity

The works of Virgil almost from the moment of their publication revolutionized Latin poetry. The Eclogues, Georgics, and above all the Aeneid became standard texts in school curricula with which all educated Romans were familiar. Poets following Virgil often refer intertextually to his works to generate meaning in their own poetry. The Augustan poet Ovid parodies the opening lines of the Aeneid in Amores 1.1.1–2, and his summary of the Aeneas story in Book 14 of the Metamorphoses, the so-called "mini-Aeneid", has been viewed as a particularly important example of post-Virgilian response to the epic genre. Lucan's epic, the Bellum Civile, has been considered an anti-Virgilian epic, disposing of the divine mechanism, treating historical events, and diverging drastically from Virgilian epic practice. The Flavian poet Statius in his 12-book epic Thebaid engages closely with the poetry of Virgil; in his epilogue he advises his poem not to "rival the divine Aeneid, but follow afar and ever venerate its footsteps."[16] In Silius Italicus, Virgil finds one of his most ardent admirers. With almost every line of his epic Punica, Silius references Virgil. Indeed, Silius is known to have bought Virgil's tomb and worshipped the poet.[17] Partially as a result of his so-called "Messianic" Fourth Eclogue – widely interpreted later to have predicted the birth of Jesus Christ – Virgil was in later antiquity imputed to have the magical abilities of a seer; the Sortes Vergilianae, the process of using Virgil's poetry as a tool of divination, is found in the time of Hadrian, and continued into the Middle Ages. In a similar vein Macrobius in the Saturnalia credits the work of Virgil as the embodiment of human knowledge and experience, mirroring the Greek conception of Homer.[4]:1603 Virgil also found commentators in antiquity. Servius, a commentator of the 4th century AD, based his work on the commentary of Donatus. Servius' commentary provides us with a great deal of information about Virgil's life, sources, and references; however, many modern scholars find the variable quality of his work and the often simplistic interpretations frustrating.

Late antiquity, the Middle Ages, and after

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The verse inscription at Virgil's tomb was supposedly composed by the poet himself: Mantua me genuit, Calabri rapuere, tenet nunc Parthenope. Cecini pascua, rura, duces. ("Mantua gave me life, the Calabrians took it away, Naples holds me now; I sang of pastures, farms, and commanders" [transl. Bernard Knox])

Even as the Western Roman Empire collapsed, literate men acknowledged that Virgil was a master poet – Saint Augustine, for example, confessing how he had wept at reading the death of Dido.[18] Gregory of Tours read Virgil, whom he quotes in several places, along with some other Latin poets, though he cautions that "we ought not to relate their lying fables, lest we fall under sentence of eternal death".[19] In the Renaissance of the 12th century, Alexander Neckham placed the "divine" Aeneid on his standard arts curriculum,[20] and Dido became the romantic heroine of the age.[21] Monks like Maiolus of Cluny might repudiate what they called "the luxurious eloquence of Virgil",[22] but they could not deny the power of his appeal.

Dante made Virgil his guide in Hell and the greater part of Purgatory in the Divine Comedy.[23] Dante also mentions Virgil in De vulgari eloquentia, along with Ovid, Lucan and Statius, as one of the four regulati poetae (ii, vi, 7).

The Renaissance saw a number of authors inspired to write epic in Virgil's wake: Edmund Spenser called himself the English Virgil; Paradise Lost was calqued on the Aeneid; and later artists influenced by Virgil include Berlioz and Hermann Broch.[24]

The best-known surviving manuscripts of Virgil's works include the Vergilius Augusteus, the Vergilius Vaticanus and the Vergilius Romanus.

Legends

The legend of "Virgil in his basket" arose in the Middle Ages, and is often seen in art and mentioned in literature as part of the Power of Women literary topos, demonstrating the disruptive force of female attractiveness on men. In this story Virgil became enamoured of a beautiful woman, sometimes described as the emperor's daughter or mistress and called Lucretia. She played him along and agreed to an assignation at her house, which he was to sneak into at night by climbing into a large basket let down from a window. When he did so he was hoisted only halfway up the wall and then left trapped there into the next day, exposed to public ridicule. The story paralleled that of Phyllis riding Aristotle. Among other artists depicting the scene, Lucas van Leyden made a woodcut and later an engraving.[25]

In the Middle Ages, Virgil's reputation was such that it inspired legends associating him with magic and prophecy. From at least the 3rd century, Christian thinkers interpreted Eclogues 4, which describes the birth of a boy ushering in a golden age, as a prediction of Jesus' birth. In consequence, Virgil came to be seen on a similar level to the Hebrew prophets of the Bible as one who had heralded Christianity.[26] Relatedly, The Jewish Encyclopedia argues that medieval legends about the golem may have been inspired by Virgilian legends about the poet's apocryphal power to bring inanimate objects to life.[27]

Possibly as early as the second century AD, Virgil's works were seen as having magical properties and were used for divination. In what became known as the Sortes Vergilianae ('Virgilian Lots'), passages would be selected at random and interpreted to answer questions.[28] In the 12th century, starting around Naples but eventually spreading widely throughout Europe, a tradition developed in which Virgil was regarded as a great magician. Legends about Virgil and his magical powers remained popular for over two hundred years, arguably becoming as prominent as his writings themselves.[28] Virgil's legacy in medieval Wales was such that the Welsh version of his name, Fferyllt or Pheryllt, became a generic term for magic-worker, and survives in the modern Welsh word for pharmacist, fferyllydd.[29]

Virgil's tomb

The structure known as "Virgil's tomb" is found at the entrance of an ancient Roman tunnel (aka grotta vecchia) in Piedigrotta, a district 3 kilometres (1.9 mi) from the centre of Naples, near the Mergellina harbor, on the road heading north along the coast to Pozzuoli. While Virgil was already the object of literary admiration and veneration before his death, in the Middle Ages his name became associated with miraculous powers, and for a couple of centuries his tomb was the destination of pilgrimages and veneration.[30]

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Tomb of Virgil in Naples, Italy

Spelling of name

By the fourth or fifth century AD the original spelling Vergilius had been changed to Virgilius, and then the latter spelling spread to the modern European languages.[31] The later spelling persisted even though, as early as the 15th century, the classical scholar Poliziano had shown Vergilius to be the original spelling.[32] Today, the anglicizations Vergil and Virgil are both acceptable.[33]

There is some speculation that the spelling Virgilius might have arisen due to a pun, since virg- carries an echo of the Latin word for 'wand' (uirga), Vergil being particularly associated with magic in the Middle Ages. There is also a possibility that virg- is meant to evoke the Latin virgo ('virgin'); this would be a reference to the fourth Eclogue, which has a history of Christian, and specifically Messianic, interpretations.[iv]

See also

• Quintus Caecilius Epirota

References

Notes


1. The epitaph on his tomb in Posilipo near Naples read Mantua me genuit; Calabri rapuere; tenet nunc Parthenope. Cecini pascua, rura, duces ("Mantua gave birth to me, the Calabrians took me, now Naples holds me; I sang of pastures [the Eclogues], country [the Georgics] and leaders [the Aeneid]").
2. For a succinct summary, see Globalnet.co.uk Archived 18 December 2009 at the Wayback Machine
3. For a bibliography and summary see Fowler, pp. 1605–1606
4. For more discussion on the spelling of Virgil's name, see Flickinger, R. C. 1930. "Vergil or Virgil?." The Classical Journal 25(9):658–60.

Citations

1. Jones, Peter (2011). Reading Virgil: Aeneid I and II. Cambridge University Press. pp. 1, 4. ISBN 978-0521768665. Retrieved 23 November 2016.
2. Bunson, Matthew (2014). Encyclopedia of the Roman Empire. Infobase Publishing. p. 28. ISBN 978-1438110271. Retrieved 15 July 2021.
3. Ruud, Jay (2008). Critical Companion to Dante. Infobase Publishing. p. 376. ISBN 978-1438108414. Retrieved 23 November 2016.
4. Fowler, Don. 1996. "Virgil (Publius Vergilius Maro)." In The Oxford Classical Dictionary (3rd ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
5. "Map of Cisalpine Gaul". gottwein.de. Archived from the original on 28 May 2008.
6. Damen, Mark. [2002] 2004. "Vergil and 'The Aeneid'." Ch. 11 in A Guide to Writing in History and Classics. Utah State University. Archived from the original on 16 February 2017. Retrieved 28 May 2020.
7. Conway, Robert Seymour. 1967. "Where Was Vergil's Farm." Harvard Lectures on the Vergilian Age. Biblo & Tannen. ISBN 978-0819601827. pp. 14–41. The article was originally sourced from Nupedia and is open content.
8. Nardoni, Davide (1986). "La terra di Virgilio". Archeologia Viva (in Italian) (january-february ed.). pp. 71–76.
9. Gualtierotti, Piero (2008). Castel Goffredo dalle origini ai Gonzaga (in Italian). Mantua. pp. 96–100.
10. Horace, Satires 1.5, 1.6; Horace, Odes 1.3
11. Eliot, T. S. 1944. What Is a Classic?. London: Faber & Faber.
12. Avery, W. T. (1957). "Augustus and the "Aeneid"". The Classical Journal. 52 (5): 225–29.
13. Jenkyns, p. 53
14. Sellar, William Young; Glover, Terrot Reaveley; Bryant, Margaret (1911). "Virgil" . In Chisholm, Hugh (ed.). Encyclopædia Britannica. 28 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. pp. 111–116.
15. Miller, F. J. 1909. "Evidences of Incompleteness in the "Aeneid" of Vergil." The Classical Journal4(11):341–55. JSTOR 3287376.
16. Theb.12.816–817
17. Pliny Ep. 3.7.8
18. K. W. Gransden, Virgil: The Aeneid (Cambridge 1990), p. 105.
19. Gregory of Tours 1916, p. xiii.
20. Helen Waddell, The Wandering Scholars (Fontana 1968), p. 19.
21. Waddell, pp. 22–3.
22. Waddell, p. 101.
23. Alighieri, Dante (2003). The Divine Comedy (The Inferno, The Purgatorio, and The Paradiso). New York: Berkley. ISBN 978-0451208637.
24. Gransden, pp. 108–111.
25. Snyder, James. 1985. Northern Renaissance Art. US: Harry N. Abrams, ISBN 0136235964. pp. 461–62.
26. Ziolkowski, Jan M.; Putnam, Michael C. J. (2008). The Virgilian Tradition: The First Fifteen Hundred Years. Yale University Press. pp. xxxiv–xxxv. ISBN 978-0300108224. Retrieved 11 November 2013.
27. Singer, Isidore; et al., eds. (1901–1906). "Golem". The Jewish Encyclopedia. New York: Funk & Wagnalls.
28. Ziolkowski, Jan M.; Putnam, Michael C. J. (2008). The Virgilian Tradition: The First Fifteen Hundred Years. Yale University Press. p. xxxiv. ISBN 978-0300108224. Retrieved 11 November2013.
29. Ziolkowski, Jan M.; Putnam, Michael C. J. (2008). The Virgilian Tradition: The First Fifteen Hundred Years. Yale University Press. pp. 101–102. ISBN 978-0300108224. Retrieved 11 November 2013.
30. Chambers, Robert (1832). The Book of Days. London: W and R Chambers. p. 366.
31. Comparetti, Domenico (1997). Vergil in the Middle Ages. Princeton University Press. ISBN 978-0691026787. Retrieved 23 November 2016.
32. Wilson-Okamura, David Scott (2010). Virgil in the Renaissance. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0521198127. Retrieved 23 November 2016.
33. Winkler, Anthony C.; McCuen-Metherell, Jo Ray (2011). Writing the Research Paper: A Handbook. Cengage Learning. p. 278. ISBN 978-1133169024. Retrieved 23 November 2016.

Further reading

• Anderson, W. S., and L. N. Quartarone. 2002. Approaches to Teaching Vergil's Aeneid. New York: Modern Language Association.
• Buckham, Philip Wentworth, Joseph Spence, Edward Holdsworth, William Warburton, and John Jortin. 1825. Miscellanea Virgiliana: In Scriptis Maxime Eruditorum Virorum Varie Dispersa, in Unum Fasciculum Collecta. Cambridge: Printed for W. P. Grant.
• Conway, R. S. [1914] 1915. "The Youth of Vergil." Bulletin of the John Rylands Library July 1915.
• Farrell, J. 1991. Vergil's Georgics and the Traditions of Ancient Epic: The Art of Allusion in Literary History. New York: Oxford University Press.
• —2001. "The Vergilian Century." Vergilius (1959–) 47:11–28. JSTOR 41587251.
• Farrell, J., and Michael C. J. Putnam, eds. 2010. A Companion to Vergil's Aeneid and Its Tradition, (Blackwell Companions to the Ancient World). Chichester, MA: Wiley-Blackwell.
• Fletcher, K. F. B. 2014. Finding Italy: Travel, Nation and Colonization in Vergil's 'Aeneid'. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
• Gregory of Tours. 1916. The History of the Franks, translated by E. Brehaut. New York: Columbia University Press. OCLC 560532077.
• Hardie, Philip R., ed. 1999. Virgil: Critical Assessments of Ancient Authors 1–4. New York: Routledge.
• Henkel, John. 2014. "Vergil Talks Technique: Metapoetic Arboriculture in 'Georgics' 2." Vergilius (1959–) 60:33–66. JSTOR 43185985.
• Horsfall, N. 2016. The Epic Distilled: Studies in the Composition of the Aeneid. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Mack, S. 1978. Patterns of Time in Vergil. Hamden: Archon Books.
• Panoussi, V. 2009. Greek Tragedy in Vergil's "Aeneid": Ritual, Empire, and Intertext. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Quinn, S., ed. 2000. Why Vergil? A Collection of Interpretations. Wauconda: Bolchazy-Carducci.
• Rossi, A. 2004. Contexts of War: Manipulation of Genre in Virgilian Battle Narrative. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
• Sondrup, Steven P. 2009. "Virgil: From Farms to Empire: Kierkegaard's Understanding of a Roman Poet." In Kierkegaard and the Roman World, edited by J. B. Stewart. Farnham: Ashgate.
• Syed, Y. 2005. Vergil's Aeneid and the Roman Self: Subject and Nation in Literary Discourse. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
• Syson, A. 2013. Fama and Fiction in Vergil's 'Aeneid'. Columbus: Ohio State University Press.

External links

Collected works

• Works by Virgil in eBook form at Standard Ebooks
• Works by Virgil at Project Gutenberg
• Works by or about Virgil at Internet Archive
• Works by Virgil at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)
• Works of Virgil at the Perseus Digital Library—Latin texts, translations, and commentaries
o Aeneid, Eclogues, and Georgics translated by J. C. Greenough, 1900
o Aeneid, translated by T. C. Williams, 1910
o — translated by John Dryden, 1697
• Works of Virgil at Theoi Project
o Aeneid, Eclogues and Georgics, translated by H. R. Fairclough, 1916
• Works of Virgil at Internet Sacred Texts Archive
o Aeneid, translated by John Dryden, 1697
o Eclogues and Georgics, translated by J. W. MacKail, 1934
• P. Vergilius Maro at The Latin Library
• Virgil's works—text, concordances, and frequency list.
• Virgil: The Major Texts: contemporary, line-by-line English translations of Eclogues, Georgics, and Aeneid.
• Virgil in the collection of Ferdinand, Duke of Calabria at Somni:
o Publii Vergilii Maronis Opera Naples and Milan, 1450.
o Publii Vergilii Maronis Opera Italy, 1470 – 1499.
o Publii Vergilii Maronis Opera Milan, 1465.
• Lewis E 198 Opera at OPenn

Biography

• Suetonius: The Life of Virgil—an English translation.
• Vita Vergiliana [The Life of Virgil] by Aelius Donatus (in original Latin).
• Aelius Donatus' Life of Virgil, translated by David Wilson-Okamura
• Vergil – A Biography (Project Gutenberg ed.), by Tenney Frank.
• Vergilian Chronology (in German).

Commentary

• The Vergil Project.
• "A new Aeneid for the 21st century."—A review of Robert Fagles's new translation of the Aeneid in the TLS, 9 February 2007.
• Virgilmurder—Jean-Yves Maleuvre's website setting forth his theory that Virgil was murdered by Augustus.
• The Secret History of Virgil—contains selection on the magical legends and tall tales that circulated about Virgil in the Middle Ages.
• Interview with Virgil scholar Richard Thomas and poet David Ferry, who recently translated the "Georgics"—via ThoughtCast
• SORGLL: Aeneid, Bk I, 1–49, read by Robert Sonkowsky
• SORGLL: Aeneid, Bk IV, 296–396, read by Stephen Daitz

Bibliographies

• Comprehensive bibliographies on all three of Virgil's major works, downloadable in Word or pdf format
• Bibliography of works relating Vergil to the literature of the Hellenistic age
• A selective Bibliographical Guide to Vergil's Aeneid
• Virgil in Late Antiquity, the Middle Ages, and the Renaissance: an Online Bibliography
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Re: Freda Bedi Cont'd (#3)

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Part 1 of 2

Appendix: Alexander and the Ganges: A Question of Probability
Excerpt from Alexander and the East: The Tragedy of Triumph
by A.B. Bosworth
© A.B. Bosworth 1996

Maurya ... it seems that Chandragupta went by that name, particularly in the west; for he is known to Arabian writers by the name of Mur, according to the Nubian geographer, who says that he was defeated and killed by Alexander; for these authors supposed that this conqueror crossed the Ganges; and it is also the opinion of some ancient historians in the west.

-- Essay III. Of the Kings of Magadha; their Chronology, by Captain Wilford, Asiatic Researches, Volume 9, 1809. pgs. 94-100.


Most contentious issues in the reign of Alexander have a distinctly cyclical aspect. Long ago Ernst Badian.1 [E. Badian, in Ancient Society and Institutions: Studies Presented to Victor Ehrenberg 65-6 n. 56.] criticized Schachermeyr's claim that 'today we know' that the Greeks of Asia were not in the League of Corinth. 'Yesterday, presumably, we "knew" that they were; and who knows what we shall "know" tomorrow?" Eternal verities are beyond our grasp when there is little or no evidence at our disposal, as is the case with the Asiatic Greeks and the Corinthian League.2 [Schachermeyr at least absorbed the lesson. In the 2nd edn. of his work on Alexander he weakened his confident assertion. 'Heute wir wissen' [Google translate: Today we know.] became 'Heute glauben wir zu wissen' [Google translate: Today we think we know] (Al.2 177), and in a subsequent fn. he added that the data was insufficient for stringent proof and that his views should be regarded as hypothetical and provisional (Al.2 258 n. 295).] Interpretation and speculation have free rein. However, even where explicit evidence exists, we may find a comparable cycle of acceptance and scepticism. One school accepts the source testimony at face value and builds upon it; another dismisses the evidence as distorted or tainted and excludes it from any historical reconstruction. Such exclusion can be justified if the source material is in conflict with other evidence adjudged more incontrovertible, or transcends the bounds of possibility. However, what transcends the bounds of possibility often coincides with what is uncomfortable to believe. One sets one's own limits upon what Alexander may have thought, planned, and done, and accepts or rejects the source material by that criterion. Credo, ergo est [Google translate: Therefore it is] becomes the unstated methodological rule.

The issue which best exemplifies this dilemma is the famous Ganges question. Is it credible that Alexander had reasonably accurate information about the Ganges river system and planned to extend his conquests there? On a priori considerations it would seem highly probable. He spent a spring and a summer in the northern Punjab, penetrating as far east as the river Hyphasis (modern Beas). In the course of that campaign he carried out detailed topographical investigations as far as the Indus mouth (which refuted his rashly formed belief that the Indus and Nile were interconnected).3 [Arr. 6. I. 5; Strabo 15. I. 25 (696) = Nearchus, FGrR 133 F 20. On this strange episode see above, Ch. 3.] He was in close contact with the local native rulers and naturally questioned them about conditions on the march ahead. It is surely to be inferred that he received information about the river system of the Jumna and Ganges, no more than 250 km., as the crow flies, east of the Hyphasis. When three separate source traditions corroborate that probability it would seem perverse to question it, and it is fair to state that most modern authorities have accepted that Alexander had some knowledge of the Ganges.4 [That was the consensus of earlier scholars. The doyen of Indianologists, Christian Lassen stated categorically that Alexander intended to take his conquests to the mouth of the Ganges (Indische Altertumskunde ii.2 171- 3). Droysen i.2 2. 165, was more cautious about Alexander's aims, but took it as axiomatic that he knew of the Ganges. So too the influential monograph by A. E. Anspach, De Alexandri Magni expeditione Indica (Leipzig 1903) 77-9. In more recent times the most eloquent and systematic defender of what may be termed the traditional view has been Fritz Schachermeyr, 'Alexander und die Ganges-Lander', IBK 3 (1955) 123-35 (= G. T. Griffith (ed.), Alexander the Great: The Main Problems (Cambridge, 1966) 137-49). For a sample of obiter dicta see U. Wilcken, Alexander the Great 185-6; Green 407-8; N. G. L. Hammond, KCS2 218: Bosworth, Conquest and Empire 132-3.]

There is, however, a strong sceptical minority. The most eloquent and authoritative attack upon the ancient tradition came from Sir William Tarn, who in 1923 argued that Alexander 'never knew of the Ganges or of Magadha, any more than he knew of the vast Middle Country between the Sutlej and the Ganges',5 [Tarn, JHS 43 (1923) 93-101. He had a forerunner in Niese i. 138-9, 509.] and in 1948 he was to refine his case, noting but not addressing the criticisms made in the meantime by Ernst Meyer.6 [Tarn, Al. ii. 275-85. Meyer's criticism (Klio 21 (1927) 183-91) is noted in a single footnote (279 n. 2) with a contemptuous aside: the proposal to supplement the name Ganges at Diod. 18.6.2 'is indefensible and merely darkens counsel: I need not refute Ernst Meyer's attempts to defend it'.] In 1965 Dietmar Kienast came to the same conclusion by a somewhat different route,7 [D. Kienast, Historia 14 (1965) 180-8.] and most recently T. R. Robinson has attempted the demolition of a critical (but not decisive) branch of the source tradition.8 [T. R. Robinson, AHB 7 (1993) 84-99.] What these approaches have in common is an insistence that the only evidence which can be accepted without reservation is a single passage of Arrian (5. 25. 1), which describes Alexander's ambitions beyond the Hyphasis without reference to the Ganges and without apparent knowledge of the centralized Nanda kingdom in the lower Ganges valley.9 [Kienast's exposition (above, n. 7, 180-1) is typical: 'Dieser sehr detaillierte Bericht, der offen bar aus guter Quelle (wohl Aristobul) stammt, weiss also nichts vom Ganges, sondern nur von dem Lande unmittelbar jenseits des Hyphasis.' [Google translate: This very detailed one Report, which apparently comes from a good source (probably Aristobulus), does not know anything about it Ganges, but only from the land immediately beyond the Hyphasis.] The vulgate tradition, common to Diodorus, Curtius, and the Metz Epitome,10 [Diod. 17.93. 2-4; Curt. 9. 2. 2-9; Metz Epit. 68-9; cf. Plut. Al. 62. 2-3; Justin 12. 8. 9-10 (heavily abbreviated and garbled).] reports that Alexander did receive information about the Ganges and the eastern kingdom, and is necessarily dismissed as romantic embroidery, dating from the period when Megasthenes' embassy to Chandragupta had brought eyewitness information about the Ganges and the great eastern capital of Pataliputra.

Historiae survives in 123 codices, or bound manuscripts, all deriving from an original in the 9th century. As it was a partial text, already missing large pieces, they are partial as well. They vary in condition. Some are more partial than others, with lacunae that developed since the 9th century. The original contained ten libri, "books," equivalent to our chapters. Book I and II are missing, along with any Introduction that might have been expected according to ancient custom. There are gaps in V, VI, and X. Many loci, or "places," throughout are obscure, subject to interpretation or emendation in the name of restoration.

The work enjoyed popularity in the High Middle Ages. It is the main source for a genre of tales termed the Alexander Romance (some say romances); for example, Walter of Chatillon's epic poem Alexandreis, which was written in the style of Virgil's Aeneid. These romances spilled over into the Renaissance, especially of Italy, where Curtius was idolized. Painters, such as Paolo Veronese and Charles Le Brun, painted scenes from Curtius...

-- Quintus Curtius Rufus, by Wikipedia


11 [So Robinson (above, n. 8) 98-9. Tarn Al. ii. 282-3 considered that the 'legends' of Alexander and the Ganges dated to the second century BC and reflect the history of the Indo-Bactrian monarchy. Kienast (above, n. 7) 187-8 comes to a minimalist sceptical position: both Hieronymus and Cleitarchus knew of the Ganges, the former through the campaigns of Eumenes, but there is no conclusive evidence that Alexander planned to take his conquests beyond the Punjab.] We therefore have only one piece of 'reliable' evidence; the rest of the tradition is argued away. However, even if we accept the argumentation, it does not prove the sceptical case. The minuscule piece of 'reliable' evidence is silent about Alexander's knowledge of the Ganges. Even if we accept every word of Arrian, one could still argue that he had been informed of the existence of the great river.12 [As is honestly and candidly admitted by Kienast 181: 'Andererseits kann man auch nicht schlussig beweisen, dass Alexander vom Ganges keine Kenntnis hatte.' [Google translate: On the other hand, you can also not conclusively prove that Alexander had no knowledge of the Ganges.]] The intrinsic probability remains. No source contains or hints at the negative.

Of the various pieces of source material buttressing the case for Alexander's knowledge of the Ganges by far the most important (and problematic) is a tradition represented in two passages of Diodorus.13 [Diod. 2.37. 2-3; 18. 6. 1-2.] In Book 2 he grafts on to his digest of Megasthenes' account of India a description of the Ganges which patently comes from another source.14 [The width of the Ganges is totally at odds with Megasthenes' well-attested statement that its median (or minimum) breadth was 100 stades (Arr. Ind. 4. 7; Strabo 15. I. 35 (702) = Megasthenes FGrH 715 F 9).] The river is described as 30 stades wide, flowing from north to south (as the Ganges does in its western reaches) and dividing off to the east the Gandaridae, who had the largest and most numerous elephants in India.
No foreign king had ever conquered them because of the number and ferocity of these beasts.15 [The statement is restricted to the Gandaridae. It is hardly a sentence of Megasthenes grafted into an alien context, as is argued by Robinson (above: n. 8) 93- 5. Megasthenes claimed that all India had been immune from invasion until the time of Alexander (Arr. Ind. 5. 4-7; Strabo 15. 1. 6 (686-7) = FGrH 715 F II; cf. Diod. 2. 39.4; Arr. Ind. 9. 10-11 = FGrH 715 F 14). The uniqueness of Megasthenes was to deny the Achaemenid conquest of western India. Any source might have claimed that the eastern land had been immune from invasion.] Alexander himself came to the Ganges after subjugating the rest of the Indians but gave up the expedition on learning that his adversaries possessed 4,000 elephants. This information is neatly paralleled in the context of the so-called Gazetteer of Empire in Book 18.16 [Diod. 18. 6. 1-2. On the Gazeteeer in general see Hornblower, Hieronymus 80-7. 'Geographical review' is a better label than 'Gazetteer', but the term is now sanctioned by use.]

When Alexander turned back at the Hyphasis (Beas), how much did he know about what lay before him? And why, in the vulgate tradition, does he know of the distant Ganges and the distant kingdom of Magadha, but not of the next great river to the Beas, the Sutlej (a question often asked), or of anything else between the Beas and the Ganges?...

We possess one contemporary document bearing on the matter which has escaped notice, a satrapy-list or gazetteer of ‘Asia,' i.e. Alexander's empire, [‘Asia’ or ’all Asia’ means, in the later part of the fourth century, the Persian Empire which Alexander claimed to rule...]... We can date this document with certainty. It includes the Indian provinces, and so is later than Alexander's return from India. The ‘Hyrcanian sea’ (not Caspian) is still a lake, so it is earlier than Patrocles. Chandragupta is unknown, so it is certainly earlier than Megasthenes and probably earlier than circ. 302. Porus is still alive, so it is earlier than 317. Susiana ‘happens to be' part of Persis, i.e. it was under the same satrap, which can only have happened at one point in the story: the satrap is Peucestas... Media is still undivided; so the document is earlier than the partition of Babylon in 323, when Media was divided between Peithon and Atropates. Lastly, Armenia still appears as a satrapy of the empire, whereas the fiction of an Armenian satrapy was abandoned at the partition of Babylon, and this is decisive. The gazetteer then dates between spring 324 and June-July 323...

This document divides the empire into north and south of the Taurus-'Caucasus‘ line.8 [Eratosthenes took his similar division from this document, and not vice versa; apart from the date, which is certain, it contains no trace of the real characteristic of his geographical scheme, the [x].] After dealing with the northern provinces, it begins in 18, 6. 1 on the southern provinces, working from east to west; India therefore comes first. What it says about India, in Diodorus’ version, is this: India lies along ([x]) the Caucasus, and is a large kingdom of several peoples, the greatest of them being the Tyndaridae (or Gandaridae), whom Alexander did not attack because of their elephants. A river, the greatest in that district ([x]), 30 stades broad, divides ([x]) this country ([x]) — I think this means the India already described, but it might mean the Tyndaridae — from the India that comes next, i.e. further westward ([x]). Bordering on this country ([x]) — i.e. either on the India already described or on the Tyndaridae — is the rest of India which Alexander conquered ([x] above), through the middle of which runs the Indus. That is to say, Alexander's conquests are divided from the rest of India by an unnamed river: independent India beyond this river is a single kingdom, associated with a name. Note especially that the gazetteer, like the sources used by Arrian in his narrative, does not mention the two names which play such a part in the vulgate tradition, the Ganges and the Prasii: and, looking at what the gazetteer does say about India, this shows conclusively that neither was known to its author, that is, to those about Alexander in 324/3. Alexander then can have known nothing of the Ganges or of Magadha, but it remains to see how the vulgate tradition arose...

The first Greek to visit and describe the Ganges and the Prasii was Megasthenes...The Prasii are his name for Magadha, as is shown by Pataliputra being their capital...Magadha in actual fact lay on this side of (i.e. south and west of) the Ganges, and its empire (before Chandragupta) lay further west still...

Cleitarchus, who fixed the vulgate tradition about Alexander, did not accompany Alexander to Asia and was not with him in India; he was not one of the contemporary historians of the expedition, and is not a primary source, but was a literary compiler belonging to a later generation. It is certain now that he cannot have written earlier than the decade 280-270; and there are grounds, though not conclusive grounds, for putting his book even later, after 260....The points proven are that Cleitarchus used Berossos, Patrocles, and Timaeus, and had never himself seen Babylon...he wrote much later than Megasthenes....

in the vulgate, Alexander, when he reaches the Beas, hears of the Ganges and the Prasii, whom he desires to conquer; the story is given by both Diodorus and Curtius, and is our only professed account of what he knew when he turned back, though the good tradition, as we shall see, has a very different account of what the army believed....Diodorus, Book 17, primarily represents Cleitarchus... Diodorus and Curtius agree here, among other things, in one most extraordinary perversion, which therefore goes back to Cleitarchus also, and which is the key of the whole matter; the Prasii are beyond the Ganges. This strange mistake also occurs in Plut. Alex. 62, where the Prasii hold the further bank...

Cleitarchus must have had before him, among the other documents which we know he used, the two we have here noticed, the gazetteer of 324/3, and Megasthenes.... In the first he found an unnamed river, called the greatest in the district, and a named kingdom beyond it. In the second he found the greatest river in India, the Ganges, and a kingdom whose capital stood on its bank, though in fact the kingdom stretched out westward. Like Fischer in his edition of Diodorus, he identified the two rivers and called the unnamed river the Ganges; and the kingdom of the Tyndaridae or Gandaridae, beyond the unnamed river, he then naturally identified with that of the Prasii, which he then necessarily placed beyond the Ganges; hence in the Cleitarchean vulgate this kingdom regularly appears as ‘the Gandaridae (or Gangaridae) and Prasii.' Starting from this identification, he then wrote up Alexander in his usual fashion, not knowing that he had left out most of Northern India....he was a very bad geographer in any case, and the man who could confuse two such well-known rivers as the Hydaspes and the Acesines would have had no difficulty in confusing the unnamed river and the Ganges....

Fortunately he left untouched an easy means of checking his mistake: the breadths of the rivers. The unnamed river of the gazetteer is 30 stades broad. Megasthenes' Ganges is not less than 100 stades broad.... The breadth alone then is sufficient proof that the ‘Ganges’ of Cleitarchus-Diodorus is only the unnamed river of the gazetteer....


On the other hand, Diod. 17, 108, 3 — the Macedonians refuse to cross the Ganges — has nothing directly to do with this identification: it is a reference, not part of the narrative, and is therefore not Cleitarchus; it belongs to a later legend...As 2, 37, 2 represents the gazetteer, it is interesting to note that it gives one detail not given in 18, 6, 1: the river in question, the unnamed river, runs from north to south. It was well enough known since Megasthenes that all the middle Ganges, above Pataliputra, ran roughly west and east....

Before leaving Cleitarchus, one other point may be noticed. His story about the Ganges and the Prasii is told to Alexander by a rajah on the Beas named Phegeus, who begins by saying that across the river is a desert of eleven (Curtius) or twelve (Diodorus) days’ journey. No Indian living on the upper Beas could have said this. If Phegeus, who is unknown to the good tradition, ever existed, he lived much further south, near the Rajputana desert; but he may be as mythical as some other characters in the vulgate. That Cleitarchus put his Ganges story in the mouth of a man who begins by placing the great desert on the east bank of the upper Beas is itself a good test of what that story is worth...

The statement that Alexander turned back from fear of the elephants is a late legend inserted by Diodorus himself...

Strictly construed, the gazetteer imports that Alexander claimed India up to the Sutlej; and it is possible enough that he did. Across the Beas, says Arr. 5, 25, 1, was a people aristocratically governed (i.e. an Aratta people) with many elephants. [Amplified in Strabo, 15, 702: a ruling oligarchy of 5000, each of whom gave an elephant to the State!] This can hardly go back to the Journal, from its form; probably it is Aristobulas repeating camp gossip, for the Aratta known to us had no elephants... we get some support for the suggestion that the rule of Darius I. had ended at the Beas, where Alexander's men refused to go on...

The conclusion then is that Alexander, when he turned back, knew of the Sutlej, and vaguely of some kingdom beyond it, with which the name Gandaridae or Tyndaridae was connected. He never knew of the Ganges or of Magadha, any more than he ever knew of the vast Middle Country between the Sutlej and the Ganges. What he did know was not of a nature to shake his conviction, based primarily on the Aristotelian geography, that Ocean lay at quite a short distance in front of him, as is proved by his desire still to advance in spite of the great reduction in his small striking force by troops left on communications... The story that he knew of the Ganges and Magadha, which is unknown to the good tradition, has been written into the vulgate from Megasthenes through a mistake which I have traced; and by means of this story the vulgate has attributed to Alexander a scheme of conquest [The vulgate's idea that Alexander meant to cross the Ganges, involving a conflict with Magadha, would almost arise naturally from its substitution of the Ganges for the Sutlej] which has no basis in fact, because he knew nothing of the existence of the place whose conquest was the object of the scheme. The legend of the plan to conquer Magadha, however, matured much faster than the parallel legend of the plan to conquer Carthage and the Mediterranean, whose growth I have previously traced... The first step was that someone forged a letter from Craterus to his mother (Strabo 15, 702) in which Alexander reaches the Ganges. Then follow two stories; in the one, preserved by Diodorus, 2, 37, 3, Alexander reaches the Ganges but dare not attack the Gandaridae (sic) because of their 4000 elephants; in the other, given in Plut. Alex. 62 and alluded to in Diodorus 17, 108, 3, he reaches the Ganges and desires to cross, but the army refuses. (As in Plutarch the ‘Gandaritae and Prasii hold the further bank, which represents the blunder made by Cleitarchus which this paper has been tracing, we have here an excellent instance of later legend springing from the Cleitarchean vulgate; it is illuminating for Plutarch's indiscriminate use of material.) Finally, in Justin 12, 8, 9, Alexander does conquer Magadha: Praesios, Gangaridas, caesis eorum exercitibus expugnat. [Google translate: To preside over Gangaridae, and cut off their end to its armies.] The statement in Diodorus' version of the gazetteer, 18, 6, 1, that Alexander did not attack the Gandaridae because of their elephants, is then a mere remark of Diodorus' own, quoted from his own version of the legend in 2, 37, 3. Like many legends, it possesses a minute substratum of fact; the report about the elephants across the Beas. Arr. 5, 25, 1, was one of the causes which decided Alexander's army to go no further.

-- Alexander and the Ganges, by William Woodthorpe Tarn


There Diodorus reviews the various components of the eastern Empire of Alexander's successors and begins his enumeration of the southern lands from the far east. First is India, a large and populous kingdom, boasting several nations, the largest of which is the 'Tyndaridae' against whom Alexander did not campaign because of the number of their elephants. That country is divided from the next portion of India by a river which is not named in the text but is described as the greatest in those parts, with a width of 30 stades.

The similarities of these passages is such that one naturally assumes that they are derived from a single source: the 'Tyndaridae' of the second passage are simply a corruption of the Gandaridae of the first,17 [This to my knowledge has never been questioned. Gandaridae to Tyndaridae is an easy scribal error, imposing a recognizable Greek name upon an unfamiliar foreign term. The corruption incidentally supports the traditional correction [x] at 18. 6. I; in the Bude Goukowsky restored [x], which coheres with the Latin spellings of the name (see below, n. 29) and supports the interpretation that it is a general ethnic derived from the river ('people of the Ganges': cf. Goukowsky ad Diod. 17. 93. 2). However, such a spelling would lend itself less to corruption than [x], the invariable form given by the manuscripts at Diod. 17. 93. 2-4.] and the unnamed river of the second passage must be the Ganges. If both passages have a common original, the most likely source is Hieronymus of Cardia, who provided the narrative core for Diodorus in Book 18. The material would be anticipated in Book 2, and engrafted on the body of material from Megasthenes. There is a clear parallel in the anticipatory citation of Cleitarchus which Diodorus imposes upon the surrounding context, from Ctesias.18 [Diod. 2. 7. 3 = FGrH 137 F 10; cf. Curt. 5. 1. 26 with Hamilton, in Greece & the E. Med. 126-46, esp. 138-40; Bosworth, From Arrian to Alexander 10.] As for Hieronymus, he was much in Diodorus' mind in Book 2. The account of the Nabataean Arabs is patently part recapitulation, part repetition of a long excursus in Book 19, which was derived from Hieronymus, an eyewitness of the area.19 [Diod. 2. 48. 1-5 resumes the more extended description at 19.94. 2-10, while 2. 48. 6-10 is a virtual copy of 19.98. In its turn Diod. 2. I. 5 epitomizes the exposition at 2. 48. 2-5 (cf. P. Krumbholz, Rh. Mus. 44 (1889) 286-98, esp. 291-3). On Hieronymus' excursus in general see Hornblower, Hieronymus 144-53.] Part of this secondary draft is in turn extracted from its context and added to Ctesias' account of the campaign of Ninus. In exactly the same way a section from the Gazetteer in Book 18 is re-used in the context of Megasthenes' geography of India. In that case Alexander's plans for an invasion of the Ganges valley are attested by the near-contemporary Hieronymus, and Hieronymus is a formidable cachet of authenticity.

The strategy of the sceptics has necessarily been to distance the report of the Ganges from Hieronymus. Tarn in his most sophistical vein excised everything he disapproved of in the Gazetteer as an interpolation by Diodorus and failed to address the detailed correspondence with the parallel passage of Book 2.20 [The fullest exposition is Tarn, Al. ii. 277-9; the earlier discussion (JHS 43 (1923) 93-5) is less convoluted and involves only one interpolation (98: 'the part of the gazetteer given in Diod. 18.6. I seems to be given with substantial accuracy, subject, of course, to this, that the statement that Alexander turned back from fear of the elephants is a late legend inserted by Diodorus himself').] The more recent approach of Robinson is more coherent. It accepts that the second passage is unitary, but claims that the river there described is not the Ganges but the Hyphasis (Beas) and that the Gandaridae should be located not on the Ganges but immediately east of the Hyphasis (see Fig. 8 above).21 [Robinson (above, n. 8), esp. 84-5. Both hypotheses were foreshadowed by Tarn, who considered that the river of the Gazetteer could be the Sutlej, immediately east of the Hyphasis (JHS 43 (1923) 97-8; 25 years later (at Al. ii. 279) the 'unnamed river' becomes an interpolation by Diodorus), and argued repeatedly that the Gandaridae were displaced (see below).] This report Diodorus misinterpreted and combined incompetently with other material from Megasthenes (used in Book 2) and Cleitarchus (used in Book 17). Hieronymus, then, did not mention the Ganges, and it is only Diodorus' proverbial stupidity which gives the impression that he did.

Robinson's argument is undoubtedly ingenious, but its premisses are flawed, and unfortunately much of the material is taken directly from Tarn without any probing of the supporting evidence. Most illuminating is the key assertion that in Diodorus there is an eastward displacement of the Gandaridae. 'For the Gandaridae are generally associated with the eastern Punjab and the Indus system, not with the Gangetic plain.'22 [Robinson (above, n. 8) 89 with n. 13. Tarn in 1923 (above, n. 5, 98) suggested that the Gandaridae of the Gazetteer were somehow distinct from the Gandaridae of the vulgate and were located east of the Sutlej. In 1948 he was more radical and claimed that the Gandaridae were in fact the Indians of Gandhara, the old Achaemenid satrapy of the Kabul valley (Al. ii. 277-8).] This categorical assertion is documented by a reference to Kiessling's Pauly articles on 'Gandaris' and 'Gandaridae', which unequivocally locate the Gandaridae in the Ganges plain.23 [Kiessling, RE vii. 694-5 ('Gandaridai'), 695-6 ('Gandaris'); cf. 703-7 ('Ganges'). Kiessling was categorical that there were three separate areas: Achaemenid Gandhara, Gandaris in the Punjab, and the land of the Gandaridae in the lower Ganges, and considered the similarity of name an important indicator of the progress of Aryan migration (695, lines 49-58).
] As Kiessling makes plain, there is no reference to Gandaridae west of the Ganges. We hear in passing that the princedom of the 'bad' Porus, which lay between the rivers Acesines and Hydraotes, was named Gandaris.24 [Strabo 15. 1. 30 (699). For the general location of the realm of the 'bad' Porus see Arr. 5. 21. 1-4.] That may or may not indicate some association with the people named Gandaridae, and in any case the location does not help Robinson. The 'bad' Porus ruled an area well to the west of the Hyphasis, not to the east of the river, where Robinson would locate the Gandaridae. Now this Porus fled in the face of Alexander's advance across the Punjab, in the early summer of 326, and we are informed that he fled to the land of the Gandaridae.25 [Diod. 17. 91. I (cf. Arr. 5. 21. 3 -- destination unnamed).] All that proves is that these Gandaridae were located somewhere east of the Hydraotes; it provides no information as to how far east they were found. Robinson suggests that they were directly beyond the Hyphasis, but it might also be argued that any Indian rajah who cared to flee rather than submit to Alexander would put the greatest distance possible between himself and the invader and seek sanctuary in the Ganges kingdom,26 [That was the automatic and plausible assumption of Lassen, Indische Altertumskunde ii.2 163 n. 3 (so Droysen i.2 2. 148 n. I). Why Anspach (above, n. 4) 64 n. 199 commented 'iam veri dissimile est trans Gangem tum fugisse Porum' [Google translate: Porus had fled to the other side of the Ganges as well as of the truth, but is differently now] I do not understand. There was the instructive object lesson of the regicide Barsaentes, who fled from his satrapy in central Iran to the Indians of Gandhara (cf. Berve ii. 102, no. 205). If we may believe Curtius (8. 13. 4), both Barsaentes and his Indian collaborator had been delivered to Alexander's justice shortly before the battle of the Hydaspes and the flight of the 'bad' Porus. It gave a defector every encouragement to fly as far as possible and choose the strongest possible protector.] as far away as possible.

Apart from the single reference to the princedom of 'Gandaris' there is only an oblique reference in Dionysius Periegetes to 'Gargaridae' near the 'gold-bearing Hypanis' (another name for the Hyphasis/Beas).27 [Dion. Per. 1143-8. Kiessling also adduced Peripl. M. Rubr. 47, in which a people named 'Tanthragoi' are attested inland from Barygaza (by the Rann of Kutch) and associated with Bucephala. But, even if the traditional correction 'Gandaraioi' is accepted, the passage is extraordinarily imprecise (cf. L. Casson, The Periplus Maris Erythraei 204-5) and contains the egregious error that Alexander penetrated to the Ganges. It cannot be used as evidence for Gandaridae in the Punjab.] Before we are transported by excitement at this, we should look at the context in Dionysius, which is a farrago of nonsense. The 'Hypanis' is associated with another mysterious river, the Magarsus, and both are said to flow down from the northern mountains into the Gangetic plain.28 [Dion. Per. 1146-7: [x]. It may be added that Dionysius (1152-60) also places Nysa (see below, p. 199) in the Gangetic plain. His view of Indian geography can only be termed chaotic. If the Gargaridae of Dionysius are in fact the Gandaridae of Diodorus, they are as much associated with the Ganges as they are with the Hyphasis. ]

The Roman god Bacchus and his Greek counterpart Dionysos have long been associated with Nysa. The names Dionysos and Nysa are said to be etymologically related, though the exact connection is unclear.

Bacchus / Dionysos was the son of Jupiter and Semele. The pregnant Semele unwisely asked to see Jupiter in his flaming form, the sight causing her to burn to death. Jupiter rescued the embryonic Bacchus by placing him in his thigh to develop until birth. When Bacchus was born, Jupiter turned him over to the Nysiads, Oceanic nymphs, to raise. The Nysiads were associated with the mythic mount Nysa.

In the Iliad, Homer refers to Dionysos and associates him with this mountain. The speaker is Diomedes, stating his refusal to fight against any of the gods, as any victory against them is Pyrrhic:
[x] (6.130–134)

In Stanley Lombardo's translation:
Not even mighty Lycurgus lived long
After he tangled with the immortals,
Driving the nurses of Dionysus
Down over the Mountain of Nysa
And making them drop their wands
As he beat them with an ox-goad. (p. 116)

Since the worship of Dionysos entered Greece from either Asia Minor or neighboring Thrace, the god was associated with the east. Different mythographers located Nysa in different parts of Asia: Turkey, Arabia, or India. For ancient geographers, India meant the entire subcontinent east of the Hindu Kush and south of the Himalayas; this includes part of present-day Afghanistan as well as all of Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, Nepal, Bhutan, and Sri Lanka.

Mythopoeic impulses during the time of Alexander the Great (356 BCE–323 BCE) associated the conqueror with Hercules, but W. J. Woodhouse observes that as his army moved eastward he began to be equated with Bacchus as well. Alexander made it as far as northwest India, leading to the belief that Bacchus was the conqueror of that land:
The triumphant irresistible bursting of Alexander the Great into the secrets of the Far East naturally appealed to the imagination of his generation as a sort of fabled progress of Bacchus through those same regions. The exploits of Alexander it was that give birth to the legend of the conquest of India and the East by Dionysus, rather than the converse; and the imagination of court flatterers was exercised to provide divine prototypes of Alexander's achievements. Being himself reputed son of Zeus-Ammon, and Dionysos also being, in some stories, a son of Ammon, it was altogether suitable that Alexander should tread literally in the footsteps of his divine predecessor, and at last come upon that very city of Nysa which had existed in the imagination of so many generations as built by Dionysos for his wearied Bacchanals, and upon that same Mt. Mēros on which his troops had refreshed themselves amid its ivy and laurels. (p. 428, internal citation omitted, emphasis added)

Mēros is the ancient Greek for thigh. Mythopoeists of Alexander's time equated Meros with Meru, a mythical mountain that is considered the center of the universe in Hindu, Buddhist, and Jain cosmology. The connection between Bacchus' birth from Jupiter's thigh and the name of this mountain proved irresistible. In The Anabasis of Alexander, the 2nd C CE historian Arrian relates the how Alexander reached Nysa and was greeted by its citizens. Arrian is rather skeptical that the Dionysos referred to is the god:
In this country, lying between the rivers Cophen [Kabul] and Indus, which was traversed by Alexander, the city of Nysa is said to be situated. The report is, that its foundation was the work of Dionysus, who built it after he had subjugated the Indians. But it is impossible to determine who this Dionysus was, and at what time, or from what quarter he led an army against the Indians. For I am unable to decide whether the Theban Dionysus, starting from Thebes or from the Lydian Tmolus came into India at the head of an army, and after traversing the territories of so many warlike nations, unknown to the Greeks of that time, forcibly subjugated none of them except that of the Indians. But I do not think we ought to make a minute examination of the legends which were promulgated in ancient times about the divinity; for things which are not credible to the man who examines them according to the rule of probability, do not appear to be wholly incredible, if one adds the divine agency to the story. When Alexander came to Nysa the citizens sent out to him their president, whose name was Acuphis, accompanied by thirty of their most distinguished men as envoys, to entreat Alexander to leave their city free for the sake of the god. The envoys entered Alexander's tent and found him seated in his armour still covered with dust from the journey, with his helmet on his head, and holding his spear in his hand. When they beheld the sight they were struck with astonishment, and falling to the earth remained silent a long time. But when Alexander caused them to rise, and bade them be of good courage, then at length Acuphis began thus to speak: "The Nysaeans beseech thee, king, out of respect for Dionysus, to allow them to remain free and independent; for when Dionysus had subjugated the nation of the Indians, and was returning to the Grecian sea, he founded this city from the soldiers who had become unfit for military service, and were under his inspiration as Bacchanals, so that it might be a monument both of his wandering and of his victory, to men of after times; just as thou also hast founded Alexandria near mount Caucasus, and another Alexandria in the country of the Egyptians. Many other cities thou hast already founded, and others thou wilt found hereafter, in the course of time, inasmuch as thou hast achieved more exploits than Dionysus. The god indeed called the city Nysa, and the land Nysaea after his nurse Nysa. The mountain also which is near the city he named Meros (i.e. thigh), because, according to the legend, he grew in the thigh of Zeus. From that time we inhabit Nysa, a free city, and we ourselves are independent, conducting our government with constitutional order. And let this be to thee a proof that our city owes its foundation to Dionysus; for ivy, which does not grow in the rest of the country of India, grows among us." (V.1)

Pleased that he had reached as far as Dionysos, Alexander granted the Nysians their wish and allowed their city to remain "free and independent." He then took his army on a picnic to the fabled mountain:
He was now seized with a strong desire of seeing the place where the Nysaeans boasted to have certain memorials of Dionysus. So he went to Mount Merus with the Companion cavalry and the foot guard, and saw the mountain, which was quite covered with ivy and laurel and groves thickly shaded with all sorts of timber, and on it were chases of all kinds of wild animals. The Macedonians were delighted at seeing the ivy, as they had not seen any for a long time; for in the land of the Indians there was no ivy, even where they had vines. They eagerly made garlands of it, and crowned themselves with them, as they were, singing hymns in honour of Dionysus, and invoking the deity by his various names. Alexander there offered sacrifice to Dionysus, and feasted in company with his companions. (V.2)

This city of Nysa has been identified with a couple of sites in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Ptolemy mentions a city named Nagara, also known as Dionysopolis; both this name and Nagara's location between the Cophen [Kabul] and Indus rivers make it a strong candidate. The exact location of Nagara is not known, but it is associated with an archaeological site known as Nagara Ghundi, about four miles from Jalalabad in Afghanistan. The present-day city of Nisatta in Pakistan, some 100 miles away from Jalalabad, is another viable candidate.

Some 300 years after Arrian (and 800 years after Alexander's time), the Hellenistic poet Nonnus wrote an epic poem, the Dionysiaca, which narrates the life of Dionysos, his conquest of India, and his return to the West. Nonnus, however, situates Nysa in Arabia.

References (except Wikipedia)

• Arrian. The Anabasis of Alexander. Trans. E. J. Chinnock. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1884. Wikisource. Accessed 27 March 2021.
• Ball, Warwick. "Nagara Ghundi." Archaeological Gazetteer of Afghanistan, n. 756. 1982. Cultural Property Training Institute, Afghanistan. aiamilitarypanel.org. Accessed 27 March 2021.
• Black, John. "Mount Meru: Hell and Paradise on One Mountain." 3 April 2013. ancient-origins.net. Accessed 27 March 2021.
• Homer. Iliad. Trans. Stanley Lombardo. Intro. Sheila Murnaghan. Indianapolis: Hackett, 1997.
• ———. The Iliad. The Chicago Homer. Accessed 27 March 2021.
• "Nisatta." Jatland.com. Accessed 27 March 2021.
• Nonnus. Dionysiaca. Trans. W. H. D. Rowse. Loeb Classical Library. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1940–1942. 3 vols: one two three. Archive.org. Accessed 27 March 2021.
• Woodhouse, W. J. "Nysa". pp. 427–428. Encyclopædia of Religion and Ethics, ed. James Hastings. Vol. IX, Mundas–Phrygians. pp. 427–428. Google Books. Accessed 27 March 2021.
 
-- What is meant by “Nysa” in the Lusiads?, by literature.stackexchange.com
[/quote]

There is no other trace of the supposed western Gandaridae.
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Re: Freda Bedi Cont'd (#3)

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Part 2 of 2

Against this dearth of attestation there is solid testimony linking the Gandaridae with the Ganges plain. One important qualification needs to be made. Latin authors almost invariably refer to the people as Gangaridae. Why that is the case is obscure, but the fact is certain and proved by Curtius (9. 2. 3) who clearly follows the same source as Diodorus (17. 93. I) and reads Gangaridae29 [So apparently Justin, 12. 8. 9 (some manuscript variation); Metz Epit. 68 reads 'candaras'. I suspect that Vergil (Georg. 3. 27) became canonical for the Latin tradition. The form Gangaridae may even have been his creation, to suggest the Ganges as a counterpart to the Nile (Georg. 3. 29).

In gold and solid ivory, on the doors, I’ll fashion battles
with the tribes of Ganges, the weapons of victorious Quirinus,
and the Nile surging with war, in full flow,
and door columns rising up with ships in bronze.


-- Georg. 3. 27-30


If so it inevitably influenced Curtius the rhetorician, and Pompeius Trogus, who wrote immediately after Vergil.] whereas Diodorus and Plutarch refer to Gandaridae. What is more, the vulgate tradition associates both Gandaridae and Gangaridae with the Prasii,30 [The combination occurs in all branches: Diodorus, Curtius, Plutarch, Justin and the Metz Epitome. For Megasthenes' location of the Prasii around Pataliputra see Arr. Ind. 10. 5; Strabo 15. 1. 36 (702) = FGrR 715 F 18.] whom the eyewitness Megasthenes attests in the vicinity of the capital of the Ganges kingdom.

Megasthenes, who being sent by Seleukos Nikator on an embassy to Sandrakottos, the king of the Prasii, whose capital was Palibothra, wrote a work on India of such acknowledged worth that it formed the principal source whence succeeding writers drew their accounts of the country. This work, which appears to have been entitled [x], no longer exists, but it has been so often abridged and quoted by the ancient writers that we have a fair knowledge of its contents and their order of arrangement. Dr. [E.A.] Schwanbeck, with great industry and learning, has collected all the fragments that have been anywhere preserved, and has prefixed to the collection a Latin Introduction, wherein, after showing what knowledge the Greeks had acquired of India before Megasthenes, he enters into an examination of those passages in ancient works from which we derive all the little we know of Megasthenes and his Indian mission.

***

It is said that India, being of enormous size when taken as a whole, is peopled by races both numerous and diverse, of which not even one was originally of foreign descent, but all were evidently indigenous; and moreover that India neither received a colony from abroad, nor sent out a colony to any other nation. The legends further inform us that in primitive times the inhabitants subsisted on such fruits as the earth yielded spontaneously, and were clothed with the skins of the beasts found in the country, as was the case with the Greeks; and that, in like manner us with them, the arts and other appliances which improve human life were gradually invented, Necessity herself teaching them to an animal at once docile and furnished not only with hands ready to second all his efforts, but also with reason and a keen intelligence.

The men of greatest learning among the Indians tell certain legends, of which it may be proper to give a brief summary. They relate that in the most primitive times, when the people of the country were still living in villages, Dionusos made his appearance coming from the regions lying to the west, and at the head of a considerable army. He overran the whole of India, as there was no great city capable of resisting his arms. The heat, however, having become excessive, and the soldiers of Dionusos being afflicted with a pestilence, the leader, who was remarkable for his sagacity, carried his troops away from the plains up to the hills. There the army, recruited by the cool breezes and the waters that flowed fresh from the fountains, recovered from sickness. The place among the mountains where Dionusos restored his troops to health was called Meros; from which circumstance, no doubt, the Greeks have transmitted to posterity the legend concerning the god, that Dionusos was bred in his father's thigh.

Having after this turned his attention to the artificial propagation of useful plants, he communicated the secret to the Indians, and taught them the way to make wine, as well as other arts conducive to human well-being. He was, besides, the founder of large cities, which he formed by removing the villages to convenient sites, while he also showed the people how to worship the deity, and introduced laws and courts of justice. Having thus achieved altogether many great and noble works, he was regarded as a deity and gained immortal honours. It is related also of him that he led about with his army a great host of women, and employed, in marshalling his troops for battle, drums and cymbals, as the trumpet had not in his days been invented; and that after reigning over the whole of India for two and fifty years he died of old age, while his sons, succeeding to the government, transmitted the sceptre in unbroken succession to their posterity. At last, after many generations had come and gone, the sovereignty, it is said, was dissolved, and democratic governments were set up in the cities.

Such, then, are the traditions regarding Dionusos and his descendants current among the Indians who inhabit the hill-country [Librarian's Comment: Nysa, between the Cophen [Kabul] and Indus rivers.]. They further assert that Herakles also was born among them.
They assign to him, like the Greeks, the club and the lion's skin. He far surpassed other men in personal strength, and prowess, and cleared sea and land of evil beasts. Marrying many wives he begot many sons, but one daughter only. The sons having reached man's estate, he divided all India into equal portions for his children, whom he made kings in different parts of his dominions. He provided similarly for his only daughter, whom he reared up and made a queen. He was the founder, also, of no small number of cities, the most renowned and greatest of which he called Palibothra. He built therein many sumptuous palaces, and settled within its walls a numerous population. The city he fortified with trenches of notable dimensions, which were filled with water introduced from the river. Herakles, accordingly, after his removal from among men, obtained immortal honour; and his descendants, having reigned for many generations and signalized themselves by great achievements, neither made any expedition beyond the confines of India, nor sent out any colony abroad. At last, however, after many years had gone, most of the cities adopted the democratic form of government, though some retained the kingly until the invasion of the country by 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


Another eastern people who owed allegiance to the Persians were the “Thatagus” or the Sattagydians. They together with the Gandarians, the Dadicae and the Aparytae constituted the seventh satrapy. Herzfeld is inclined to regard the Sattagydians as an Indian people located in the Punjab. Rawlinson, however, thinks that they lived near the Arachosians (of Kandahar) and occupied a part of south-eastern Afghanistan. According to Sarre they are to be located in the Ghazni and Ghilzai regions. Dames placed them in the Hazara country. The exact position of the Sattagydians still remains uncertain and the matter cannot be finally decided until the discovery of fresh evidence. ...

Indian contingents fought side by side with the Persians against the Hellenic host at Guagamela. Arrian refers to three distinct groups of Indians who responded to the trumpet call of Darius III Codomanus (333-330 B.C.). The Indians who were neighbours of the Bactrians (of the Balkh region), possibly the inhabitants of Kapisi-Gandhara, were arrayed with the Bactrians themselves and the Sogdianians 'of the Samarkand territory) under the command of Bessus, the satrap of Bactria. A second group of Indians styled the ‘'Indian hill-men” or “mountaineer Indians”, possibly the Sattagydians or people of the principality of Sambos in Sind, were placed with the Arachosians (of the Kandahar area) under Bersaentes, Satrap of Arachosia. Besides these, we have pointed reference to a third group, viz. Indians on this side of the Indus, apparently those of the twentieth satrapy, who came to the help of the Persian king with a comparatively small force of fifteen elephants.

-- Age of the Nandas and Mauryas, by Hem Chandra Raychaudhuri, edited by K.A. Nilakanta Sastri


Even if one writes off this unanimous testimony as deriving from a single tainted source, there is independent corroboration in Pliny, who locates the Gangaridae explicitly on the Ganges, gives their capital (Pertalis), and adds an estimate of their army size.31 [Pliny, NR 6. 65-6. These 'Gangaridae' are mentioned immediately after the description of the Ganges, which includes Megasthenes' figure of 100 stades for its median breadth. They are termed the novissima gens [Google translate: Last race] of the Ganges; whether that implies nearest the mouth or nearest the headwaters cannot be determined. Ptolemy (Geogr. 7.1. 81) at least located the Gangaridae around the mouths of the Ganges. All this is desperately obscure but it does establish the key point that the peoples of the Gangetic plain could be termed (in whole or part) Gandaridae or Gangaridae.]

Image
Headwaters of Indus, Sutlej, Ganges, Karmali, Brahmaputra


The author next proceeds to give a short summary of the Buddhistic teachings about this world and the system of which it forms a constituent.... 
In the ocean, resting on a gold disk, is the mountain Sumeru composed of four precious substances: along its middle the sun and moon revolve and on it the Devas sojourn....

Around the Sumeru Mountain, our author continues, are seven mountains and seven seas and the water of the seas between the mountains has the "eight virtues": outside the seven Gold Mountains is the Salt Sea. In the sea (or ocean) there are, speaking summarily, four habitable Islands, viz-Pi-t'i-ha Island in the east, Chan-pu Island in the south, Ku-to-ni in the west, and Kou-lo Island in the north. The influence of a Gold-wheel king extends over these four Islands, a Silver-wheel king rules over all except the north one, a Copper-wheel king rules over the South and East Islands, and an Iron-wheel king bears sway only over Chan-pu Island. When a "Wheel-king" is about to arise a gold, silver, copper, or iron wheel, according to the Karma of the man, appears for him in the air and gives him his title while indicating the extent of his dominion.
 
In the centre of Chan-pu Island (Jambudvipa), south of the Perfume Mountain and north of the Great Snow Mountain is the A-na-p'o-ta-to (Anavatapta) Lake above 800 li in circuit. Its banks are adorned with gold, silver, lapis-lazuli, and crystal: all its sand are golden and it is pure and clear. The p'usa Ta-ti (Great-land) having by the force of his prayer become a dragon-king lives in the depths of the Lake and sends forth its pure cold water for Jambudvipa. Thus from the silver east side through the Ox Mouth flows the Ganges which after going once round the Lake flows into the south-east sea: from its gold south side through the Elephant Mouth flows the Sin-tu (Indus) which, after flowing round the Lake enters the south-west sea: from the lapis-lazuli west side through the Horse Mouth the Fo-chu (Oxus) flows passing round the Lake and then on into the north-west sea: from the crystal north side through the Lion Mouth flows the Si-to (Sita) river which goes round the Lake and then on the north-east sea. Another theory is that the Sita flows underground until it emerges at the Chi-shih ("Heaped up stones") Mountain and that it is the source of the [Yellow] River of China....
 
The A-na-p'o-ta-to (Anavatapta) Lake is here, we have seen, described as being in the middle of Jambudvipa to the south of the Perfume (that is Fragrance-intoxicating or Gandhamadana) Mountain, and north of the Great Snow (Himavat) Mountain. This is the situation ascribed to the Lake in certain sastras, but in the Chang-a-han-ching and some other authorities it is on the summit of the Great Snow Mountain. In a note to our text we are told that the Chinese translation of the name is Wu-je-nao, or "Without heat-trouble". This is the rendering used by Yuan-chuang in his translations and it is the term commonly employed by Chinese writers and translators, but the word Anavatapta means simply "unheated". It is said to have been the name of the Dragon-king of the Lake and to have been given to him because he was exempt from the fiery heat, the violent storms, and the fear of the garudas which plagued other dragons. Our pilgrim's statement that the Ganges, Indus, Oxus, and Sita (or Sita) all have their origin in this Lake is found in several Buddhist scriptures: one of these as translated by Yuan-chuang used the very words of our passage, but in two of them there are differences as to the directions in which the rivers proceed. Nagasena speaks of the water of this Lake, which he calls Anotatta daha, as flowing into the Ganges. In the early Chinese versions of Buddhist works the name is given, as in the note to our text, A-nu-ta, which evidently represents the Pali form Anotatta. Then the pilgrim mentions a supposition that the Sita had a subterranean course for a distance and that where it emerged, at the Chi-shih, "Accumulated-rocks" Mountain, it was the source of the Yellow River. The Chi-shih-shan of this theory is the Chi-shih of the Yu-kung chapter of the Shu-Ching. This Chi-shih was the place at which, according to some, the Yellow River had its source and it was a district in what is now the western part of Kansuh Province. But the term Chi-shih is also used in the sense of "mountain" as a synonym of shan.
 
It has been stated by some western writers that our pilgrim confuses the Anavatapta Lake with the Sarikul of the Pamirs, but this is not correct. Some other Chinese writers seem to make this mistake but Yuan-chuang does not. Then the Anavatapta Lake has been identified with the Manasarowar Lake of Tibet, but this cannot be accepted. We must regard the "Unheated" Lake as a thing of fairyland, as in the Earthly Paradise or Garden of Eden. It is expressly stated that the Lake could be reached only by those who had supernatural powers, the faculty of transporting themselves at will by magic. The Buddha and his arhats visited it on several occasions passing through the air from India to it in the twinkling of an eye or the raising of an arm, and down to the time of Asoka great Buddhist saints came to lodge on its banks. Here was that wonderful incense the burning of which yielded a wide-spreading perfume which released all the world from the consequences of sin. Here too was a goodly palace, and all about were strange trees and flowers through which breathed fragrant airs and birds with plaintive songs made harmony.
 
I have not discovered the source from which the pilgrim obtained his information that the dragon-king of the Anavatapta Lake was the Ta-ti or "Great-land" p'usa [Bodhisattva]. As the words of the text show, this p'usa was not the Buddha in one of his preparatory births, but a p'usa still living as the Naga-raja of the Lake. In the D text instead of Ta-ti we have Pa-Ti or "Eight-lands". This reading seems to point to some Mahayanist p'usa who had attained to eight-lands, that is eight of the ten stages to perfection.[/b][/size]
 
-- On Yuan Chwang's Travels in India, 629-645 A.D., by Thomas Watters M.R.A.S.


The appropriate conclusion is surely the reverse of that drawn by Robinson. There is no evidence that the Gandaridae were located in the Punjab, but there are several independent attestations of them in the Ganges plain. If, then, the Gazetteer mentions the Gandaridae in the context of a great river, then that river can only be the Ganges, as Diodorus makes explicit in Book 2.

If there is no eastward displacement of the Gandaridae, the case for identifying the unnamed river of Diodorus 18. 6. 2 with the Hyphasis is fatally weakened. The surrounding description is, as Robinson admits, hard to reconcile with the ancient testimony about the Hyphasis. It was certainly not the largest of the rivers in the area. Even if one limits the area in question to the western border of Alexander's conquests in the Punjab,32 [So Robinson (above, n. 8) 89: 'its description ... will have to be taken in a limited sense to mean that it is the greatest river in its own immediate area.' That is perhaps just possible, but it is not likely and is contradicted by Diodorus' own usage (cf. 2. 16. 7, where the Indus is 'the greatest of the rivers in those parts' ([x])....

What [the gazetteer] says about India, in Diodorus’ version, is this: India lies along ([x]) the Caucasus, and is a large kingdom of several peoples, the greatest of them being the Tyndaridae (or Gandaridae), whom Alexander did not attack because of their elephants. A river, the greatest in that district ([x]), 30 stades broad, divides ([x]) this country ([x]) from the India that comes next, i.e. further westward ([x]). Bordering on this country ([x]) is the rest of India which Alexander conquered ([x] above), through the middle of which runs the Indus.

-- Alexander and the Ganges, by William Woodthorpe Tarn


... and the context is clearly India as a whole: see also 17. 85. 3).] there can be no doubt that the largest river in that district was the Acesines [Chenab] whose breadth was estimated at 15 stades in the flood season (as opposed to 7 stades for the Hyphasis).33 [Arr. 5. 20. 8 = Ptolemy, FGrR 138 F 22 (the Acesines [Chenab] was the one river whose breadth was mentioned by Ptolemy). See also Strabo 15. 1. 18 (692) = Nearchus, FGrR 133 F 18; Aristobulus, FGrR 139 F 35. The width of the Hyphasis is given by Diodorus 17. 93. 1.] It was the Acesines [Chenab] which (for Alexander's men) preserved its identity through successive confluences until it reached the Indus,34 [The most important passage is Arr. 6. 14. 4-5.] and it was the Acesines [Chenab] whose flood spate impressed the Macedonians. By contrast the Hyphasis was important as the boundary of Alexander's conquests, not for its size.35 [Cf. Pliny, NH 6. 62 = FGrR 119 F 2a: the hematists made the Hyphasis the terminus of their measurements in Asia.] And, pace Robinson, it is size that Diodorus emphasizes. The boundary river was the largest in the area, which is most naturally understood as the Indian lands in their entirety, and had a width of 30 stades. Now the Ganges was agreed to be the largest Indian river, and although estimates of its width vary dramatically, there is some agreement on 30 stades.

The ancient Greeks, till even a comparatively late period in their history, possessed little, if any, real knowledge of India. It is indeed scarcely so much as mentioned by name in their greatest poets, whether epic, lyric, or dramatic....their conception of it, as we gather from the same source, was vague in the extreme. They imagined it to be in Eastern Ethiopia which stretched away to the uttermost verge of the world, and which, like the Ethiopia of the West, was inhabited by a race of men whose visages were scorched black by the fierce rays of the sun... Ktesias... who wrote somewhat later than Herodotos, frequently calls the Indians by the name of Ethiopians, and the final discrimination between the two races was not made till the Makedonian invasion gave the Western world more correct views of India. Alexander himself, as we learn from Strabo, on first reaching the Indus mistook it for the Nile... Much lies in a name, and the error made by the Greeks in thus calling India Ethiopia led them into the further error of considering as pertinent to both these countries narrations, whether of fact or fiction, which concerned but one of them exclusively. This explains why we find in Greek literature mention of peculiar or fabulous races, both of men and other animals, which existed apparently in duplicate, being represented sometimes as located in India, and sometimes in Ethiopia or the countries thereto adjacent.... it seems somewhat remarkable that they should have learned hardly anything of importance regarding it from the expeditions which were successively undertaken against it by the Egyptians under Soeostris, the Assyrians under Semiramis, and the Persians first under Kyros and afterwards under Dareios the son of Hystaspes.

-- 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


Image
"the district-area" of the Gazetteer = the border of India which Alexander conquered ("the western border of Alexander's conquests in the Punjab") = the Hyphasis/Beas north of its joining the Sutlej


The figure recurs in the vulgate tradition of Alexander's plans against the Gandaridae,36 [Diod. 17. 93. 2 (32 stades: so Plut. Al. 62. 2); Metz Epit. 68 gives 30 stades, and Curtius affords no figure.] and more seriously in Strabo (15. I. 35 (702)), who mentions 'some authors' who gave 30 stades as the minimum width of the Ganges (others made it as little as 3)37 [Strabo 15.1. 35 (702). Tarn (above, n. 5, 96) claims that 'we know of nothing to which this can refer except Diodorus' source (Cleitarchus)?' It would be more helpful to add that there is no source other than Megasthenes whom we can confidently exclude. Our ignorance is profound, and the most economical hypothesis is that several traditions gave the width of the Ganges at or around 30 stades. It is ironic that the eyewitness, Megasthenes, gives the most patently inflated figure.] and contrasts the more exaggerated estimate of Megasthenes. The description in Diodorus' Gazetteer most naturally applies to the Ganges, and the estimate of its breadth is not too inflated (according to modern measurements the width of its bed varies between 1-1/4 and 2-1/4 miles). The boundary river west of the Gandaridae looks remarkably like the Ganges, where the Gandaridae are elsewhere attested, and the exposition in the Gazetteer is practically identical to the earlier description of the Ganges in Diodorus Book 2.

There are awkwardnesses, to be sure, as is almost always the case with Diodorus. The Gazetteer purports to be a list of satrapies, but the concept of satrapy is very elastic: Lycaonia, Lycia, and Pisidia are entered as separate entities, whereas they were never more than satrapal subdivisions,38 [See, most conveniently, the characterization of Antigonus' satrapy at Triparadeisus (and Babylon), including Lycaonia, Lycia, and Pamphylia as subgroups (Arr. Succ. F 1. 37 (Roos); cf. Diod. 18.3. 1, 39. 6). Hornblower's conclusion (84) is characteristically level-headed: 'Though the word "satrapy" is used everywhere, this may be the fault of Diodorus, and the term cannot be pressed too hard.'] and there is some confusion between what is inside and outside the Empire. Armenia is included despite its dubious status and so notably is the eastern Indian kingdom, even though Diodorus makes it abundantly clear that Alexander never annexed it.

We possess one contemporary document bearing on the matter which has escaped notice, a satrapy-list or gazetteer of ‘Asia,' i.e. Alexander's empire, [‘Asia’ or ’all Asia’ means, in the later part of the fourth century, the Persian Empire which Alexander claimed to rule...]

-- Alexander and the Ganges, by William Woodthorpe Tarn


But the territory is described as a populous kingdom, and the description suits the Nanda kingdom of the Ganges, rather than the territory immediately east of the Hyphasis, which may not have been a kingdom in any sense. Indeed for Robinson the area was not a kingdom, rather the territory of the autonomous Yaudheyas, who are named by Panini and attested some centuries later between the Beas and Sutlej.39 [Robinson (above, n. 8) 98. The Yaudheyas are described as autonomous by Panini (15. 3. 117; cf. Agrawala 445). Their coins (2nd century BC to 2nd century AD) have been found in the general area between the Beas and Jumna. For a brief statement see The Oxford History of India4 (Oxford 1981) 166.] He can hardly have all the factors of his equation. If the boundary river of the Gazetteer was the Hyphasis, then there was no kingdom to the east, and if there was a kingdom to the east of the boundary river, then the river cannot have been the Hyphasis.

Begging The Question (Assuming The Answer, Tautology):

Reasoning in a circle. The thing to be proved is used as one of your assumptions. For example: "We must have a death penalty to discourage violent crime". (This assumes it discourages crime.) Or, "The stock market fell because of a technical adjustment." (But is an "adjustment" just a stock market fall?)

-- A List Of Fallacious Arguments, by Don Lindsay


Alexander asked Porus to garrison the country and himself pushed on to the Hyphasis (Beas), beyond which, it was reported, lay an exceedingly fertile country inhabited by brave agriculturists enjoying an excellent system of government under an aristocracy [Librarian's Comment: aristocratic polity with 5,000 counsellors, each of whom contributed an elephant to the commonwealth.] which exercised its power with justice and moderation; besides, the land was well stocked with elephants of superior size and courage. 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.

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


The difference between the sources, then, is a difference of perspective rather than fact. The vulgate tradition gives a fairly discursive report on the geography, manpower, and politics of the eastern kingdom, while Arrian singles out the aspects which made it a formidable adversary: agricultural wealth, a warlike population well controlled by the government, and an unparalleled number of war elephants.

-- Appendix: Alexander and the Ganges: A Question of Probability, Excerpt from Alexander and the East: The Tragedy of Triumph, by A.B. Bosworth


Next, Diodorus (18. 6. 2) makes a clean distinction between the kingdom of the east with its great boundary river and the land conquered by Alexander, which was intersected by several rivers. Diodorus' wording is obscure, and may require emendation;40 [Fischer's Teubner (followed in the Loeb) reads [[x]][x] ('irrigated by river waters'), a somewhat vacuous expression, but with some justification in Diodorus (2. 39. 3; 5. 19. 3). Goukowsky's [x] ('irrigated by the waters of five rivers') strays too far from the received reading and presupposes that Diodorus' source knew of the Sutlej (cf. Arr. 6. 14. 5, where only four Punjab rivers are named).] but on any interpretation, as Robinson concedes, what is at issue is a distinction between the multiple river system of the west and the single boundary river of the east. That boundary river cannot be the Hyphasis/Beas, which was one -- and not the most important -- of the tributaries of the Indus. It is a counsel of desperation when Robinson (92) asserts without a shred of evidence that Diodorus concluded that the Hyphasis/Beas flowed independently into the Ocean and inferred in Book 2 that his source meant the Ganges when it referred to the boundary river. On the contrary the Gazetteer can only mean the Ganges when it defines the Indians to the east of the subcontinent,41 [Tarn made much of the statement in the vulgate (Diod. 17. 93. 2; cf. Curt. 9. 2. 3; Plut. Al. 62. 2; Metz Epit. 68) that the Gandaridae were situated across the Ganges. In 1923 (above, n. 5, 95) he assumed that this meant that they were beyond the Ganges and repeated the point in 1948 (Alexander the Great ii. 281). But surely all the vulgate is signifying is the western reaches of the Ganges which extend northwards to the Himalayas. It would need to be crossed (or was conceived as being crossed) by any traveller aiming at Pataliputra, the capital of the east.] and it makes a rough distinction between the kingdom of Pataliputra and the western lands conquered by Alexander and dominated by the river system of the Indus. The west was not all overrun by the Macedonians but most of it definitely was, and there is a valid distinction between the eastern kingdom bounded by the Ganges which Alexander never attacked and the western lands which he largely overran.

Image

Alexander now advanced to the Hyphasis, or Beas, and reached it higher up than the point where it joins the Sutlej. It was destined to be the landmark of his utmost march.... On the banks of the Hyphasis the crisis came; the men resolved to go no farther...On the banks of the Hyphasis Alexander erected twelve towering altars to the twelve great gods of Olympus, as a thankoffering for having led him safely within reach of the world's end.

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


This rough distinction [Librarian's Comment: between the kingdom of Pataliputra and the western lands conquered by Alexander and dominated by the river system of the Indus.] explains the one error of fact in the recapitulation of the passage in Book 2. Diodorus carelessly states that Alexander penetrated as far as the Ganges. If the source of the Gazetteer made the Ganges the boundary of eastern India and stated loosely that Alexander conquered the lands to the west, it was easy for Diodorus to write that he took his conquests to the Ganges -- even though he is later explicit that the turning point was the Beas.

[The gazetteer] begins in 18, 6. 1 on the southern provinces, working from east to west; India therefore comes first. What it says about India, in Diodorus’ version, is this: India lies along ([x]) the Caucasus, and is a large kingdom of several peoples, the greatest of them being the Tyndaridae (or Gandaridae), whom Alexander did not attack because of their elephants. A river, the greatest in that district ([x]), 30 stades broad, divides ([x]) this country ([x]) from the India that comes next, i.e. further westward ([x]). Bordering on this country ([x]) is the rest of India which Alexander conquered ([x] above), through the middle of which runs the Indus.

That is to say, Alexander's conquests are divided from the rest of India by an unnamed river: independent India beyond this river is a single kingdom, associated with a name. Note especially that the gazetteer, like the sources used by Arrian in his narrative, does not mention the two names which play such a part in the vulgate tradition, the Ganges and the Prasii: and, looking at what the gazetteer does say about India, this shows conclusively that neither was known to its author, that is, to those about Alexander in 324/3. Alexander then can have known nothing of the Ganges or of Magadha.

-- Alexander and the Ganges, by William Woodthorpe Tarn


The inexactitude is paralleled elsewhere42 [Peripl. M. Rubr. 47 (see above, n. 27). Strabo 15. 1. 35 (702) adduces a clearly fictitious letter of Craterus which claimed that Alexander advanced to the Ganges. However, Strabo claims that the tradition was unique [x]) and that the sighting of the Ganges was its strangest point. It can hardly have been a feature of the Alexander literature. When Diodorus (17. 108. 3) mentions the army's refusal to cross the Ganges, it is a general reference to reluctance for the proposed eastern campaign; it does not entail that the army had reached the Ganges. It was a refusal in prospect. So too in Plut. Al. 62. 2 where the Macedonians resist Alexander's forcing them to cross the Ganges. It is a flight of rhetoric but not misleading -- hardly 'the worst chapter he ever wrote' (Tarn, Alexander the Great ii. 281 n. 5).] and easily comprehensible. The misunderstanding, moreover, presupposes that Diodorus was working with a single source, not conflating material from the Gazetteer and the report of the eastern kingdom which he includes in Book 17. The latter report is embedded in the context of the return from the Hyphasis, and the Hyphasis is explicitly mentioned in the previous sentence (17. 93. I). If he were working with that source in Book 2, he was unlikely to have concluded that Alexander reached the Ganges. The fact that his figures for the elephant army of the Gandaridae are exactly those he gives in Book 17 43 [Diod. 2. 37. 3; 17. 93. 2. No number is given at 18. 6. 2.] need only imply that the sources were in relative agreement. The description of the elephants, 'decked out for war', is practically a stock theme in Diodorus, and recurs in the account of Alexander's funeral carriage in Book 18;44 [ Diod. 18. 27. I. Cf. Diod. 31. 8. 12. One should never underestimate Diodorus' penchant for repetition.] it certainly does not imply that Diodorus combined two separate narrative strands.

Indeed there is a fatal objection to the hypothesis of conflation. In the vulgate tradition the reports of the eastern kingdom whet Alexander's appetite for conquest and it is the resistance of the troops which forces him to abandon the project.45 [Diod. 17. 93. 4, 94. 5; Curt. 9. 2. 9-10; Plut. Al. 62. 2.] In the other tradition the king considers discretion the better part of valour, and decides against attacking such a formidable army.46 [Diod. 18. 6. I; 2. 37. 3. It is likely enough that Hieronymus contracted his reference to the proceedings and obscured the fact that the king's decision was forced upon him by his troops, but it is most improbable that Diodorus twice omitted all reference to the Macedonian resistance, which he described in detail at 17. 94. This distinction is slurred over by Hornblower, Hieronymus 86.] This is a fundamental contradiction. It should also be noted that in Books 2 and 18 the Gandaridae stand alone, whereas in the vulgate they are associated with the Prasii. Diodorus clearly used two distinct sources. In Book 17 he worked from the vulgate (Cleitarchus?), whereas the two other passages, in Book 2 and Book 18, derive from a single authority, most probably Hieronymus of Cardia. The two traditions have some measure of agreement, on the width of the Ganges and the number of elephants at the disposal of the Gandaridae. Above all they are categorical that Alexander conceived and abandoned plans of attacking the Gangetic plain.

We can now address the account of Arrian, which prima facie contradicts the rest of the tradition. His narrative of events at the Hyphasis is schematic, dominated by the interplay between Alexander and his troops. The reports of conditions beyond the Hyphasis are brief and vague: the land was rich, its inhabitants good at agriculture and excellently governed, the commons held in check by the enlightened rule of the best men.47 [The passage is derived from one of Arrian's narrative sources. The most popular candidate is Aristobulus (Strasburger, Studien i. 130; Kienast (above, n. 7) 181). Kornemann 79 adjudged the context 'pure Ptolemy'. All that can be said is that it is 'pure Arrian', and, as usual, its provenance is impossible to determine.] Their elephants far exceeded in number those possessed by the other Indians, and they excelled in size and courage (Arr. 5. 25. I). This description contains not a single ethnic name, nor a single geographical pointer except that the territory lay to the east of the Hyphasis. Kienast assumed without question that Arrian was referring only to the lands immediately east of the river ('unmittelbar jenseits des Hyphasis'). [Google translate: immediately beyond the hyphasis.] 48 [Kienast 181, cf. 188. Schachermeyr (above, n. 4) 132 n. 28 had already undermined the assumption in trenchant style: 'Das [x] ... muss ebenso wenig "unmittelbar am anderen Ufer" bedeuten, wie wenn man heute von "jenseits des Kanals", "jenseits des Ozean" usw. spricht.' [Google translate: 'The [x] ... doesn't have to be either "immediately on the other bank" mean, as if one were today from "beyond the Channel", "across the ocean" etc. speaks.' ]] However, he did not add that Arrian's information is largely repeated in an unnamed authority used by Strabo, which reported an aristocratic polity with 5,000 counsellors, each of whom contributed an elephant to the commonwealth.49 [Strabo 15. I. 37 (702). Cf. Robinson (above, n. 8) 98, suggesting Aristobulus as a common source. That is certainly a possibility, but Strabo may derive from some other authority (Onesicritus?), which gave similar details to those in Arrian but reported the 'facts' independently.] These numbers are even larger than those in the vulgate, and presuppose a catchment area much more extensive than the lands immediately east of the Hyphasis. One may, of course, deny that there is a common source, but one cannot artificially restrict the range of Arrian's description. He is not here interested in the geography but in the valour and virtue of the intended enemy and in the huge number of elephants. That in itself was sufficient to dampen the spirits of the rank-and-file (Arr. 5. 25. 2).

The absence of any geographical limit may mean that Arrian's source was equally unforthcoming, but we cannot assume it. Indeed in the speech which is placed in Alexander's mouth Arrian has the king claim that the Ganges and the eastern ocean are relatively close.50 [Arr. 5. 26. I: On the nature and derivation of the Hyphasis speeches see most fully Bosworth (above, n. 18) 123-34, esp. 129-30. More recently N. G. L. Hammond, Sources for Alexander the Great (Cambridge 1993) 258-5), has argued that they were 'based on speeches incorporated in their histories by Ptolemy and Aristobulus'. If this were accepted (and I find it frankly incredible), it would entail that the first-generation historians did refer explicitly to the Ganges and credited Alexander with knowledge of the river.] Not a great deal can hinge upon this. The speeches which Arrian presents here are very elaborate rhetorical constructions, blending diverse and inconsistent material. The sentence after the reference to the Ganges continues with an anachronistic echo of Eratosthenes' doctrine of the gulfs of Ocean,51 [In his last year Alexander was agnostic on the Caspian question and commissioned an expedition to determine whether or not it was a gulf of Ocean (7. 16. 1-2). Previously he had accepted the theory that the Iaxartes and Tanais (Syr-Darya and Don) were connected, a theory which entailed that the Caspian was an enclosed sea. This is obscured by Hammond, Sources 258: Arr. 3. 29. 2 and 5. 5. 4 represent Arrian's view (from Eratosthenes) not Alexander's.] and the reference to the Ganges may be equally misplaced, the product of later rhetorical fantasy. But one could also argue that the Ganges was mentioned in Arrian's narrative sources and held in reserve for the speech.52 [That again was Schachermeyr's suggestion (above, n. 4, 132): 'da es der Autor wohl zu vermeiden wusste, die Erwahnung des Ganges zweimal zu bringen'. [Google translate: 'since it's the author probably knew how to avoid bringing the mention of the Ganges twice'.] It is not the best argument, for repetition of narrative detail is a feature of Arrian's speeches. Reservation of source material for the speeches is more a trait of Curtius Rufus.] It certainly tells in favour of Arrian's sources having mentioned the Ganges or given an account not inconsistent with its having been Alexander's objective.

The crux is the apparent divergence of fact between Arrian and the vulgate tradition. The vulgate presents us with a kingdom and a somewhat unimpressive king named Xandrames.53 [Diod. 17. 93. 2-3; Curtius 9. 2. 3, 6-7; Metz Epit. 68; cf. Pluto Al. 62. 9.] Arrian has nothing about a king but describes a regime controlled by the best men. Are these accounts mutually exclusive? Perhaps not. A central monarchy may still tolerate aristocratic government within its constituent communities, provided that it can control the aristoi.

Having thus achieved altogether many great and noble works, [Dionusos] was regarded as a deity and gained immortal honours. It is related also of him that he led about with his army a great host of women, and employed, in marshalling his troops for battle, drums and cymbals, as the trumpet had not in his days been invented; and that after reigning over the whole of India for two and fifty years he died of old ago, while his sons, succeeding to the government, transmitted the sceptre in unbroken succession to their posterity. At last, after many generations had come and gone, the sovereignty, it is said, was dissolved, and democratic governments were set up in the cities.


***

Marrying many wives [Herakles] begot many sons, but one daughter only. The sons having reached man's estate, he divided all India into equal portions for his children, whom he made kings in different parts of his dominions. He provided similarly for his only daughter, whom he reared up and made a queen. He was the founder, also, of no small number of cities, the most renowned and greatest of which he called Palibothra.... Herakles, accordingly, after his removal from among men, obtained immortal honour; and his descendants, having reigned for many generations and signalized themselves by great achievements, neither made any expedition beyond the confines of India, nor sent out any colony abroad. At last, however, after many years had gone, most of the cities adopted the democratic form of government, though some retained the kingly until the invasion of the country by 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


Now there is nothing either in Arrian or in Strabo to suggest that the peoples they describe were autonomous. Elsewhere that is explicitly stated of the numerous Aratta peoples [Librarian's Comment: a people aristocratically governed] between the Acesines and Hyphasis.54 [ Arr. 5. 20. 6, 21. 5, 22.1-2, 24. 6, 8; 6. 6. I, II. 3, 15. 1, 21. 3; cf. Ind. II. 9, 12. 5-6.] The Ksudrakas (Oxydracae) of the Rechna Doab boast of their freedom and autonomy and are ruled by an aristocracy.55 [Arr. 6. 14. 1-2: the Oxydracae are represented by nomarchs and city rulers, backed by 150 of their notables, and they stress their freedom and autonomy, continuous since the time of Dionysus.] The same is said of the state of Nysa in the mountains of Bajaur. The language used of its polity echoes what Arrian says of the peoples east of the Hyphasis -- but Nysa is specifically termed free and autonomous.56 [Arr. 5. 1. 5-6 ; cf. 2. 2.] It may be sheer chance that Arrian does not state that the eastern Indians were also free, but on the other hand the omission could be significant. Arrian's description is compatible with a paramount regal authority. That, according to Megasthenes, was the situation in the Mauryan kingdom in the generation after Alexander, under the enlightened rule of Chandragupta. The king's counsellors were noted for their wisdom and justice, and it was from their number that their local rulers were selected.57 [Ind. 12. 6-7; Strabo 15. 1. 49 (707) = Megasthenes, FGrH 715 F 19.] They were a small class but the most distinguished in birth and intelligence, and they acted as judges and administrators of the masses.58 [Diod. 2. 41. 4 (= FGrH 715 F 4). Cf. Pliny NH 6. 66: 'res publicas optumi ditissimique temperant, iudicia reddunt, regibus adsident.' [Google translate: 'Public grams learned controlling decisions reflect kings had been sitting.']] This might almost be Arrian's description of the peoples beyond the Hyphasis. He concentrates on the intermediate level of counsellors and ignores the monarch. There were good compositional reasons for doing so. Arrian is concerned to explain the reluctance of the Macedonians and stresses the formidable nature of the opposition they faced. A weak, unpopular king, as Xandrames is portrayed in the vulgate, was not particularly to be feared, but the local governors, men of integrity and intelligence, certainly were. Their local administration proved their quality and made them worthy opponents of Alexander, proper objects of fear for his troops. The difference between the sources, then, is a difference of perspective rather than fact. The vulgate tradition gives a fairly discursive report on the geography, manpower, and politics of the eastern kingdom, while Arrian singles out the aspects which made it a formidable adversary: agricultural wealth, a warlike population well controlled by the government, and an unparalleled number of war elephants. The two traditions are complementary, not contradictory.

We may now conclude. There is a strong source tradition attesting that Alexander was informed about the Gangetic plain, its population, and its government. The vulgate tradition preserves the substance of detailed reports made by friendly princes in the Punjab, reports which encouraged him to invade.59 [On their substantial accuracy see above, Ch. 3.] Another tradition, based on Hieronymus of Cardia, also records the size of the Gangetic elephant army and insinuates that Alexander was deterred from invasion. In both cases the reports are connected with the retreat from the Hyphasis. For Hieronymus they were the ultimate cause of the retreat: Alexander made a prudential decision not to invade the eastern lands. For the vulgate it was his troops who were reluctant to advance. The latter theme is expanded by Arrian who gives no names but writes generally of the elephants, warlike population, and good internal government of the territory east of the Hyphasis. He supplies extra detail but does not directly contradict the other sources. What is more, the source tradition blends perfectly with all rational arguments from probability. There was a centralized monarchy in the Ganges plain and its king was weak and unpopular. Alexander had been in the Punjab for several months by the time he reached the Hyphasis, and he enjoyed the society of the rulers of the area. Is it credible that they knew nothing of the lands to the east or that they kept the knowledge to themselves? What is more, if it is true that the 'bad' Porus took refuge with the Gandaridae of the east, then the name would have come to Alexander's attention before he reached the Hyphasis, and further enquiries were practically inevitable. The sceptical view by contrast involves accepting a chain of remotely possible alternatives. Alexander may not have enquired carefully about conditions in the east. He may not have been informed about the Ganges kingdom. The tradition that he did may be the result of later imaginative embroidery. However, each of these probabilities is small, the cumulative probability infinitesimal. It is surely preferable, for once, to accept what the sources say.
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Re: Freda Bedi Cont'd (#3)

Postby admin » Sat Jul 17, 2021 11:55 pm

What is meant by “Nysa” in the Lusiads?
by "Verbose" [dumb English major trying to reinvent himself as a coder"
literature.stackexchange.com
March 28, 2021

The following verse appears in Book 1 of The Lusiads (William Mickle's translation, 1877 edition; emphasis mine):

So spoke high Jove: the gods in silence heard,
Then rising, each by turns his thoughts preferr’d
But chief was Bacchus of the adverse train;
Fearful he was, nor fear’d his pride in vain,
Should Lusus’ race arrive on India’s shore,
His ancient honours would be known no more;
No more in Nysa should the native tell
What kings, what mighty hosts before him fell.

The fertile vales beneath the rising sun
He view’d as his, by right of victory won,
And deem’d that ever in immortal song
The Conqueror’s title should to him belong.
Yet Fate, he knew, had will’d, that loos’d from Spain
Boldly advent’rous thro’ the polar main,
A warlike race. should come, renown’d in arms,
And shake the eastern world with war’s alarms,
Whose glorious conquests and eternal fame
In black Oblivion’s waves should whelm his name.


A footnote (presumably written by Mickle?) explains Nysa as "An ancient city in India sacred to Bacchus." As far as I know, the culture that worshipped Bacchus/Dionysus never made it as far as India (Alexander the Great had some campaigns in India but never conquered any significant part of it?) Maybe The Lusiads, or Mickle, uses a different meaning of "India" from what I'm assuming, referring to a broader area in Asia than the present-day country of India, but the ancient cities named Nysa that I can find all seem to be in Greece or Turkey, surely too far west to be called "India".

Where is this Nysa, and why was it said to be sacred to Bacchus?


The Roman god Bacchus and his Greek counterpart Dionysos have long been associated with Nysa.

Megasthenes, who being sent by Seleukos Nikator on an embassy to Sandrakottos, the king of the Prasii, whose capital was Palibothra, wrote a work on India of such acknowledged worth that it formed the principal source whence succeeding writers drew their accounts of the country. This work, which appears to have been entitled [x], no longer exists, but it has been so often abridged and quoted by the ancient writers that we have a fair knowledge of its contents and their order of arrangement. Dr. [E.A.] Schwanbeck, with great industry and learning, has collected all the fragments that have been anywhere preserved, and has prefixed to the collection a Latin Introduction, wherein, after showing what knowledge the Greeks had acquired of India before Megasthenes, he enters into an examination of those passages in ancient works from which we derive all the little we know of Megasthenes and his Indian mission.

***

It is said that India, being of enormous size when taken as a whole, is peopled by races both numerous and diverse, of which not even one was originally of foreign descent, but all were evidently indigenous; and moreover that India neither received a colony from abroad, nor sent out a colony to any other nation. The legends further inform us that in primitive times the inhabitants subsisted on such fruits as the earth yielded spontaneously, and were clothed with the skins of the beasts found in the country, as was the case with the Greeks; and that, in like manner us with them, the arts and other appliances which improve human life were gradually invented, Necessity herself teaching them to an animal at once docile and furnished not only with hands ready to second all his efforts, but also with reason and a keen intelligence.

The men of greatest learning among the Indians tell certain legends, of which it may be proper to give a brief summary. They relate that in the most primitive times, when the people of the country were still living in villages, Dionusos made his appearance coming from the regions lying to the west, and at the head of a considerable army. He overran the whole of India, as there was no great city capable of resisting his arms. The heat, however, having become excessive, and the soldiers of Dionusos being afflicted with a pestilence, the leader, who was remarkable for his sagacity, carried his troops away from the plains up to the hills. There the army, recruited by the cool breezes and the waters that flowed fresh from the fountains, recovered from sickness. The place among the mountains where Dionusos restored his troops to health was called Meros; from which circumstance, no doubt, the Greeks have transmitted to posterity the legend concerning the god, that Dionusos was bred in his father's thigh.

Having after this turned his attention to the artificial propagation of useful plants, he communicated the secret to the Indians, and taught them the way to make wine, as well as other arts conducive to human well-being. He was, besides, the founder of large cities, which he formed by removing the villages to convenient sites, while he also showed the people how to worship the deity, and introduced laws and courts of justice. Having thus achieved altogether many great and noble works, he was regarded as a deity and gained immortal honours. It is related also of him that he led about with his army a great host of women, and employed, in marshalling his troops for battle, drums and cymbals, as the trumpet had not in his days been invented; and that after reigning over the whole of India for two and fifty years he died of old age, while his sons, succeeding to the government, transmitted the sceptre in unbroken succession to their posterity. At last, after many generations had come and gone, the sovereignty, it is said, was dissolved, and democratic governments were set up in the cities.

Such, then, are the traditions regarding Dionusos and his descendants current among the Indians who inhabit the hill-country [Librarian's Comment: Nysa, between the Cophen/Kabul and Indus rivers]. They further assert that Herakles also was born among them.
They assign to him, like the Greeks, the club and the lion's skin. He far surpassed other men in personal strength, and prowess, and cleared sea and land of evil beasts. Marrying many wives he begot many sons, but one daughter only. The sons having reached man's estate, he divided all India into equal portions for his children, whom he made kings in different parts of his dominions. He provided similarly for his only daughter, whom he reared up and made a queen. He was the founder, also, of no small number of cities, the most renowned and greatest of which he called Palibothra. He built therein many sumptuous palaces, and settled within its walls a numerous population. The city he fortified with trenches of notable dimensions, which were filled with water introduced from the river. Herakles, accordingly, after his removal from among men, obtained immortal honour; and his descendants, having reigned for many generations and signalized themselves by great achievements, neither made any expedition beyond the confines of India, nor sent out any colony abroad. At last, however, after many years had gone, most of the cities adopted the democratic form of government, though some retained the kingly until the invasion of the country by 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


The names Dionysos and Nysa are said to be etymologically related, though the exact connection is unclear.

Bacchus / Dionysos was the son of Jupiter and Semele. The pregnant Semele unwisely asked to see Jupiter in his flaming form, the sight causing her to burn to death. Jupiter rescued the embryonic Bacchus by placing him in his thigh to develop until birth. When Bacchus was born, Jupiter turned him over to the Nysiads, Oceanic nymphs, to raise. The Nysiads were associated with the mythic mount Nysa.

In the Iliad, Homer refers to Dionysos and associates him with this mountain. The speaker is Diomedes, stating his refusal to fight against any of the gods, as any victory against them is Pyrrhic:

οὐδὲ γὰρ οὐδὲ Δρύαντος υἱὸς κρατερὸς Λυκόοργος
δὴν ἦν, ὅς ῥα θεοῖσιν ἐπουρανίοισιν ἔριζεν:
ὅς ποτε μαινομένοιο Διωνύσοιο τιθήνας
σεῦε κατ' ἠγάθεον Νυσήϊον: αἳ δ' ἅμα πᾶσαι
θύσθλα χαμαὶ κατέχευαν ὑπ' ἀνδροφόνοιο Λυκούργου (6.130–134)


In Stanley Lombardo's translation:

Not even mighty Lycurgus lived long
After he tangled with the immortals,
Driving the nurses of Dionysus
Down over the Mountain of Nysa
And making them drop their wands
As he beat them with an ox-goad. (p. 116)


Since the worship of Dionysos entered Greece from either Asia Minor or neighboring Thrace, the god was associated with the east. Different mythographers located Nysa in different parts of Asia: Turkey, Arabia, or India. For ancient geographers, India meant the entire subcontinent east of the Hindu Kush and south of the Himalayas; this includes part of present-day Afghanistan as well as all of Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, Nepal, Bhutan, and Sri Lanka.

Mythopoeic impulses during the time of Alexander the Great (356 BCE–323 BCE) associated the conquerer with Hercules, but W. J. Woodhouse observes that as his army moved eastward he began to be equated with Bacchus as well. Alexander made it as far as northwest India, leading to the belief that Bacchus was the conquerer of that land:

The triumphant irresistible bursting of Alexander the Great into the secrets of the Far East naturally appealed to the imagination of his generation as a sort of fabled progress of Bacchus through those same regions. The exploits of Alexander it was that give birth to the legend of the conquest of India and the East by Dionysus, rather than the converse; and the imagination of court flatterers was exercised to provide divine prototypes of Alexander's achievements. Being himself reputed son of Zeus-Ammon, and Dionysos also being, in some stories, a son of Ammon, it was altogether suitable that Alexander should tread literally in the footsteps of his divine predecessor, and at last come upon that very city of Nysa which had existed in the imagination of so many generations as built by Dionysos for his wearied Bacchanals, and upon that same Mt. Mēros on which his troops had refreshed themselves amid its ivy and laurels. (p. 428, internal citation omitted, emphasis added.)


Mēros is the ancient Greek for thigh. Mythopoeists of Alexander's time equated Meros with Meru, a mythical mountain that is considered the center of the universe in Hindu, Buddhist, and Jain cosmology. The connection between Bacchus' birth from Jupiter's thigh and the name of this mountain proved irresistible. In The Anabasis of Alexander, the 2nd C CE historian Arrian relates the how Alexander reached Nysa and was greeted by its citizens. Arrian is rather skeptical that the Dionysos referred to is the god:

In this country, lying between the rivers Cophen and Indus, which was traversed by Alexander, the city of Nysa is said to be situated. The report is, that its foundation was the work of Dionysus, who built it after he had subjugated the Indians. But it is impossible to determine who this Dionysus was, and at what time, or from what quarter he led an army against the Indians. For I am unable to decide whether the Theban Dionysus, starting from Thebes or from the Lydian Tmolus came into India at the head of an army, and after traversing the territories of so many warlike nations, unknown to the Greeks of that time, forcibly subjugated none of them except that of the Indians. But I do not think we ought to make a minute examination of the legends which were promulgated in ancient times about the divinity; for things which are not credible to the man who examines them according to the rule of probability, do not appear to be wholly incredible, if one adds the divine agency to the story. When Alexander came to Nysa the citizens sent out to him their president, whose name was Acuphis, accompanied by thirty of their most distinguished men as envoys, to entreat Alexander to leave their city free for the sake of the god. The envoys entered Alexander's tent and found him seated in his armour still covered with dust from the journey, with his helmet on his head, and holding his spear in his hand. When they beheld the sight they were struck with astonishment, and falling to the earth remained silent a long time. But when Alexander caused them to rise, and bade them be of good courage, then at length Acuphis began thus to speak: "The Nysaeans beseech thee, king, out of respect for Dionysus, to allow them to remain free and independent; for when Dionysus had subjugated the nation of the Indians, and was returning to the Grecian sea, he founded this city from the soldiers who had become unfit for military service, and were under his inspiration as Bacchanals, so that it might be a monument both of his wandering and of his victory, to men of after times; just as thou also hast founded Alexandria near mount Caucasus, and another Alexandria in the country of the Egyptians. Many other cities thou hast already founded, and others thou wilt found hereafter, in the course of time, inasmuch as thou hast achieved more exploits than Dionysus. The god indeed called the city Nysa, and the land Nysaea after his nurse Nysa. The mountain also which is near the city he named Meros (i.e. thigh), because, according to the legend, he grew in the thigh of Zeus. From that time we inhabit Nysa, a free city, and we ourselves are independent, conducting our government with constitutional order. And let this be to thee a proof that our city owes its foundation to Dionysus; for ivy, which does not grow in the rest of the country of India, grows among us." (V.1)


Pleased that he had reached as far as Dionysos, Alexander granted the Nysians their wish and allowed their city to remain "free and independent."

We can now address the account of Arrian, which prima facie contradicts the rest of the tradition... The reports of conditions beyond the Hyphasis are brief and vague: the land was rich, its inhabitants good at agriculture and excellently governed, the commons held in check by the enlightened rule of the best men. Their elephants far exceeded in number those possessed by the other Indians, and they excelled in size and courage. This description contains not a single ethnic name, nor a single geographical pointer except that the territory lay to the east of the Hyphasis... Arrian's information is largely repeated in an unnamed authority used by Strabo, which reported an aristocratic polity with 5,000 counsellors, each of whom contributed an elephant to the commonwealth. These numbers are even larger than those in the vulgate, and presuppose a catchment area much more extensive than the lands immediately east of the Hyphasis.

The absence of any geographical limit may mean that Arrian's source was equally unforthcoming, but we cannot assume it. Indeed in the speech which is placed in Alexander's mouth Arrian has the king claim that the Ganges and the eastern ocean are relatively close. Not a great deal can hinge upon this. The speeches which Arrian presents here are very elaborate rhetorical constructions, blending diverse and inconsistent material... and the reference to the Ganges may be equally misplaced, the product of later rhetorical fantasy. But one could also argue that the Ganges was mentioned in Arrian's narrative sources and held in reserve for the speech. It certainly tells in favour of Arrian's sources having mentioned the Ganges or given an account not inconsistent with its having been Alexander's objective.

The crux is the apparent divergence of fact between Arrian and the vulgate tradition. The vulgate presents us with a kingdom and a somewhat unimpressive king named Xandrames. Arrian has nothing about a king but describes a regime controlled by the best men. Are these accounts mutually exclusive? Perhaps not. A central monarchy may still tolerate aristocratic government within its constituent communities, provided that it can control the aristoi.

Now there is nothing either in Arrian or in Strabo to suggest that the peoples they describe were autonomous. Elsewhere that is explicitly stated of the numerous Aratta peoples [people aristocratically governed] between the Acesines and Hyphasis. The Ksudrakas (Oxydracae) of the Rechna Doab boast of their freedom and autonomy and are ruled by an aristocracy. The same is said of the state of Nysa in the mountains of Bajaur. The language used of its polity echoes what Arrian says of the peoples east of the Hyphasis -- but Nysa is specifically termed free and autonomous. It may be sheer chance that Arrian does not state that the eastern Indians were also free, but on the other hand the omission could be significant. Arrian's description is compatible with a paramount regal authority. That, according to Megasthenes, was the situation in the Mauryan kingdom in the generation after Alexander, under the enlightened rule of Chandragupta. The king's counsellors were noted for their wisdom and justice, and it was from their number that their local rulers were selected. They were a small class but the most distinguished in birth and intelligence, and they acted as judges and administrators of the masses. This might almost be Arrian's description of the peoples beyond the Hyphasis. He concentrates on the intermediate level of counsellors and ignores the monarch. There were good compositional reasons for doing so. Arrian is concerned to explain the reluctance of the Macedonians and stresses the formidable nature of the opposition they faced. A weak, unpopular king, as Xandrames is portrayed in the vulgate, was not particularly to be feared, but the local governors, men of integrity and intelligence, certainly were. Their local administration proved their quality and made them worthy opponents of Alexander, proper objects of fear for his troops. The difference between the sources, then, is a difference of perspective rather than fact. The vulgate tradition gives a fairly discursive report on the geography, manpower, and politics of the eastern kingdom, while Arrian singles out the aspects which made it a formidable adversary: agricultural wealth, a warlike population well controlled by the government, and an unparalleled number of war elephants. The two traditions are complementary, not contradictory.

-- Appendix: Alexander and the Ganges: A Question of Probability, Excerpt from Alexander and the East: The Tragedy of Triumph, by A.B. Bosworth


He then took his army on a picnic to the fabled mountain:

He was now seized with a strong desire of seeing the place where the Nysaeans boasted to have certain memorials of Dionysus. So he went to Mount Merus with the Companion cavalry and the foot guard, and saw the mountain, which was quite covered with ivy and laurel and groves thickly shaded with all sorts of timber, and on it were chases of all kinds of wild animals. The Macedonians were delighted at seeing the ivy, as they had not seen any for a long time; for in the land of the Indians there was no ivy, even where they had vines. They eagerly made garlands of it, and crowned themselves with them, as they were, singing hymns in. honour of Dionysus, and invoking the deity by his various names. Alexander there offered sacrifice to Dionysus, and feasted in company with his companions. (V.2)


This city of Nysa has been identified with a couple of sites in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Ptolemy mentions a city named Nagara, also known as Dionysopolis; both this name and Nagara's location between the Cophen [Kabul] and Indus rivers make it a strong candidate. The exact location of Nagara is not known, but it is associated with an archaeological site known as Nagara Ghundi, about four miles from Jalalabad in Afghanistan. The present-day city of Nisatta in Pakistan, some 100 miles away from Jalalabad, is another viable candidate.

Some 300 years after Arrian (and 800 years after Alexander's time), the Hellenistic poet Nonnus wrote an epic poem, the Dionysiaca, which narrates the life of Dionysos, his conquest of India, and his return to the West. Nonnus, however, situates Nysa in Arabia.

References (except Wikipedia)

• Arrian. The Anabasis of Alexander. Trans. E. J. Chinnock. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1884. Wikisource. Accessed 27 March 2021.

• Ball, Warwick. "Nagara Ghundi." Archaeological Gazetteer of Afghanistan, n. 756. 1982. Cultural Property Training Institute, Afghanistan. aiamilitarypanel.org. Accessed 27 March 2021.

• Black, John. "Mount Meru: Hell and Paradise on One Mountain." 3 April 2013. ancient-origins.net. Accessed 27 March 2021.

• Homer. Iliad. Trans. Stanley Lombardo. Intro. Sheila Murnaghan. Indianapolis: Hackett, 1997.

• ———. The Iliad. The Chicago Homer. Accessed 27 March 2021.

"Nisatta." Jatland.com. Accessed 27 March 2021.

• Dionysiaca. Trans. W. H. D. Rowse. Loeb Classical Library. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1940–1942. 3 vols: one two three. Archive.org. Accessed 27 March 2021.

• Woodhouse, W. J. "Nysa". pp. 427–428. Encyclopædia of Religion and Ethics, ed. James Hastings. Vol. IX, Mundas–Phrygians. pp. 427–428. Google Books. Accessed 27 March 2021.
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Part 1 of 2

The Credibility of Early Roman History
by Samuel Ball Platner
The American Historical Review, Vol. 7, No. 2. pp. 233-253
January, 1902

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THE PREFACE.

It is a maxim in the science of legislation and government, that Laws are of no avail without manners, or, to explain the sentence more fully, that the best intended legislative provisions would have no beneficial effect even at first, and none at all in a short course of time, unless they were congenial to the disposition and habits, to the religious prejudices, and approved immemorial usages of the people for whom they were enabled; especially if that people universally and sincerely believed, that all their ancient usages and established rules of conduct had the sanction of an actual revelation from heaven: the legislature of Britain having shown, in compliance with this maxim, an intention to leave the natives of these Indian provinces in possession of their own Laws, at least on the titles of contracts and inheritances, we may humbly presume, that all future provisions, for the administration of justice and government in India, will be conformable, as far as the natives are affected by them, to the manners and opinions of the natives themselves; an object which cannot possibly be attained, until those manners and opinions can be fully and accurately known. These considerations, and a few others more immediately within my province, were my principal motives for wishing to know, and have induced me at length to publish, that system of duties, religious and civil, and of law in all its branches, which the Hindus firmly believe to have been promulged in the beginning of time by Menu, son or grandson of Brahma, or, in plain language, the first of created beings, and not the oldest only, but the holiest of legislators; a system so comprehensive and so minutely exact, that it may be considered as the Institutes of Hindu Law, preparatory to the copious Digest, which has lately been compiled by Pandits of eminent learning, and introductory perhaps to a Code which may supply the many natural defects in the old jurisprudence of this country, and, without any deviation from its principles, accommodate it justly to the improvements of a commercial age.

We are lost in an inextricable labyrinth of imaginary astronomical cycles, Yugas, Mahayugas, Calpas, and Menwantaras, in attempting to calculate the time, when the first Menu, according to the Brahmens, governed this world, and became the progenitor of mankind
, who from him are called Manavah; nor can we, so clouded are the old history and chronology of India with fables and allegories, ascertain the precise age, when the work, now presented to the Publick, was actually composed; but we are in possession of some evidence, partly extrinsick and partly internal, that it is really one of the oldest compositions existing. From a text of Parasara discovered by Mr. Davis, it appears, that the vernal equinox had gone back from the tenth degree of Bharani to the first of Aswini, or twenty-three degrees and twenty minutes, between the days of that Indian philosopher, and the year of our Lord 499, when it coincided with the origin of the Hindu ecliptick; so that Parasara probably flourished near the close of the twelfth century before Christ; now Parasara was the grandson of another sage, named Vasishtha, who is often mentioned in the laws of Menu, and once as contemporary with the divine Bhrigu himself; but the character of Bhrigu, and the whole dramatical arrangement of the book before us, are clearly fictitious and ornamental, with a design, too common among ancient lawgivers, of stamping authority on the work by the introduction of supernatural personages, though Vasishtha may have lived many generations before the actual writer of it, who names him, indeed, in one or two places as a philosopher in an earlier period. The style, however, and metre of this work (which there is not the smallest reason to think affectedly obsolete) are widely different from the language and metrical rules of Calida's, who unquestionably wrote before the beginning of our era; and the dialect of Menu is even observed, in many passages, to resemble that of the Veda, particularly in a departure from the more modern grammatical forms; whence it must, at first view, seem very probable, that the laws, now brought to light, were considerably older than those of Solon or even of Lycurgus, although the promulgation of them, before they were reduced to writing, might have been coeval with the first monarchies established in Egypt or Asia: but, having had the singular good fortune to procure ancient copies of eleven Upanishads, with a very perspicuous comment, I am enabled to fix, with more exactness, the probable age of the work before us, and even to limit its highest possible age by a mode of reasoning, which may be thought new, but will be found, I persuade myself, satisfactory; if the Publick shall, on this occasion, give me credit for a few very curious facts, which, though capable of strict proof, can at present be only asserted. The Sanscrit of the three first Vedas, (I need not here speak of the fourth) that of the Manava Dherma Sastra, and that of the Paranas, differ from each other in pretty exact proportion to the Latin of Numa, from whose laws entire sentences are preserved, that of Appius, which we see in the fragments of the Twelve Tables, and that of Cicero, or of Lucretius, where he has not affected an obsolete style: if the several changes, therefore, of Sanscrit and Latin took place, as we may fairly assume, in times very nearly proportional, the Vedas must have been written about 300 years before these Institutes, and about 600 before the Puranas and Itihasas, which, I am fully convinced, were not the productions of Vyasa; so that, if the son of Parasara committed the traditional Vedas to writing in the Sanscrit of his father’s time, the original of this book must have received its present form about 880 years before Christ’s birth. If the texts, indeed, which Vyasa collected, had been actually written in a much older dialect, by the sages preceding him, we must inquire into the greatest possible age of the Vedas themselves: now one of the longest and finest Upanishads in the second Veda contains three lists, in a regular series upwards, of at most forty-two pupils and preceptors, who successively received and transmitted (probably by oral tradition) the doctrines contained in that Upanishad; and as the old Indian priests were students at fifteen, and instructors at twenty-five, we cannot allow more than ten years, on an average, for each interval between the respective traditions; whence, as there are forty such intervals, in two of the lists between Vyasa, who arranged the whole work, and Ayasya, who is extolled at the beginning of it, and just as many, in the third list, between the compiler and Yajnyawalcya, who makes the principal figure in it, we find the highest age of the Yajur Veda to be 1580 years before the birth of our Saviour, (which would make it older than the five books of Moses) and that of our Indian law tract about 1280 years before the same epoch. The former date, however, seems the more probable of the two, because the Hindu sages are said to have delivered their knowledge orally, and the very word Sruta, which we often see used for the Veda itself, means what was heard; not to insist that Culluca expressly declares the sense of the Veda to be conveyed in the language of Vyasa. Whether Menu or Menus in the nominative and Meno's in an oblique case, was the same personage with Minos [Minos was a mythical king in the island of Crete, the son of Zeus and Europa. He was famous for creating a successful code of laws; in fact, it was so grand that after his death, Minos became one of the three judges of the dead in the underworld. Minos, by Wikipedia], let others determine; but he must indubitably have been far older than the work, which contains his laws, and though perhaps he was never in Crete, yet some of his institutions may well have been adopted in that island, whence Lycurgus, a century or two afterwards, may have imported them to Sparta.

-- Institutes of Hindu Law: Or, The Ordinances of Menu, According to the Gloss of Culluca. Comprising the Indian System of Duties, Religious and Civil, Verbally translated from the original Sanscrit, With a Preface, by Sir William Jones


THE CREDIBILITY OF EARLY ROMAN HISTORY1 [An address delivered by the President of the American Philological Association at its annual meeting, held in Cambridge, Mass., July, 1901.]

A REPROACH frequently cast at those who are engaged in the study of classical antiquity, is that their subject-matter has been worked over so long and so often that no further results can be obtained that have any value for men of the present. When new fields of research are so widely spread around us, it is worse than foolish to spend the time and effort on the old. Be this as it may, there is still one phase of the study of classical antiquity which has so far escaped the general condemnation. History, even of the olden time, has not yet become the object of the scorn of exponents of the latest educational ideas, and is in fact very much in vogue. The historical method must be applied, and rightly, to all branches of scientific study, and in spite of the unwillingness on the part of many to recognize the fact, it has been true for some years that teachers of the classics have insisted that the full culture-value of their subject could be obtained only when proper attention was paid to the social, political and economic conditions under which the literature was developed.

If we look carefully to the history of the world, what can be more important than a correct appreciation of the early centuries in the history of Greece and Rome, periods during one of which were developed the literature and art which have ever since been the unattainable standard of the world, and during the other of which that power arose which has been the paramount influence in law and government in all succeeding ages. Certainly we cannot be accused of dealing with dead issues in laboring over the problems presented to us in either of these fields, and it is to the nature of the early history of the city of Rome that I now ask your attention.

It is a mere commonplace to remark that the earliest stages in the history of most peoples present very great difficulties in the way of arriving at anything like the exact facts, and this is usually due to the insufficiency of evidence that has come down to us, and to the inevitable errors resulting from the nature of tradition. In the case of the early history of the greatest city in the world, the difficulty is immeasurably increased by the well-known fact, that in addition to all the errors inherent we have to do with a considerable amount of material which is known to be the product of the deliberate invention of later times. So while the problem becomes exceedingly perplexing, the eagerness of scholars to solve it, becomes correspondingly keen. Nor can it be said that time and labor expended on its solution are wasted, so long as any hope remains of arriving at something like the real facts.

There are certain peculiar features in the case of Roman history, the most noticeable of which is the character of Roman literature, on which we must depend so much for our information. Here is no developing native product, but a literature due to foreign impulse, and worked out in conscious imitation of Greek models, both as regards form and substance. The earliest annalists of Rome intentionally followed their patterns, and the elimination of the Greek from the native is one of the most difficult parts of the problem. Most noticeable again in its effect upon the tradition of Roman history, was the servile attitude maintained towards Rome by the rest of the world after the Punic wars, which resulted in a deliberate falsification of everything in favor of the dominant power. With a very few apparent exceptions like Metrodorus of Skepsis, almost all historiographers of that period took part in the general chorus of adulation, entirely regardless of the truth. A third peculiarity of the situation is the presence of what was really an official or "canonical" tradition. The methods employed by the Greek and Roman manufacturers of early history, had resulted in the promulgation of numerous narratives of the same events, so contradictory as to disturb even the Romans themselves, and to bring about the formation of a sort of official version which became in a sense "canonical," and was generally accepted by the principal writers of the post-Ciceronian age. This is the account that Livy, for instance, usually presents, although all our historians do not hesitate to give very frequently other versions along with the "canonical." These conditions were recognized by the Roman historians themselves, but with hardly an exception, they failed entirely to develop what we call the critical method. Beyond a certain point this could not have been expected, but it is a source of surprise and disappointment that we have to wait until the close of the first century to find a Roman Thucydides.

The legacy of Rome, then, to the world, so far as her own early history is concerned, is a mass of fable, fact and fancy, inextricably interwoven, and commended to us by all the charm of Livian rhetoric, and this inheritance has been accepted and enjoyed without question or cavil, by the vast majority even of scholars until very recent times.
But it was inevitable that a day of reckoning should come, and as we all know, it was in the study of Niebuhr that the demolition and reconstruction of Roman history began. Niebuhr, Schwegler, Mommsen! Three mighty names to conjure with, and how great a contribution to the science of historical criticism they represent! But as in all other departments of human knowledge, where room for the erection of what is to last forever must be cleared by the destruction of what is insecure, the pendulum of belief swings widely but irregularly, sometimes rapidly, sometimes slowly, and it is long before the stable equilibrium of admitted fact is reached.

So in the matter under discussion, we have passed through the stage where all that has come down to us about the regal period was ruthlessly cast aside as absolutely false, the succeeding stage when men were inclined to see much that was true beneath the overlying strata of legend, then a stage when, in some quarters at least, an almost medieval attitude of belief was assumed, and now finally a period when even the first condition of skepticism seems to be well-nigh surpassed. There is, if we may so speak, a very renaissance of unbelief with regard to the first three centuries of Rome's existence. This oscillation may be paralleled perhaps by the change in the position of scholars with respect to the Old Testament, and in the field of Roman life, by the varying estimates of Cicero, his character and influence. From Drumann and Mommsen to Aly and Zielinski is a far cry, and between them in time and opinion we find everything from entire repudiation of a political renegade to unquestioning faith in the saviour of the commonwealth. But as the latest voice of Ciceronian criticism has tended to rehabilitate the great orator, the latest voice of historical criticism, uttered too by a descendant of the Romans themselves, is the most powerful yet heard in the attack upon all that tradition has handed down concerning the early history of Rome.

I refer of course to Ettore Pais and his great work La Storia di Roma, in the first two volumes of which he has discussed the history of Rome down to the time of Pyrrhus, and while following out the lines laid down by Mommsen in the Roemische Forschungen has gone far beyond that great man in the scope of his work, comprehensiveness of treatment and importance of results.

It is the misfortune of modern Italian scholarship that it has been so completely eclipsed by the transalpine; and the paucity of men of the first rank in the present generation has caused the world of scholars to look with suspicion upon an Italian book. But here at least is a man to be reckoned with, and whether his conclusions are accepted or rejected, they cannot be ignored, and his material and methods must be studied with the utmost attention. Apparently the importance of his work has so far been overlooked except by a very few. This is natural and excusable, particularly in this country, where the prevailing attitude towards the work of Italians is illustrated by the fact that up to the middle of last February, this book, though issued in 1898 and 1899, had not been placed on the shelves of the library of one of our most famous universities.

Before proceeding to the discussion of the results of this latest investigation of the sources of our knowledge of early Roman history, our attention should be fixed upon a factor in the problem, not new by any means, but which has recently assumed much larger proportions than formerly, that is the control exercised over results obtained in other ways by archaeological and topographical discoveries. The increased importance of material of this kind finds an excellent illustration in the information which has come into our hands as a result of the systematic excavations carried on in the Forum and Comitium during the past two years and a half. It was to be expected that in the archaeological remains of these two spots -- one the center of Roman political life, the other the center of all else -- much would be found to help in tracing the course of development of the city itself, as it was marked in monuments of brick and stone, monuments which could hardly be falsified by succeeding generations.


In general too little attention has been paid to the reciprocal relations of topography and history. Due weight has been readily given to the influence of environment upon the development of the individual, but there has been a failure to recognize the direct bearing of topographical conditions upon the historical progress of a nation, and to see how much with regard to the latter may be inferred from the former. As a matter of fact, the discoveries made within a space twenty feet square at the edge of the Comitium have precipitated a violent struggle between those who accept the traditional account of the regal period and those who do not, and the final settlement of the questions raised by these discoveries may go a long way in determining our attitude toward that tradition. To be sure the problem suggested here is not purely topographical but involves other elements as well, and the point may be better illustrated in a very simple case by noting that topographical conditions prove at once that Livy's account of the settlement of many thousand Latins in the valley ad Murciae in the days of Ancus Martius, must be absolutely wrong.

In view of the certain additions which have been and will continue to be made to our knowledge of the material remains of ancient Rome, and the publication of so notable a book as that of Pais, no apology is necessary for directing our attention again to the credibility of early Roman history, and we can perhaps do no better than follow our new leader in a brief review of the character of some of the sources from which information as to the events of the early period is derived, and of some of these events themselves.

At the very outset one must note the strange contrast that exists between the remarkable amount of detailed information given us by the annalists and the comparatively late period at which they did their work. There is a still greater contrast between this elaborate history and that of other peoples at the same relative stage of development, like the peoples of the east and of the Greek cities. If we know so little of the history of Magna Graecia before the fourth century, how is it that we know so much about Rome in the eighth and seventh?


Now it is as certain as anything can be, that the literature and culture of the Romans were due to Greek influence, and, necessarily, that what is related of their early history must have been due in some way or other to the labors of Greek historiographers transferred to native channels. The earliest Roman annalist wrote in Greek in the time of Hannibal, which two facts are enough in themselves to suggest the source and character of his story. We are told expressly that those who first wrote the history of Rome were Greeks, and their interest in things barbarian and Roman arose as a result of the intercourse between Greeks and Romans in the fifth century, when the Siciliotes and inhabitants of the Greek cities in southern Italy were necessarily brought into contact with the rising power of Rome. But though the earliest notices go back so far, it was not until the third century that Greek historians seem to have busied themselves especially with Rome, and the reason for this is easy to see. When in that momentous struggle between Greek and barbarian which culminated in the defeat of Pyrrhus, it became plain to every one that the seat of empire had been removed across the Adriatic, the clever Greek read the signs of the times and fell at once to describing, with or without knowledge, the beginnings and history of this new power. The form in which their narratives were put forth, determined all subsequent conceptions of the early history of Rome.

When these Greeks and their earliest Roman followers attempted to write the history of the first centuries of Rome, what had they in the way of records? The statement often made by the writers of the Ciceronian period, that all monumental records such as statues, laws and inscriptions of various sorts, had perished in the Gallic invasion, must be true for the most part, but supposing that some of these monuments were in existence -- and the discovery of the old inscription and surrounding structures in the Forum proves that some did survive -- it is hardly possible that they would have been used to any great extent in working out the history of the earliest times. The evidence of the few fragments that now remain from the early days agrees with what we should infer from arguments of another kind, in showing that, if there had been no destruction like that wrought by the Gauls, there would have been few monuments of a sort to afford reliable historical information of a remote period. There is therefore little account to be taken of matter outside of oral and written records. The banquet songs described by Cato were doubtless a familiar feature of daily life, but even without the distinct repudiation of Cicero and Livy, we should recognize at once their worthlessness as historical documents.

The Annales Maximi were according to Cato's statement a list of magistrates, prodigies, eclipses and the price of corn. But these meager lists cannot have made up those eighty rolls which Cicero describes and which contained the history of the city from the beginning down to 133 B.C., and which were diffuse enough to contain Piso's story of Romulus's use of wine. These Annales were written out long after the beginning of Latin literature, and owed their form and much of their content to the annals of the Greeks. In Pais's words, "The little that we know of them reveals such a direct imitation of the Greek writers, such abundance of words, or as we might better say, such garrulity, as suited the chatter of barbers [quelle ciancie di barbieri] which Polybius censures in Sosilus and Chaerea, the historians of Hannibal, but which did not suit in any way the redaction of state documents, compiled at a tolerably early date." No fragment of the Annales Maximi in our possession belongs to a redaction earlier than the third century. In short, after Pais's keen critique, it is difficult to see in them anything but a second century creation, based on the tradition of the great Roman families, the works of early Greek historiographers, and the earliest Roman poets like Ennius, and we must recognize the fact that "these fragments which have come down to us have nothing to do with the most ancient pontifical tablets which were little more than an illustration of the calendar."


The influence of Ennius, Naevius and other early Roman poets, if such there were, in shaping the legendary history of the early period, has probably been greatly underestimated. It can be shown further, that these poets drew their material for early times, as well as their inspiration from their Greek predecessors and contemporaries. It would be idle to discuss at length the characteristics of these Greeks who approached their subject with no intention or desire to learn the truth, but only to produce a skilfully constructed poem into which could be woven a vast mass of legend and myth, with the natural result that the product was characterized by pure imagination, duplication, and falsification. This compilation of the Annales Maximi during the second century, under the influence of the first Roman poets and annalists, gave rise to the formation of what is known as the "canonical" tradition of the origin and early history of the city, and this "canonical" form which was an attempt to correlate divergent accounts, seems to have been put into final shape by Varro in his systematization and arrangement of all existing knowledge.

Our own chief literary sources of information are three, Diodorus Siculus, Livy and Dionysius of Halicarnassus. The two latter give in general the accepted official version, while Diodorus is apt to present divergent accounts, and is usually credited with a greater degree of independent judgment. Nevertheless, the evidence of all three has practically no first hand value. The stream cannot rise higher than its source.


Interesting illustrations of the way in which this early history was manufactured, abound on every hand. Monumenta of various sorts were made and attributed to the days of the Kings, as the lituus of Romulus, of which Cicero speaks in the De Divinatione 1 [II. 80.]: "So do not mention the lituus of Romulus which you say could not have been burned in the great fire;" and of which Plutarch says: "It was kept in the Capitol, but lost when Rome was taken by the Gauls; afterwards when the barbarians had quitted the city, it was found buried deep in ashes, untouched by the fire, whilst everything about it was destroyed and consumed." Pliny the Elder2 [N. H., XXXIV. 22-23.] describes the costume of statues of the time of Romulus and Numa, and says of the statues of the three Fates near the Rostra: "I should suppose that these and that of Attus Navius were the first erected in the time of Tarquinius Priscus, if it were not for the fact that the statues of the earlier kings were on the Capitol," -- although in a preceding chapter he had expressly stated that the first bronze statue at Rome was made from the property of Spurius Cassius. Livy tells3 [I. 12, 6.] how Romulus vowed the temple to Jupiter Stator in the battle between the Romans and Sabines, but in the tenth book4 [36, II.] he writes: "Meanwhile the Consul raising his hands to heaven, in a clear voice so that he might be heard plainly, vowed a temple to Jupiter Stator, if the flight of the Roman line should be checked," and a little later1 [X. 37, 15.] having noticed the discrepancy, he continues: "And in this battle a temple was vowed to Jupiter Stator, as Romulus had previously vowed one; but he had consecrated only a fanum, that is the site set apart for the temple." Varro, quoted by Macrobius,2 [I. 13, 21.] speaks of seeing a bronze tablet on which was engraved a law with regard to intercalary months, said to have been passed in the year 472 B.C. The most trustworthy account, however, refers this legislation to the year 191 B.C.

We may compare also the epigraphic fabrication related by Suetonius in describing the prodigies that happened at the death of Caesar.3 [Jul. Caes. 81.] A bronze tablet was found in the tomb where Capys was said to have been buried, on which was cut in Greek this prophecy: "When the bones of Capys shall be uncovered, a descendant of Julius shall be slain by the hands of his kinsmen, and soon afterwards avenged by great slaughter throughout Italy." And Suetonius continues: "The authority for this statement is Cornelius Balbus, a most intimate friend of Caesar, so that no one is to suppose it fabulous or fictitious."

To what extent etymology was made to serve the purposes of the historiographer, may be seen on every page of Varro's famous work De Lingua Latina, of which the following is a notorious and most instructive example:

Various reasons are assigned for the name Aventine. According to Naevius, it was derived from avis, because the birds came there from the Tiber; according to others the Alban king Aventinus was buried there; and according to others still the word was derived from adventus hominum because on that hill the temple of Diana was erected which was a common sanctuary of the Latins. "

"I prefer the derivation ad advectu, because formerly this hill was separated from the rest by marshes, and therefore people were brought thither from the city on rafts."


The manner in which topographical conditions and facts were utilized is illustrated by the tale found in Ovid, Valerius Maximus and Pliny, to the effect that the horns cut in the arch of the Porta Raudusculana in the Servian wall, commemorated the curious experience of a certain Roman praetor, Cipus Genucius, from whose head sprang such horns, as he was leading his army through this gate.

We can understand the direct and formal imitation of Greek models better if we keep in mind the famous definition of Quintilian4 [X. I, 31.]: "historia ... est enim proxima poetis et quodammodo carmen solutum et scribitur ad narrandum non ad probandum." [Google translate: history ... is near a sense of poetry and released a song written in the statement to be proved.] From form to matter is but a step, and the process is the same as that illustrated so distinctly in the domain of art. The Romans compared themselves to the Greeks long before Plutarch wrote his Lives, and they invented incidents in the careers of their heroes which should correspond to those of famous Greeks. Thus Scipio Africanus was said to have owed his birth to a miracle similar to that which brought Alexander the Great into being, and Tarquinius Superbus copied the procedure of Periander. The inevitable result was that the euhemerism of Ennius [an approach to the interpretation of mythology in which mythological accounts are presumed to have originated from real historical events or personages. Euhemerism supposes that historical accounts become myths as they are exaggerated in the retelling, accumulating elaborations and alterations that reflect cultural mores. It was named for the Greek mythographer Euhemerus, who lived in the late 4th century BC. In the more recent literature of myth, such as Bulfinch's Mythology, euhemerism is termed the "historical theory" of mythology. -- Euhemerism, by Wikipedia] destroyed almost all of the germs of native mythology and theogony, and indicated the lines along which Roman historiography must move.
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Furthermore, as the Romans themselves tell us, all their historians down to the time of Pompey belonged to distinguished families by relationship or clientage, and this very fact caused them to be at pains to exalt the history of their own clans, a fruitful source of fabrication. But there was another influence at work, and that was the desire to exalt the whole state, and its history. Hence the determined effort to give official sanction to the tradition that the Romans came of Trojan or Hellenic stock, and that they could trace their origin to a time as early as any of the Greek cities.

Two other factors in the formation of this artificial structure, the received story of the early days, were the duplication of events actual or alleged, and the influence of current political tendencies and theories. The duplication of events, that is the assigning of what happened at one time to another much earlier date, in either the same or a slightly disguised form, while not peculiar to Roman history, has there found its widest application. It is not among the least of Pais's services that he has brought out with proper emphasis the great importance of this factor. So numerous are the examples, such as the repeated stories of Manlius, and the explanations of the Lacus Curtius, that it would be useless to linger over them. The reasons for such duplication are patent at the first glance, among them the stereotyped character and conduct of those who belonged to the same house, the desire of succeeding generations to imitate the deeds of their ancestors, and the fact that so many of the clans seem to have assumed in successive years the command against the same foes. Variations in later versions seem usually to have been intentionally made, in order that suspicion might be averted. Consulships, dictatorships and censorships were boldly attributed to the ancestors of those who had held these offices in historical times, and so notorious was the practice that even Cicero and Livy protested against it. In consequence of this same impulse, events of a later date were thrown back into earlier periods, as the fabled treaty of 508 B.C. between Rome and Carthage, and the establishment of the censorship in the days of Servius Tullius. The same tendency which has assigned to Charlemagne the achievements of more than one man produced such types as Appius Claudius and Coriolanus.

The last factor in the fabrication of Roman history upon which much weight must be laid, is that of the political attitude of the historian and his hero. Cato, as is well known, tried to do something to counteract this evil, by refusing to mention the names of those of whom he was writing, but nothing could have been farther from the purpose of all other Roman historians. One has only to read Livy's account of perfectly historical persons and events, to see how he deliberately warped or suppressed the truth in order to depreciate the services of those who represented opposite political views. Modern colorless critical history was something entirely unsupposable to the Roman mind. Education in morals and good citizenship, the avowed object of the Roman historian, demanded an expression on his part of what he considered right and patriotic, and a condemnation of the opposite. To the most critical and truth-seeking of Romans, even a writer like Froude would have seemed not only culpably impartial but absolutely impossible.

These elements have been recognized in some degree by all historians since Niebuhr, but the extent of their application has varied. We have in general come to regard the history of the regal period as legendary so far as details are concerned, but no such view has prevailed with regard to the republic. It is true that Mommsen in his Roemische Forschungen laid down the lines along which the investigation should proceed, and in his essays on Coriolanus, Spurius Maelius, Spurius Cassius and Marcus Manlius, demonstrated the non-historical character of many of the tales from the period of the early republic, but in these particular cases, the subjects were such as would most naturally be derived from mythical sources. Neither in his history nor in his essays, does Mommsen cast any serious doubt upon the truth of the main features of the traditional history of the period between the expulsion of the Kings and the fall of the decemvirate. The attitude of most scholars previous to 1898, may be illustrated by that of Pelham and Shuckburgh in their histories published in 1893 and 1894. Pelham, after explaining the reasons why the history of the early republic is subject to some extent to the same suspicions as that of the regal period, and stating that the "details are of no historical value," proceeds to relate the course of events in such a way as not to suggest for a moment that he discredits the main features of the narrative. Shuckburgh is much less skeptical and gives his readers to understand that he is treating of what is genuinely historical.

Hardened as we have become to the process of having long cherished beliefs destroyed, and prone as we are to welcome innovations in all things, we cannot overcome a sense of dismay at reading statements like these of Pais:


"We arrive therefore at the conclusion that the whole account of decemvirate, that is the creation of this magistracy, the sending of the embassy to Athens, the codification of the laws of the Twelve Tables, the circumstances and procedure with reference to Virginia, no less than the second secession of the plebs, the following passage of the Canuleian laws, and the revolution at Ardea, are the results of unskilful attempts to combine self-contradictory traditions, and have at bottom no historical or chronological value." ...

"In the case of all the history of Roman legislation before the decemvirate we are confronted with accounts not originally true and only altered by later changes, but produced by real and deliberate falsification.

"The pretended constitutional history of Rome, described by the annalists of the second and first centuries, is in direct opposition to the honest and sincere declaration of Polybius who asserted that it was difficult to explain the beginnings and successive modifications, and to foretell the future phases of the Roman constitution, since the institutions of the past, both private and public, were unknown."


This means that everything which has been handed down from the years before 440 B.C. is thoroughly discredited, and that the beginning of anything like genuine history must be placed after that date. It is doubtful if anything quite so destructive as this in the field of historical criticism has been effected for many years, and we are overpowered by the almost absolute negation involved. Painstaking labor and the utmost skill in the employment of great learning, have combined to produce a monumental work of the greatest importance, and one which forces itself upon the attention of all students of classical antiquity.

Process and results are precisely the same for both the regal and early republican periods, but let us look rather at the latter and examine briefly two or three of the main features in the narrative which has come down to us. Perhaps the most noteworthy event in the twenty years after the expulsion of the Kings, was the secession of the plebs to the Sacred Mount, which marked the culmination of the first stage in the struggle between plebeian and patrician, and resulted in the establishment of that most unique of Roman institutions, the tribuneship. The circumstances are familiar to all, how in the midst of wars with Aequians and Volscians, the plebs were put off again and again with false promises, until after the army had won a victory under the dictator Manius Valerius, and was encamped before the city, the Senate still refused to adopt the necessary reforms. Thereupon the army, by which we must suppose the plebeian part of it to be meant, marched in order to the Sacred Mount, or according to another version to the Aventine, and returned to the city only after their claims had been allowed, in part at least, and the tribuneship established. Half a century later, another secession is described. The decemvirs had refused to give up office, and had, it was alleged, caused Lucius Siccius Denitatus, a veteran of many campaigns, to be foully murdered, while the most notorious of the board, Appius Claudius, had by his attempt to carry off Virginia, forced her father to slay her in defense of honor. The army again marched to the Sacred Mount, nominated tribunes, advanced to Rome and occupied the Aventine. A compromise was negotiated by Valerius and Horatius, and the tribunate again established.

Now the very similarity of these two accounts is enough to arouse grave suspicion, and an investigation of all the attendant circumstances proves that the first secession is but an anticipation of the second, together with some features which repeat the story of the expulsion of the Kings. Thus of the two leaders in the secession, Lucius Junius Brutus and Caius Sicinius, the latter is but the duplication of C. Sicinius, one of the tribunes elected after the fall of the decemvirate, and both these again of that Sicinius who was tribune in 395 B.C., and after the taking of Veii proposed to emigrate thither from Rome and found a new state. The names of the tribunes, either when the establishment of the tribunate in 494 is spoken of, or the increase in their number in 471, or the reestablishment of the institution in 449, show by their identity or similarity, that they represent only repetitions and variations of the same tradition, and that the successive Sicinii or Siccii -- for these appear to be variants of the same name -- Icilii, etc., are due to this process of duplication. So Manius Valerius who pacified the plebs in 494 before the first secession, is the same person, and the occasion the same, that we find described in Livy,1 [VII. 39.] where he tells how in 342 the dictator M. Valerius Corvus checked the rage of the army by his eloquence, and again of the same occurrence in 302 or 300. In this latter year, moreover, this same Valerius, when Consul, caused the famous "lex de provocatione" to be again approved, which had been already passed twice in previous years, and always on the motion of members of this same family. That is, during the first two hundred years of the republic, the passage of the same measure was attributed to the efforts of the same family thrice, which means, of course, that the annalists who wrote under the inspiration of the Valerii, thrust this action of theirs further and further back.


Let us pass over a half century, and take up the narrative of the decemvirate itself. The preceding contests between patricians and plebeians, the chaos resulting from the clashing of Consul and tribune, the sending of an embassy to Athens to learn something of the procedure of the Greeks, the appointment of a board of ten men for the year 451, who should supersede all regular constitutional magistrates and themselves discharge all executive, legislative and judicial functions while engaged in codifying Roman law, the reappointment of this board for the ensuing year although with considerable change in its personnel, the growth of tyranny and the personal ascendency of Appius Claudius, the illegal refusal on the part of the decemvirs to surrender office at the end of the year and high-handed proceedings in maintaining their position, the murder of Siccius Dentatus, the story of Virginia, the second secession of the plebs, and the consequent fall of the decemvirs and the reestablishment of consular and tribunician government, make up the framework of this story into which is woven a mass of details familiar enough.

At the outset we are met by two and perhaps three distinct traditions which as usual are not only different but irreconcilable. According to the received version, the decemvirs prepared only ten tables during the first year, and were continued in office in order to complete their work, but failing to do so, the last two tables were promulgated by Valerius and Horatius, Consuls in 449 and outspoken defenders of the rights of the plebeians. But this same version states that the law against intermarriage between the two orders was not repealed until 445 through the action of the tribune Canuleius, and by the law, called after him. How was it that Valerius and Horatius did not allow this privilege when they revised and completed the Twelve Tables? Furthermore, according to the received version, there were at least three plebeians among the decemvirs in the second year. How was it that they agreed to the perpetuation of this restriction which is represented as being one of the chief grounds of complaint among the plebeians?

It is evident that the account of this Canuleian law belonged originally to a version of the decemvir story entirely different from that which ascribed to them a bad character, or reckoned plebeians among their number for the second year, and which became afterwards canonical. If the plebeians had been represented among the decemvirs, they would never have submitted to the continuance of this provision against intermarriage or the subsequent ineligibility of plebeians to hold office. Again, from a reference to Canuleius in Florus it would appear that one version was current, according to which Canuleius was the leader of the plebeians in another secession from the city, this time to the Janiculum. The accepted version then, according to which there were either three or five plebeians among the decemvirs during the second year, who became as tyrannical and ill-disposed towards their fellows as Appius Claudius himself with whom they were most closely associated, involves the highly improbable assumption that they joined with the patricians in putting forth legislation inimical to the interests of their own class, and that after having succeeded in winning so large a proportional representation upon this wholly extraordinary board of magistrates, they consented to be shut out of the consulship for the next three quarters of a century.


That there were other versions, however, dating from an earlier period, seems to be clearly shown by the account of Diodorus, according to whom it was provided in the last two tables, prepared by Valerius and Horatius, that one of the consuls must be a plebeian and both might be. Now it is perfectly certain that this stage in the struggle was not reached before the passage of the Licinian laws in 367, or their extension in 342, so that this version is manifestly the result of anticipation.

A similar confusion in the sources, so-called, is illustrated by the fact that those annalists who ascribed the last two tables to the decemvirs, also attributed to them the insertion of intercalary months, although this action was assigned by others to Romulus, to Numa, to Servius, or to the Consuls of 472.

The Valerio-Horatian laws of 449 were really a part of the story of the decemvirate, and contained, it was said, three principal provisions: first, that no magistrate should be elected from whose judgment there could be no right of appeal to the people; second, that the decisions of the comitia tributa, meaning thereby an assembly of the plebeians by tribes, should be binding upon the whole people; and third, that the persons of the tribunes should be inviolable. The first of these provisions was enacted in the year 300 by a Valerius, and Livy states that this was the third time that it had been passed, on each occasion through the instrumentality of a Valerius. The second was said to have been already passed in 471, and to have been presented again in 339 and 287, when by the Hortensian law the step was actually taken. With regard to the last, hopeless confusion prevailed. Livy said that in his time lawyers denied that inviolability was the result of this enactment, and the view that the aediles were also made sacrosancti by this law, is proved to be absurd by the entire absence of any such condition in later times. In Livy's account also, the decemviri indices are mentioned along with the tribunes and aediles, as having been made sacrosancti, but these decemvirs can be no other than the board which was afterwards known as decemviri stlitibus iudicandis, who had nothing to do with the decemvirs, and never had the slightest claim to inviolability. It is impossible to suppose that those who invented the Valerio-Horatian laws of 449, should have attributed to them the establishment of another decemvirate like the one just overthrown.

The leading figure in the story of the decemvirs, whose lust was the immediate cause of their expulsion, is represented as Appius Claudius, but he is found to be no more truly historical than his predecessors.


"All the Claudii, according to tradition, pursued the same course of political action. All were haughty and open enemies of the plebeians, going to extreme lengths in their opposition to them and always arrogant. This tradition, however, has been shown to be untrue. The Claudii, especially Appius Claudius Caecus, censor in 312, were people of culture, of progressive ideas, looking with favor upon popular tendencies and assisting the plebs, and it is easy to understand why they were described in the annals of their enemies as tyrannical. Furthermore all the Appii Claudii who made their appearance in Roman affairs before 312 are stereotyped characters. The first Claudius, according to the received family tradition, came to Rome in the first years after the expulsion of the Kings, but soon after his reception among the senators, displayed his hatred for the plebs. His descendants exhibit the same tendency; Appius Claudius, consul in 471, was accused by the tribunes Siccius and Duilius, and escaped punishment by suicide in precisely the same way as the hated decemvir of whom he is naturally the double. For this same reason, tradition said that during his consulship and in spite of his opposition various popular measures were passed. In 424 and 416 a Claudius recalls the decemvir; and C. Claudius who in 450 opposed the plebs and the Canuleian rogation acted in the same way as the celebrated censor.

"We are told that this latter, when the time arrived for him to give up office, wished to remain, desiring to accomplish many great reforms; that he gave the sons of freedmen entrance into the Senate, and in order that he might not be forced to render an account of his actions, avoided the meetings of the Senate. This is practically the same thing which that earlier C. Claudius did, who when his colleague P. Valerius had been killed during the siege of the Capitol which had been seized by Appius Herdonius, took pains to prevent the election of a second colleague, and distracted the attention of the people with games, processions and amusements. Finally it is quite probable that some of the marked features of the legend of the censor Appius were taken from the deeds of the later Claudii, especially the censor of the year 169, who in a celebrated case, when he had been accused by the tribunes, came within a very little of being condemned."
1 [Ettore Pais, La Storia di Roma, I. 1, pp. 567-569.]


The names of the other decemvirs show their unhistorical character. Among the patricians, the family of Romilius, said to have been Consul in 455, is otherwise unknown; that of Rabuleius is nowhere mentioned among the patrician gentes or in the Fasti, and the only other Rabuleius of this early period was a tribune of the plebs in the time of Spurius Cassius. Lucius Minucius belongs with Spurius Maelius who is universally recognized as purely mythical, and after 457 there was no trace of any Minucius until the plebeian of that name became Consul in 305. It is strange to find an Antonius mentioned among the patricians in the fifth century, as the Antonii appeared first as tribunes in 167, and no one of the family was Consul until 92. With regard to the patrician Sestius, it is to be noted that the only other Sestius in the consular Fasti was the famous first plebeian Consul of 366, who was elected to that office in consequence of the Licinian-Sestian laws, and as their provisions were by some annalists assigned to corresponding legislation immediately after the fall of the decemvirate, it was natural to insert a Sestius among the members of that board.

With regard to the Consuls in the year after the expulsion of the decemvirs, Valerius and Horatius, the case is still more striking. The Horatii figure as Consuls in the years 509, 477, 457 and 447, but after this date there is no authentic record of an Horatius among Roman magistrates. The Valerii who appear with the Horatii in this period are only anticipations of the historical members of the family, and the Valerii and Horatii taken together, may be regarded as myths, corresponding to Lycurgus, Theseus and Zaleucus, who occupy the same relative positions in the historical development of Sparta, Athens and Locris. Later rationalism transformed these possible divinities into the two first Roman Consuls, and their appearance after the fall of the decemvirate and the new dawn of liberty for the plebs is a precise analogue to their appearance after the expulsion of the Kings and the bringing in of liberty for the whole people.

With regard to the character of the legislation of the Twelve Tables it must be noted that what has been handed down to us, gives evidence of legal conditions belonging to a period much later than the middle of the fifth century. There was said to have been a statute forbidding the burial of the dead within the city, but according to Servius this law was not passed until 260, in the consulship of Duilius. The making of wills was provided for, although in Sparta, a correspondingly conservative state, no such legislation occurred before the fourth century. Binding force is said to have been given to marriage without the ceremony of confarreatio, or coemptio, although such laxity can hardly have been allowed so early, and an institution like the "trinoctiumn," or provision by which a wife, by staying three nights in each year away from home, could avoid coming "in manum mariti," [Google translate: power of her husband.] appears wholly foreign to Roman ideas in the fifth century. Witness the evidence of the legend of Spurius Cassius who is represented as having no property of his own except the peculium. The coining of copper money is known not to have been begun until the middle of the fourth century, but the terms employed in the fragments of the Twelve Tables seem to point indubitably to such coinage.

 The legislation of the Twelve Tables must, according to all antecedent probability, have been the result of slow growth, and its traditional form the result of the fusing of various redactions. For it is a priori unreasonable to suppose that any such codification, as these Tables are represented as being, should have been made once for all at so early a period. As Athens attributed to Solon a mass of later legislation, so Rome attributed to the decemvirs much that was of later origin. Lycurgus in Sparta, Carondas and Zaleucus in Magna Graecia, and Diocles in Syracuse, illustrate the same process.

The true view, that the legislation of the Twelve Tables comprises in substance the legal development of the fourth century, finds support in the narrative of Appius Claudius, the censor in 312, and Gnaeus Flavius, the scribe of the pontifices, who was raised to the office of curule aedile by the help of Appius. As has already been pointed out, the decemvir was developed from the character and deeds of the censor, and, furthermore, an examination of the work of Flavius has frequently suggested the correspondence between it and that of the decemvirs. "The latter formulated and published the civil law, and freed the citizens from the abuse of the magistrates and unskilful lawyers, the former by publishing the formulas of this law and the list of days for transacting legal business, arrived at the same result. To the decemvirs was attributed the formation of that calendar which Flavius published." So in Cicero's time there was a dispute as to whether Flavius lived before or after the promulgation of the laws of the decemvirs, and some asserted that what he published was afterwards withdrawn from the knowledge of the people. The confusion arising from this double tradition -- the publication of the results of the decemviral legislation by the board itself or the succeeding consuls, or by Flavius in 305 -- gave rise to the further version according to which rights once in possession of the people were afterwards taken from them. The real publication of the Fasti in 305 appears therefore to have been one of the causes for the formation of a story of a corresponding publication at the time of the decemvirs, and one more link in the chain of evidence against their actual existence.

Once more, according to another version, the publication of the Twelve Tables was said to have been entrusted to the plebeian aediles, although it is manifestly absurd to suppose that so important a matter should have been placed in the hands of minor plebeian officials at so early a date. Careful analysis seems to show that the tradition of the presence of plebeians among the decemvirs, is due to the confusion of the different sorts of decemvirs, decemviri agris adsignandis, stlitibus iudicandis and legibus scribundis, and that their insertion in the last is due to their presence in historical times in the second. The proposal to burn the decemvirs is another form of the tale related by Valerius Maximus, in which the tribune Mucius burns his nine colleagues and the history of the turmoil and agitation during the decade between the supposed Terentilian rogation and the decemvirate, is only the duplication of what happened in the decade preceding the enactment of the Licinian laws of 367, which were sometimes identified with those of 449.

Another element in the traditional history of the decemvirate, namely the embassy to Athens, upon close examination proves to be as unhistorical as the rest of the story. In the first place, how is it possible that the names of these ambassadors could have been remembered so exactly, when in Cicero's time men were not sure of the names of those who were sent out in the year 146 to assist Memmius in the reorganization of the province of Greece. The explanation is that Postumii, Sulpicii and Manlii were ambassadors to Greece in the third century, and hence members of these same families were said to have taken part in the first embassy. In the second place, the story of the sending of an embassy to Athens on such an errand, was a result of that same tendency among the historiographers of the two countries to prove the parallelism of their institutions, or at least the imitation of the Greek by the Roman. The choice of the best of Greek legal principles seemed to them a thoroughly characteristic thing for the Romans to make. The relations existing between Athens, the Greek cities in Italy, and Rome, were of such a nature that it would be to Athens that such an embassy would naturally be sent, and the fact that Roman law was anything but an imitation of the Greek was quite lost sight of in the general desire to connect the two peoples in every possible way. To sum up in the words of Professor Pais:


"The story of the decemvirate . . . which we have seen to be false on its external side is no more authentic with regard to its essential or internal character, and the natural consequence is that the whole account is to be rejected in its entirety as a later invention.

"The pseudo-history from the expulsion of the Kings to the fall of the decemvirs and the conspiracy of Spurius Maelius, consists of two or three parts which are repeated. To the Sabine invasions and the continual wars with Volscians and Aequians, correspond the popular agitations which led to the secessions of 494 and 450, and the creation of tribunes in 493, 471 and 449. All these varying acts in the drama are the result of the simple duplication of the same event."


For the period after the decemvirate and down to the sack of Rome by the Gauls, this rigid criticism discloses a similar chaotic condition of tradition, and it is only gradually, even in this fourth century, that we begin to find trustworthy and accurate historical data.

If now this view of the tradition of the history of Rome for the first three or four centuries be justified, what answers can be given to the two questions that at once present themselves, i.e., Is any credence to be given to any part of this tradition? and What process is to be employed in attempting to separate the true from false? The answers made to these two questions will condition the method to be followed in reconstructing early Roman history, which is simply the recognized method of modern historical criticism.

As all know, great activity has been displayed during recent years in studying the so-called sources of Roman history, those earlier annalists from whom Diodorus, Dionysius, and Livy and their successors drew much of their information, and attempts have been made to assign relative historical value to these sources. Great critical acumen has been developed in these investigations, but the data are necessarily so meager in most cases, and the temptation to skilful combination and bold hypothesis so great, that one feels an instinctive distrust of the dogmatic conclusions of even the most learned scholars. Not that something has not been really accomplished, and we may, for instance, feel reasonably sure that Diodorus is on the whole more likely to have used better sources than Dionysius, but after all the difference is comparatively slight. In view of the many varying accounts of the events of Rome's early history, the mere fact that one version can be traced to one annalist rather than another, is in itself and usually, no valid reason for believing that it is true, and the answer to the first question may be prefaced by the statement that because any particular narrative is told by any particular annalist, is in itself no sufficient reason for its acceptance. This acceptance or rejection must rest on other grounds. On the other hand, it is absurd to assume that all of this tradition is necessarily false. Such wholesale rejection would be as irrational as entire and unquestioning acceptance, for it is manifestly impossible, according to the ordinary laws of chance, that some truth should not have entered into the narrative. The answer, therefore, to the first question must necessarily be in the affirmative, and we are immediately confronted with the second, which is infinitely more difficult.

We may, of course, assume an entirely agnostic position, and maintain that it is impossible to discover data sufficient to enable us to unravel the tangled threads of truth and fiction. Or we may take the position that there is some method by which an approximation at least to the truth may be made. This is the only reasonable attitude, and the method of approach must be, briefly, the following. We are in the presence of numerous conflicting versions of early events. One series has obtained wider currency and authority, because it received in antiquity the stamp of "canonicity," and the others have been cast aside for the most part as of less value. This view must be entirely abandoned at the very outset, and all versions from every source admitted as having equal validity. Then, so far as possible, the genesis of each version must be traced out, and its relation in time and place to the others determined, regardless of any preconceived superiority of one over another. This determination of genesis, time and place, and interrelation will in most cases be quite indefinite, but it is imperative that the first step in the process be the assembling of all traditional matter with such determinants as can be found. Having this material before us, we proceed to select, accept or reject, not according to any theory of the superior credibility of one supposed source over another, but as a result of the application of principles of criticism that have been derived from other sources of knowledge, that is the testimony and test of archaeological evidence, topographical conditions, comparative law, philology and religion, and the known laws of historical development. For it may be taken for granted that no nation develops and decays in a manner wholly peculiar to itself. Out of this traditional material much will be rejected at once because it cannot be reconciled with the testimony of one or another of the criteria just mentioned. In many cases only one version will be found which corresponds with this testimony, and it may be accepted provisionally. Some cases will occur where two or more versions are equally admissible according to the standards which have been adopted, and as there is no means of coming to a decision between them, historical value must be denied them all, -- so far at least as basing any further inferences on them is concerned. The application of this method to the mass of literary tradition, will leave little in the way of details that can be accepted as trustworthy, but to this little can be added the constantly increasing amount of information as to the gradual course of development, which is supplied by these very fields of research, archaeology, topography, law and religion.

If we are obliged to give up the entertaining details of literary story, we get in their place the infinitely more important and useful general testimony of more trustworthy witnesses. The assumption that it is possible, out of the literature itself, to separate the true from the false, seems to me to have been a fundamental error in many attempts to reconstruct early Roman history, for in the very nature of the case, the judgment must rest in a large part upon an entirely unmeasurable quantity, -- the varying conception of historical aim and method held by the Greek and Roman annalists.

SAMUEL BALL PLATNER.
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Discourse III. On the Hindus
Discourses Delivered Before the Asiatic Society: And Miscellaneous Papers, on The Religion, Poetry, Literature, Etc. of the Nations of India
by Sir William Jones
p. 20-37
Delivered February 2, 1786



On the Hindus -- History of the Ancient world -- Etymology, &c. of the Asiatics -- the five principal nations of the continent of Asia -- Sources of Asiatic wealth -- The languages, letters, philosophy, religion, sculpture, architecture, sciences and arts, of the Eastern nations -- Antiquity, structure and description of the Sanscrit language -- Characters of the same -- Of the Indian religion and philosophy -- Chronology of the Hindus -- Of the remains of architecture and sculpture in India -- Of the arts and manufactures of India -- laventions of the Hindus.

Gentlemen,

In the former discourses, which I had the honor of addressing to you, Gentlemen, on the institution and objects of our Society, I confined myself purposely to general topics; giving in the first a distant prospect of the vast career, on which we were entering, and, in the second, exhibiting a more diffuse, but still superficial, sketch of the various discoveries in History, Science, and Art, which we might justly expect from our inquiries into the literature of Asia. I now propose to fill up that outline so comprehensively as to omit nothing essential, yet so concisely as to avoid being tedious; and, if the state of my health shall suffer me to continue long enough in this climate, it is my design, with your permission, to prepare for our annual meetings a series of short dissertations, unconnected in their titles and subjects, but all tending to a common point of no small importance in the pursuit of interesting truths.

Of all the works, which have been published in our own age, or, perhaps, in any other, on the History of the Ancient World, and the first population of this habitable globe, that of Mr. Jacob Bryant, whom I name with reverence and affection, has the best claim to the praise of deep erudition ingeniously applied, and new theories happily illustrated by an assemblage of numberless converging rays from a most extensive circumference: it falls, nevertheless, as every human work must fall, short of perfection; and the least satisfactory part of it seems to be that, which relates to the derivation of words from Asiatic languages. Etymology has, no doubt, some use in historical researches; but it is a medium of proof so very fallacious, that, where it elucidates one fact, it obscures a thousand, and more frequently borders on the ridiculous, than leads to any solid conclusion: it rarely carries with it any internal power of conviction from a resemblance of sounds or similarity of letters; yet often, where it is wholly unassisted by those advantages, it may be indisputably proved by extrinsic evidence. We know à posteriori, that both fitz and hijo, by the nature of two several dialects, are derived from filius; that uncle comes from avus, and stranger from extra; that jour is deducible, through the Italian, from dies; and rossignol from luscinia, or the finger in groves; that sciuro, ecureuil, and squirrel are compounded of two Greek words descriptive of the animal; which etymologies, though they could not have been demonstrated à priori, might serve to confirm, if any such confirmation were necessary, the proofs of a connection between the members of one great Empire; but, when we derive our hanger, or short pendent sword, from the Persian, because ignorant travellers thus mis-spell the word khanjar, which in truth means a different weapon, or sandalwood from the Greek, because we suppose, that sandals were sometimes made of it, we gain no ground in proving the affinity of nations, and only weaken arguments, which might otherwise be firmly supported. That Cús then, or, as it certainly is written in one ancient dialect, Cút and in others, probably, Cás, enters into the composition of many proper names, we may very reasonably believe; and that Algeziras takes its name from the Arabic word for an island, cannot be doubted; but, when we are told from Europe, that places and provinces in India were clearly denominated from those words, we cannot but observe, in the first instance, that the town, in which we now are assembled, is properly written and pronounced Calicátà; that both Cátá and Cút unquestionably mean places of strength, or, in general, any inclosures; and that Gujaràt is at least as remote from Jezirah in sound, as it is in situation.

Another exception (and a third could hardly be discovered by any candid criticism) to the Analysis of Ancient Mythology, is, that the method of reasoning and arrangement of topics adopted in that learned work are not quite agreeable to the title, but almost wholly synthetical; and, though synthesis may be the better mode in pure science, where the principles are undeniable, yet it seems less calculated to give complete satisfaction in historical disquisitions, where every postulatum will perhaps be refused, and every definition controverted; this may seem a slight objection, but the subject is in itself so interesting, and the full conviction of all reasonable men so desirable, that it may not be lost labor to discuss the same or a similar theory in a method purely analytical, and, after beginning with facts of general notoriety or undisputed evidence, to investigate such truths, as are at first unknown or very imperfectly discerned.

The five principal nations, who have in different ages divided among themselves, as a kind of inheritance, the vast continent of Asia, with the many islands depending on it, are the Indians, the Chinese, the Tartars, the Arabs, and the Persians: who they severally were, whence, and when they came, where they now are settled, and what advantage a more perfect knowledge of them all may bring to our European world, will be shown, I trust, in five distinct essays; the last of which will demonstrate the connection or diversity between them, and solve the great problem, whether they had any common origin, and whether that origin was the same, which we generally ascribe to them.

I begin with India, not because I find reason to believe it the true center of population or of knowledge, but, because it is the country, which we now inhabit, and from which we may best survey the regions around us; as, in popular language, we speak of the rising sun, and of his progress through the Zodiac, although it had long ago been imagined, and is now demonstrated, that he is himself the center of our planetary system. Let me here premise, that, in all these inquiries concerning the history of India, I shall confine my researches downwards to the Mohammedan conquests at the beginning of the eleventh century, but extend them upwards, as high as possible, to the earliest authentic records of the human species.

India then, on its most enlarged scale, in which the ancients appear to have understood it, comprises an area of near forty degrees on each side, including a space almost as large as all Europe; being divided on the west from Persia by the Arachosian mountains, limited on the east by the Chinese part of the farther peninsula, confined on the north by the wilds of Tartary, and extending to the south as far as the isles of Java. This trapezium, therefore, comprehends the stupendous hills of Potyid or Tibet, the beautiful valley of Cashmír, and all the domains of the old Indoscythians, the countries of Népál and Butánt, Cámrùp or Asàm, together with Siam, Ava, Racan, and the bordering kingdoms, as far as the Chína of the Hindus or Sín of the Arabian Geographers; not to mention the whole western peninsula with the celebrated island of Sinhala, or Lion-like men, at its southern extremity. By India, in short, I mean that whole extent of country, in which the primitive religion and languages of the Hindus prevail at this day with more or less of their ancient purity, and in which the Nágarì letters are still used with more or less deviation from their original form.

The Hindus themselves believe their own country, to which they give the vain epithets of Medhyama or Central, and Punyabhúmi, or the Land of Virtues, to have been the portion of Bharat, one of nine brothers, whose father had the dominion of the whole earth; and they represent the mountains of Himálaya as lying to the north, and, to the west, those of Vindhya, called also Vindian by the Greeks; beyond which the Sindhu runs in several branches to the sea, and meets it nearly opposite to the point of Dwáracà, the celebrated seat of their Shepherd God: in the south-east they place the great river Saravatya; by which they probably mean that of Ava, called also Airávati in parts of its course, and giving perhaps its ancient name to the gulf of Sabara. This domain of Bharat they consider as the middle of the Jambudwípa, which the Tibetians also call the Land of Zambu; and the appellation is extremely remarkable; for Jambu is the Sanskrit name of a delicate fruit called Jáman by the Muselmans, and by us rose-apple; but the largest and richest sort is named Amrita, or Immortal; and the Mythologists of Tibet apply the same word to a celestial tree bearing ambrosial fruit, and adjoining to four vast rocks, from which as many sacred rivers derive their several streams.

The inhabitants of this extensive tract are described by Mr. Lord with great exactness, and with a picturesque elegance peculiar to our ancient language: "A people, says he, presented themselves to mine eyes, clothed in linen garments somewhat low descending, of a gesture and garb, as I may say, maidenly and well nigh effeminate, or a countenance shy and somewhat estranged, yet smiling out a glozed and bashful familiarity. " Mr. Orme, the Historian of India, who unites an exquisite taste for every fine art with an accurate knowledge of Asiatic manners, observes, in his elegant preliminary Dissertation, that this "country has been inhabited from the earliest antiquity by a people, who have no resemblance, either in their figure or manners, with any of the nations contiguous to them," and that, "although conquerors have established themselves at different times in different parts of India, yet the original inhabitants have lost very little of their original character." The ancients, in fact, give a description of them, which our early travellers confirmed, and our own personal knowledge of them nearly verifies; as you will perceive from a passage in the Geographical Poem of Dionysius, which the Analyst of Ancient Mythology has translated with great spirit:

To th' east a lovely country wide extends,
India, whose borders the wide ocean bounds;
On this the sun, new rising from the main,
Smiles pleas'd, and sheds his early orient beam.
Th' inhabitants are swart, and in their locks
Betray the tints of the dark hyacinth.
Various their functions; some the rock explore,
And from the mine extract the latent gold;
Some labor at the woof with cunning skill,
And manufacture linen; others shape
And polish iv'ry with the nicest care:
Many retire to rivers shoal, and plunge
To seek the beryl flaming in its bed,
Or glitt'ring diamond. Oft the jasper's found
Green, but diaphanous; the topaz too
Of ray serene and pleasing; last of all
The lovely amethyst, in which combine
All the mild shades of purple. The rich soil,
Wash'd by a thousand rivers, from all sides
Pours on the natives wealth without control.


Their sources of wealth are still abundant even after so many revolutions and conquests; in their manufactures of cotton they still surpass all the world; and their features have, most probably, remained unaltered since the time of Dionysius; nor can we reasonably doubt, how degenerate and abased so ever the Hindus may now appear, that in some early age they were splendid in art and arms, happy in government, wise in legislation, and eminent in various knowledge: but, since their civil history beyond the middle of the nineteenth century from the present time, is involved in a cloud of fables, we seem to possess only four general media of satisfying our curiosity concerning it; namely, first their Languages and Letters; secondly, their Philosophy and Religion; thirdly, the actual remains of their old Sculpture and Architecture; and fourthly, the written memorials of their Sciences and Arts.

I. It is much to be lamented, that neither the Greeks, who attended Alexander into India, nor those who were long connected with it under the Bactrian Princes, have left us any means of knowing with accuracy, what vernacular languages they found on their arrival in this Empire. The Mohammedans, we know, heard the people of proper Hindustan, or India on a limited scale, speaking a Bháshá, or living tongue of a very singular construction, the purest dialect of which was current in the districts round Agrà, and chiefly on the poetical ground of Mat'hurà; and this is commonly called the idiom of Vraja. Five words in six, perhaps, of this language were derived from the Sanskrit, in which books of religion and science were composed, and which appears to have been formed by an exquisite grammatical arrangement, as the name itself implies, from some unpolished idiom; but the basis of the Hindustání, particularly the inflections and regimen of verbs, differed as widely from both those tongues, as Arabic differs from Persian, or German from Greek. Now the general effect of conquest is to leave the current language of the conquered people unchanged, or very little altered, in its groundwork, but to blend with it a considerable number of exotic names both for things and for actions; as it has happened in every country, that I can recollect, where the conquerors have not preserved their own tongue unmixed with that of the natives, like the Turks in Greece, and the Saxons in Britain; and this analogy might induce us to believe, that the pure Hindì, whether of Tartarian or Chaldean origin, was primeval in Upper India, into which the Sanskrit was introduced by conquerors from other kingdoms in some very remote age; for we cannot doubt that the language of the Véda's was used in the great extent of country, which has before been delineated, as long as the religion of Brahmà has prevailed in it.

The Sanskrit language, whatever be its antiquity, is of a wonderful structure; more perfect than the Greek, more copious than the Latin, and more exquisitely refined than either, yet bearing to both of them a stronger affinity, both in the roots of verbs and in the forms of grammar, than could possibly have been produced by accident; so strong indeed, that no philologer could examine them all three, without believing them to have sprung from some common source, which, perhaps, no longer exists: there is a similar reason, though not quite so forcible, for supposing that both the Gothic and the Celtic, though blended with a very different idiom, had the same origin with the Sanskrit; and the old Persian might be added to the same family, if this were the place for discussing any question concerning the antiquities of Persia.

The characters, in which the language of India were originally written, are called Nágarí, from Nagara, a City, with the word Deva sometimes prefixed, because they are believed to have been taught by the Divinity himself, who prescribed the artificial order of them in a voice from heaven. These letters, with no greater variation in their form by the change of straight lines to curves, or conversely, than the Cusic alphabet has received in its way to India, are still adopted in more than twenty kingdoms and states, from the borders of Cashgar and Khoten, to Ráma's bridge, and from the Sindhu to the river of Siam; nor can I help believing, although the polished and elegant Dévanágarí may not be so ancient as the monumental characters in the caverns of Jarasandha, that the square Chaldaic letters, in which most Hebrew books are copied, were originally the same, or derived from the same prototype, both with the Indian and Arabian characters: that the Phenician, from which the Greek and Roman alphabets were formed by various changes and inversions, had a similar origin, there can be little doubt; and the inscriptions at Canárah, of which you now possess a most accurate copy, seem to be compounded of Nágarí and Ethiopic letters, which bear a close relation to each other, both in the mode of writing from the left hand, and in the singular manner of connecting the vowels with the consonants. These remarks may favor an opinion entertained by many, that all the symbols of sound, which at first, probably, were only rude outlines of the different organs of speech, had a common origin: the symbols of ideas, now used in China and Japan, and formerly, perhaps, in Egypt and Mexico, are quite of a distinct nature; but it is very remarkable, that the order of sounds in the Chinese grammars corresponds nearly with that observed in Tibet, and hardly differs from that, which the Hindus consider as the invention of their Gods.

II. Of the Indian Religion and Philosophy, I shall here say but little; because a full account of each would require a separate volume: it will be sufficient in this dissertation to assume, what might be proved beyond controversy, that we now live among the adorers of those very deities, who were worshipped under different names in Old Greece and Italy, and among the professors of those philosophical tenets, which the Ionic and Attic writers illustrated with all the beauties of their melodious language. On one hand we see the trident of Neptune, the eagle of Jupiter, the satyrs of Bacchus, the bow of Cupid, and the chariot of the Sun; on another we hear the cymbals of Rhea, the songs of the Muses, and the pastoral tales of Apollo Nomius. In more retired scenes, in groves, and in seminaries of learning, we may perceive the Bráhmans and the Sarmanes, mentioned by Clemens, disputing in the forms of logic, or discoursing on the vanity of human enjoyments, on the immortality of the soul, her emanation from the eternal mind, her debasement, wanderings, and final union with her source. The six philosophical schools, whose principles are explained in the Dersana Sástra, comprise all the metaphysics of the old Academy, the Stoa, the Lyceum; nor is it possible to read the Védánta, or the many fine compositions in illustration of it, without believing, that Pythagoras and Plato derived their sublime theories from the same fountain with the sages of India. The Scythian and Hyperborean doctrines and mythology may also be traced in every part of these eastern regions; nor can we doubt, that Wod or Oden, whose religion, as the northern historians admit, was introduced into Scandinavia by a foreign race, was the same with Buddh, whose rites were probably imported into India nearly at the same time, though received much later by the Chinese, who soften his name into FO'.

This may be a proper place to ascertain an important point in the Chronology of the Hindus; for the priests of Buddha left in Tibet and China the precise epoch of his appearance, real or imagined, in this Empire; and their information, which had been preserved in writing, was compared by the Christian missionaries and scholars with our own era. Couplet, De Guignes, Giorgi, and Bailly, differ a little in their accounts of this epoch, but that of Couplet seems the most correct: on taking, however, the medium of the four several dates, we may fix the time of Buddha, or the ninth great incarnation of Vishnu, in the year one thousand and fourteen before the birth of Christ, or two thousand seven hundred and ninety-nine years ago. Now the Cáshmirians, who boast of his descent in their kingdom, assert that he appeared on earth about two centuries after Crishna the Indian Apollo, who took so decided a part in the war of the Mahábhárat; and, if an Etymologist were to suppose, that the Athenians had embellished their poetical history of Pandion's expulsion and the restoration of Ægeus with the Asiatic tale of the Pándus and Yudhishtir, neither of which words they could have articulated, I should not hastily deride his conjecture: certain it is, that Pándumandel is called by the Greeks the country of Pandion. We have, therefore, determined another interesting epoch, by fixing the age of Crishna near the three thousandth year from the present time; and, as the three first Avatàrs, or descents of Vishnu, relate no less clearly to an Universal Deluge, in which eight persons only were saved, than the fourth and the fifth do to the punishment of impiety and the humiliation of the proud, we may for the present assume, that the second, or silver, age of the Hindus was subsequent to the dispersion from Babel; so that we have only a dark interval of about a thousand years, which were employed in the settlement of nations, the foundation of states or empires, and the cultivation of civil society. The great incarnate Gods of this intermediate age are both named Ráma but with different epithets; one of whom bears a wonderful resemblance to the Indian Bacchus, and his wars are the subject of several heroic poems. He is represented as a descendent from Súrya, or the Sun, as the husband of Sítá, and the son of a princess named Caúselyá: it is very remarkable, that the Peruvians, whose Incas boasted of the same descent, styled their greatest festival Ramasitoa; whence we may suppose, that South America was peopled by the same race, who imported into the farthest parts of Asia the rites and fabulous history of Ráma. These rites and this history are extremely curious; and, although I cannot believe with Newton, that ancient mythology was nothing but historical truth in a poetical dress, nor, with Bacon, that it consisted solely of moral and metaphysical allegories, nor with Bryant, that all the heathen divinities are only different attributes and representations of the Sun or of deceased progenitors, but conceive that the whole system of religious fables rose, like the Nile, from several distinct sources, yet I cannot but agree, that one great spring and fountain of all idolatry in the four quarters of the globe was the veneration paid by men to the vast body of fire, which "looks from his sole dominion like the God of this world"; and another, the immoderate respect shown to the memory of powerful or virtuous ancestors, especially the founders of kingdoms, legislators, and warriors, of whom the Sun or the Moon were wildly supposed to be the parents.

III. The remains of architecture and sculpture in India, which I mention here as mere monuments of antiquity, not as specimens of ancient art, seem to prove an early connection between this country and Africa: the pyramids of Egypt, the colossal statues described by Pausanias and others, the sphinx, and the Hermes Canis, which last bears a great resemblance to the Varáhávatár, or the incarnation of Vishnu in the form of a Boar, indicate the style and mythology of the same indefatigable workmen, who formed the vast excavations of Cánárah, the various temples and images of Buddha, and the idols, which are continually dug up at Gayá, or in its vicinity. The letters on many of those monuments appear, as I have before intimated, partly of Indian, and partly of Abyssinian or Ethiopic, origin; and all these indubitable facts may induce no ill-grounded opinion, that Ethiopia and Hindustàn were peopled or colonized by the same extraordinary race; in confirmation of which, it may be added, that the mountaineers of Bengal and Bahár can hardly be distinguished in some of their features, particularly their lips and noses, from the modern Abyssinians, whom the Arabs call the children of Cúsh: and the ancient Hindus, according to Strabo, differed in nothing from the Africans, but in the straitness and smoothness of their hair, while that of the others was crisp or woolly; a difference proceeding chiefly, if not entirely, from the respective humidity or dryness of their atmospheres: hence the people who received the first light of the rising sun, according to the limited knowledge of the ancients, are said by Apuleius to be the Arü and Ethiopians, by which he clearly meant certain nations of India; where we frequently see figures of Buddha with curled hair apparently designed for a representation of it in its natural state.

IV. It is unfortunate, that the Silpi Sástra, or collection of treatises on Arts and Manufactures, which must have contained a treasure of useful information on dying, painting, and metallurgy, has been so long neglected, that few, if any, traces of it are to be found; but the labors of the Indian loom and needle have been universally celebrated; and fine linen is not improbably supposed to have been called Sindon, from the name of the river near which it was wrought in the highest perfection: the people of Colchis were also famed for this manufacture, and the Egyptians yet more, as we learn from several passages in scripture, and particularly from a beautiful chapter in Ezekial containing the most authentic delineation of ancient commerce, of which Tyre had been the principal mart. Silk was fabricated immemorially by the Indians, though commonly ascribed to the people of Serica or Tancǔt, among whom probably the word Sèr, which the Greeks applied to the silkworm, signified gold; a sense, which it now bears in Tibet. That the Hindus were in early ages a commercial people, we have many reasons to believe; and in the first of their sacred law-tracts, which they suppose to have been revealed by Menu many millions of years ago, we find a curious passage on the legal interest of money, and the limited rate of it in different cases, with an exception in regard to adventures at sea; an exception, which the sense of mankind approves, and which commerce absolutely requires, though it was not before the reign of Charles I. that our own jurisprudence fully admitted it in respect of maritime contracts.

We are told by the Grecian writers, that the Indians were the wisest of nations; and in moral wisdom, they were certainly eminent: their Níti Sástra, or System of Ethics, is yet preserved, and the Fables of Vishnuserman, whom we ridiculously call Pilpay, are the most beautiful, if not the most ancient, collection of apologues in the world: they were first translated from the Sanskrit, in the sixth century, by the order of Buzerchumihr, or Bright as the Sun, the chief physician and afterwards Vezír of the great Anúshireván, and are extant under various names in more than twenty languages; but their original title is Hitópadésa, or Amicable Instruction; and, as the very existence of Esop, whom the Arabs believe to have been an Abyssinian, appears rather doubtful, I am not disinclined to suppose, that the first moral fables, which appeared in Europe, were of Indian or Ethiopian origin.

The Hindus are said to have boasted of three inventions, all of which, indeed, are admirable, the method of instructing by apologues, the decimal scale adopted now by all civilized nations, and the game of Chess, on which they have some curious treatises; but, if their numerous works on Grammar, Logic, Rhetoric, Music, all which are extant and accessible, were explained in some language generally known, it would be found, that they had yet higher pretensions to the praise of a fertile and inventive genius. Their lighter Poems are lively and elegant; their Epic, magnificent and sublime in the highest degree; their Purána's comprise a series of mythological Histories in blank verse from the Creation to the supposed incarnation of Buddha; and their Védas, as far as we can judge from that compendium of them, which is called Upanishat, abound with noble speculations in metaphysics, and fine discourses on the being and attributes of God. Their most ancient medical book, entitled Chereca, is believed to be the work of Siva; for each of the divinities in their Triad has at least one sacred composition ascribed to him; but, as to mere human works on History and Geography, though they are said to be extant in Cashmír, it has not been yet in my power to procure them. What their astronomical and mathematical writings contain, will not, I trust, remain long a secret: they are easily procured, and their importance cannot be doubted. The Philosopher, whose works are said to include a system of the universe founded on the principle of Attraction and the Central position of the sun, is named Yavan Achárya, because he had travelled, we are told, into Ionia: if this be true, he might have been one of those, who conversed with Pythagoras; this at least is undeniable, that a book on astronomy in Sanskrit bears the title of Yavana Jática, which may signify the Ionic Sect; nor is it improbable, that the names of the planets and Zodiacal stars, which the Arabs borrowed from the Greeks, but which we find in the oldest Indian records, were originally devised by the same ingenious and enterprizing race, from whom both Greece and India were peopled; the race, who, as Dionysius describes them,

... first assayed the deep,
And wafted merchandize to coasts unknown,
Those, who digested first the starry choir,
Their motions mark'd, and call'd them by their names.


Of these cursory observations on the Hindus, which it would require volumes to expand and illustrate, this is the result: that they had an immemorial affinity with the old Persians, Ethiopians, and Egyptians, the Phenicians, Greeks, and Tuscans, the Scythians or Goths, and Celts, the Chinese, Japanese, and Peruvians; whence, as no reason appears for believing, that they were a colony from any one of those nations, or any of those nations from them, we may fairly conclude that they all proceeded from some central country, to investigate which will be the object of my future Discourses; and I have a sanguine hope, that your collections during the present year will bring to light many useful discoveries; although the departure for Europe of a very ingenious member, who first opened the inestimable mine of Sanskrit literature, will often deprive us of accurate and solid information concerning the languages and antiquities of India.
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Re: Freda Bedi Cont'd (#3)

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Jacob Bryant [The Analyst of Ancient Mythology]
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Accessed: 7/25/21

Whether Menu or Menus in the nominative and Meno's in an oblique case, was the same personage with Minos [Minos was a mythical king in the island of Crete, the son of Zeus and Europa. He was famous for creating a successful code of laws; in fact, it was so grand that after his death, Minos became one of the three judges of the dead in the underworld. Minos, by Wikipedia], let others determine; but he must indubitably have been far older than the work, which contains his laws, and though perhaps he was never in Crete, yet some of his institutions may well have been adopted in that island, whence Lycurgus, a century or two afterwards, may have imported them to Sparta.

There is certainly a strong resemblance, though obscured and faded by time, between our Menu with his divine Bull, whom he names as Dherma himself, or the genius of abstract justice, and the Mneues of Egypt with his companion or symbol Apis; and, though we should be constantly on our guard against the delusion of etymological conjecture, yet we cannot but admit that Minos and Mneues, or Mneuis, have only Greek terminations, but that the crude noun is composed of the same radical letters both in Greek and in Sanscrit.

'That Apis and Mneuis,' says the Analyst of ancient Mythology, ‘were both representations of some personage, appears from the testimony of Lycophron and his scholiast; and that personage was the same, who in Crete was styled Minos, and who was also represented under the emblem of the Minotaur; Diodorus, who confines him to Egypt, speaks of him by the title of the bull Mneuis, as the first lawgiver, and says, "That he lived after the age of the gods and heroes, when a change was made in the manner of life among men; that he was a man of a most exalted soul, and a great promoter of civil society, which he benefited by his laws; that those laws were unwritten, and received by him from the chief Egyptian deity Hermes, who conferred them on the world as a gift of the highest importance.” He was the same, adds my learned friend, with Menes, whom the Egyptians represented as their first king and principal benefactor, who first sacrificed to the gods, and brought about a great change in diet.’


If Minos, the son of Jupiter, whom the Cretans, from national vanity, might have made a native of their own island, was really the same person with Menu, the son of Brahma, we have the good fortune to restore, by means of Indian literature, the most celebrated system of heathen jurisprudence, and this work might have been entitled The Laws of Minos; but the paradox is too singular to be confidently asserted, and the geographical part of the book, with most of the allusions to natural history, must indubitably have been written after the Hindu race had settled to the south of Himalaya.

-- Institutes of Hindu Law: Or, The Ordinances of Menu, According to the Gloss of Culluca. Comprising the Indian System of Duties, Religious and Civil, Verbally translated from the original Sanscrit, With a Preface, by Sir William Jones

The Hindus themselves believe their own country, to which they give the vain epithets of Medhyama or Central, and Punyabhúmi, or the Land of Virtues, to have been the portion of Bharat, one of nine brothers, whose father had the dominion of the whole earth; and they represent the mountains of Himálaya as lying to the north, and, to the west, those of Vindhya, called also Vindian by the Greeks; beyond which the Sindhu runs in several branches to the sea, and meets it nearly opposite to the point of Dwáracà, the celebrated seat of their Shepherd God: in the south-east they place the great river Saravatya; by which they probably mean that of Ava, called also Airávati in parts of its course, and giving perhaps its ancient name to the gulf of Sabara. This domain of Bharat they consider as the middle of the Jambudwípa, which the Tibetians also call the Land of Zambu; and the appellation is extremely remarkable; for Jambu is the Sanskrit name of a delicate fruit called Jáman by the Muselmans, and by us rose-apple; but the largest and richest sort is named Amrita, or Immortal; and the Mythologists of Tibet apply the same word to a celestial tree bearing ambrosial fruit, and adjoining to four vast rocks, from which as many sacred rivers derive their several streams.

The inhabitants of this extensive tract are described by Mr. Lord with great exactness, and with a picturesque elegance peculiar to our ancient language: "A people, says he, presented themselves to mine eyes, clothed in linen garments somewhat low descending, of a gesture and garb, as I may say, maidenly and well nigh effeminate, or a countenance shy and somewhat estranged, yet smiling out a glozed and bashful familiarity. " Mr. Orme, the Historian of India, who unites an exquisite taste for every fine art with an accurate knowledge of Asiatic manners, observes, in his elegant preliminary Dissertation, that this "country has been inhabited from the earliest antiquity by a people, who have no resemblance, either in their figure or manners, with any of the nations contiguous to them," and that, "although conquerors have established themselves at different times in different parts of India, yet the original inhabitants have lost very little of their original character." The ancients, in fact, give a description of them, which our early travellers confirmed, and our own personal knowledge of them nearly verifies; as you will perceive from a passage in the Geographical Poem of Dionysius, which the Analyst of Ancient Mythology has translated with great spirit:
To th' east a lovely country wide extends,
India, whose borders the wide ocean bounds;
On this the sun, new rising from the main,
Smiles pleas'd, and sheds his early orient beam.
Th' inhabitants are swart, and in their locks
Betray the tints of the dark hyacinth.
Various their functions; some the rock explore,
And from the mine extract the latent gold;
Some labor at the woof with cunning skill,
And manufacture linen; others shape
And polish iv'ry with the nicest care:
Many retire to rivers shoal, and plunge
To seek the beryl flaming in its bed,
Or glitt'ring diamond. Oft the jasper's found
Green, but diaphanous; the topaz too
Of ray serene and pleasing; last of all
The lovely amethyst, in which combine
All the mild shades of purple. The rich soil,
Wash'd by a thousand rivers, from all sides
Pours on the natives wealth without control.

Their sources of wealth are still abundant even after so many revolutions and conquests; in their manufactures of cotton they still surpass all the world; and their features have, most probably, remained unaltered since the time of Dionysius; nor can we reasonably doubt, how degenerate and abased so ever the Hindus may now appear, that in some early age they were splendid in art and arms, happy in government, wise in legislation, and eminent in various knowledge: but, since their civil history beyond the middle of the nineteenth century from the present time, is involved in a cloud of fables, we seem to possess only four general media of satisfying our curiosity concerning it; namely, first their Languages and Letters; secondly, their Philosophy and Religion; thirdly, the actual remains of their old Sculpture and Architecture; and fourthly, the written memorials of their Sciences and Arts.

-- Discourse III. On the Hindus, Discourses Delivered Before the Asiatic Society: And Miscellaneous Papers, on The Religion, Poetry, Literature, Etc. of the Nations of India, Delivered February 2, 1786, by Sir William Jones

P. 20-21: The AEtolians are said to have lived on the omphalos or umbilicus of Greece. [Liv. Hist. lib xxv. C. 18.] There was a place in Crete called omphalium, from an omphalos. [Callim. Hymn. In Jov. V. 42.] Sicily affords instances of such places. [Jacob Bryant. Myth. Vol. i. p. 11.] Many others also of ancient celebrity are noticed by different authors. The prists of the temple of Apollo at Delphi maintained farther, that their Mount Parnassus was not only the omphalos of Greece, but the Mesomphalso, the Meru of all the world. Such is the title given to it by the tragic poet Sophocles. [Oedip. Tyrann. V. 487.] In accordance with him, Pindar relates, in his fourth Pythian ode, that the oracle which obliged Jason to undertake the Argonautic expedition was uttered by the laurel-crowned priestess of Delphi, from the Mesomphalos of Mount Parnassus. [Pyth. Od. Iv. 129. ] Pausanias cites the authority of this poet, in confirmation of the assertion of the citizens of Delphi, that the omphalos, a figure of white stone, placed within the limits of their temple, and kept covered by a veil, was the exact mesomphalos, the middle of all the earth. [Pausan. Lib. X. c. 16, s. 2. Strab. Lib. Ix. P. 420. A. ] The stone thus covered in reverence, as it was pretended, clearly intimates the claim vindicated for these mesomphali. It was doubtless the same as the Phenician cone, sacred to Venus, and exhibited in the Sastra under the name of bhaga or yoni, as the sign of one of the lunar mansions. This emblem of fertility and production belongs to the ancient phallic worship, and is aptly placed in a spot which claims the title of the first birthplace of the human race. The same inference may be drawn from Ilium, the name of the citadel of Troy. The hero of the Aeneis conveyed Ilium and the conquered Penates into Italy. [ ] Ilium was the abode of the Penates, gods of Troy. Ila signifies the earth, in the Sanscrit. There are several circumstances which shew that the title of having been the birthplace of the first of mankind was asserted by the votaries of Mount Parnassus. The high and precipitous peaks of that mountain, the mysterious caves and the ceaseless streams, the mephitic vapours issuing from numerous cavities, all marked the place extraordinary. The numerous sacred structures comprised within the wide bounds of its heights gave to the whole of the place a close resemblance to the fabled features of Meru, the mesomphalos of India.

The learned analyst of ancient mythology, availing himself of his convertible radicals, has thought proper to maintain that sacred umbilical eminences derived their name from the oracular uses to which they served; that omphalos was a word compounded of the Greek ([x]) omphi, signifiying an oracular response, and el, a Hebrew word, signifying that the response was from a god. This might have been probable were it true that all these omphali were oracular. But it does not appear that all these eminences were so. This fact overturns his argument, and invites a farther enquiry concerning the derivation of the word….

P. 36: The god Horus of the Egyptian mythology was a personification of the sun, as some are pleased to affirm, but more properly of the earth, produced by Osiris, the active cause, on Isis, the passive agent in productive nature. According to Jamblichus, Horus was often represented by the figure of a man seated on the lotus. Other Egyptian symbols exhibit a frog, an amphibious creature, sitting on the flower, as though newly emerging from the water. In another, a beautiful young woman, a symbol of productive earth, is seated on the flower. The late traveler Belzoni, and others, have seen the like symbols still extant in several temples of the country. [Jacob Bryant. Myth. Vol. iii. P. 256. Belzoni’s Travels, p. 57.]

There have been various opinions concerning the true import of these symbols. The philosophers Jamblichus, Plutarch, and Porphyry, agree that they allude to the elements of earth and water, but wandering into refined disquisitions concerning nature moist and nature dry, they involve themselves in perplexing subtleties, and lose the plain truth while in pursuit of it. The same may be said of the English analyst of ancient mythology. He regards the symbols of Horus as referring to the general deluge and the ark of Noah: he regards the infant Horus seated on the calyx of the lotus as significant of the aged patriarch shut up in the ark. The improbability, if not the impossibility of this opinion, will perhaps appear when it is known, that the name of Noah, and of the miraculous assemblage of every kind of animal in the ark is never noticed in the records left by the heathen mythologists or historians. The true history of the general deluge is merged and lost in the heathen theories of the alternate destruction of the world by water and by fire, and of the restoration of his inhabiters from a few that escaped. Leaving therefore these fables as not meriting attention, the symbol of Horus on the calyx or flower of the lotus is again offered to notice….

P. 94: The learned analyst of ancient mythology affirms that the word Asia, [Jacob Bryant, vol. i. p. 31.] the name of a most important quarter of the globe, signifies the land of fire, for that it is compounded of the radicals [x] or is, and [x], [Etym. Magn. Ad voc.] aia, earth. The former of these radicals is the same as the Hebrew [x] aish, fire. The name was evidently given because fire and the sun were worshipped in all the regions of that continent known to the ancients. This element was a symbol of the male or generative power of Nature, adopted in opposition to the worship of Egypt, Europe, and the western regions, whose inhabitants pertinaciously adhered to their worship of water and the moon, symbols of the female or productive powers of Nature. The history of the Asiatic nations confirms this position. The Canaanites made their sons and their daughters pass through the fire unto Moloch. The Chaldees of Ur were especially distinguished by the same worship. The Persians of ancient ages, and the Parsis of modern, the disciples of Zoroaster, are eminently distinguished by the observance of rites performed in worship of the same element. The ancient Hyrcania received its name from the same worship, for which even the modern Balk and Bamian have long been noted. Even Hindosthan had her Suryavansa worshipping the sun and fire, in opposition to the Chandravansa worshipper of the moon and water. Such differences subsisted between the shepherd kings of Egypt, who built the pyramids, and the Egyptians, whom they compelled, with victorious insolence to labour as slaves at the mighty works. The purport of the name of the continent from whence they came proves that they were worshippers of the sun and fire, and that the pyramids were built for the worship of that element….

P. 155-156: The word obelisk signifies a spit; and, according to Herodotus, the name was given to the column because of the resemblance it had to that culinary instrument. A reference to such an ordinary object cannot be supposed to have been applied to a sacred structure, nor was it, for Pliny expressly declares that the word obelisk signifies a dedication to the sun. [‘Ita significatur nomine Aegyptio.’ Hist. Nat. lib. Xxxvi. C. 8.] How the name might bear this signification, the naturalist does not show. The Analyst of Ancient Mythology may by an use of his radicals supply the defect.

He affirms that the word obelisk is compounded of the radical monosyllables oph, alias ob, a serpent, and el, a designation of the Deity, and that the word indicated that the structure was dedicated to the serpent divine, which, he says, was the sun. [Jacob Bryant, Radicals, vol. i.] The grammarian Horapollo will guide to a better conclusion. When the Egyptians intend to signify the world, they draw the figure of a serpent taking into his mouth his own tail. Thus it appears that the serpent, ob, is the world, and consequently ob-el means the world divine, the world god. [Horapoll. Hiero. Lib. i. c. I. ] Hence it appears that the import of the word obelisk is the world sustained by the Deity. When two obelisks are placed on the two sides of the doors or entrances of temples, they are the same symbols as the Icin and Boaz of the temple of Solomon; when singly standing alone, the obelisk has the same general import, it signifies the power of the god to whom it is dedicated….

P. 286: The zealous Advocate for the religion of the Gospel seems to have known well the usual contents of these sacred arks; for the Christians, not being awed by the pretended sanctity of those fabrics intended to be secret mysteries, would not hesitate to look into them whenever an opportunity occurred. The Advocate, regarding the indignant scorn the contents of these arks, recites them in terms as follow: "Are they not," says he, "sprigs of sesamis, and little pyramids, and wool elaborately wrought, a cake with many knobs, handfuls of salt, together with a snake, used in the orgies of Bacchus? Are they not pomegranates? Are they not little hearts, little rods, sprigs of ivy, sweet cakes, and heads of poppies? These," says the scornful Advocate, "are their sacred things." [Clem. Alexand. Admon. ad Gent. p. 14. A.] The Analyst of Ancient Mythology admits that such things as these here recited, were the usual garniture of the sacred arks; but he shows, that every article had its peculiar symbolical meaning, and might have been available to good effects: but it is evident that much study must have been pratised, before such effects could have wrought upon the minds of the pagan votaries; the excess of meaning rendered, as it ever must, the import of the many symbols utterly inefficient. The study of the symbols was never undertaken; their use was unknown, and they appeared to be really useless and even ridiculous; the banter of the Christian Advocate became irresistible, and the pagan, ashamed of his old mythology, gave heed to the evidences of truth, and became a convert to the Christian faith.

This effect ensuing from the argument of the Christian Advocate, affords a useful warning in regard to the use of symbols; it shews that when the symbols are numerous they become uninstructive, and even injurious to the interests of truth. Of the articles, the usual furniture of the sacred arks of the pagans, it must be observed, that every one of them had a symbolical meaning calculated to afford the most valuable instruction; the whole rightly understood would have formed a most excellent lecture in natural religion -- would have taught the same truths as man is invited to seek and secure by a pious attention given to the works of the Creator. This will be sufficiently evident from the authorities and observations of the learned and ingenious Bryant, who shews that idolatory depended entirely on the symbolical use of natural objects. Had idolaters confined themselves within that limit, they had not been transgressors of the divine law; but when they bowed before the symbol, it soon became a god; they they trod the paths of error. The Reformers of the sixteenth century, aware of this tendency of the use of symbols, proscribed them altogether; destroying that which might be valuably useful, because it had been abused. True religion is most assuredly spiritual; but there are few who can become spiritual without the aid of objects of sense, and therefore the use of symbols, when confined within proper bounds, will ever be approved the true friend of man. The same may be said of the application of heathen structures to the purposes of Christian worship. All of them were symbolical: but when it is shewn that they all received their symbolical forms by a regular descent from the primal and patriarchal altar, in form most probably the same as the altar raised by the Deity for the use of many when he planted the Garden of Eden, the forms of the sacred structures of even the heathen may be said to have had a divine origin. This fully justifies the adoption of the forms of heathen sacred structures, and the application of even heathen symbols, to purposes altogether and purely Christian. After these remarks, digressive perhaps, but not altogether foreign to the subject, the attention is again invited to the history of the sacred arks of heathenism.

The religion of the Celts, better known as the religion of the Druids, was, during the ages which preceded the age of recorded history, the form which idolatry bore in almost all, if not actually in all parts of the world. Rites performed in caves formed a part of the religious duties of that mode of religion; and the use of the kist-vaen or sacred ark was inseparable from, and indispensably necessary to, the performance of some of the most solemn mysteries.

-- Naology: or, A Treatise on the Origin, Progress, and Symbolical Import of The Sacred Structures of the Most Eminent Nations and Ages of the World, by John Dudley, M.A., Vicar of Humberston and of Sileby, Leicestershire, sometime Fellow and Tutor of Clare Hall, Cambridge, and Author of an Essay on the Identity of the River Niger and the Nile, 1846

RADICALS.

Πειθους δ' εστι κελευθος, αληθειη γαρ οπηδει.——PARMENIDES.

The materials, of which I purpose to make use in the following inquiries, are comparatively few, and will be contained within a small compass. They are such as are to be found in the composition of most names, which occur in antient mythology: whether they relate to Deities then reverenced; or to the places, where their worship was introduced. But they appear no where so plainly, as in the names of those places, which were situated in Babylonia and Egypt. From these parts they were, in process of time, transferred to countries far remote; beyond the Ganges eastward, and to the utmost bounds of the Mediterranean west; wherever the sons of Ham under their various denominations either settled or traded. For I have mentioned that this people were great adventurers; and began an extensive commerce in very early times. They got footing in many parts; where they founded cities, which were famous in their day. They likewise erected towers and temples: and upon headlands and promontories they raised pillars for sea-marks to direct them in their perilous expeditions. All these were denominated from circumstances, that had some reference to the religion, which this people professed; and to the ancestors, whence they sprung. The Deity, which they originally worshipped, was the Sun. But they soon conferred his titles upon some of their ancestors: whence arose a mixed worship. They particularly deified the great Patriarch, who was the head of their line; and worshipped him as the fountain of light: making the Sun only an emblem of his influence and power. They called him Bal, and Baal: and there were others of their ancestry joined with him, whom they styled the Baalim. Chus was one of these: and this idolatry began among his sons. In respect then to the names, which this people, in process of time, conferred either upon the Deities they worshipped, or upon the cities, which they founded; we shall find them to be generally made up of some original terms for a basis, such as Ham, Cham, and Chus: or else of the titles, with which those personages were, in process of time, honoured. These were Thoth, Men or Menes, Ab, El, Aur, Ait, Ees or Ish, On, Bel, Cohen, Keren, Ad, Adon, Ob, Oph, Apha, Uch, Melech, Anac, Sar, Sama, Samaïm. We must likewise take notice of those common names, by which places are distinguished, such as Kir, Caer, Kiriath, Carta, Air, Col, Cala, Beth, Ai, Ain, Caph, and Cephas. Lastly are to be inserted the particles Al and Pi; which were in use among the antient Egyptians.

Of these terms I shall first treat; which I look upon as so many elements, whence most names in antient mythology have been compounded; and into which they may be easily resolved: and the history, with which they are attended, will, at all times, plainly point out, and warrant the etymology.

-- A New System; or, an Analysis of Ancient Mythology. Volume I., by Jacob Bryant

Maurya ... it seems that Chandragupta went by that name, particularly in the west; for he is known to Arabian writers by the name of Mur, according to the Nubian geographer, who says that he was defeated and killed by Alexander; for these authors supposed that this conqueror crossed the Ganges; and it is also the opinion of some ancient historians in the west.

-- Essay III. Of the Kings of Magadha; their Chronology, by Captain Wilford, Asiatic Researches, Volume 9, 1809. pgs. 94-100.

In "A Descent Into the Malestrom," before the old mariner's confrontation with the whirlpool, the uninitiated narrator remarks on the prospect: "I looked dizzily, and beheld a wide expanse of ocean, whose waters were so inky a hue as to bring to mind the Nubian geographer's account of the Mare Tenebrarum."1 [The Complete Works of Edgar Allan Poe, ed. James A. Harrison (New York, 1902/1965), II, 226-227. All other references to this edition will be noted in the text by volume and page number.] In Burton Pollin's Dictionary of Names and Titles in Poe's Collected Works, the identity of this geographical authority is left open to question. Hanna, Claudius Ptolemy, and Idrisi have been mentioned as possibilities.2 [Pollin mentions Idrisi and Claudius Ptolemy in Dictionary (New York, 1968), p. 68. Admitting uncertainty, T.O. Mabbott mentions Hanno and Idresi in Selected Poetry and Prose of Edgar Allan Poe (New York, 1951), p. 421.] The allusion is of more than trifling importance, since Poe recast it in "Eleonora," the preface to "Mellonta Tauta," and Eureka. These four references indicate a singular fascination with the geographer and his descriptive account. In each case, Poe's source was Jacob Bryant's A New System; or, An Analysis of Ancient Mythology (1807).3 [London, 1807.] The treatment of the Nubian geographer in Bryant's work clarifies a significant allusion, invites a re-evaluation of the sources of "A Descent into the Maelstrom," and adds to an understanding of the image patterns in the tale.

While the sources of "A Descent into the Maelstrom" have received fairly rigorous attention4 [See Adolph B. Benson, "Scandinavian References in the Works of Edgar Allan Poe," Journal of English and Germanic Philology, XL (Jan., 1941), 73-90; Arlin Turner, "Sources of Poe's 'A Descent into the Maelstrom,'" Journal of English and Germanic Philology, XLVI (July, 1947), 298-301; William T. Bandy, "New Light on a Source of Poe's 'A Descent into the Maelstrom,'" American Literature, XXIV (Jan, 1953), 534-537; Margaret J. Yonce, "The Spiritual Descent into the Maelstrom: A Debt to "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,'" Poe Newsletter, II (April, 1969), 26-29; and Carroll D. Laverty, "Science and Pseudo-Science in the Writings of Edgar Allan Poe" (Unpublished dissertation, Duke University, 1951), pp. 178-179.] allowance must be made for Bryant's in-

-- Notes: Poe's Nubian Geographer, by Kent Ljungquist, Bluefield College, American Literature, Vol. 48, No. 1 (Mar., 1976), pp. 73-75 (3 pages), Published By: Duke University Press

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Jacob Bryant
Born: 1715, Plymouth, Devon
Died: 14 November 1804 (aged 88–89)
Nationality: British
Occupation: scholar, mythographer

Jacob Bryant (1715–1804) was an English scholar and mythographer, who has been described as "the outstanding figure among the mythagogues who flourished in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries."[1]

Life

Bryant was born at Plymouth. His father worked in the customs there, but was afterwards moved to Chatham. Bryant was first sent to a school near Rochester, and then to Eton College. In 1736 he was elected to a scholarship at King's College, Cambridge, where he took his degrees of B.A. (1740) and M.A. (1744), later being elected a fellow.[2] He returned to Eton as private tutor to the Duke of Marlborough. In 1756 he accompanied the duke, who was master-general of ordnance and commander-in-chief of the forces in Germany, to the Continent as private secretary. He was rewarded by a lucrative appointment in the Board of Ordnance, which allowed him time to indulge his literary tastes.

Image
The Duke of Marlborough, by George Romney.

George Spencer, 4th Duke of Marlborough, KG, PC, FRS (26 January 1739 – 29 January 1817), styled Marquess of Blandford until 1758, was a British courtier, nobleman, and politician from the Spencer family. He served as Lord Chamberlain between 1762 and 1763 and as Lord Privy Seal between 1763 and 1765. He is the great-great-great grandfather of Sir Winston Churchill....

Marlborough entered the Coldstream Guards in 1755 as an Ensign, becoming a Captain with the 20th Regiment of Foot the following year. After inheriting the dukedom in 1758, Marlborough took his seat in the House of Lords in 1760, becoming Lord-Lieutenant of Oxfordshire in that same year. The following year, he bore the sceptre with the cross at the coronation of George III. In 1762, he was made Lord Chamberlain as well as a Privy Counsellor, and after a year resigned this appointment to become Lord Privy Seal, a post he held until 1765. An amateur astronomer, he built a private observatory at his residence, Blenheim Palace. He kept up a lively scientific correspondence with Hans Count von Brühl, another aristocratic dilettante in astronomy.

The Duke was made a Knight of the Garter in 1768, and was elected to the Royal Society in 1786.

-- George Spencer, 4th Duke of Marlborough, by Wikipedia


He was twice offered the mastership of Charterhouse school, but turned it down.

Bryant died on 14 November 1804 at Cippenham near Windsor. He left his library to King's College, having previously made some valuable presents from it to the king and the Duke of Marlborough. He bequeathed £2000 to the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, and £1000 for the use of the retired collegers of Eton.

United Society Partners in the Gospel (USPG) is a United Kingdom-based charitable organization (registered charity no. 234518).

It was first incorporated under Royal Charter in 1701 as the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts (SPG) as a high church missionary organization of the Church of England and was active in the Thirteen Colonies of North America....

Foundation and mission work in North America

In 1700, Henry Compton, Bishop of London (1675–1713), requested the Revd Thomas Bray to report on the state of the Church of England in the American Colonies. Bray, after extended travels in the region, reported that the Anglican church in America had "little spiritual vitality" and was "in a poor organizational condition". Under Bray's initiative, the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts was authorised by convocation and incorporated by Royal Charter on 16 June 1701. King William III issued a charter establishing the SPG as "an organisation able to send priests and schoolteachers to America to help provide the Church's ministry to the colonists". The new society had two main aims: Christian ministry to British people overseas; and evangelization of the non-Christian races of the world.

The society's first two missionaries, graduates of the University of Aberdeen, George Keith and Patrick Gordon, sailed from England for North America on 24 April 1702. By 1710 the Society's charter had expanded to include work among enslaved Africans in the West Indies and Native Americans in North America. The SPG funded clergy and schoolmasters, dispatched books, and supported catechists through annual fundraising sermons in London that publicized the work of the mission society. Queen Anne was a noted early supporter, contributing her own funds and authorizing in 1711 the first of many annual Royal Letters requiring local parishes in England to raise a "liberal contribution" for the Society's work overseas...

The SPG clergy were ordained, university-educated men, described at one time by Thomas Jefferson as "Anglican Jesuits." They were recruited from across the British Isles and further afield; only one third of the missionaries employed by the Society in the 18th century were English. Included in their number such notable individuals as George Keith, and John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, originally a movement within the Anglican Church.

West Indies

Through a charitable bequest received in 1710, aimed at establishing Codrington College, the SPG became a significant slave owner in Barbados in the 18th and early 19th centuries. With the aim of supplying funding for the college, the Society was the beneficiary of the forced labour of thousands of enslaved Africans on the Codrington Plantations. Many of the slaves died in captivity from such diseases as dysentery and typhoid, after being weakened by overwork.

Although many educational institutions of the period, such as All Souls College, Oxford and Harvard University in Massachusetts benefitted from charitable bequests made by slave owners and slave traders, the ownership of the Codrington Plantations by the SPG and the Church of England generated considerable adverse controversy. In 1783, Bishop Beilby Porteus, an early proponent of abolitionism, used the occasion of the SPG's annual anniversary sermon to highlight the conditions at the Codrington Plantations and called for the SPG to end its connection with slave trade. The SPG did not relinquish its slave holdings in Barbados for decades, not until after the introduction in Parliament of the Slavery Abolition Act of 1833.

At the February 2006 meeting of the General Synod of the Church of England, attendees commemorated the church's role in helping to pass the Slave Trade Act of 1807 to abolish the Atlantic trade. Delegates also voted unanimously to apologise to the descendants of slaves for the church's long involvement in and support of the slave trade and the institution. Tom Butler, Bishop of Southwark, confirmed in a speech before the vote, that the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts had owned the Codrington Plantations...

Global expansion

The Society established mission outposts in Canada in 1759, Australia in 1793, and India in 1820. It later expanded outside the British Empire to China in 1863, Japan in 1873, and Korea in 1890. By the middle of the 19th century, the Society's work was focused more on the promotion and support of indigenous Anglican churches and the training of local church leadership, than on the supervision and care of colonial and expatriate church congregations

-- United Society Partners in the Gospel, by Wikipedia


Works

His chief works were A New System or Analysis of Ancient Mythology[3] (1774–76, and later editions), Observations on the Plain of Troy (1795), and Dissertation concerning the Wars of Troy (1796). He also wrote on theological, political and literary subjects.

Mythographer

Bryant saw all mythology as derived from the Hebrew Scriptures, with Greek mythology arising via the Egyptians.[4] The New System attempted to link the mythologies of the world to the stories recorded in Genesis. Bryant argued that the descendants of Ham had been the most energetic, but also the most rebellious peoples of the world and had given rise to the great ancient and classical civilisations. He called these people "Amonians", because he believed that the Egyptian god Amon was a deified form of Ham. He argued that Ham had been identified with the sun, and that much of pagan European religion derived from Amonian sun worship.

John Richardson was Bryant's chief opponent, in the preface to his Persian Dictionary. In an anonymous pamphlet, An Apology, Bryant defended and reaffirmed his opinions. Richardson then revised the dissertation on languages prefixed to the dictionary, and added a second part: Further Remarks on the New Analysis of Ancient Mythology (1778). Bryant also wrote a pamphlet in answer to Daniel Wyttenbach of Amsterdam, about the same time.[5] Sir William Jones frequently mentions Bryant's model, accepting parts of it and criticising others, particularly his highly conjectural etymologies. He referred to the New System as "a profound and agreeable work", adding that he had read it through three times "with increased attention and pleasure, though not with perfect acquiescence in some other less important parts of his plausible system".[6]

Bryant in the New System acknowledges help from William Barford.[7]

A Latin dissertation of Barford's on the 'First Pythian' is published in Henry Huntingford's edition of Pindar's works, to which is appended a short life of the author, a list of his works, and a eulogium of his learning. The list consists of poems on various political events in Latin and Greek, written in his capacity of public orator, a Latin oration at the funeral of William George, provost of King's College, 1756, and a Concio ad Clerum, 1784, written after his installation as canon of Canterbury.

-- William Barford, by Wikipedia


His theories are widely credited as an influence on the mythological system of William Blake, who had worked in his capacity as an engraver on the illustrations to Bryant's New System.

Classical scholar

In his books on Troy, Bryant endeavoured to show that the existence of Troy and the Greek expedition were purely mythological, with no basis in real history. In 1791, Andrew Dalzel translated a work of Jean Baptiste LeChevalier as Description of the Plain of Troy.[8] It provoked Bryant's Observations upon a Treatise ... (on) the Plain of Troy (1795) and A Dissertation concerning the War of Troy (1796?). A fierce controversy resulted, with Bryant attacked by Thomas Falconer, John Morritt, William Vincent, and Gilbert Wakefield.[5]

Other works

• Bryant's first work was Observations and Enquiries relating to various parts of Ancient History, ... the Wind Euroclydon, the island Melite, the Shepherd Kings, (Cambridge, 1767). Bryant attacked the opinions of Bochart, Beza, Grotius, and Bentley.[5]
• When his account of the Apamean medal was disputed in the Gentleman's Magazine, Bryant defended himself in Apamean Medal and of the Inscription ΝΩΕ, London, 1775. Joseph Hilarius Eckhel upheld his views, but Daines Barrington and others opposed him in the Society of Antiquaries of London.[5]

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The Apamean medal

• After his friend Robert Wood died in 1771, Bryant edited one of his works as An Essay on the Original Genius and Writings of Homer, with a Comparative View of the Troade (1775).
Vindiciæ Flavianæ: a Vindication of the Testimony of Josephus concerning Jesus Christ (1777) was anonymous; the second edition, with Bryant's name, was in 1780. The sequel was A Farther Illustration of the Analysis (1778). This work influenced Joseph Priestley.[5]

Joseph Priestley FRS (24 March 1733 – 6 February 1804) was an English chemist, natural philosopher, separatist theologian, grammarian, multi-subject educator, and liberal political theorist who published over 150 works. He has historically been credited with the independent discovery of oxygen in 1774 by the thermal decomposition of mercuric oxide, having isolated it. Although Swedish chemist Carl Wilhelm Scheele also has strong claims to the discovery, Priestley published his findings first. Scheele discovered it by heating potassium nitrate, mercuric oxide, and many other substances about 1772.

During his lifetime, Priestley's considerable scientific reputation rested on his invention of carbonated water, his writings on electricity, and his discovery of several "airs" (gases), the most famous being what Priestley dubbed "dephlogisticated air" (oxygen). Priestley's determination to defend phlogiston theory and to reject what would become the chemical revolution eventually left him isolated within the scientific community.

Priestley's science was integral to his theology, and he consistently tried to fuse Enlightenment rationalism with Christian theism. In his metaphysical texts, Priestley attempted to combine theism, materialism, and determinism, a project that has been called "audacious and original". He believed that a proper understanding of the natural world would promote human progress and eventually bring about the Christian millennium.
Priestley, who strongly believed in the free and open exchange of ideas, advocated toleration and equal rights for religious Dissenters, which also led him to help found Unitarianism in England. The controversial nature of Priestley's publications, combined with his outspoken support of the French Revolution, aroused public and governmental suspicion; he was eventually forced to flee in 1791, first to London and then to the United States, after a mob burned down his Birmingham home and church. He spent his last ten years in Northumberland County, Pennsylvania.

A scholar and teacher throughout his life, Priestley also made significant contributions to pedagogy, including the publication of a seminal work on English grammar and books on history, and he prepared some of the most influential early timelines. These educational writings were among Priestley's most popular works. It was his metaphysical works, however, that had the most lasting influence, being considered primary sources for utilitarianism by philosophers such as Jeremy Bentham, John Stuart Mill, and Herbert Spencer.

-- Joseph Priestley, by Wikipedia


• An Address to Dr. Priestley ... upon Philosophical Necessity (1780); Priestley printed a reply the same year.[5]
Bryant was a believer in the authenticity of Thomas Chatterton's fabrications. Chatterton had created poems written in mock Middle English and had attributed them to Thomas Rowley, an imaginary monk of the 15th century. When Thomas Tyrwhitt issued his work The Poems supposed to have been written at Bristol by Thomas Rowley and others,' Bryant with Robert Glynn followed with his Observations on the Poems of Thomas Rowley in which the Authenticity of those Poems is ascertained (2 vols., 1781).[5]
Gemmarum Antiquarum Delectus (1783) was privately printed at the expense of the Duke of Marlborough, with engravings by Francesco Bartolozzi. The first volume was written in Latin by Bryant, and translated into French by Matthew Maty; the second by William Cole, with the French by Louis Dutens.[5]
On the Zingara or Gypsey Language (1785) was read by Bryant to the Royal Society, and printed in the seventh volume of Archæologia.[5]
• A disquisition On the Land of Goshen, written about 1767, was published in William Bowyer's Miscellaneous Tracts, 1785.[5]
A Treatise on the Authenticity of the Scriptures (1791) was anonymous; second edition, with author's name, 1793; third edition, 1810. This work was written at the instigation of the Dowager Countess Pembroke, daughter of his patron, and the profits were given to the hospital for smallpox and inoculation.[5]
• Observations on a controverted passage in Justyn Martyr; also upon the "Worship of Angels", London, 1793.[5]
• Observations upon the Plagues inflicted upon the Egyptians, with maps, London, 1794.[5]
• The Sentiments of Philo-Judæus concerning the Logos or Word of God (1797).
A treatise against Tom Paine.[5]
• 'Observations upon some Passages in Scripture' (relating to Balaam, Joshua, Samson, and Jonah), London, 1803.[5]

A projected work on the Gods of Greece and Rome was not produced by his executors. Some of his humorous verse in Latin and Greek was published.[5]

References

1. S. Foster Damon, A Blake Dictionary (1965), article on Bryant.
2. "Bryant, Jacob (BRNT736J)". A Cambridge Alumni Database. University of Cambridge.
3. Foster: Opinionated and peppery, unhampered by modern standards of scholarship, and indulging in a fantastic philology, Bryant was of the Age of Reason in that he sought to reduce all fables to common sense.
4. John Charles Whale; Stephen Copley (1992). Beyond Romanticism: New Approaches to Texts and Contexts, 1780–1832. Routledge, Chapman & Hall, Incorporated. p. 92. ISBN 978-0-415-05201-6. Retrieved 11 April 2013.
5. Stephen, Leslie, ed. (1886). "Bryant, Jacob" . Dictionary of National Biography. 7. London: Smith, Elder & Co.
6. Young, Brian, "Christianity, histopry and India, 1790-1820", Collini, et al, History, Religion, and Culture: British Intellectual History 1750-1950, Cambridge University Press, 2000, p.98.
7. Stephen, Leslie, ed. (1885). "Barford, William" . Dictionary of National Biography. 3. London: Smith, Elder & Co.
8. Jean Baptiste LeChevalier (1791). Description of the plain of Troy, tr., with notes and illustr. by A. Dalzel. Retrieved 11 April 2013.

Attribution

• This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Stephen, Leslie, ed. (1886). "Bryant, Jacob". Dictionary of National Biography. 7. London: Smith, Elder & Co.
• This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Cousin, John William (1910). A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature. London: J. M. Dent & Sons – via Wikisource.

External links

• Works by Jacob Bryant at Project Gutenberg
• Works by or about Jacob Bryant at Internet Archive

**************************

Jacob Bryant
by Dictionary of National Biography
1885-1900

BRYANT, JACOB (1715–1804), antiquary, was born in 1715 at Plymouth, where his father was an officer in the customs, but before his seventh year was removed to Chatham. The Rev. Samuel Thornton of Luddesdon, near Rochester, was his first schoolmaster, and in 1730 he was at Eton. Elected to King's College, Cambridge, in 1736, he took his degrees, B.A. in 1740, M.A. in 1744, and he became a fellow of his college. He was first private tutor to Sir Thomas Stapylton, and then to the Marquis of Blandford, afterwards duke of Marlborough, and his brother, Lord Charles Spencer. In 1756 he was appointed secretary to the Duke of Marlborough, master-general of ordnance, and went with him to Germany, where the latter died while commander-in-chief. At the same time Bryant held an office in the ordnance department worth 1,400l. a year. Mr. Hetherington made him his executor with a legacy of 3,000l., and the Marlborough family allowed him 1,000l. a year, gave him rooms at Blenheim, and the use of the famous library. He twice refused the mastership of the Charterhouse, although once actually elected. His first work was 'Observations and Enquiries relating to various parts of Ancient History, ... the Wind Euroclydon, the island Melite, the Shepherd Kings,' &c. (Cambridge, 1767, 4to), in which he attacked the opinions of Bochart, Beza, Grotius, and Bentley. He next published the work with which his name is chiefly associated, 'A New System or an Analysis of Ancient Mythology,' with plates, London, 1774, two vols. 4to; second edition, 1775, 4to; and vol. iii. 1776, 4to. His research is remarkable, but he had no knowledge of oriental languages, and his system of etymology was puerile and misleading. The third edition, in six vols. 8vo, was published in 1807. John Wesley published an abbreviation of the first two vols, of the 4to edition. Richardson, assisted by Sir William Jones, was Bryant's chief opponent in the preface to his 'Persian Dictionary.' In an anonymous pamphlet, 'An Apology,' &c., of which only a few copies were printed for literary friends, Bryant sustained his opinions, whereupon Richardson revised the dissertation on languages prefixed to the dictionary, and added a second part: 'Further Remarks on the New Analysis of Ancient Mythology,' &c., Oxford, 1778, 8vo. Bryant also wrote a pamphlet in answer to Wyttenbach, his Amsterdam antagonist, about the same time. His account of the Apamean medal being disputed in the 'Gentleman's Magazine,' he defended himself by publishing 'A Vindication of the Apamsean Medal, and of the Inscription Nωη,' London, 1775, 4to. Eckhel, the great medallist, upheld his views, but Daines Barrington and others strongly opposed him at the Society of Antiquaries (Archæologia, ii.) In 1775, four years after the death of his friend, Mr. Robert Wood, he edited, 'with his improved thoughts,' 'An Essay on the Original Genius and Writings of Homer, with a Comparative View of the Troade,' London, 4to. The first edition, of seven copies only, was a superb folio, privately printed in 1769. Bryant published in 1777, without his name, 'Vindiciæ Flavianæ: a Vindication of the Testimony of Josephus concerning Jesus Christ,' London, 8vo; second edition, with author's name, London, 1780, 8vo. This work converted even Dr. Priestley to his opinions. In 1778 he published 'A Farther Illustration of the Analysis ... ,' pp. 100, 8vo (no place). He next published 'An Address to Dr. Priestley ... upon Philosophical Necessity,' London, 1780, 8vo, to which Priestley printed a rejoinder the same year. When Tyrwhitt issued his work 'The Poems supposed to have been written at Bristol by Thomas Rowley and others,' Bryant, assisted by Dr. Glynn of King's College, Cambridge, followed with his 'Observations on the Poems of Thomas Rowley in which the Authenticity of those Poems is ascertained,' 2 vols., London, 1781, 8vo, a work that did not add to his reputation. In 1783, at the expense of the Duke of Marlborough, the splendid folio work on the Marlborough gems, 'Gemmarum Antiquarum Delectus,' was privately printed, with exquisite engravings by Bartolozzi. The first volume was written in Latin by Bryant, and translated into French by Dr. Maty; the second by Dr. Cole, prebendary of Westminster, and the French by Dr. Dutens. In 1785 a paper 'On the Zingara or Gypsey Language' was read by Bryant to the Royal Society, and printed in the seventh volume of 'Archæologia.' He next published, without his name, 'A Treatise on the Authenticity of the Scriptures,' London, 1791, 8vo; second edition, with author's name, Cambridge, 1793, 8vo; third edition, Cambridge, 1810, 8vo. This work was written at the instigation of the Dowager Countess Pembroke, daughter of his patron, and the profits were given to the hospital for smallpox and inoculation. Then followed 'Observations on a controverted passage in Justyn Martyr; also upon the 'Worship of Angels,' London, 1793, 4to; 'Observations upon the Plagues inflicted upon the Egyptians,' with maps, London, 1794, 8vo, pp. 440. Professor Dalzel's publication in 1794 of M. Chevalier's 'Description of the Plain of Troy' elicited Bryant's fearless work, 'Observations upon a Treatise ... (on) the Plain of Troy,' Eton, 1795, 4to, and 'A Dissertation concerning the War of Troy' (? 1796), 4to, pp. 196; second edition, corrected, with his name, London, 1799, 4to. Bryant contended that no such war was ever undertaken, and no such city as the Phrygian Troy ever existed; but he won no converts, and was attacked on all sides by such men as Dr. Vincent, Gilbert Wakefield, Falconer, and Morritt. In 1799 he published 'An Expostulation addressed to the British Critic,' Eton, 4to, mistaking his antagonist Vincent for Wakefield, and for the first time losing his temper and using strong and unjustifiable language. His next work, 'The Sentiments of Philo-Judæus concerning the Logos or Word of God,' Cambridge, 1797, 8vo, pp. 290, is full of fanciful speculation which detracted from his fame. In addition to these numerous works he published a treatise against the doctrines of Thomas Paine, and a disquisition 'On the Land of Goshen,' written about 1767, was published in Mr. Bowyer's 'Miscellaneous Tracts,' 1785, 4to; and his literary labours closed with 'Observations upon some Passages in Scripture' (relating to Balaam, Joshua, Samson, and Jonah), London, 1803, 4to. It is apparent, however, from the preface to Faber's 'Mysteries of the Cabiri,' 1803, 8vo, that Bryant had written a kind of supplement to his 'Analysis of Ancient Mythology,' a work on the Gods of Greece and Rome, which, in a letter to Faber, he said, 'may possibly be published after his death,' but his executors have never produced the work. Some of his humorous poems are found in periodicals of his time, but are of little interest except as examples of elegant Latin and Greek verse.

Bryant, who was never married, had resided a long time before his death at Cypenham, in Farnham Royal, near Windsor. There the king and queen often visited him, and the former passed hours alone with him enjoying his conversation. A few months before his end came he said to his nephew, 'All I have written was with one view to the promulgation of truth, and all I have contended for I myself have believed.' While reaching a book from a shelf he hurt his leg, mortification set in, and he died 14 Nov. 1804. His remains were interred in his own parish church, beneath the seat he had occupied there, and a monument was erected to his memory near the same.

In person he was a delicately formed man of low stature; late in life he was of sedentary habits, but in his younger days he was very agile and fond of field sports, and once by swimming saved the life of Barnard, afterwards provost of Eton. To the last he was attached to his dogs, and kept thirteen spaniels at a time. He was temperate, courteous, and generous. His conversation was very pleasing and instructive, with a vein of quiet humour. There are many pleasant anecdotes of him in Madame d'Arblay's 'Diary and Letters.' In his lifetime his curious collection of Caxtons went to the Marquis of Blandford, and many valuable books were sent from his library to King George III. The classical part of his library was bequeathed to King's College, Cambridge; 2,000l. to the Society for Propagating the Gospel, 1,000l. to superannuated collegers of Eton School, 500l. to the poor of Farnham Royal, &c.

The English portrait prefixed to the octavo edition of his work on ancient mythology is from a drawing by the Rev. J. Bearblock, taken in 1801. All literary authorities, and his monument, give the year of his birth as above, but in the Eton register-book he is entered as '12 years old in 1730.'

[Bryant's Works; Nichols's Lit. Anecd. i. 672, iii. 7, 42, 84, 148, 515, iv. 348, 608, 667, v. 231, viii. 112, 129, 218, 249, 427, 505, 531, 540, 552, 614, 635, ix. 198, 290, 577, 714; Nichols's Lit. Illust. ii. 651, iii. 132, 218, 772, vi. 36, 249, 670, vii. 401, 404, 469; Gent. Mag. xlviii. 210, 625; New Monthly Mag. i. 327; Archæologia, iv. 315, 331, 347, vii. 387; Cole's MSS., Brit. Mus. vols. xx. xxiii.; Martin's Privately Printed Books, 85; Mme. d'Arblay's Diary, 1846, iii. 117, 228, 323, 375, 401.]
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Puducherry (union territory) [Pondicherry]
by Wikipedia
Accessed: 7/31/21



Puducherry (/ˌpʊdʊˈtʃɛri/), also known as Pondicherry (/ˌpɒndɪˈtʃɛri/), is a union territory of India. It was formed out of four territories of former French India, namely Pondichéry (Pondicherry; now Puducherry), Karikal (Karaikal), Mahé and Yanaon (Yanam), excluding Chandannagar. It is named after the largest district, Puducherry. Historically known as Pondicherry (Pāṇṭiccēri), the territory changed its official name to Puducherry on 20 September 2006.[6][7]

The Union Territory of Puducherry lies in the southern part of the Indian Peninsula. The areas of Puducherry district and Karaikal district are bound by the state of Tamil Nadu, while Yanam district and Mahé district are enclosed by the states of Andhra Pradesh and Kerala, respectively. Puducherry is the 29th most populous and the third most densely populated of the states and union territories of India. It has a gross domestic product (GDP) of ₹210 billion (US$2.9 billion) and ranks 25th in India.[8]

History

Main article: History of Puducherry

The earliest recorded history of the municipality of Puducherry can be traced to the second century AD. The Periplus of the Erythraean Sea mentions a marketplace named Poduke (ch 60). G. W. B. Huntingford suggested this might be a site about 2 miles from the modern Puducherry, which was possibly the location of Arikamedu (now part of Ariyankuppam). Huntingford noted that Roman pottery was found at Arikamedu in 1937. In addition, archaeological excavations between 1944 and 1949 showed that it was "a trading station to which goods of Roman manufacture were imported during the first half of the 1st century" Subsequent investigation by Vimala Begley from 1989 to 1992 modified this assessment, and now place the period of occupation from the third or second century BC to the eighth century AD.[9][10]

In 1674, the municipality of Pondicherry (Pondichéry) became a French colony of the French colonial empire. Together with Chandernagor (already French since 1673), Mahé (since 1721), Yanam (Yanaon) (since 1731), Karaikal (Karikal) (since 1739) and Masulipatam (1760), it formed the French colony of French India, under a single French governor in Pondicherry, although French rule over one or more of these enclaves was repeatedly interrupted by British occupations. The territories of French India were completely transferred to the Republic of India de facto on 1 November 1954, and de jure on 16 August 1962, when French India ceased to exist, becoming the present Indian constituent union territory of Pondicherry, combining four coastal enclaves (with the exception of Chandannagar, which merged with the state of West Bengal in 1954).

Geography

Further information: List of rivers of Puducherry

The Union Territory of Puducherry consists of four small unconnected districts: Puducherry district (293 km2 or 113 sq mi), Karaikal district (161 km2 or 62 sq mi) and Yanam district (20 km2 or 7.7 sq mi) on the Bay of Bengal and Mahé district (9 km2 or 3.5 sq mi) on the Laccadive Sea, covering a total area of 483 km2 (186 sq mi). Puducherry and Karaikal have the largest areas and population, and are both enclaves of Tamil Nadu. Yanam and Mahé are enclaves of Andhra Pradesh and Kerala, respectively. Its population, as per the 2011 Census, is 1,244,464.

Some of Puducherry's regions are themselves amalgamations of non-contiguous enclaves, often called "pockets" in India. The Puducherry region is made of 11 such pockets, some of which are very small and entirely surrounded by the territory of Tamil Nadu. Mahé region is made up of three pockets. This unusual geography is a legacy of the colonial period with Puducherry retaining the borders of former French India.

All four regions of Puducherry are located in the coastal region. Five rivers in Puducherry district, seven in Karaikal district, two in Mahé district and one in Yanam district drain into the sea, but none originates within the territory.

Districts of Union Territory of Puducherry

• Puducherry district is an enclave of Tamil Nadu.
• Karaikal district is also an enclave of Tamil Nadu.
• Mahé district is an enclave of Kerala.
• Yanam district is an enclave of Andhra Pradesh.

Demographics

Hinduism (87.30%)
Christianity (6.29%)
Islam (6.05%)
Others (0.36%)


Hinduism is the major religion with 87.3% of the population adhering to it. Other religions include Christianity (6.29%) and Islam (6.05%).[12]

Government and administration

Main articles: Puducherry Legislative Assembly and Puducherry Municipal Council
See also: List of Lieutenant Governors of Puducherry, List of Chief Ministers of Puducherry, and List of districts of Puducherry

Puducherry is a Union Territory of India rather than a state, which implies that governance and administration fall directly under federal authority. However, Puducherry is one of the three union territories in India (the other being National Capital Territory of Delhi and Jammu and Kashmir) that is entitled by a special constitutional amendment to have an elected legislative assembly and a cabinet of ministers, thereby conveying partial statehood.[13] There has been some interest by the territory's government in receiving full statehood, but budgetary issues remain a consideration. Also, Mahe and Yanam may oppose such a change of status.[14]

The Centre is represented by the Lieutenant Governor, who resides at the Raj Nivas (Le Palais du Gouverneur) at the Park, the former palace of the French governor. The central government is more directly involved in the territory's financial well-being unlike states, which have a central grant that they administer. Consequently, Puducherry has at various times, enjoyed lower taxes, especially in the indirect category.

Special administration status

According to the Treaty of Cession of 1956, the four territories of former French India territorial administration are permitted to make laws with respect to specific matters. In many cases, such legislation may require ratification from the federal government or the assent of the President of India.

Article II of the Treaty states:

The Establishments will keep the benefit of the special administrative status which was in force prior to 1 November 1954. Any constitutional changes in this status which may be made subsequently shall be made after ascertaining the wishes of the people.


Languages

Main article: Languages of Puducherry

The most widely spoken first language is Tamil, which is native to 88.2% of the population. There are also speakers of Telugu (5.96%), Malayalam (3.84%) and Urdu (0.69%).

French was the official language according to Article XXVIII of the Traité de Cession (Treaty of Cession) of 1956. According to the treaty, "the French language shall remain the official language of the Establishments so long as the elected representatives of the people shall not decide otherwise".[15][16] After independence, the new official languages were recognised by The Pondicherry Official Language Act, 1965 (Act No. 3 of 1965) which makes no mention of French (but also not officially denying it)[17] This act stated that "the Tamil language shall (...) be the language to be used for all or any of the official purposes of the Union territory".[3] It also provides for the use of the Malayalam and Telugu languages in the Mahé and Yanam districts. The law also states that English "may be used for all or any of the official purposes of the Union territory".[18] While the Union Territory official gazette's name is in French (La Gazette de L'État de Poudouchéry) it is published exclusively in English.[19] Through the 1963 Union Territories Act, Tamil, Telugu and Malayalam became official languages used region-wide.

Economy

The gross domestic product of Puducherry, at market prices estimated by Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation with figures in millions of Indian rupees grew from 1,840 to 258,190 million rupees from 1980 to 2014.

Year / Gross domestic product
1980 / 1,840
1985 / 3,420
1990 / 6,030
1995 / 13,200
2000 / 37,810
2010 / 130,920
2014 / 258,190[20][21][22]


Fisheries

The potential for fisheries is substantial in the Union Territory. The four regions of the Union Territory have a coastline of 45 km with 675 of inshore waters, 1.347 hectares (3.33 acres) of inland water and 800 ha of brackish water. 27 marine fishing villages and 23 inland fishing villages host a fishermen population of about 65,000 of which 13,000 are actively engaged in fishing. Tanks and ponds are also tapped for commercial fish rearing.

Tourism

Main article: Tourism in Puducherry

Puducherry is one of the most popular tourist spots in India for national and international tourists. Puducherry was the residence of Sri Aurobindo (1872–1950) and the Sri Aurobindo Ashram still operates from Puducherry. A unique experimental city Auroville, the brainchild of the Mother, whose inhabitants are drawn from all parts of the world is situated on the outskirts of the city. There are several temples, churches, monuments, parks, and mosques which attract tourists.

Transport

Rail


Puducherry is connected by a railway branch line from the five-way junction at Viluppuram and Chennai. The railway line is a broad gauge line with 16 originating trains and 17 terminating trains.[23] Mean while Karaikal and Mahe also well connected by railway lines. Several railway lines are also under construction in Karaikal district.[24]

Air

Puducherry has an airport called Puducherry airport. It has flight operations between Puducherry and Hyderabad.[25] A new airport is proposed in karaikal which is called as karaikal airport.[26]

Sea

Puducherry U.T. has several ports namely Karaikal port, Puducherry port, Mahe port. Among them, Largest port is Karaikal Port.[27]

Road

Main article: Road Network in Puducherry District
Further information: Puducherry Road Transport Corporation

Puducherry has a network all-weather metalled roads connecting the territory. Puducherry has a road length of 2,552 km (road length per 4.87 km2), the highest in the country. PRTC busses plays a vital role in puducherry U.T.

Education

Main article: List of educational institutions in Puducherry

According to the 2011 census, Puducherry had a literacy rate of 86.55.[28] Pondicherry University is a university centrally located in Puducherry.[29] Other educational institutions include Jawaharlal Institute of Postgraduate Medical Education & Research (JIPMER), Indira Gandhi Medical College and Research Institute (Government of Puducherry), Mahathma gandhi post graduate institute of dental science[GOVT OF PUDUCHERRY], Tagore Arts and Science College, Indira Gandhi College of Arts and Science (Government of Puducherry), Mahatma Gandhi Medical College and Research Institute, National Institute of Technology, Puducherry, Perunthalaivar Kamarajar Institute of Engineering and Technology,[30] Pondicherry Engineering College, Mother Theresa Post Graduate and Research Institute of Health Sciences, Achariya College of Engineering Technology (ACET), Rajiv Gandhi College of Engineering and Technology, Rajiv Gandhi College of Veterinary and Animal Sciences, Mahatma Gandhi Medical College & Research Institute, Sri Manakula Vinayagar Medical College Hospital, Sri Ganesh College of Engineering and Technology, and Sri Venkateshwaraa Medical College Hospital and Research Centre.

In popular culture

• Puducherry was the setting for Yann Martel's first third of his Booker Prize-winning novel Life of Pi (2001). A portion of the subsequent film adaptation was filmed there.[31]
• Lee Langley's novel A House in Pondicherry (1996) was set there.
• Prince Pondicherry is an Indian character from Roald Dahl's children's novel Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (1964). The prince orders Willy Wonka to build a palace of chocolate in India; the palace melts in the hot sun.

See also

• Geography portal
• Asia portal
• India portal
• Puducherry (Lok Sabha constituency)
• Chandannagar
• French East India Company
• French colonial empire
• Municipal Administration in French India

References

1. Varma, M. Dinesh (6 June 2015). "New Chief Secretary assumes charge". The Hindu. ISSN 0971-751X. Retrieved 9 November 2016.
2. "PUDUCHERRY LEGISLATIVE ASSEMBLY". Archived from the original on 3 November 2017. Retrieved 26 October 2017.
3. "The Pondicherry Official Languages Act, 1965" (PDF). lawsofindia.org. Laws of India. Archived from the original (PDF) on 3 May 2020. Retrieved 10 June 2019.
4. "Official Languages of Pondicherry - E-Courts Mission, Government of India". Archived from the original on 2 April 2015. Retrieved 12 June 2015.
5. "Tamil Nadu News : Puducherry comes out with list of State symbols". The Hindu. 21 April 2007. Archived from the original on 4 January 2013. Retrieved 10 February 2014.
6. "South Asia | New name for old French territory". BBC News. 20 September 2006. Archivedfrom the original on 22 February 2014. Retrieved 10 February 2014.
7. "National : Bill to rename Pondicherry as Puducherry passed". The Hindu. 22 August 2006. Archived from the original on 21 October 2012. Retrieved 10 February 2014.
8. "State Domestic Product and other aggregates, 2004–05 series". Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation. 27 February 2015. Archived from the original on 23 March 2015. Retrieved 18 June 2015.
9. Vimala Begley. "The Dating of Arikamedu and its Bearing on the Archaeology of Early Historical South India" (PDF). Archived (PDF) from the original on 1 January 2019. Retrieved 1 January2019.
10. The Periplus of the Erythraean Sea: Travel and Trade in the Indian Ocean by a Merchant of the First Century. Kessinger Publishing. July 2007. p. 119. ISBN 978-0-548-20943-1. Archived from the original on 17 May 2016. Retrieved 15 November 2015.
11. Decadal Variation In Population Since 1901
12. "Population by religion community – 2011". Census of India, 2011. The Registrar General & Census Commissioner, India. Archived from the original on 25 August 2015.
13. "Lanka BBC Info Know Puducherry: Government Name Pondicherry As Puducherry". lankabbc.com. 29 June 2012. Archived from the original on 2 February 2017. Retrieved 24 January 2017.
14. "Will Pondy's attempt to get statehood succeed?". The New Indian Express.
15. "The Government of Union Territories Act, 1963" (PDF). Ministry of Home Affairs, Government of India. Archived from the original (PDF) on 5 March 2016. Retrieved 1 June 2015.
16. "Puducherry code volume 1" (PDF). Government of Puducherry. Archived from the original(PDF) on 25 September 2015. Retrieved 1 June 2015.
17. "History". District Court of Puducherry. Archived from the original on 2 April 2015. Retrieved 12 June 2015.
18. CIDIF. "06-Le français à Pondichéry, par Roland Breton". go1.cc. Archived from the originalon 9 April 2015.
19. "La Gazette de L' État de Poudouchéry The Gazette of Puducherry" (PDF). gstcouncil.gov.in. Retrieved 21 June 2021.
20. "Economy of Puducherry - StatisticsTimes.com". statisticstimes.com.
21. "Union Territory of Puducherry". South Asia Program at Hudson Institute.
22. List of Indian states by GDP
23. karthik. "Pondicherry Station - 16 Train Departures SR/Southern Zone - Railway Enquiry". indiarailinfo.com. Archived from the original on 17 August 2017. Retrieved 17 August 2017.
24. Rajaram, R. (5 February 2021). "Karaikal-Peralam railway line project gets an impetus". The Hindu. ISSN 0971-751X. Retrieved 12 May 2021.
25. "Puducherry airport becomes AAI's first 100% solar-powered airport - Times of India". The Times of India. Retrieved 12 May 2021.
26. "Greenfield airport at Karaikal waiting to take wings". The Hindu. 4 March 2020. ISSN 0971-751X. Retrieved 12 May 2021.
27. "India's Largest Private Port to Handle large Vessels and Diverse Cargo Mix". karaikalport.com. Retrieved 12 May 2021.
28. "Ranking of states and union territories by literacy rate: 2011" (PDF). Government of India. Archived (PDF) from the original on 6 July 2015. Retrieved 2 January 2016.
29. "Pondicherry University". Pondicherry University. Archived from the original on 25 April 2011.
30. "Welcome to the Website of PKIET". Pkiet.edu.in. Archived from the original on 17 February 2014. Retrieved 10 February 2014.
31. "Filming Locations". IMDb. Archived from the original on 1 December 2012. Retrieved 3 December 2012.

External links

• Official website of the Government of the Union Territory of Puducherry
• Treaty establishing De Jure Cession of French Establishments in India
• Official website of Department of Tourism, Pondicherry
• Puducherry (union territory) travel guide from Wikivoyage
• Frenchbooksonindia.com an open access multilingual discovery tool on Pondicherry with book data from 1673 to 2020, full-text ebooks from 1531 to 1937 and in-text search from c. 1830 to c. 1920

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Pondicherry
by Wikipedia
Accessed: 8/1/21

This article is about the city. For the union territory, see Puducherry (union territory). For other uses, see Puducherry (disambiguation).

Pondicherry (/ˌpɒndɪˈtʃɛri/), now known as Puducherry (/ˌpʊdʊˈtʃɛri/), is the capital and the most-populous city of the Union Territory of Puducherry in India. The city is in the Puducherry district on the southeast coast of India and is surrounded by the state of Tamil Nadu, with which it shares most of its culture, heritage and language.[2]

History

Main article: History of Puducherry

[x]
Pondicherry waterfront circa 1900

The history of Pondicherry is recorded only after the arrival of Dutch, Portuguese, British and French traders. By contrast, nearby places such as Arikamedu, Ariyankuppam, Kakayanthoppe, Villianur and Bahour, which were colonised by the French East India Company over a period of time and later became the union territory of Pondicherry, have recorded histories that predate the colonial period.

Poduke or Poduca (a marketplace) was a Roman trading destination from the 3rd century BCE.[3] Poduca has been identified as possibly being Arikamedu (now part of Ariyankuppam), located about 2 miles (3.2 km) from the modern city of Pondicherry. The area was part of the Pallava Kingdom of Kanchipuram in the 4th century. The Cholas of Thanjavur held it from the 10th to 13th centuries until it was replaced by the Pandya Kingdom in the 13th century. The Vijayanagar Empire took control of almost all of the south of India in the 14th century and maintained control until 1638 when they were supplanted by the Sultan of Bijapur.

In 1674 the French East India Company set up a trading centre at Pondicherry and this outpost eventually became the chief French settlement in India. The French governor François Martin made remarkable improvements to the city and its commercial ties, facing at the same time strong opposition from the Dutch and the English. He entered into extended negotiations with the sultans of Golconda through the intercession of several roving French merchants and doctors who were in favour with the Sultan. Trading in jewelry and precious stones which had become highly fashionable in European courts was one among many activities. Five trading posts were established along the south Indian coast between 1668 and 1674. The city was separated by a canal into the French Quarter and the Indian Quarter.[4]

On 21 August 1693, during the Nine Years' War, Pondicherry was captured by the Dutch. Governor of Dutch Coromandel Laurens Pit the Younger sailed with a fleet of 17 ships and 1600 men from Negapatam and bombarded Pondicherry for two weeks, after which Francois Martin surrendered it. At the Peace of Ryswick it was agreed by all parties to return conquered territories and in 1699 Pondicherry was handed back to the French.[5]

On 16 January 1761, the British captured Pondicherry from the French, but it was returned under the Treaty of Paris (1763) at the conclusion of the Seven Years' War.[6] The British took control of the area again in 1793 at the Siege of Pondicherry amid the Wars of the French Revolution, and returned it to France in 1814.

On 18 March 1954, a number of resolutions were passed by the municipalities in Pondicherry demanding immediate merger with India. Some days later, similar resolutions were passed by the municipalities in Karaikal. The resolutions had the full support of the French Indian Councillors, who are popularly known as Ministers, and the President of the Representative Assembly. These Municipalities represent roughly 90 percent of the population of the French possessions and they called upon the Government of France to take urgent and necessary measures to give effect to the wishes of the people.[7] The Government of India had made it clear that the cultural and other rights of the people would be fully respected. They were not asking for the immediate transfer of the de jure sovereignty of France. Their suggestion was that a de facto transfer of the administration should take place immediately, while French sovereignty should continue until the constitutional issue had been settled. Both India and France would have to make necessary changes in their respective Constitutions. All this would take time, while the demand of the people was for immediate merger without a referendum. The Government of India was convinced that the suggestion which they made would help to promote a settlement, which they greatly desired. They would gladly enter into negotiations with the Government of France on the basis suggested.[8]

On 18 October 1954 in a general election involving 178 people in Pondicherry Municipal and Commune Panchayat, 170 people were in favor of merger and eight people voted against. The de facto transfer of the French Indian territories from French governance to the Indian union took place on 1 November 1954 and was established as the union territory of Pondicherry. The treaty effecting the de jure transfer was signed in 1956. However, due to opposition in France, the ratification of this treaty by the French National Assembly only took place on 16 August 1962.

Topography

The topography of Pondicherry is the same as that of coastal Tamil Nadu. Pondicherry's average elevation is at sea level, and a number of sea inlets, referred to as "backwaters" can be found. Pondicherry experiences extreme coastal erosion as a result of a breakwater constructed in 1989,[9] just to the south of the city. Where there was once a broad, sandy beach, now the city is protected against the sea by a 2-km-long seawall which sits at a height of 8.5 m above sea level. Whilst there was an early seawall made by the French government in 1735, this was not "hard structure coastal defense" so much as an adjunct to the old shipping pier and a transition from the beach to the city,[10]

Today, the seawall consists of rows of granite boulders which are reinforced every year in an attempt to stop erosion. As a consequence of the seawall, there is severe seabed erosion and turbulence at the coastal margin, resulting in an extreme loss of biodiversity within the critical intertidal zone. Whenever gaps appear as the stones fall into the continually eroding seabed, the government adds more boulders. Pondicherry's seawall has also caused beach erosion to migrate further up the coast, to the fishing villages in Puducherry and Tamil Nadu to the north of the city.[citation needed]

Economy

In 2012, the Ministry of Power inaugurated the Smart Grid project in Puducherry.[11] Farming around Pondicherry include crops such as rice, pulses, sugarcane, coconuts, and cotton. In 2016, the Pondicherry State Government Employees Central Federation presented a status paper on the fiscal and social crisis in Puducherry to Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh. The report stated that a "combination of a staggering debt, stagnant tax revenues and rampant misappropriation of funds has throttled the economy of the Union Territory" and called for measures on a war footing to "deliver good governance and end corruption."[12]

Climate

The climate of Pondicherry is classified by the Köppen climate classification as tropical wet and dry (As),[13] similar to that of coastal Tamil Nadu. Summer lasts from April to early June, when maximum temperatures may reach 41 °C (106 °F). The average maximum temperature is 36 °C (97 °F). Minimum temperatures are in the order of 28–32 °C (82–90 °F). This is followed by a period of high humidity and occasional thundershowers from June till September.

The northeast monsoon sets in during the middle of October, and Pondicherry gets the bulk of its annual rainfall during the period from October to December. The annual average rainfall is 1,355 millimetres or 53 inches.[14] Winters are very warm, with highs of 30 °C (86 °F) and lows often dipping to around 18–20 °C (64–68 °F).

Demographics

According to the 2011 census of India, Pondicherry had a population of 244,377, with 124,947 females and 119,430 males. Pondicherry had an average literacy rate of 80.6% with male literacy at 84.6% and female literacy at 76.7%. In Pondicherry, 10% of the population was under six years of age.[1]

The majority speak Tamil in Pondicherry. There is a community of French people and a number of French institutions such as the consulate of France in Pondicherry, the French Institute of Pondicherry and L'Alliance française.[17]

Civic administration

The city of Puducherry comprises two municipality, Puducherry and Uzhavarkarai. All the Municipalities and the Commune Panchayats in the Union Territory of Puducherry function under the Administrative control of the Local Administration Department.[18] The Puducherry Municipality under the Puducherry District comprises the erstwhile Communes of Puducherry and Mudaliarpet with its headquarters is in Puducherry. It has a total of 42 wards spread over an areas of 19.46 Sq. km.[19]Wards 1–10 are north of the city. Wards 11–19 are in Boulevard Town and remaining wards are southwest of the city centre.[20]

Urban agglomeration

Local bodies / Area / Population
Pondicherry Municipality / 19 km2 / 241,773
Oulgaret Municipality / 36 km2 / 300,028
Villianur Census Town and Outgrowth -- / 67,254
Ariyankuppam Town and Outgrowth -- / 47,454
Total / 293 km2 / 629,509


Data according to 2011 census

There are two proposals by the Puducherry government, firstly to merge Pondicherry and Oulgaret municipalities, and upgrade the Pondicherry municipality into a '"municipal corporation", and secondly to upgrade Villianur and Ariyankuppam commune panchayats into municipalities, which would increase the Pondicherry region's urban area around 155 km2. of the total 292 km2.

Transport

Road


Pondicherry is connected to Chennai via the East Coast Road through Mahabalipuram.[21] There are daily bus services from several main stops from Chennai. The Pondicherry Road Transport Corporation runs buses within the city and it runs Volvo buses to Chennai and to various places.[22] The Tamil Nadu State Transport Corporation operates Volvo air-conditioned bus services from Chennai to Pondicherry.[23]

Rail

PDY/Puducherry (Pondicherry) is connected by train to Chennai, Delhi, Kolkata, and Mumbai, as well as other important cities such as Kanyakumari, Hyderabad, Nagpur, Bhubaneswar, Bengaluru, Visakhapatnam and Mangalore.[24][25] Moreover, VM/Villupuram Junction which is at a distance of around 24 miles i.e.40 km(both by rail & road) is connected to several other Indian Cities.[26]

Air
Pondicherry Airport is located at Lawspet, an Assembly Constituency in the union territory of Pondicherry.[27] It has direct flights to Hyderabad,[27] Bengaluru operated by SpiceJet Airlines.

Tourism

Main article: Tourism in Puducherry

Pondicherry is a tourist destination. The city has many colonial buildings, churches, temples and statues which, combined with the town planning and French style avenues in the old part of town, still preserve much of the colonial ambiance.

While the sea is a draw for tourists, Pondicherry no longer has the sandy beaches that once graced its coastline. The breakwater to the harbour and other hard structures constructed on the shore caused extreme coastal erosion and the sand from Pondicherry's Promenade Beach was permitted to disappear entirely. As a result of the city's seawall and groyne construction, the beaches further up the coast to the north have also been lost. An enormous deposition of sand has accrued to the south of the harbour breakwater, but this is not a commodious beach and is not easily accessible from the city.

But recently, the government has been taking steps by constructing a reef and re-dosing sand. The sea is accessible by a small patch of land at the Promenade Beach (Goubert Avenue).[28] Moreover, the beach is one of the cleanest in India and has been selected for Blue Flag certification.[29]

The Sri Aurobindo Ashram, located on rue de la Marine,, is one of the most important ashrams in India, founded by the renowned Freedom Fighter and spiritual philosopher Sri Aurobindo.[30] Auroville (City of Dawn) is an "experimental" township located 8 km north-west of Pondicherry.

There are a number of old and large churches in Pondicherry, most of which were built in the 18th and 19th centuries. A number of heritage buildings and monuments are present around the Promenade Beach, such as the Children's Park and Dupleix Statue, Gandhi statue, Nehru Statue, Le Café, French War Memorial, 19th Century Light House, Bharathi Park, Governors Palace, Romain Rolland Library, Legislative Assembly, Pondicherry Museum and the French Institute of Pondicherry at Saint Louis Street.

Puducherry Botanical Gardens is located south of the New Bus Stand. Chunnambar Backwater resort is situated 8 km from Pondicherry, along the Cuddalore Main Road. This tropical resort is flanked by a creek on one side.

Arulmigu Manakula Vinayagar Devasthanam on Manakula Vinayagar Street is a Hindu temple, which houses Lord Ganesha. Sri Manakula Vinayagar Temple was in existence before the French came and settled in Pondicherry i.e. before 1666.[31]

Sengazhuneer Amman Temple at Veerampattinam village is one of the oldest temples in Pondicherry, which is about 7 km away from the city centre. The car festival conducted in mid-August is famous in Puducherry and other neighboring states. The festival takes place on the fifth Friday since the commencement of the Tamil month of 'Aadi' every year from the date immemorial. The temple car festival is the only one where the head of the state pulls the temple car right from the days of the French rule.

Thirukaameeswarar Temple is one of the ancient temples located in a rural town called Villianur (the ancient name is Vilvanallur, from "vilva marangal niraindha nalla vur"),[32] which roughly translates as nice with archery trees is located about 10 km away (towards Villupuram) from Pondicherry. This temple is renowned as Periya Koil "Big Temple". The prime god is Lord Shiva and the prime goddess is Goddess Kokilambigai. There are other Hindu gods such as Murugan, Vinayagar, Thakshanamoorthy, Perumal, Bhramah, Chandikeshwarar, Natarajar, Navagrahah, and 63 Naayanmaars.[citation needed] The pioneers[clarification needed] in this temple say that the age of this temple is about 1000 plus years. It is thought to have been built by one of the Chola kings. There is also a huge temple pond. The Ther Thiruvizha (chariot procession) is celebrated at this temple.

Social organisations

• Alliance Française de Pondicherry created in 1889 and is among the first Alliances in the world after the one in Paris.
• PondyCAN - is a broad based, non-profit organization committed to preserve and enhance the natural, social, cultural and spiritual environment.

Notable people

Leaders


• V. Subbiah, Trade Union leader & freedom fighter.

Literature and Arts

• Tamil poet Bharathidasan.
• Anandaraj, Tamil film actor
• Kalki Koechlin, Hindi movie actress
• Ayesha Kapur, Hindi movie actress
• M. Night Shyamalan, Hollywood director
• Tao Porchon-Lynch, Yoga instructor, American actress

Science and technology

• S. Somasegar, former senior vice-president, Microsoft
• Ganapathi Thanikaimoni, Indian scientist and director of the Palynology laboratory of the French Institute of Pondicherry
• Yvonne Artaud, French educationalist and psychologist.
• Navi Radjou, an innovation and leadership strategist based in Silicon Valley.[33]

Armed forces

Maréchal Le Marquis de Lauriston (1768–1828), a very senior-ranking military commander in the French Army, was born in Pondicherry.

Fictional

• Prince Pondicherry, a character from Roald Dahl's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, is named after the city. The character asked that Willy Wonka build him a palace made of chocolate. Given the heat of the Indian climate, this decision worked out poorly for the fictitious prince.
• Pondicherry is the setting for the first third of Yann Martel's Booker Prize-winning novel Life of Pi (2001). A portion of the subsequent film adaptation was filmed there.[34]
• Lee Langley's novel A House in Pondicherry (1996).[35]

Educational institutions

• Jawaharlal Institute of Postgraduate Medical Education and Research
• Pondicherry University
• Puducherry Technological University

See also[edit]
• Karaikal, India
• Mahé, India
• Manakula Vinayagar Temple
• Pondicherry urban area
• Yanam, India
References[edit]
1. Jump up to:a b "District Census Handbook: Puducherry" (PDF). Census of India. Office of the Registrar General & Census Commissioner, India. pp. 86–87. Retrieved 11 February 2019.
2. "Bill to rename Pondicherry as Puducherry passed". The Hindu. 22 August 2006. Retrieved 2 May 2016.
3. Francis, Peter (2002). Asia's Maritime Bead Trade: 300 B.C. to the Present. University of Hawaii Press. ISBN 978-0-8248-2332-0.
4. WORRALL, JILL (11 April 2016). "Peace, love and a French flavour in Pondicherry, South India". http://www.stuff.co.nz. Retrieved 2 May 2016.
5. Israel, Jonathan (1989). Dutch Primacy in World Trade 1585-1740. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0198227299.
6. Chand, Hukam. History Of Medieval India, 202.
7. https://eparlib.nic.in/bitstream/123456 ... 4-1954.pdf page 22
8. https://eparlib.nic.in/bitstream/123456 ... 4-1954.pdf page 23
9. "The Story of Pondicherry's Eroding Coastline in a Single Image". 16 October 2008.
10. "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 16 September 2009. Retrieved 22 June 2009.
11. "Smart grid project inaugurated". Puducherry. The Hindu. 20 October 2012. Retrieved 23 October 2012.
12. Special Correspondent (18 October 2016). "Report paints grim picture of Puducherry's economy". The Hindu. Retrieved 28 October 2017.
13. "Climate: Pondicherry – Climate graph, Temperature graph, Climate table". Climate-Data.org. Retrieved 6 October 2013.
14. "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 26 July 2009. Retrieved 10 July 2009.
15. "Pondicherry Climatological Table Period: 1971–2000". India Meteorological Department. Retrieved 11 April 2015.
16. "Ever recorded Maximum and minimum temperatures up to 2010" (PDF). India Meteorological Department. Archived from the original (PDF) on 21 May 2013. Retrieved 11 April 2015.
17. "Pondicherry: Forever France? by Anand Jha". 21 July 2012. Archived from the original on 21 July 2012. Retrieved 3 October 2013.
18. "Local Administration-Departments-Know Puducherry: Government of Puducherry". http://www.py.gov.in. Retrieved 9 April 2020.
19. "Municipality Details - Pondicherry Municipality - The Union Territory of Puducherry". http://www.pdymun.in. Retrieved 9 April 2020.
20. Town and Country Planning Department, Pondicherry, India: City Development Plan – Pondicherry, Final Report, March 2007, S. 159 Archived 19 June 2009 at the Wayback Machine
21. Ramakrishnan, Deepa (23 February 2012). "After a decade on fast lane, ECR is set to expand". The Hindu. Chennai. Retrieved 16 September 2012.
22. "20 buses launched in urban routes". The Hindu. Puducherry. 8 June 2010. Retrieved 19 September 2012.
23. V, Venkatasubramanian (19 February 2010). "A boon to Kancheepuram unit of TNSTC". The Hindu. Kancheepuram. Archived from the original on 24 February 2010. Retrieved 15 September2012.
24. "Delhi-Puducherry train link from July 3". The Hindu. 25 June 2011. Retrieved 16 September2012.
25. "Changes in train timings". The Hindu. Puducherry. 13 September 2012. Retrieved 16 September 2012.
26. Ltd, rome2rio Pty. "Puducherry to Villupuram - 3 ways to travel via bus, and line 16116 train". Rome2rio. Retrieved 28 January 2020.
27. Jump up to:a b "Puducherry back on aviation map; services to Hyderabad launched". The Economic Times. 16 August 2017. Retrieved 12 February 2019.
28. M, Kavya (30 August 2018). "Artificial reef helps restore lost Pondy beach". Deccan Chronicle. Retrieved 28 January 2020.
29. Jun 6, Bosco Dominique | TNN |; 2019; Ist, 12:31. "Beach in Puducherry selected for blue flag certification | Puducherry News - Times of India". The Times of India. Retrieved 28 January 2020.
30. "Sri Aurobindo". Retrieved 19 July 2019.
31. "Arulmigu Manakula Vinayagar Temple". Retrieved 19 July 2019.
32. "About Pondicherry". India tourism. Retrieved 19 July 2019.
33. "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 19 January 2015. Retrieved 19 January 2015.
34. "Life of Pi". The Guardian. Retrieved 19 July 2019.
35. "Of Love Lost". India Today. Retrieved 19 July 2019.
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