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Part 1 of 2

Megasthenes and the Indian Chronology As Based on the Puranas
by K.D. Sethna
Purana VIII
Bulletin of the Purana Department
Ministry of Education
Government of India
1966

-- 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, M.A., 1877

-- Purana VIII, Bulletin of the Purana Department, Ministry of Education, Government of India, 1966

-- Historical Dates From Puranic Sources, by Prof. Narayan Rao

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

One last point in connection with the puranic king lists ought to be mentioned here. Arrian's Indike (9.9), quoting Megasthenes, states that "from Dionysus to Sandracottus the Indians counted a hundred and fifty-three kings, over six thousand and forty-three years."41 [41 Loeb, tr., E. Iliff Robson, p. 333.] Similarly, in Pliny's Natural History (6.59): "From the time of Father Liber to Alexander the Great 153 kings are counted in a period of 6451 years and three months."42 [42 Loeb, tr. H. Rackem, p. 383.] Classical scholars have wondered about these figures, not to mention the intriguing discrepancy.43 [43 E.g., Pierre CHANTRAINE: Arrien. L'Inde, Paris: Belles Lettres, 21952, p. 35. For a different type of speculation, identifying Sandracottus with Candragupta I Gupta -- rather than Maurya -- who would have been enthroned in 325 or 324 B.C., and on the Indian identity of Father Bacchus, the kind of chronology handed Megasthenes; etc., see K.D. SETHNA: Megasthenes and the Indian Chronology as Based on the puranas, Pur 8, 1966, 9-37, 276-294; 9, 1967, 121-129; 10, 1968, 35-53, 124-147.] More important is the fact that, at least from Megasthenes' time onward, Indians had puranic lists of kings, some of which came to the notice of the foreign visitor.44 [44 Cf. L. ROCHER: The Greek and Latin Data about India. Some Fundamental Considerations, Zakir Husain vol. (1968), 34. Also KANE 1962: 849.]

-- Frederick Eden Pargiter: Excerpt from The Puranas, by Ludo Rocher

Megasthenes was the Greek ambassador sent by Seleucus Nicator in c. 302 B.C. to the court of the Indian king whom the Greeks called Sandrocottus and whose capital they designated as Palibothra in the country of the Prasii. Scholars have identified the Prasii as the Prachya (Easterners) and Palibothra as Pataliputra and seen the eastern kingdom of Magadha, whose capital was Pataliputra, in the Greek references to the Prasii. The name "Sandrocottus" has been equated with "Chandragupta" and the king who received Megasthenes is said to have been Chandragupta Maurya who, like Sandrocottus, was the founder of a dynasty in Magadha.  

The Question of the Two Chandraguptas

The founder of the Mauryas, however, is not the only Chandragupta known to history as a Magadhan emperor and the founder of a dynasty. There is also the first of the Imperial Guptas, Chandragupta I. Modern historians date him to 320 A.D. and set forth many reasons for the identification of Sandrocottns with Chandragupta Maurya. These are claimed to be supported most convincingly by several lines of evidence converging to date Chandragupta Maurya's grandson Asoka to the middle of the 3rd century B.C. But the ancient chronology of India herself, based on the dynastic sections of the Puranas and other indigenous testimonies and traditions, runs counter to this historical vision.

The Puranic account starts with the date 3102 B.C. which it calls the beginning of the Kaliyuga and goes back by 36 years to 3138 B.C. for the Bharata War between the Kuru and the Pandavas as well as for the birth of Parikshit, the grand-nephew of Yudhishthira -- Yudhishthira who ruled at Hastinapura after the Pandava victory in that year down to the Kaliyuga year which was marked by the death of Krishna and the installation by Yadhishthira of Parikshit in his own place so that he and his family might be free to go on a world-pilgrimage. The ancient Indian chronology takes also into account 3177 B.C. This date is connected with what is termed the cycle of Sapta Rishi, the Seven Rishis, the stars of the constellation Great Bear. The Seven Rishis are supposed to make a cycle of 2700 years by a stay of 100 years in each of the 27 Nakshatras or lunar asterisms of the ecliptic. 3177 B.C. marks their entry for a century's stay in the asterism Magha.

The Puranas offer two sets of general calculation. One is concerned with the Sapta Rishi cycle. The Vayu-Purana (99. 423, as well as the Brahmanda Purana,1 [F. I. Pargiter, Purana Texts of the Dynasties of the Kali Age (London, 1913, p. 61, n. 92.] says that the Seven Rishis who were in Magha in the time of Parikshit complete their 24th century in a part of the Andhra (Satavahana) dynasty. This means: when 2400 years had passed after 3177 B.C. the Andhra dynasty had already started. The Brahmanda (III. 74.230) again says that during the same dynasty there is the 27th century and that the asterism Magha, whose guardians are the Pitris (Ancestors), follows once more. A verse of the Matsya Parana1 [ Ibid., p. 59. ] speaks also of the cycle repeating itself after the 27th century and connects the repetition with the same dynasty using an expression which can be translated either as "at the end of the Andhras" or as "in the end..." The second rendering would be consistent with the substance of the Brahmanda verse. And both the verses, putting the completion of the 27th century in the terminal portion of the Andhras, balance those which put the completion of the 24th in the initial portion.

The Andhra line consisted, according to most Puranas, of 30 kings. So the closing part should mean at least one-fourth of the number, the last 7 or 8 kings. We may hold that 2700 passed from 3177 B.C. up to some point in the reign of one of the last 7 Andhras. The total of these reigns in the Puranas is (28 + 7 + 3 + 29 + 6 + 10 + 7 = ) 90 years. Hence the end of the dynasty might be anywhere between (3177-2700 =) 477 B.C. and (477- 90 = ) 387 B.C.

As a complement to the Sapta Rishi computation we get from the Puranas a number of periods termed "intervals", which bring a greater exactness. From the birth of Parikshit to the Coronation of Mahapadma Nanda, founder of the dynasty just preceding the Mauryas, there was an interval which is variously given as 1015, 1050, and 1500 years. From this coronation to the beginning of the Andhras there was an interval of 836 years. Since 1500 years -- as Anand Swarup Gupta2 ["The Problem of Interpretation of the Puranas", Purana, Vol. VI, No. I. January, 1964, pp. 67-68. ] has recently reminded us tally with the total of the reign-lengths which most Puranas ascribe to the dynasties of Magadha from the Bharata War to Mahapadma's coronation,3 [Ibid., p. 68: Barhadrathas, 1000 years; Pradyotas, 138; Sisunagas, 362.] we may use it to reach the date of the rise of the Nandas. We get (3138-1500 = ) 1638 B.C. Then we reach the start of the Andhras in (1638-836 =) 802 B.C. The Puranas, as D.C. Sircar1 [The Satavahanas and the Chedis, The Age of Imperial Unity, edited by R. C. Majumdar and A.D. Pusalker (Bombay, 1951), p. 196, fn. 1 continued from p. 195. ] notes, record for the full run of the Andhras several numbers: 300, 411, 412, 456, 460 years. Out of these, 411 and 412 bring us from 802 B.C. to 391 and 390 B.C. respectively -- both the dates falling within the range 477- 387 B.C. obtained from the Sapta Rishi computation.

The next great dynasty after the Andhras is the Imperial Guptas. The Puranas mention the Guptas in general and connect a group of territories with them, which by being referred to no one particular Gupta would seem to be the persistent core, the stable heartland, of the expanding or contracting Gupta empire. But the Puranas supply no chronological matter about the Guptas, except that some lapse of time between them and the Andhras is suggested. Hence the Imperial Guptas, according to the Puranas, must come somewhere in the rest of the 4th century B.C. With a Chandragupta of Pataliputra at their head and a Sandrocottus becoming king of Palibothra in c. 325 or 324 B.C. by modern calculations, it is evident that Puranically Sandrocottus must be Chandragupta I of the Imperial Guptas and not Chandragupta Maurya.

Whatever we may say, by way of criticism, about the Kaliyuga's commencement in 3102 B.C. or the Bharata War's occurrence in 3138 B.C. or the coronation of Mahapadma Nanda in 1638 B.C. or even the start of the Andhras in 802 B.C., we cannot help being struck with the precision with which this chronology s ynchronises Chandragupta I with Sandrocottus.

Such a situation raises the question: "Which of the Chandraguptas was Sandrocottus at whose court Megasthenes lived?" And it is indeed very pertinent to ask: "Does Megasthenes offer any chronological clue to solve it?"

The Chronological Clue from Megasthenes

We have three versions of a statement by Megasthenes, which can bear upon our problem. J. McCrindle has translated all of them.1 [The Classical Accounts of India, edited with an Introduction, Notes and Comments by R. C. Majumdar (Calcutta, 1960),- pp. 840, 457, 223. ]

Pliny (VI. xxl. 4-5) reports about the Indians: "From the days of Father Bacchus to Alexander the Great, their kings are reckoned at 154, whose reigns extend over 6451 years and 3 months."

Solinus (52.5) says: "Father Bacchus was the first who invaded India, and was the first of all who triumphed, over the vanquished Indians. From him to Alexander the Great 6451 years are reckoned with 3 months additional, the calculation being made by counting the kings, who reigned in the intermediate period, to the number of 153."

Arrian (Indica, I. ix) observes: "From the time of Dionysus to Sandrocottus the Indians counted 153 kings and a period of 6042 years, but among these a republic was thrice established... and another to 300 years, and another to 120 years. The Indians also tell us, that Dionysus was earlier than Heracles by fifteen generations, and that except him no one made a hostile invasion of India.... but that Alexander indeed came and overthrew in war all whom he attacked..."

It would be worth while discussing the three versions in every detail and arriving at what must have been the full original pronouncement of Megasthenes which has thus got transmitted with some confusions and inconsistencies and one lacuna. But for our immediate purpose it will suffice to make a few clarifying observations and then inquire: "What historical or legendary figure mentioned by the Indians became identified with Dionysus (Bacchus) in the Greek mind to serve as the starting-point of Indian chronology and of the line of Indian kings?

First, we may note from the more expansive versions of Solinus and Arrian that Dionysus and Alexander are terms of comparison in respect of the invaders of India -- especially the Greek ones. Dionysus is declared to be the first who invaded India, Alexander the only other person to do so. The most appropriate way to connect them is by calculating the time that elapsed between them. Solinus gives us just this time-connection, To connect the two invaders by a number of kings, as does Pliny is controversial; for, it brings up at once the issue: "Does the number refer to the whole of ancient India?" 153 or 154 kings are far too few for the whole, in which there were a host of practically independent kingdoms, each with its own genealogy of rulers. The number must be in reference to merely one particular kingdom which was associated with Alexander and with which Dionysus may have been associated either directly or through some scion of his. But can we associate any such kingdom with Alexander? He subjugated several states, but he was not specifically a king of this or that state. So his name at one end of a king-series is an anomaly.

Quite the reverse is the case with Sandrocottus whose name in Arrians' king-series replaces Pliny's "Alexander". Sandrocottus, though emperor of many peoples, is specifically known as the King of the Prasii -- the Prasii whom Pliny elsewhere (VI.22) describes as the greatest nation in India. We can easily conceive him as the tail-end of a line which goes back through various dynasties of kings of Palibothra to a hoary past along one branch among many leading to a common ancestor.

This conception seems natural when we realise that the small king-number was mentioned to Megasthenes at Palibothra itself, where he was stationed as ambassador. And what endows this conception with inevitability is the importance which Indian chronologists and historians have given to Magadha whose capital was Palibothra: the kings of Magadha after the Bharata War are the principal theme of the Puranic lists of dynasties, Sandrocottus and not Alexander was certainly the terminus intended by Megasthenes to the king-series the Indians mentioned to him.

But this series, although not related to Alexander, can well serve to describe from the Magadhan point of view the time-span from Dionysus to Alexander. And that is exactly how Solinus uses it, even if without the implication of Magadha such as Arrian has. Arrian too is justified in using it to describe the time-span from Dionysus to Sandrocottus. For, the two time-spans could not be much different. Alexander and Sandrocottus were contemporaries, and the gap of over 409 years which is there between the number in Arrian and that in Pliny or Solinus is a gross mistake. Arrian's time-span should really be not so much less nor even the same but a little more. Plutarch1 [Life of Alexander, LXIII. ] as well as Justin2 [Historiarum Philippicarum, XV. 1 v.] record that when Alexander, some time after his invasion, met Sandrocottus, the latter was not yet a king. According to Plutarch, the meeting took place round about the time the Macedonians "most resolutely opposed Alexander when he insisted that they should cross the Ganges". Alexander's progress came to a halt at approximately the end of July 326 B.C.3 [ "Foreign Invasions" by R. K. Mookerji, The Age of Imperial Unity p. 50. ] Thus we are sure that Sandrocottus mounted the throne of Palibothra later than this date. If we accept the more detailed time-span -- 6451 years and 3 months -- conveyed by Pliny and Solinus as our basis and if we try to guess the one in Arrian by introducing the least possible changes in the figures which he supplies, Sandrocottus's coronation must have been not 6042 but 6452 years after what Arrian calls "the time of Dionysus" and Pliny "the days of Father Bacchus".

Here we must consider the import of these two phrases, for they determine how we should count the 153 or 154 kings. Do they direct us to the beginning of Dionysus's kingship in India or to the end of it? In other words, is Dionysus included in the 153 or 154 kings? The phrase "From... to" employed by all the writers is ambiguous, whether we apply it to the "time" and "days" or to the king-number. Luckily we have an unequivocal phrase in Solinus to guide us: "the calculation being made by counting the kings who reigned in the intermediate period..." The reference is to the number of years and months from Dionysus to Alexander and these years and months are brought into relation with the number of kings. About both the time-period and the king-series we get the clear term: "intermediate". The number of kings applies to those who reigned between the days of Dionysus and the days of Alexander: the total of their reigns -- 6451 years and 3 months -- applies also to the period between the reigns of Dionysus and Alexander. After Dionysus ceased reigning and before Alexander started doing so we have the intermediate period. Similarly, the kings who are counted are the ones succeeding Dionysus and preceding Alexander. Indeed, Dionysus, who "was the first of all who triumphed over the vanquished Indians", must be counted as the first king over the Indians. But he is not a part of the 153 or 154 kings. Neither is Sandrocottus. If we count both of them, the king-number will be 155 or 156.

The final point to glance at is: "Which of the two king-numbers is to be accepted?" Since two authors out of three give 153 and since Arrian who correctly refers the king-series to Sandrocottus is one of them, 153 would appear to have more weight. But, when the difference of 154 from it is exceedingly small, perhaps the two serial numbers are there because of a disagreement among computers whether a certain name was to be included or not in the full tally.

In view of all our observations our job is to link Sandrocottus with an intervening chain of 153 or 154 kings to the ancient monarch of India whom the Greeks named Dionysus. By doing it we should be able to decide between Chandragupta Maurya and Chandragupta I for Sandrocottus and between the rise of the Mauryas and the rise of the Imperial Guptas for 325 or 324 B.C. The whole of ancient Indian chronology hinges on our decision apropos of the clue from Megasthenes.

Dionysus in India

Obviously, to come to a decision we must consult the Indian sources on which Megasthenes based himself. Where time-periods or king-lists are concerned, the informants of Megasthenes are very likely to have been Puranic pundits. "In fact," says D. R. Manked1 [Puranic Chronology (Anand, 1951), p. 2. ] rightly, "apart from the Puranas, there is no other source for such information." No doubt, the early Puraras were not quite in the form which we have today of this kind of literature, but there must have been many things in common and we are justified in tracing the extant Puranic documents to versions in fairly ancient times. "The early versions of the Puranas", A.D. Pusalker2 [Studies in the Epics and Puranas (Bhavan's Book University, Bombay, 1955), p. lxvi.] sums up, "existed at the period of the Bharata War and that of Megasthenes." And, like the original work of Megasthenes himself, these versions must have had a consistent tale of historico-chronological indications, which at present we can partly rebuild only by critical collation of the various reports.

Along with the Puranas there were some other traditional accounts -- the Vedas, the Brahmanas and the Epics. These too we must draw upon wherever necessary in our search for Dionysus in India.

Strictly speaking, the religious Indian analogue of Dionysus, god of wine, is Soma. Soma is apostrophised in the Rigveda as lord of the wine of delight (ananda) and immortality (amrita), pouring himself into gods and men, the deity who is also deep-hidden in the growths of the earth, waiting to be released us a rapture-flow for men and gods. In the times after the Rigveda, Soma emerges more specifically as a lunar god no less than as a king of the vegetable world with his being of nectar passing between heaven and earth through ritual and sacrifice. During those times, Soma is also regarded, in the earliest reference to the origin of kingship (Aitareya Brahmana, 1.14), as the god whom the other gods, seeking to fight the Titans (Asuras) effectively, elected as their king after having lived without a king so far. In the Satapatha Brahmana (V. 3. 3. 12; 4. 2. 3; XIII. 6. 2. 18; 7. 1. 13) the Brahmins speak of Soma as their king while common folk acknowledge an earthly monarch. The same book (XI, 4.3.9) applies to Soma the epithet (Raja-pati), "lord of kings." All this goes to suggest that Soma in ancient Indian tradition was the primeval as well as the supreme king from the religious stand-point.

But the true religious analogue of Dionysus need not be exclusively what the Greeks had in view, and we are concerned with the Indian figure whom they in the days of Alexander and Megasthenes identified with their Dionysus for various reasons, among which a strong touch of Soma, even if inevitable, might yet be only one stimulus. Besides, although Megasthenes connects wine with some religious ceremonies in India, there seems to have been in the country then no marked cult of the wine-god. The god mentioned as "Soroadeios" and interpreted to Alexander as "maker of wine" is now recognised to have been "Suryadeva", the sun-god. "Some illiterate interpreter" , E. Bevan1 [ The Cambridge History of India (1923), Vol. I, p . 422. ] explains, "must have been misled by the resemblance of Surya, 'sun', to Sura, 'wine'."

In the absence of a marked cult of Soma, the wide-spread Indian worship, which the Greeks reported, of Dionysus must indicate some other deity tinged with Soma-characteristics. The unanimous vote of scholars, bearing on Strabo's statement (XV, I) from Magasthenes that the Indians who lived on the mountains worshipped Dionysus, whereas the philosophers of the plains worshipped Heracles, is for Shiva, who was worshipped with revelry by certain hill-tribes. The pillar symbol, linga, associated popularly with Shiva as a phallus, making him a fertility god, and the bull which goes with him as his vahana, vehicle -- these two characteristics must have affirmed him still further with Dionysus who "is believed to have been originally a Thracian fertility god worshipped in the form of a bull with orgiastic rites".2 [Smaller Classical Dictionary (Everyman), p. 110, col. 2. ] and whose exoteric symbol, the phallus, was carried about in the rural festivals as well as in the mysteries.3 [The Encyclopaedia Britannica (13th Ed.), Vol. VIII, p. 287, col. 2.]

But surely when the Greeks spoke of royal history running in India from the time of Dionysus to that of Alexander and Sandrocottus, their Dionysus was a fusion of this Shiva with some legendary hero who, unlike Shiva, was celebrated as a primal king and who carried even more than Shiva a Soma-colour in some way affirming him to the wine-aspect of the Hellenic god.

The fusion is to be expected, since he was to the Greeks as much an empire-builder as a god. In the imagination of the Macedonian soldiers he was the subject of Euripides's fable -- a conqueror of the East whom they endowed with a constructive role in the remote past of India. This role bulked large in the thought of Megasthenes and it is well spotlighted by Arrian, (Indian, I, vii) drawing upon the Greek ambassador's book: "Dionysus,... when he came and conquered the people, founded cities and gave laws to these cities and introduced the use of wine among the Indians, as he had done among the Greeks, and taught them to sow the land, himself supplying seeds for the purpose... It is also said that Dionysus first yoked oxen to the plough and made many of the Indians husbandmen instead of nomads, and furnished them with the implements of agriculture; and that the Indians worship the other gods, and Dionysus himself in particular, with cymbals and drums, because he so taught them; and that he also taught them the Satyric dance, or, as the Greeks call it, the Kordax; and that he instructed the Indians to let their hair grow long in honour of the god, and to wear the turban; and that he taught them to anoint themselves with unguents, so that even up to the time of Alexander the Indians marshalled for battle to the sound of cymbals and drums." Then Arrian refers to Dionysus's departure from India after having established the new order of things and having appointed as king of the country one of his companions who was the most conversant with Bacchic matters and who subsequently reigned for 52 years. Among the cities founded by Dionysus, Arrian (Anabasis, V.I; Indica, I. 1) in company with all his fellow-annalists names only Nysa (in the Hindu Rush), so called after either Dionysus's nurse or his native mountain.

Some further points may be cited from Diodorus. Like others he (II. 38) mentions the Indian mountain "Meros" (Meru), at whose foot lay the city of Nysa, as a place where Dionysus bad been, and he links with its name the Greek legend that Dionysus was bred in his father Zeus's thigh (meros in Greek). In a few things Diodorus differs from what most authors have quoted from Megasthenes. After repeating the story of the invasion of India by Dionysus, he (ibid.) mentions Dionysus as not leaving the country after his achievements but as reigning over the whole of India for 52 years and then dying of old age while his sons succeeded to the government and transmitted the sceptre in unbroken succession to their posterity. What is more, Diodorus (III. 63) shows us that the Greeks knew of a counter-legend to the one about the entry of Dionysus into India from the west. And from this counter-legend the starter of the king-series to whom the Indians referred emerges in a clearer shape:

"Now some,... supposing that there were three individuals of this name, who lived in different ages, assign to each appropriate achievements. They say, then, the most ancient of them was Indos, and that as the country, with its genial temperature, produced spontaneously the vine-tree in great abundance, he was the first who crushed grapes and discovered the use of the properties of wine... Diouysus, then, at the head of an army, marched to every part of the world, and taught mankind the planting of the vine, and how to crush grapes in the winepress, whence he was called Lenaios. Having in like manner imparted to all a knowledge of his other inventions, he obtained after his departure from among men immortal honour from those who had benefited by his labours. It is further said that the place is pointed out in India even to this day where the god had been, and that cities are called by his name in the vernacular dialects, and that many other important evidences still exist of his having been born in India..."

There are some more details to the Dionysus-story, but all about him is not of equal importance; and those points in particular which have too clearly a Greek colour cannot be of much help to us. A few points which strike us as rather fanciful may also be passed over.

What we have mainly to match from Indian sources is an ancient human-divine personage who is a great progressive and constructive leader, no less than a conqueror -- one who is organically knit together with the country's traditional history and geography and stands deified in legend at the head of all royal successions in India.

The Three Candidates

Indian tradition shows us three human-divine personages, each of whom in an important sense is a king in the past and acted as a fundamental force of progress.

Legendary India starts with Manu Svayambhuva.1 [The Vedic Age, edited by R. G. Majumdar and A.D. Pusalker (London, 1952), pp. 270-71. ] He is reputed to have subdued all enemies, become the first king of the earth and revived the institutions of the four castes and of marriage, which had been established by his predecessor and progenitor, the deity Brahma.

With a status similar in another epoch is Manu Vaivasvata.2 [Ibid., pp. 271-72. ] He is said to be the originator of the human race and all the dynasties mentioned in the Puranas spring from him. He framed rules and laws of government, and collected a sixth of the produce of the land as a tax to meet administrative expenses. He is also famous for having saved humanity from the deluge which occurred at this time.

As a conqueror, Dionysus may be seen as resembling Svayambhuva. As a law-giver, he may be traced in Vaivasvata. As a primal king, he is more like Vaivasvata than Svayambhuva, for, though both are royal genealogy-starters in their own ways, the latter is such simply by being the first Indian -- and Dionysus, even as "Indos", was not the Adam of India. But in all his other capacities Dionysus is not at all like either Vaivasvata or Svayambhuva.

The third human-divine figure who is a primal king in Indian eyes stands in time intermediate between Svayambhuva and Vaivasvata: he is Prithu Vainya -- Prithu, the son of Vena. When we examine him, we discover that in all important respects he is the candidate par excellence for the Indian Dionysus.

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Part 2 of 2

Prithu Vainya as Dionysus

Prithu is not explicitly acknowledged by extant Indian records as a genealogy-starter, but he is called again and again the first king in a very special connotation of the phrase and, if he suited the Greeks who were obsessed with their Dionysus in Indian annals and who connected Dionysus with Sandrocottus, Indian records could easily lend themselves to making him for them a genealogy-starter. For, although Svayambhuva was the first king on earth and Vaivasvata the king at the source of all detailed human families, Prithu initiated the special status and significance enjoyed by kingship in ancient Indian history: he is "celebrated as the first consecrated king, from whom the earth received its name Prithvi".1 [Ibid, p. 271.] Even the hoary Satapatha Brahmana (V. 3. 5. 4) styles him the first anointed monarch. As D. R. Patil2 [Cultural History from the Vayu Parana (Poona, 1946), pp. 28, 163.] relates, the Vayu Purana terms him adiraja (first king) and the Mahabharata (IV and XI) says that the divine Vishnu entered the person of the king and hence the whole universe worships the kings as if they were gods. The Vishnu Purana,3 [Tr. by M. N. Dutt (Calcutta, 1896), p. 62.] too, deems him a portion of deity.

Prithu as king precedes Vaivasvata in time, but it is not by mere precedence that, like Svayambhuva, he is primal in royalty. He is adiraja by God-invested right and thus combines in himself the typical position of Dionysus the starter of royal dynasties: king as god and god as king. Thus he is suited the most to begin a line of duly coronated rulers.

Nor is he less a conqueror than Svayambhuva. When he was born, says the Vayu Purana,4 [Patil, Op. cit., p. 163. ] he stood equipped with bow, arrows and a shining armour. After his consecration he proceeded to vanquish the earth because he found her devoid of Vedic rites and proper service. Terrified of his uplifted weapons the earth fled in the shape of a cow and, on being pursued, pleaded not to be destroyed and she surrendered herself to his demands. Prithu is also the earliest among the kings to be called chakravartin -- that is, in F. E. Pargiter's words,1 [Ancient Indian Historical Tradition (London, 1922), p. 399. ] "sovereigns who conquered surrounding kingdoms and brought them under their authority, and established a paramount position over more or less extensive regions around their own kingdom." As the earth-vanquisher and the chakravartin prototype he is exactly like Dionysus who, "at the head of an army, marched to every part of the world".

He also resembles Dionysus uniquely and exclusively by many of his peace-time achievements. The Atharvaveda (VIII. 10. 24) gives him, as V. M. Apte2 [ The Vedic Age, p. 460. ] writes, "the credit of introducing the art of ploughing". Pusalker3 [ Ibid., p. 271. ] sums up many of his constructive activities: "He levelled the whole earth, clearing it of ups and downs, and encouraged cultivation, cattle-breeding, commerce and building of cities and villages."

Here we may recall Diodorus's phrase on Dionysus: "cities are called by his name in the vernacular dialects." Apropos of Hiuentsang's travels (c. 640 A.D.) in India, A. Cunningham4 [The Ancient Geography of India, edited with an Introduction and Notes by S. Majumdar (Calcutta, 1924), p. 385.] writes of the town which the Chinese scholar mentioned as Pehoa: "The place derives its name from the famous Prithu-Chakra-vartti, who is said to have been the first person that obtained the title Raja." Then Cunningham refers to the legendary events after the death of Prithu's father Vena: "On his death Prithu performed the Sraddha, or funeral ceremonies, and for twelve days after the cremation he sat on the bank of the Sarasvati offering water to all comers. The place was therefore called Prithudaka or Prithu's pool, from daka or udaka water; and the city which he afterwards built on the spot was called by the same name. The shrine of Prithudaka has a place in the Kurukshetra Mahatmya, and is still visited." S. Majumdar5 [Ibid., p. 702. ] adds by way of annotation on Prthudaka: "Referred to in the Kavyamimamsa (p. 93) as the boundary between Northern and Central India." Jaya Chandra Narang1 ["Structure of India in Relation to Language and History," The Cultural Heritage of India (Calcutta, 1958), p. 47.] goes as far back as Patanjali in referring to this town: "Uttarapatha is defined ...... as the country to the north of Prithudaka, i.e., the modern Pihowa on the Sarasvati.... "

Nor is this the sole Dionysian item of geography to be noted. In the Hathigumpha inscription of Kharavela (second half of the 1st century B.C.) we read of the claim of this king of Kalinga to have devastated Pithuda, the capital of a king of the Masulipatam region in the Madras State. Kharavela's Pithuda seems to be the same as Pitundra, metropolis of the Masoloi according to the geographer Ptolemy (c. 140 A.D.). And both the names appear to resolve only into the Sanskrit Prithuda.

Now we may turn to the religious aspect of Prithu to match that of Dionysus. Although king, he carried on profound religious practices, as the Matsya Purana2 [X.] informs us. And his pursuit of the earth, we may remember, was due to his anger at the neglect of Vedic rites and proper service. In the Rigveda he figures in one hymn (X. 148.5) as a rishi. There is, further, the suggestion from the compilers of the Vedic Index; (II, p. 16) that, as D. R. Patil3 [Op. cit., p. 163.] puts it, "Prithu of the Rigveda was probably a vegetation deity." This brings him very close indeed to Dionysus as well as to Soma. And his connection with the vegetable world emerges too from the story of his pursuit of the earth. When the earth surrenders herself to his demands, there takes place "the milching of the earth". This act seems to have many levels of significance. On the most apparent, the idea which is prominent is rightly said by Patil4 [Ibid. ] to be "that the king must provide for his people means for sustenance especially through the vegetable world." But there is also here a relation to the Soma-concept. For the "milching" involves the preparation of a [illegible] as drink from earth-products. And this drink assumes directly the aspect of Soma when we observe the circumstances under which the Vayu Purana mentions the deposition of Prithu's father Vena: Vena was deposed because he "held ideas against the performances of sacrifices and in his reign the gods did not partake of Soma at all".1 [Ibid., p. 24. ] And Prithu is declared, on his consecration as king, to have restored the Vedic sacrifices: he thus released, as it were, the rapture-wine from the earth for the gods. Thus one of the most Dionysian characteristics can be combined with Prithu.

When we look at the Rigvedic Vena we see in a still more Dionysian light the pertinence of the Puranic story of his depriving the gods of Soma. Vena in the Rigveda is not only called (X. 93.14) a "generous patron", the original bounty which in the Puranas is pictured as becoming perverted: he is also a form of the Vedic wine-god of delight, Soma, the true religious analogue of Dionysus. In one hymn (I. 83.4, 5), where the birth of Light from the lower life and from its crookedness is spoken of, we have the expression: yatah suryo vratapa vena ajani, "the Sun was born as the protector of the Law and the Blissful One",2 [Sri Aurobindo, On the Veda (Pondicherry, 1956), p. 276.] Vena is the word for "the Blissful One" and the Blissful One is that power or personality of the Supreme which is Bhaga and which is the creative enjoyer, the one who takes the delight of all that is created, the one to whom all creation is bhojanam, meaning both enjoyment and food. Bhaga is Soma, and Soma gets directly implied to be Vena when the Rigveda (IV. 58.4) speaks of three kinds of clarity (ghritam): "One Indra produced, one Surya, one the gods fashioned by natural development out of Vena." Sri Aurobindo,3 [Ibid., p. 120.] after giving this translation, comments: "Indra is the Master of the thought-mind, Surya of the supramental  light, Vena is Soma, the master of mental delight of existence, creator of the sense-mind."

Thus Prithu Vainya gets steeped in a Soma-connotation. And Megasthenes was encouraged to catch it in a Dionysian shape from his Indian informants all the more by the very sound of this hero's patronymic "Vainya". Just as the Indian hill-fortress Varana becomes Aornos to Alexander's army and just as the Indian god-name "Varuna" is answered by the Greek "Ouranos", so too "Vainya" must have sounded to the Greek ear like the Greek "Oinos" (wine), "Oine" (vine), "Oeneos" (vintner). We may recollect that Dionysus, because of his art of crushing grapes in the winepress, came to be termed "Lenaios". The Greeks may have understood Prithu to have been designated as "Vainya" for the same art.

While we are about Prithu and his father we may allude to the myth that Dionysus was bred in the thigh of his father Zeus and delivered from it to the world. The common myth concerning Prithu's birth is that he was born from the churning of Vene's left arm. But Ronald M. Huntington1 ["The Legend of Prithu", Purana, vol. II, 1-2, July 1960, p. 190, fn. 8.)] has drawn attention to traditional sources which, instead of "left arm", read "thigh".

And this Puranic myth has yet another point worth marking. The expression "churning" is applicable only to a liquid, and the churned Vena assumes the look of an earth-nectar turned unproductive and needing to be revived -- once more the idea of perverted Soma.

But, if the Vena of the Puranas reveals the sense of the Rigvedic Soma becoming perverted, then Prithu the saviour who is churned out of him grows the same Soma set right again: he is Soma once more delight and immortality, Soma restored to divinity.

Thus Prithu subsumes all that Soma brings of equivalence to Dionysus. Not only does he take into himself the godhead of wine, but also his status as the first consecrated king of earth merges in the kingship which for the first time came into being among the gods.

Even with Dionysus as Shiva, Prithu has a rapport. The Smriti (IX. 44) calls the earth Prithu's wife (bharya). So, if in the story of his pursuit of her she is given the form of a cow, he as her husband becomes by implication a bull. And the bull, ever since the Rigveda, has been a symbol of generation, inward or outward, spiritual or physical. Hence Prithu joins up on one side to the bull-form that went with the worship of Dionysus and on the other to the bull-vehicle that is Shiva's. And since Shiva with his phallus-emblem was a fertility god like Dionysus, Prithu by his connection with the vegetable world and even more as a vegetable deity gets assimilated with equal ease to both. The Greeks would find little difficulty in making their Dionysus a composite of Shiva and Prithu.

The Sanskrit for the Name "Dionysus"

Our special formula of Dionysus = Prithu and our broad one of Dionysus = Shiva = Prithu would receive the finishing touch if in regard to Shiva and Prithu we could light upon an Indian equivalent of the name "Dionysus". This name as a whole has had various explanations: the terminal component has been taken as "Nusos" (Thracian for "son") or "Nusa" tree or "Nysa" (proper name of a mountain or a nurse). The only thing certain is the initial component "Dio" from "Dios" (God).

Now, it is well-known that the Indian "Deva" for the Greek "Dios" is particularly linked with Shiva: e.g. "Mahadeva" Great God. It is also evident from the story in Puranas and the Mahabharata that the concept of King as Divinity derives from the consecration of Prithu is the first king to be considered Deva: the appellation Bhudeva ("Earth-God") which is common in Indian literature for a king may be traced to the legend of his anointment. So we have for both Shiva and Prithu an Indian equivalent to the initial component of "Dionysus". The terminal component can find too its Indian equivalent with regard to them if we remember how first the companion of Alexander related the cult of Dionysus to India. They did so on reaching the town in the Hindu Kush, which they called Nysa after the name heard by them on its occupants' lips. They enthusiastically conjectured that Dionysus had given this town its name in honour of his nurse or of his mountain.1 [Arrian, Anabasis, V. 1; Indica, I. 1. ] Naturally then they would expect the God worshipped there to be their own Dionysus and their expectations must have been amply fulfilled when they may have found this God, who was Shiva, called Deva: what could the Deva of Nysa be save Dionysus? Megasthenes, on longer stay in India, particularly in Magadha, heard of a king whose various achievements and functions answered to what the Greeks' own tradition had said about Dionysus, and this king was known not only as the first in an important sense but also as Deva: further, he had some associations in common with the Deva of Nysa. Would it be any wonder if he too got called Dionysus?

The appropriateness of the dubbing must have been confirmed for Megasthenes by a phrase he may have come across about this king. Since the God-head is said to have entered Prithu and Prithu to have become the first consecrated monarch by that divine Presence, one can imagine the informants of the Greek ambassador using for Prithu the apt phrase Raja daivyena sahasa, "King with God-force". This phrase could very well be to Greek ears the Indian way of saying "Raja Dionysus". It is a phrase easily for Prithu against a Puranic-cum-Vedic background. In the Puranas Prithu, with the Godhead in him, turned Truthwards the Earth-cow whose sacrificial and productive "milk" had been confined by irreligious powers. In the Rigveda (X.108.6) we have actually the expression sahasa daivyena about the heavenly Sarama who comes pressing upon the dark powers named the Panis to let the hidden Cows go upward to the Truth.

Some Final Considerations

Looked at from every angle, Prithu emerges as the Indian original of the Greeks' Dionysus in a multiple manner impossible to either Svayambhuva or Vaivasvata. Even the role of Dionysus as law-giver, which affirms Dionysus to Vaivasvata, is implicit in Prithu's role as champion of Vedic rites and fosterer of trade and sovereign over a vast number of peoples and builder of cities. And though Vaivasvata is the father of the human ages and thereby looks plausible for the part of history-starter which Dionysus plays in the Greek account, the history he starts is joined with Prithu in an important and organic way. The period at whose head stands Vaivasvata differs from all preceding periods in that, unlike them, it had cities and villages, knew agriculture, trade, pasture and cattle-breeding. And it knew all these things because of Prithu: Prithu has given a special distinguishing character to the Vaivasvata epoch and made the period, in which the Puranic dynasties from that Manu flourished, what it historically is.1 [Cf. Vayu Purana, 62. 170-74; also Patil, Op. Cit., p. 71.] Vaivasvata is thus significantly assimilated into Prithu.

Svayambhuva himself, the sheer first of all earth-kings in the Puranas, is assimilated in a certain sense. The Matsya Purana (X),2 [The Sacred Books of the Hindus, p. 31. ] after describing how Prithu chased and conquered the earth which was fleeing from him like a cow, says: "The land promised to obey the behests of the king. Then the king, after making Svayambhuva Manu as his calf, milked the earth in the form of the cow with his own hands. The earth then produced different kinds of grain which support mankind." The strange psycho-symbolic phrase about Svayambhuva renders that prime king a living portion of the Prithu-history, a power serving organically the achievement of the first consecrated monarch.

A last consideration, rounding off the rich many-sided equation of Prithu to Dionysus, is a legend connected with Magadha. We have argued that the 153 or 154 kings of Megasthenes trace the line upward from Sandrocottus, rather than from Alexander, to Dionysus and that they pertain to just the province of Magadha as their tail-end. It would be most appropriate if to balance Sandrocottus at the lower extreme as king of Magadha the list went back with whatever intermediate breaks, to an original Magadhan monarch. The equation of Prithu to Dionysus makes Dionysus such a monarch, for the Brahma Purana,3 [B.C. Law, Tribes in Ancient India (Poona, 1943), p. 95.] which in the midst of later accretions is held4 [The Cambridge Htstory of India, p. 300.] to have very ancient matter enshrined in it, bears a legend in which "the first great Samrat or Emperor of Magadha" is Prithu.

The Kings from Dionysus to Sandrocottus

Now we may legitimately start counting after Prithu the 153 or 154 kings and see whether our Dionysus-theory of him leads us to a Chandragupta and which of the two possible Chandraguptus becomes our terminus.

As the Puranas are the main Indian source for the dynastic lists we have to make use of their detailed account. But in their present versions they are not uniform in these lists, though the variations are within certain limits. What we should try to reach is the primal Puranic list by means of collation. Pargiter, in his Ancient Indian Historical Tradition has set up a table of collated genealogical lines from the time of Vaivasvata to that of the Bharata War. His Puranic Texts of the Dynasties of the Kali Age collates the members of the eight dynasties which the Puranas set ruling in Magadha. As for the line from Prithu to Vaivasvata, the collated picture in outline is in Pusalker's remark in The Vedic Age:1 [Vayu Purana, II. 22, 23, 25, 26, 39, 41; Matsya Purana, XI.] "Fifth in descent from Prithu was Daksha, whose daughter's grandson, Manu Vaivasvata, saved humanity from the deluge ...... "

If Daksha is the 5th descendant from Prithu, Vaivasvata's number is 8 because he is 3rd in descent frim Daksha. The details of the picture may be filled in from the Puranas, with Daksha's daughter Aditi substituted by her husband Kasyapa. Of course, Prithu himself stands unnumbered outside the picture at the upper end just as a Chandragupta will have to stand at the lower: 153 or 154 kings have to be in "the intermediate period" between these two.

Prithu Vainya

1. Antardhana (or Antardhi)
2. Havirdhana
3. Prachinabarhisha
4. Prachetas
5. Daksha
6. Kasyapa
7. Vivasvata
8. Manu Vaivasvata

But how shall we count after Vaivasvata? He had 10 sons founding 10 families ruling over various sections of the country.1 [The Vedic Age, p. 271.] Are we to count whatever members of all these families are found, on collation, in the Puranas? In reference to the Solar and Lunar lines into which the Puranas branch off Vaivasvata's progeny, Mankad2 [Op. cit., p. 4. ] who has mistakenly attempted tracing from Vaivasvata the entire number of kings given by Megasthenes has yet some very perspicacious observations to guide the counting. He says that we have to proceed in two instalments. First we must come down from the time of Vaivasvata to that of the Bharata War and afterwards go on to the time of Alexander. But, in order to make the two movements a single whole, we must remember that Sandrocottus, the king before whom the Greek number completed itself and whose Indian counterpart we have to reach, was a Magadhan king. Therefore, we must move from Vaivasvata in such a way as to get along the Magadhan branch.

The Magadhan branch, in all the Puranas, is always put in direct continuation of the Lunar line. So we have to ignore the Solar line coming down to the Bharata War and continuing further for about 30 kings. But the Lunar line has several branches and we have to ignore all except the one which carries us to the kings of Magadha before and during and after the Bharata War. The king of Magadha who died in the Bharata War was Sahadeva, the son of Jarasandha. So, prior to taking up the main theme of the Puranic lists, the kings of Magadha subsequent to the War, we have to count along a course which leads from Vaivasvata to Sahadeva: we must not bring in any king occurring along another course.

With the correct procedure established, we have next to look at Pargiter's list3 [ Ancient Indian Historical Tradition, pp. 144-49.] of the appropriate kings down to Sahadeva. In this list, one name is put by him within brackets: it is Bharadvaja. The bracketing is done because Bharadvaja, as Pargiter relates on page 159 of his book, never sat on the throne; an adopted son of Bharata, he consecrated his own sun Vitatha as Bharata's successor after the latter had died. So we must omit Bharadvaja if we are to take the actual kings. Then, with Manu Vaivasvata as number 8 and his daughter Ila replaced by her husband Budha, we get the following table:

8. Manu
9. Budha
10. Pururavas
11. Ayu
12. Nahusha
13. Yayati
14. Puru
15. Janamejaya I
16. Prachinvant
17. Pravira
18. Manasyu
19. Abhayada
20. Sudhanvan-Dhundu
21. Bahugava
22. Samyati
23. Ahamyati
24. Raudrasva
25. Richeyu
26. Matinara
27. Tamsu
28. Dushyanta
29. Bharata
30, Vitatha
31. Bhuvamanya
32. Brihatkshatra
33. Suhotra
34. Hastin
35. Ajamidha
36. Riksha
37. Samvarana
38. Kuru
39. Sudhanvan
40. Suhotra
41. Chyavana
42. Krita  
43. Vasu
44. Brihadratha
45. Kusagra
46. Rishabha
47. Pushpavant
48. Satyahita
49. Sudhanvan
50. Urja
51. Sambhava
52. Jarasandha
53. Sahadeva

Coming to the Magadhan kings after the Bharata War, we have 8 dynasties whose member have been enumerated one after another and who therefore can be counted. We shall follow Pargiter's collection of the relevant Puranic texts. About the Barhadrathas he1 [The Puranic Texts of the Dynasties of the Kali Age (London, 1913), p. 13. ] tells us: "There were 32 kings altogether, 10 before the battle and 22 after." We have already mentioned the earlier 10, from Brihadratha to Sahadeva. About the Pradyotas we learn2 [Ibid., p. 19, line 10; p. 68. ] that they were 5. About the Sisunagas we are told:3 [Ibid., pp. 20, 65.] "All the authorities say that there were 10 kings." The Nandas are given1 [ Ibid., p. 25, line 7; p. 26, line 7; p. 69. ] as 9: a father and 8 sons. Of the Mauryas "the best attested number is 10",2 [ Ibid., pp. 27, 70. ] The Sungas have the same number: 10.3 [ Ibid., pp. 33, 70. ] The Kanvas count 4.4 [ Ibid., p. 71. ] On the Andhras, Pargiter5 [ Ibid., pp. 36, 72. ] writes; "The Vayu, Brahmanda, Bhagavata and Visnu all say there were 30 kings... and 30 is no doubt the correct number." Let us put the "best attested" counts in a table:

Barhadrathas / 22
Pradyotas / 5
Sisunagas / 10
Nandas / 9
Mauryas / 10
Sungas / 10
Kanvas / 4
Andhras / 30

At two places we shall have a king named Chandragupta to answer to Sandrocottus. First, immediately after the Nandas. The number of this Chandragupta, founder of the Mauryas, is after (22 + 5 + 10 + 9=) 46. But 46 added to the previous 53 yields only 99 whereas the number preceding him should be 153 or 154. So Chandragupta Maurya is ruled out.

The next Chandragupta will come after the Andhras to found the dynasty of the Imperial Guptas. The sum-total of kings at the end of the Andhras that is, at the end of all the 8 countable dynasties said to have ruled over Magadha, is (22 + 5 + 10 + 9 + 10 + 4 + 30 = ) 100. If we add these 100 kings to the 53 before them we obtain 153-- exactly one of the two king- numbers from Megasthenes for "the intermediate period" between Dionysus and Sandrocottus.

Even the other number -- 154 -- becornes both apt and intelligible on a back-view of Pargiter's table. For 153 is reached on omission of Bharadvaja who never sat on the throne. But if we include him because he was next after Bharata and just before Vitatha we shall get 154 dynastic names, Thus both the numbers from Megasthenes get aligned to the Puranas with an astonishing accuracy.

It seems impossible to doubt that Prithu Vainya at the commencement and Chandragupta I of the Imperial Guptas at the termination are what the Indian informants of Megasthenes intended when they spoke of a king-series from Dionysus to Sandrocottus. Through Megasthenes the Puranic chronology of the rise of the Imperial Guptas in c. 325 or 324 B.C. appears to be completely vindicated.

Some Possible Objections Answered

However, a few objections may be raised. One may say: "The Puranas designate the Pradyotas as kings of Magadha, but modern research is disposed to put them on the throne of Avanti. Also, modern research has not struck upon any definite evidence to regard the Andhra Satavahanas as Magadhan kings. If we knock the two dynasties out, there will never be 153 or 154 kings before Chandragupta I along the Magadhan line backward to Prithu.

The answer is very simple: "To begin with, modern research is not yet unanimous: scholars like V. Smith 1 [The Early History of India (London, 1934), Chapters II and VIII. Vide also Anand Swarup Gupta, "The problem of Interpretation of the Puranas," Purana, Vol. VI, No, 1, January, 1965, p. 68, fn. 37, on the question of the Pradyotas.] do not agree with the majority opinion. But even if this opinion happens to be correct, our argument stands. For, we are unconcerned at the movement with the issue of the Puranas' correctness in this matter: we are concerned with nothing else than what the Puranas record and what we are supposing their pundits to have conveyed to the Greek ambassador in the time of Sandrocottus. The issue really is: 'Does the Puranic list, right or wrong, correspond numerically to that of Megasthenes? The correspondence is very striking."

One may also object: According to Pargiter's careful analysis,2 [Ancient Indian Historical Tradition, pp. 144-49.] the scheme of genealogy from Vaivasvata to Sahadeva, inclusive of both, comprises 94 generations. To take only (53-7 =) 46 king-names, as you do, misrepresents the state of affairs. You should really count 94 kings and, adding the 7 more up to Prithu, get 101 names before the Bharata War. Then the total number will be (101 +100 =) 201 instead of 153. This will throw the Puranas out of tune with Megasthenes and invalidate your whole procedure and proving."

Here also the main point is overlooked. We do not affirm that only 46 kings existed from Vaivasvata to the Bharata War along the line we have to choose as the sole legitimate one. Nor do the Puranas make such an affirmation: Pargiter1 [Ibid., p. 89. ] has shown that they do not really claim to be exhaustive about any line. But our concern is simply with the number of names actually offered and with the problem: "Does it agree or not with the Greek account?" Pargiter's analysis of the generations makes no odds. A most notable agreement is there. Both our procedure and proving remain untouched.

The only objection truly worth weighing arises from Arrian's concluding remark: "The Indians also tell us that Dionysus was earlier than Heracles by fifteen generations." In the context of the king-series, Heracles is evidently meant to have been either fifteenth in the list or contemporaneous with whoever else was fifteenth. But we know who Heracles was, from Arrian's own slightly earlier statement (Indica, I, viii): "Heracles ...who is currently reported to have come as a stranger into the country is said to have been in reality a native of India. This Heracles is held in especial honour by the Sourasenoi, an Indian tribe who possess two large cities, Methora and Cleisobora, and through whose country flows a navigable river called the Jobares. But the dress which this Heracles wore, Megasthenes tells us, resembled that of the Theban Heracles, as the Indians themselves admit. It is further said he had a numerous progeny of male children born to him in India (for, like his Theban namesake, he married many wives) but that he had only one daughter. The name of this child was Pandaia, and the land in which she was born and with the sovereignty of which Heracles entrusted her was called after her name Pandaia." Sufficient clues have been seen by scholars1 [Pusalker, Studies in the Epics and Puranas. p. 64.] in this account to identify Heracles. D. R. Bhandarkar equates him with Krishna Vasudeva (plus Krishna's brother Balarama) and the Sourasenoi with the Surasenas or Satvatas. Lassen, McCrindle and Hopkins state that Methora and Cleisobora are respectively Mathura and Krishnapura on the Jamuna (Jobares). The story about Pandaia is a confused reference to Krishna's close personal association with the Pandavas in the Bharata War and to his family-tie to them by the marriage of his sister to the Pandava Arjuna. But if Heracles is Krishna, how, in any sense, can he be 15th after Dionysus or Prithu? He cannot be even 15th from Vaivasvata, for he was a contemporary of Sahadeva. In fact, Pargiter, when followed not along the Lunar line leading to Sahadeva but along another line of the Lunar family which leads to Krishna, shows him to be the 53rd name, though the 94th generation, if Vaivasvata is the 1st name and generation. This would make him (53 + 7 = ) 60 in name-number after Prithu and (94 + 7 = ) 101 in generation after him. Hence the account of Megasthenes cannot be equated here to the Puranic results and the rift threatens to invalidate our conclusions, by means of Puranic comparison, in favour of Chandragupta I.

One may put up the defence that the rift may be due to a slip by the copyists of Megasthenes, like the egregious yet obvious error of a much smaller time-gap between Dionysus and Sandracottus than between Dionysus and Alexander. Such a slip need not prejudice the highly impressive correspondence already traced. But, of course, it would be better if the discrepancy could be explained away. And actually there is a way out of the difficulty. It lies in inquiring: "Can Krishna be put, in some sense or other, immediately after the 14th name in our Puranic list so that he may be the 15th after Prithu? If he can, we may legitimately suggest that Megasthenes has made a mix-up without truly falsifying the Puranic information.

When we examine our Puranic list we find that 14th after Prithu is Puru, the son of Yayati. But Puru is not the only son: we have named him alone because through him we arrive ultimately at the Magadhan line. Pusalker,1 [The Vedic Age, p. 274. ] drawing upon the Puranas and the Mahabharata, tells us, as also does Pargiter by his tables: "Yayati had five sons. Devayani bore two, Yadu and Turvasu, and Sarmishtha three, Anu, Druhyu, and Puru." All these sons are 14th after Prithu. Pusalker continues: "Yadu, the eldest son of Yayati, founded the Yadavas, the first Lunar dynasty to rise into prominence." The greatest and almost the last Yadava was Krishna.2 [Ibid., pp. 298-99.] Now, the term "Yadava" means in general a member of Yadu's family but its first and immediate meaning is "son of Yadu." If Krishna the Yadava is understood as son of "Yadu", then, since Yadu is 14th after Prithu, Krishna is 15th. And he is 15th not only as a name: those who are next in succession to Yadu -- his "sons", as they are called -- are 15th in generation no less than in name-number, and therefore Prithu would be exactly 15 generations earlier than Krishna who according to us, substituted one of these sons in Megasthenes's understanding.

The precise generation-number 15 into which Krishna as "Yadava" could fit is too suggestive to be without relevance to our problems of Dionysus's having been "fifteen generations earlier than Heracles". Besides, the very name of the son, through whom the line which nearly ended with Krishna came into being is somewhat allied in sound to Krishna's own: it is Kroshtri.

Thus every objection can be met. And we may hold, in conclusion, that Megasthenes, on his own evidence, was not a contemporary of Chandragupta Maurya. He is historically on the side of the Puranic chronology in so far as it leads to the accession of Chandragupta I in c. 325 or 324 B.C. His chronological information came from Indians who in c. 302 B.C. -- the date of his arrival at the court of Sandrocottus -- were setting up their time-scheme with the end of Prithu's semi-legendary reign at one extreme and at the other the rise of the Imperial Guptas in their own day.

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Part 1 of 2

Identifications in the Region of Kapilavastu
(With a Map.) by Major W. Yost, I.M.S.
The Journal of The Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland
P. 553-581
1906

-- The Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland, 1906

Several times... I endeavoured to read through the ‘Narrative of Fâ-Hien;’ but though interested with the graphic details of much of the work, its columns bristled so constantly—now with his phonetic representations of Sanskrit words, and now with his substitution for them of their meanings in Chinese characters...

The Chinese narrative runs on without any break. It was Klaproth who divided Rémusat’s translation into forty chapters...

In transliterating the names of Chinese characters I have generally followed the spelling of Morrison rather than the Pekinese, which is now in vogue. We cannot tell exactly what the pronunciation of them was, about fifteen hundred years ago, in the time of Fâ-Hien; but the southern mandarin must be a shade nearer to it than that of Peking at the present day. In transliterating the Indian names I have for the most part followed Dr. Eitel, with such modification as seemed good and in harmony with growing usage....

There are few predecessors in the field of Chinese literature into whose labours translators of the present century can enter. This will be received, I hope, as a sufficient apology for the minuteness and length of some of the notes....The books which I have consulted for these notes have been many, besides Chinese works. My principal help has been the full and masterly handbook of Eitel, mentioned already, and often referred to as E.H. Spence Hardy’s ‘Eastern Monachism’ (E.M.) and ‘Manual of Buddhism’ (M.B.) have been constantly in hand, as well as Rhys Davids’ Buddhism, published by the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, his Hibbert Lectures, and his Buddhist Suttas in the Sacred Books of the East, and other writings....

I think there are many things in the vast field of Buddhist literature which still require to be carefully handled. How far, for instance, are we entitled to regard the present Sûtras as genuine and sufficiently accurate copies of those which were accepted by the Councils before our Christian era? Can anything be done to trace the rise of the legends and marvels of Sakyamuni’s history, which were current so early (as it seems to us) as the time of Fâ-hien, and which startle us so frequently by similarities between them and narratives in our Gospels? Dr. Hermann Oldenberg, certainly a great authority on Buddhistic subjects, says that ‘a biography of Buddha has not come down to us from ancient times, from the age of the Pali texts; and, we can safely say, no such biography existed then’ (‘Buddha—His Life, His Doctrine, His Order,’ as translated by Hoey, p. 78). He has also (in the same work, pp. 99, 416, 417) come to the conclusion that the hitherto unchallenged tradition that the Buddha was ‘a king’s son’ must be given up. The name ‘king’s son’ (in Chinese 太子), always used of the Buddha, certainly requires to be understood in the highest sense...

Dr. Rhys Davids has kindly read the proofs of the Translation and Notes, and I most certainly thank him for doing so, for his many valuable corrections in the Notes, and for other suggestions which I have received from him....

The accompanying Sketch-Map, taken in connexion with the notes on the different places in the Narrative, will give the reader a sufficiently accurate knowledge of Fâ-hien’s route.

There is no difficulty in laying it down after he crossed the Indus from east to west into the Punjâb, all the principal places, at which he touched or rested, having been determined by Cunningham and other Indian geographers and archæologists. Most of the places from Chʽang-an to Bannu have also been identified....

The point at which Fâ-hien recrossed the Indus into Udyâna on the west of it is unknown. Takshaśilâ, which he visited, was no doubt on the west of the river, and has been incorrectly accepted as the Taxila of Arrian in the Punjâb. It should be written Takshasira...

Nothing of great importance is known about Fâ-hien in addition to what may be gathered from his own record of his travels...

[H]is father devoted him to the service of the Buddhist society, and had him entered as a Śrâmaṇera, still keeping him at home in the family...

When he was ten years old, his father died;... When his mother also died... after her burial he returned to the monastery...

When he had finished his novitiate and taken on him the obligations of the full Buddhist orders... he undertook his journey to India in search of complete copies of the Vinaya-piṭaka. What follows this is merely an account of his travels in India and return to China by sea, condensed from his own narrative, with the addition of some marvellous incidents that happened to him, on his visit to the Vulture Peak near Râjagṛiha....

Much of what Fâ-hien tells his readers of Buddhist miracles and legends is indeed unreliable and grotesque; but we have from him the truth as to what he saw and heard.

-- A Record of Buddhistic Kingdoms, Being an Account by the Chinese Monk Fa-Hien Of His Travels in India and Ceylon (A.D. 399–414) In Search of the Buddhist Books of Discipline, Translated and Annotated with a Corean Recension of the Chinese Text, by James Legge

The Chinese treatise known as the Hsi-yu-chi (or Si-yu- ki) is one of the classical Buddhist books of China, Korea, and Japan. It is preserved in the libraries attached to many of the large monasteries of these countries and it is occasionally found for sale in bookshops. The copies offered for sale are reprints of the work as it exists in some monastery, and they are generally made to the order of patrons of learning or Buddhism. These reprints are more or less inaccurate or imperfect, and one of them gives as the complete work only two of the twelve chuan which constitute the treatise....

On the title-page of the Hsi-yu-chi it is represented as having been "translated" by Yuan-chuang and "redacted" or "compiled" by Pien-chi ([x]). But we are not to take the word for translate here in its literal sense, and all that it can be understood to convey is that the information given in the book was obtained by Yuan-chuang from foreign sources. One writer tells us that Yuan-chuang supplied the materials to Pien-chi who wrought these up into a literary treatise. Another states that Yuan-chuang communicated at intervals the facts to be recorded to Pien-chi who afterwards wove these into a connected narrative.

This Pien-chi was one of the learned Brethren appointed by T'ai Tsung to assist Yuan-chung in the work of translating the Indian books which Yuan-chuang had brought with him. It was the special duty of Pien-chi to give literary form to the translations. He was a monk of the Hui-chang ([x]) Monastery and apparently in favour at the court of the Emperor. But he became mixed up in an intrigue with one of T'ai Tsung's daughters and we cannot imagine a man of his bad character being on very intimate terms with the pilgrim. As to the Hsi-yu-chi we may doubt whether he really had much to do with its formation, and perhaps the utmost that can be claimed for him is that he may have strung together Yuan-chuang's descriptions into a connected narrative. The literary compositions of Yuan-chuang to be found in other places seem to justify us in regarding him as fully competent to write the treatise before us without any help from others...Some of the notes and comments may have been added by Pien-chi but several are evidently by a later hand....

The Hsi-yu-chi exists in several editions which present considerable variations both in the text and in the supplementary notes and explanations. For the purposes of the present Commentary copies of four editions have been used. The first of these editions is that known to scholars as the Han-shan ([x]) Hsi-yu-chi, which was brought out at private expense. This is substantially a modern Soochow reprint of the copy in one of the collections of Buddhist books appointed and decreed for Buddhist monasteries in the time of the Ming dynasty. It agrees generally with the copy in the Japanese collection of Buddhist books in the Library of the India Office, and it or a similar Ming copy seems to be the only edition of the work hitherto known to western students. The second is the edition of which a copy is preserved in the library of a large Buddhist monastery near Foochow. This represents an older form of the work, perhaps that of the Sung collection made in A.D. 1103, and it is in all respects superior to the common Ming text. The third is an old Japanese edition which has many typographical and other errors and also presents a text differing much from other editions. It is apparently a reprint of a Sung text, and is interesting in several respects, but it seems to have many faults and it is badly printed. The fourth is the edition given in the critical reprint which was recently produced in the revised collection of Buddhist books brought out in Japan. This edition is based on the text recognized in Korea and it supplies the various readings of the Sung, Yuan, and Ming editions. Some of these variations are merely different ways of writing a character but many of them give valuable corrections for the Korean text which is often at fault....

The family from which Yuan-chuang sprang is said to have been descended from the semi-mythical Huang-Ti through the great Emperor Shun, and to have originally borne the territorial designation of Shun, viz. Kuei ([x])...

The father of our pilgrim, by name Hui ([x]), was a man of high character. He was a handsome tall man of stately manners, learned and intelligent, and a Confucianist of the strict old-fashioned kind. True to his principles he took office at the proper time, and still true to them he gave up office and withdrew into seclusion when anarchy supplanted order. He then retired to the village Ch'en-pao-ku ([x]') at a short distance south-east from the town of Kou-shih ([x]). This town was in the Lo-chow, now Ho-nan, Prefecture of Honan, and not far from the site of the modern Yen-shih ([x]) Hsien. Yuan-chuang is sometimes called a Kou-shih man and it was probably in his father's home near this town that he was born in the year 600.

The family of Ch'en Hui was apparently a large one and Yuan-chuang was the youngest of four sons. Together with his brothers he received his early education from his father, not, of course, without the help of other teachers. We find Yuan-chuang described as a rather precocious child shewing cleverness and wisdom in his very early years. He became a boy of quick wit and good memory, a lover of learning with intelligence to make a practical use of his learning. It was noted that he cared little for the sports and gaieties which had over-powering charms for other lads and that he liked to dwell much apart. As a Confucianist he learned the Classical work on Filial Piety and the other canonical treatises of the orthodox system.

But the second son of the family entered the Buddhist church and Yuan-chuang, smitten with the love of the strange religion, followed his brother to the various monasteries at which the latter sojourned. Then he resolved also to become a Buddhist monk, and proceeded to study the sacred books of the religion with all the fervour of a youthful proselyte. When he arrived at the age of twenty he was ordained, but he continued to wander about visiting various monasteries in different parts of the country. Under the guidance of the learned Doctors in Buddhism in these establishments he studied some of the great works of their religion, and soon became famous in China as a very learned and eloquent young monk. But he could not remain in China for he longed vehemently to visit the holy land of his religion, to see its far-famed shrines, and all the visible evidences of the Buddha's ministrations. He had learned, moreover, to be dissatisfied with the Chinese translations of the sacred books, and he was desirous to procure these books in their original language, and to learn the true meaning of their abstruse doctrines from orthodox pundits in India. After making enquiries and preparations he left the capital Ch'ang-an ([x]), the modern Hsi-an ([x])-foo, in the year 629, and set out secretly on his long pilgrimage. The course of his wanderings and what he saw and heard and did are set forth in the Life and Records.

After sixteen year's absence Yuan-chuang returned to China and arrived at Ch'ang-an in the beginning of 645, the nineteenth year of the reign of T'ang T'ai Tsung. And never in the history of China did Buddhist monk receive such a joyous ovation as that with which our pilgrim was welcomed. The Emperor and his Court, the officials and merchants, and all the people made holiday. The streets were crowded with eager men and women who expressed their joy by gay banners and festive music. Nature, too, at least so it was fondly deemed, sympathised with her children that day and bade the pilgrim welcome. Not with thunders and lightnings did she greet him, but a solemn gladness filled the air and a happy flush was on the face of the sky. The pilgrim's old pine tree also by nods and waves whispered its glad recognition. This tree, on which Yuan-chuang patted a sad adieu when setting out, had, obedient to his request, bent its head westward and kept it so while the pilgrim travelled in that direction. But when his face was turned to the east and the homeward journey was begun the old pine true to its friend also turned and bowed with all its weight of leaves and branches towards the east. This was at once the first sign of welcome and the first intimation of the pilgrim having set out on his journey home. Now he had arrived whole and well, and had become a many days' wonder. He had been where no other had ever been, he had seen and heard what no other had ever seen and heard. Alone he had crossed trackless wastes tenanted only by fierce ghost-demons. Bravely he had climbed fabled mountains high beyond conjecture, rugged and barren, ever chilled by icy wind and cold with eternal snow. He had been to the edge of the world and had seen where all things end. Now he was safely back to his native land, and with so great a quantity of precious treasures. There were 657 sacred books of Buddhism, some of which were full of mystical charms able to put to flight the invisible powers of mischief. All these books were in strange Indian language and writing, and were made of trimmed leaves of palm or of birch-bark strung together in layers. Then there were lovely images of the Buddha and his saints in gold, and silver, and crystal, and sandalwood. There were also many curious pictures and, above all, 150 relics, true relics of the Buddha. All these relics were borne on twenty horses and escorted into the city with great pomp and ceremony.

The Emperor T'ai Tsung forgave the pilgrim for going abroad without permission, made his acquaintance and became his intimate friend. He received Yuan-chuang in an inner chamber of the palace, and there listened with unwearied interest from day to day to his stories about unknown lands and the wonders Buddha and his great disciples had wrought in them...On his petition the Emperor appointed several distinguished lay scholars and several learned monks to assist in the labour of translating, editing, and copying. In the meantime at the request of his Sovereign Yuan-chuang compiled the Records of his travels, the Hsi-yu-chi. The first draft of this work was presented to the Emperor in 646, but the book as we have it now was not actually completed until 648. It was apparently copied and circulated in Ms in its early form during the author's life and for some time after. When the Hsi-yu-chi was finished Yuan-chuang gave himself up to the task of translating, a task which was to him one of love and duty combined.... In the year 664 on the 6th day of the second month he underwent the great change. He had known that the change was coming, and had made ready for his departure. He had no fears and no regrets: content with the work of his life and joyous in the hope of hereafter he passed hence into Paradise. There he waits with Maitreya until in the fullness of time the latter comes into this world. With him Yuan-chuang hoped to come back to a new life here and to do again the Buddha's work for the good of others.

In personal appearance Yuan-chuang, like his father, was a tall handsome man with beautiful eyes and a good complexion. He had a serious but benevolent expression and a sedate and rather stately manner. His character as revealed to us in his Life and other books is interesting and attractive. He had a rare combination of moral and intellectual qualities and traits common to Chinese set off by a strongly marked individuality. We find him tender and affectionate to his parents and brothers, clinging to them in his youth and lovingly mindful of them in his old age. He was zealous and enthusiastic, painstaking and persevering, but without any sense of humour and without any inventive genius. His capacity for work was very great and his craving for knowledge and love of learning were an absorbing passion. Too prone at times to follow authority and accept ready-made conclusions he was yet self possessed and independent....

As a Buddhist monk Yuan-chuang was very rigorous in keeping the rules of his order and strict in all the observances of his religion. But his creed was broad, his piety never became ascetic, and he was by nature tolerant. There were lengths, however, to which he could not go, and even his powerful friend the Emperor T'ai Tsung could not induce him to translate Lao-tzu's "Tao-Te-Ching" into Sanskrit or recognize Lao-tzu as in rank above the Buddha.... He was brave to a marvel, and faced without fear the unknown perils of the visible world and the unimagined terrors of unseen beings....His faith was simple and almost unquestioning, and he had an aptitude for belief which has been called credulity. But his was not that credulity which lightly believes the impossible and accepts any statement merely because it is on record and suits the convictions or prejudices of the individual. Yuan-chuang always wanted to have his own personal testimony, the witness of his own senses or at least his personal experience. It is true his faith helped his unbelief, and it was too easy to convince him where a Buddhist miracle was concerned. A hole in the ground without any natural history, a stain on a rock without any explanation apparent, any object held sacred by the old religion of the fathers, and any marvel professing to be substantiated by the narrator, was generally sufficient to drive away his doubts and bring comforting belief. But partly because our pilgrim was thus too ready to believe, though partly also for other reasons, he did not make the best use of his opportunities. He was not a good observer, a careful investigator, or a satisfactory recorder, and consequently he left very much untold which he would have done well to tell....

[T]he Buddhism to which Yuan-chuang adhered, the system which he studied, revered, and propagated, differed very much from the religion taught by Gautama Buddha. That knew little or nothing of Yoga and powerful magical formulae used with solemn invocations. It was not on Prajnaparamita and the abstract subtleties of a vague and fruitless philosophy, nor on dream-lands of delight beyond the tomb, nor on P'usas like Kuan-shi-yin who supplant the Buddhas, that the great founder of the religion preached and discoursed to his disciples. But Yuan-chuang apparently saw no inconsistency in believing in these while holding to the simple original system...

After Yuan-chuang's death great and marvellous things were said of him. His body, it was believed, did not see corruption and he appeared to some of his disciples in visions of the night. In his lifetime he had been called a "Present Sakyamuni", and when he was gone his followers raised him to the rank of a founder of Schools or Sects in Buddhism. In one treatise we find the establishment of three of these schools ascribed to him, and in another work he is given as the founder in China of a fourth school. This last is said to have been originated in India at Nalanda by Silabhadra one of the great Buddhist monks there with whom Yuan-chuang studied.

In some Buddhist temples we find images of our pilgrim to which a minor degree of worship is occasionally offered. These images usually represent the pilgrim seated clothed in his monk's robes and capped, with his right hand raised and holding his alms-bowl in his left.

THE PREFACES TO THE HSI-YU-CHI.

There is only one Preface in the A, B, and C editions of the "Hsi-yu-chi", but the D edition gives two Prefaces. The second of these is common to all, while the first is apparently only in D and the Corean edition. This latter was apparently unknown to native editors and it was unknown to the foreign translators. This Preface is the work of Ching Po ([x]), a scholar, author, and official of the reigns of T'ang Kao Tsu and T'ai Tsung. Ching Po was well read in the history of his country and was in his lifetime an authority on subjects connected therewith. He was the chief compiler and redactor of the "Chin Shu ([x]), an important treatise which bears on its title-page the name of T'ang T'ai Tsung as author. Ching Po's name is also associated with other historical works, and notably with two which give an official account of the rise of the T'ang dynasty and of the great events which marked the early years of T'ai Tsung. It is plain from this Preface that its author was an intimate friend of Yuan-chuang whose name he does not think it necessary to mention. He seems to have known or regarded Yuan-chuang as the sole author of the "Hsi-yu-chi", writing of him thus: — "he thought it no toil to reduce to order the notes which he had written down". Ching Po must have written this Preface before 649, as in that year he was sent away from the capital to a provincial appointment and died on the way. The praises which he gives Yuan-chuang and their common master, the Emperor, are very liberal, and he knew them both well.

The second Preface, which is in all editions except the Corean, is generally represented as having been written by one Chang Yueh ([x]). It has been translated fairly well by Julien, who has added numerous notes to explain the text and justify his renderings. He must have studied the Preface with great care and spent very many hours in his attempt to elucidate its obscurities. Yet it does not seem to have occurred to him to learn who Chang Yueh was and when he lived.

Now the Chang Yueh who bore the titles found at the head of the Preface above the name was born in 667 and died in 730, thus living in the reigns of Kao Tsung, Chung Tsung, Jui Tsung, and Hsuan Tsung. He is known in Chinese literature and history as a scholar, author, and official of good character and abilities. His Poems and Essays, especially the latter, have always been regarded as models of style, but they are not well known at present. In 689 Chang Yueh became qualified for the public service, and soon afterwards he obtained an appointment at the court of the Empress Wu Hou. But he did not prove acceptable to that ambitious, cruel and vindictive sovereign, and in 703 he was sent away to the Ling-nan Tao (the modern Kuangtung). Soon afterwards, however, he was recalled and again appointed to office at the capital. He served Hsuan Huang (Ming Huang) with acceptance, rising to high position and being ennobled as Yen kuo kung ([x]).

Now if, bearing in mind the facts of Chang Yueh's birth and career, we read with attention the Preface which bears his name we cannot fail to see that it could not have been composed by that official....according to the Chinese authorities and their translators Julien and Professor G. Schlegel, it was a schoolboy who composed this wonderful Preface, this "piece that offers a good specimen characterized by these pompous and empty praises, and presents, therefore the greatest difficulties, not only has a translator from the West, but still has every letter Chinese who would only know the ideas and the language of the school of Confucius." We may pronounce this impossible as the piece is evidently the work of a ripe scholar well read not only in Confucianism but also in Buddhism. Moreover the writer was apparently not only a contemporary but also a very intimate friend of Yuan-chuang.

In the A and C editions and in the old texts Chang Yueh's name does not appear on the title-page to this Preface. It is said to have been added by the editors of the Ming period when revising the Canon. Formerly there stood at the head of the Preface only the titles and rank of its author. We must now find a man who bore these titles in the Kao Tsung period, 650 to 683, and who was at the same time a scholar and author of distinction and a friend of the pilgrim. And precisely such a man we find in Yu Chih-ning ([x]), one of the brilliant scholars and statesmen who shed a glory on the reigns of the early T'ang sovereigns. Yu was a good and faithful servant to T'ai Tsung who held him in high esteem and took his counsel even when it was not very palatable. On the death of T'ai Tsung his son and successor Kao Tsung retained Yu in favour at Court and rewarded him with well-earned honours. In 656 the Emperor appointed Yu along with some other high officials to help in the redaction of the translations which Yuan-chuang was then making from the Sanskrit books. Now about this time Yu, as we know from a letter addressed to him by Hui-li and from other sources, bore the titles which appear at the head of the Preface. He was also an Immortal of the Academy, a Wen-kuan Hsuo-shi ([x]). He was one of the scholars who had been appointed to compile the "Sui Shu" or Records of the Sui dynasty and his miscellaneous writings from forty chuan. Yu was probably a fellow-labourer with Yuan-chuang until the year 660. At that date the concubine of many charms had become all-powerful in the palace and she was the unscrupulous foe of all who even seemed to block her progress. Among these was Yu, who, accordingly, was this year sent away into official exile and apparently never returned.

We need have little hesitation then in setting down Yu Chih-ning as the author of this Preface. It was undoubtedly written while Yuan-chuang was alive, and no one except an intimate friend of Yuan-chuang could have learned all the circumstances about him, his genealogy and his intimacy with the sovereign mentioned or alluded to in the Preface. We need not suppose that this elegant composition was designed by its author to serve as a Preface to the Hsi- yu-chi. It was probably written as an independent eulogy of Yuan-chuang setting forth his praises as a man of old family, a record-beating traveller, a zealous Buddhist monk of great learning and extraordinary abilities, and a propagator of Buddhism by translations from the Sanskrit.

This Preface, according to all the translators, tells us that the pilgrim acting under Imperial orders translated 657 Sanskrit books, that is, all the Sanskrit books which he had brought home with him from the Western Lands. No one seems to have pointed out that this was an utterly impossible feat, and that Yuan-chuang did not attempt to do anything of the kind. The number of Sanskrit texts which he translated was seventy four, and these seventy four treatises (pu) made in all 1335 chuan. To accomplish this within seventeen years was a very great work for a delicate man with various calls on his time.

The translations made by Yuan-chuang are generally represented on the title-page as having been made by Imperial order and the title-page of the Hsi-yu-chi has the same intimation. We know also from the Life that it was at the special request of the Emperor T'ai Tsung that Yuan-chuang composed the latter treatise. So we should probably understand the passage in the Preface with which we are now concerned as intended to convey the following information. The pilgrim received Imperial orders to translate the 657 Sanskrit treatises, and to make the Ta-T'ang-Hsi-yu-chi in twelve chuan, giving his personal observation of the strange manners and customs of remote and isolated regions, their products and social arrangements, and the places to which the Chinese Calendar and the civilising influences of China reached.

-- On Yuan Chwang's Travels in India, 629-645 A.D., by Thomas Watters M.R.A.S.

Introductory.

"Do the Chinese pilgrims know two cities named Kapilavastu?

Certain discords and bearings in the itineraries of the pilgrims are discussed in the Prefatory Note to Antiquities in the Tarai, Nepal1 [Arch. Survey India, 1901, vol. xxvi. ] and from them it is inferred there were two cities named Kapilavastu; one the city visited by Fa-hsien, now represented by the ruins at Piprahava; the other that described by Yuan Chwang, of which the “royal precincts” are found in Tilaura Kot, some ten miles to the north-west of Piprahava. Palta Devi is held to mark the site of the town either of the Buddha Krakucandra or of the Buddha Konagamana;2 [Prefatory Note ( = P.N.), pp. 10, 13, 16. ] or Sisania Pande may represent the town of Konagamana.3 [P.N., pp. 10, 11, 13. ] Gutihava is believed to represent the site of the famous Nyagrodha grove.4 [P.N., pp. 12, 16. ]

Elsewhere it is observed that the old Kapilavastu was probably at Tilaura Kot, but the Piprahava stupa may be on the site of a new Kapilavastu, built after the earlier city at Tilaura was destroyed by Vidudabha.5 [Buddhist India, p. 18, note. ]

From the discussion of the bearings and distances, and the positions of certain remains, I attempt in this article to prove that the pilgrims knew but one city of Kapilavastu, comprising Tilaura Kot and ruins to the south of it; that Krakucandra’s town corresponds to the remains at Sisanihava (Sisania Pande), and Konagamana’s town to those at Gutihava (Gutiva); that the Banyan grove adjoined the south side of the city Nyagrodhika, the Piprahava remains, and that the Arrow-well was situated near Birdpur in the Basti district.

In attempting to fix precisely the positions of Kapilavastu and the towns of the two Buddhas there are difficulties: the values of the yojanas of the pilgrims are disputed; it is not easy to decide offhand whether ‘city’ or ‘capital’ in the texts refers to the “royal precincts” of Kapilavastu, to the capital Kapilavastu, to Kona, to Krakucandra’s town, or to the city in the Nyagrodha grove; and consequently when we find ‘capital’ or ‘city’ it requires very careful study to determine where certain distances begin or end. By ‘capital’ it is generally assumed that a reference is made to the capital Kapilavastu, but I am convinced this assumption is very frequently not correct.

If we con their accounts in the belief that the Kapilavastu and the three other towns are in each instance identical, considerable help is obtained in fixing at each town the position of the monuments. The description of one pilgrim may be fuller, more exact, or perhaps vary a little, yet not infrequently the two narratives are required for a clearer comprehension.

Southwards to Krakucandra’s town Yuan Chwang gives 50 li, reckoned from the “royal precincts” which he calls ‘city,’ meaning the “palace city” of Kapilavastu. Another distance, 40 li, is given, which fixes the approximate spot where Suddhodana met Gautama Buddha on his first return to his father’s district. The “30 li north-east” from Krakucandra’s to Konagamana’s town I consider an error for 30 li north-west.

I calculate Yuan Chwang’s yojana at 5-288, and Fa-hsien’s at 7-05 English miles.1 [J.R.A.S., 1903, pp. 80, 91. ] Round Kapilavastu Yuan Chwang’s ' distances are after all recorded in the one measure he always employs, and not as I suspected formerly in the earlier yojana adopted by Fa-hsien.1 [J.R.A.S., 1903, pp. 102, 103. ]

“The country shown in Mr. Mukherji’s map2 [Antiquities, p. 1. ] is for the most part open .... and the positions of all ancient remains on the surface of any importance are known.”3 [P.N., p. 10. ]

Tilaura Kot.

Here were situated the “royal precincts” (1), whose walls, 14 or 15 li in circuit (= 1-9 miles), were as stated by Yuan Chwang “all built of brick.” At the spots examined Mukherji found brick walls on all four sides of Tilaura Kot. The walls are from 10'-12' thick, and the bricks measure 12 -1/4" x 8" x 2". The excavations so far undertaken are insufficient for us to fix the sites of all the buildings enumerated by the pilgrims. The fort is only “about a mile in circuit,” but “a triangular patch of ruins exists to the north outside the walls which is not included in Mr. Mukherji’s measurements, and would add considerably to the circuit if included.” With the unmeasured patch “the circuit measures little under two miles”;4 [Pioneer, February 1st, 1904. The Pioneer (Allahabad newspaper) of 1st, 6th, and 19th February, 1904, contains three articles contributed by Prince Khadga Samser, of Nepal, on the Kapilavastu and other Tarai remains. ] another estimate also makes the circuit “to be about two miles.”5 [P.N., p. 12. ] “The brick fort was protected by a deep ditch on all sides, as also by a second mud wall and a second but wider ditch.”6 [Antiquities, pp. 19, 22. ]

The relative positions and distances from one another of the places which I identify with Kapilavastu, Kona, and the town of Krakucandra, and the bearings to certain other remains, lead me to agree with the statement respecting Tilaura Kot “that there is no other place in the whole region which, can possibly be identified with the 'royal precincts.’”1 [P.N., p. 12. ]

The site of the sleeping palace of Mahamaya in Yuan Chwang’s description is apparently the same as the site of the palace of Suddhodana in Fa-hsien’s. The two palaces of Yuan Chwang’s account were probably contained in one building (2).

Yuan Chwang informs us that a stupa (3) commemorated the spot where Asita (Kaladevala) cast the horoscope of prince Gautama. It is not perfectly clear whether the stupa was inside or outside the palace gate. It was situated “to the north-east of the palace of the spiritual conception,” and Yuan Chwang adds Asita “came and stood before the door.” In the Lalita Vistara Asita is admitted within the gate.2 [Biblio. Indica, Calcutta trans., p. 140. ] Fa-hsien, however, does not allude to Asita until he speaks of the monuments outside the gates of the capital. From this we should possibly infer that Asita was shown the child outside a gateway in a wall around the palace site. Legge notes that only the spot was shown to Fa-hsien, but Beal, Giles, and Laidlay make out from their texts that a stupa existed. The place was shown to Asoka.

Outside the walls of Tilaura Kot Yuan Chwang saw (4) two Deva temples and a monastery; the latter is noted by Fa-hsien as “congregation of priests.” If these monuments formed one group a probable position is the three mounds, one semicircular, lying together outside the upper gate in the west wall of the fort.3 [Antiquities, p. 22. ] There are also two “stupa-like ” mounds and a tank in Derva village, and farther north another mound 650' from the fort. These three mounds are near the south-west corner of Tilaura Kot.4 [Antiquities, pp. 22, 53, pl. ii. ]

At the south-west corner of the fort, between the two moats in front of the gate in the west wall, there is a mound (5) which Mukherji marks, in his plate ii, hut does not describe. This mound may be the stupa which indicates the spot where the elephant blocked the “south gate of the city” or citadel,1 [Beal, ii, p. 16. ] and Nanda drew the elephant on one side or “carried it seven paces.”2 [Rockhill: Life of the Buddha, p. 19. ] Gautama afterwards tossed the elephant with his foot, and it fell on the other side of the “city moat.”3 [Beal, ii, p. 17. ] Yuan Chwang has nothing about the elephant being tossed over a wall, far less seven walls and seven ditches of some accounts. Fa-hsien was shown this spot, but has neither walls nor moats. The elephant fell “two miles away in the outskirts,”4 [Lalita Vistara, pp. 204, 208. ] that is, on reckoning the finger-breadth by Yuan Chwang’s scale, half a yojana from the spot where it was killed, or 2-65 English miles from the gate of the citadel. This is very little short of the distance from the south-west gate of Tilaura Kot to the tank at Lahari Kudan.

Lahari Kudan.

Yuan Chwang notes that a stupa—this was built by believing brahmans and householders, and was reverenced by bhiksus5 [Rockhill, op. cit., p. 19. ] —and three temples stood within, while a fourth temple, this containing a representation of one of the four signs, it seems that of a sick man, stood without the south gate of the capital.

The four signs are accounted for in this way. The brahmans predicted that Gautama would see four signs or visions which would cause him to become an ascetic.6 [Hardy: Manual of Buddhism, p. 154. ] The visions appeared while he was going his rounds outside Kapilavastu,7 [ Beal, ii, p. 18. ] and again while, he was on his way to the Nyagrodha grove,8 [Digha; Hardy, op. cit., p. 157; Bigandet, Life of Gaudama, 1866 ed,, p. 49; Lalita Vistara, p. 257. ] or in it.9 [Rockhill, op. cit., p. 22. ] At the east gate of the capital Kapilavastu he saw the form of an old man, at the south gate of a sick man, at the west gate of a dead man, at the north gate of a mendicant.1 [Laidlay’s Fahian, p. 196. ] Yuan Chwang notes the signs in this order,2 [Also Bigandet, op. cit., p. 44; Rockhill, op. cit., p. 22. ] but he does not explain at which gate each of the forms appeared. Fa-hsien says there were (?) stupas to mark the sites, one apparently at the east, south, and north gates.3 [Beal, i, p. xlix; in Laidlay’s version at the east and south gates; in Legge’s only at the east gate, ‘on seeing the sick man,’ perhaps when Gautama was driving towards the Nyagrodha grove. ]

Yuan Chwang does not give the relative positions of the different monuments at the south gate, but he notices the stupa first and the temple outside the gate last. It is likely from this that the three temples in the capital lay between the stupa and the temple outside the south gate. If so the stupa would occupy the northernmost and the fourth temple the southernmost place in the series.

Ranged north to south on the east side of Lahari Kudan village are four mounds,4 [Antiquities, pp. 32, 53; Pioneer, Feb. 6th, 1904.] which I think represent the sites of the stupa and the four temples. Three of the mounds lie on the west, and the fourth on the south side of a tank which I identify with the hastigarta.

(1) The northernmost mound (6), says Mukherji, appears “to be a stupa of solid brick-work, still about 30' high, of which the superficies was covered with plasters, and concrete, as is still visible on the top.” From three sides bricks have been removed. This surely must be the stupa near the spot where “the elephant falling on the ground caused a deep and wide ditch.”5 [ Antiquities, p. 32; Beal, ii, p. 17. ]

(2) The mound about 40' high, situated just south of the stupa, is the site of a building with “two divisions,” around which there was formerly a brick wall on the four sides.6 [Antiquities, p. 32; Pioneer, Feb. 6th, 1904. ] On the summit of the mound and again at 20' from the ground level there are traces of more brick walls. Here we had I believe the (7, 8) two temples which Yuan Chwang places by the side of the hastigarta (9). That next the stupa contained a representation of Prince Gautama, and the other a likeness of Yasodhara and Rahula.1 [Beal, ii, p. 17. ] This temple perhaps was built on the site of one of Suddhodana’s three palaces, Ranma, Suramma, and Subha.2 [Beal, ii, p. 17; Bigandet, op. cit., pp. 47, 50; Hardy, op. cit., p. 154. ] Gautama’s palace was surrounded by high walls and a moat.3 [Lalita Vistara, p. 260. ] From an arched doorway in the palace a stairway led down to the courtyard where Gautama mounted Kanthaka that night he left Yasodhara and Tahula, and abandoned his home.4 [Bigandet, op. cit., p. 56; Hardy, op. cit., p. 162. ]

(3) A small mound “only 4 feet high,” other dimensions not given, lies 250' south of the palace mound just described. Probably this (10) was the site of the schoolroom which was also shown to Asoka. “The walls of a room are traceable.”5 [Antiquities, p. 33. ] The tank by the side of the stupa and the two mounds is probably the hastigarta.

(4) The southernmost mound “nearly 11 feet high,” distance south of the four foot high mound is not given, “appears to be a structure of solid brick-work.” It has a line of ancient platform on its south side. This mound (11), on which stands a modern octagonal temple sacred to Nagesvara Mahadeva, probably conceals the remains of the temple which lay without the south gate, and contained a representation of a sick man. Fa-hsien means, I think, by “where Nan tho and others struck the elephant” (Laidlay) that he saw a stupa at the south gate of the citadel, Tilaura Kot, and, according to the other texts where there are the additional words, “tossed it,” “hurled it,” or “threw it,” that he saw another at the hastigarta, and, see Laidlay’s and Giles’ translations, that there was a temple outside the south gate of the capital at Lahari Kudan.  

South-East Angle and East Gate of Kapilavastu.

From the outer moat at the south-east corner of Tilaura Kot a division, which Mukherji suggests is the Rohini stream, is shown on his map to extend southwards to a point almost midway between Taulihava and Bardeva, a village half a mile south-west of Taulihava. South of Taulihava its course is not outlined, but it "joins a river in British territory.”1 [Antiquities, p. 22. ] This moat probably defined the eastern side of the capital.

From a spot one-half to one mile to the south-east of Bardeva—at this distance south-east because the remains at Bardeva must be included in the capital—the Tilaura Kot-Bardeva moat probably gave off a side branch which led westward to the south gate of the capital at Lahari Kudan to supply the hastigarta and the moat round the palace in which Gautama lived by the side of the hastigarta.

Inasmuch as Taulihava is to the east side of the Tilaura-Bardeva moat, the ancient mound in Taulihava village lies outside, or just on the eastern boundary of Kapilavastu, probably a little to the eastward of the spot where the east, the principal gate, was situated. Bardeva village, situated as it is in the angle formed by the Tilaura-Bardeva moat and the suggested course of the Lahari Kudan-Bardeva moat, must stand in what was the south-east quarter or angle of the capital. There are no ruins to the immediate south of the line Lahari Kudan-Bardeva.

“In the south-east angle of the city”2 [Beal, ii, p. 18; Watters, On Yuan Chwang , ii, p. 2. ] — here ‘city' does not seem to be Gautama’s palace enclosure—there was a temple (12) containing an equestrian representation of Prince Gautama, to mark where he left the city “by the eastern gate.”3 [Beal, i, p. xlix. ] A small mound, apparently without others near it, is situated about a furlong south of Bardeva.4 [Antiquities, p. 33. ] This mound, which contains the ruins of a temple, is perhaps the site.

Ancient remains extend from Taulihava northwards to Samai Mayi, and south-west to Bardeva. The ancient mound of bricks in Taulihava village, that on which is the temple of Taulisvara Mahadeva, built about twenty years ago, is, I suspect, the ruins of the temple of the old man (13) which the pilgrims saw outside the east gate. Here there are pieces of ancient sculpture, the carved jambs of a door, dressed stones, and much brick rubble.

Neither Fa-ihsien nor Yuan Chwang notices the Shrine of Kanthaka’s Staying. It was apparently in this locality, but perhaps a good way east of the temple outside the east gate.

Krakucandra’s Town (14).

The bearings and distances given by Yuan Chwang appear to me to make it impossible to identify this town with any other than the remains at Sisanihava.1 [Dr. Hoey (J.R.A.S., 1906, p. 434) proposes to identify Krakucandra’s town (Na-pi-ka of Fa-hsien) with remains near Nibi, about four miles south of the point where the Banganga enters the Basti district. The places on the way to Rummindei are not indicated. ]

After describing what he saw at the “palace city” of Kapilavastu and at the south and east gates in the capital adjoining its south side, Yuan Chwang, without giving the distance from the south gate of Kapilavastu at Lahari Kudan, then takes us outside the Kapilavastu capital to Krakucandra’s town or Sisanihava, and from this position gives us a summary description of what he found in the immediate outskirts of Kapilavastu, and of the memorials which interested him. His account, apparently not free from error as we have it, is somewhat meagre in detail and not lucid.

The distance, he says, to this “old town” or “old city,” Krakucandra’s, is 50 li or so, an approximate estimate, south of the ‘city,’ that is, I consider, of the “palace city,” the royal precincts of Kapilavastu. Some may be inclined to believe that the 50 li and 40 li1 [Beal, ii, p. 22. The map (P.N., p. 10) showing Yuan Chwang’s route from Kapilavastu to Rummindei is unsatisfactory in that no notice is taken of this distance. ] are both reckoned from the south side of the capital Kapilavastu to Krakucandra’s town. Such an interpretation involves, it will be found, our changing south, in “50 li south,” to south-east. This change, I think, is quite unnecessary, and not likely to be right. But let us inquire if this be possible.

On measuring 50 li, 6-6 miles, in a southerly direction from Lahari Sudan, from Bardeva, or from Taulihava, no mounds are known, whereas at 40 li, 5-28 miles, south-east from Lahari Kudan, and also at this distance nearly south-east from Taulihava and Bardeva, we find the village Sisanihava, where there are extensive remains of an ancient town, comprising on the north side of Sisanihava a long mound resembling that lying just south of Rummindei, and also remains which extend half a mile south of Sisanihava.2 [Pioneer, Feb. 6th, 1904; Antiquities, pp. 33, 50, 56. ] The bearing to Sisanihava, as shown on Mukherji’s map, from the south-east quarter of Kapilavastu at Bardeva is a little east of south.3 [The position of ‘Sisania’ on Mukherji’s map requires to be altered a little to the west, and perhaps also a little to the north, that is, it lies about a mile, or perhaps more, to the north-west of the spot shown. I suppose I am right in saying so, because it is remarked (P.N., p. 10) Sisanihava is “some four or five miles in a north-westerly direction” from Piprahava, and (Pioneer, February 6th, 1904) the distance is a little above 3 miles E.S.E. from Gutihava to Kuva, a village 1-1/2 miles north of Sisanihava (Sisania). ] But Bardeva or Taulihava can scarcely be the point from which Yuan Chwang reckons his 40 li, for neither is quite on the southern limit of Kapilavastu. In this respect Lahari Kudan would be a preferable starting-point for the 40 li. The objection to reckoning the 40 li from the south side of Kapilavastu to Sisanihava is that the subsequent bearings and distances to Rummindei do not suit. They do, however, if the 40 li are reckoned from Sisanihava.

In Yuan Chwang’s account of Krakucandra’s town three stupas are mentioned; one, probably inside the city of Krakucandra, to commemorate Krakucandra’s birth (15); a second, to the south of this ‘city’ at the spot where this Buddha met his father (16); a third, to the south-east of this ‘city,’ Krakucandra’s relic stupa, and near it an inscribed Asoka pillar (17). Fa-hsien notices two of the three stupas and makes it clear they were to be seen at this town. The birthplace stupa was perhaps not pointed out to Fa-hsien.

The mounds on the south side of Sisanihava village have not been minutely examined. It is therefore impossible to tell where to look for the stupas and Asoka pillar, to which Yuan Chwang does not give the distance from the city. The stupa and pillar beside it may have been some miles distant. There is a stupa at Bharaulia,1 [J.R.A.S., 1898, p. 578. ] but this seems to be too far away, and it probably commemorates another event.

Fa-hsien places Kona to the westward of Kapilavastu. Krakucandra’s town could not well be to the south-west of Kona (Yuan Chwang gives north-east to Kona from Krakucandra’s town), for then Krakucandra’s town would not be situated, if this were so, to the ‘south’ of Kapilavastu, and it would be impossible with the distances and bearings given by Yuan Chwang to span the distance from Krakucandra’s town to Rummindei.

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Part 2 of 2

Kanakamuni’s or Konagamana’s Town, or Kona (18).

Yuan Chwang calls Kona “an old capital (or great city),” 'city,’ and ‘town.’ Fa-hsien has ‘city.’ They agree in placing Kona to the northward of Krakucandra’s town. According to Fa-hsien, Kona lay to the westward of Kapilavastu, for he proceeded eastward2 [ ‘Eastward’ in Beal; ‘east’ or ‘easterly’ in the other translations. That these bearings probably correspond to north-east see J.R.A.S., 1903, p. 100, and arguments in this article. ] from Kona to the “city of Kapilavastu,” by which we must understand, as I contend, to the “royal precincts” of Yuan Chwang’s description. If we trust one statement alone of Yuan Chwang—he has two which appear to contradict it—Kona was distant about 30 li “to the north-east of the town of Krakuchchhanda Buddha,”1 [Beal, ii, p. 19. ] which was situated 50 li to the ‘south’ of the 'city,’ that is, of the royal precincts of Kapilavastu, and south of the capital. Kona thus lay, according to this account, at an unrecorded distance to the south-east of Kapilavastu.

It follows from what the pilgrims say that Fa-hsien places Kona to the north-west (he says ‘north’), whereas Yuan Chwang places it to the north-east of Krakucandra’s town. Which pilgrim are we to follow? When all the hearings, distances, and remarks of the pilgrims have been critically examined we must decide in favour of Fa-hsien that Kona lay to the westward of Kapilavastu.

Mukherji marched with his camp twice from Piprahava to Tilaura, and once from Tilaura to Rummindei,2 [Antiquities, p. 1. ] and passed three times near to, or at the most not more than one and a half to two and a quarter miles from, the position where Kona should be found if it was situated just under four miles, 30 li, north-east of Sisanihava, but he did not see, at least does not describe, remains of any kind. If Sisanihava represents Krakucandra’s town I presume there are no remains of adequate importance north-east of Sisanihava which could possibly be identified with Kona. Were there any near the distance I give Mukherji was likely to have heard of them. And Prince Khadga Samser does not mention any. Are we then to conclude that the entire record “30 li north-east” is a blunder? It is possible that the 30 li north-east should be changed to 30 li north-west, or that no change is required, for “30 li north-east” has possibly by an oversight been given as the distance from Krakucandra’s town to Kona instead of from Kona to the “royal precincts.” Each of these theories is capable of support.

It is certain 40 li3 [Beal, ii, p. 22. ] in a southerly direction is the distance from some 'city,’ probably from its south gate, but which city is meant is not made clear by the pilgrim. With the exception of Lahari Kudan any spot on the line Lahari Kudan—Bardeva is less than 40 li, 5-28 miles, from Sisanihava. Now, if we allow that Lahari Kudan, on account of its remains, is the south gate of the capital Kapilavastu, and that Sisanihava, as the distance from Lahari Kudun to it is exactly 40 li, about 5-25 miles, is Krakucandra’s town, then 50 li, 6-6 miles, the other distance ‘south’ of the ‘city’ Kapilavastu to Krakucandra’s town (Sisanihava), cannot be reckoned from any point on the outskirts of Kapilavastu between Lahari Kudan and Bardeva. The 50 li would have to be calculated from a spot well to the north of Bardeva, whereas Yuan Chwang usually gives the distance from one town to the next between the nearest points. If calculated from the south side of Kapilavastu the 50 li must necessarily begin from some point to the west of the south gate of the capital, and 50 li 'south’ would then be meant for 50 li south-east. But it will be remembered by those who have studied the pilgrim’s account he does not place any memorials from which he could have reckoned the 50 li in a position to the westward of the south gate of the capital Kapilavastu. In 50 li south, say for south-east, we may have the distance from some city, perhaps from Kona, as Fa-hsien places Kona to the westward, to Krakucandra’s town (Sisanihava). The 50 li ‘south,’ perhaps south-east, and 40 li, also perhaps south-east, just discussed with Sisanihava as the southern terminus of the two distances, make it possible that ‘50 li’ to Sisanihava was reckoned from the neighbourhood of Gutihava, where there are a pillar, stupa, and other remains. But if so it is to be observed that ‘south’ would have to be altered to south-east. This is not desirable.

I shall now assume that the “30 li north-east” is correct, and is somehow connected with Kona, but is misplaced in the text. As Fa-hsien places Kona to the westward of Kapilavastu, is “30 li north-east,” if interpreted as the distance from Kona to the “royal precincts,” in harmony with the pilgrims’ accounts?

Yuan Chwang records “40 li north-east” from the north side of Kona to the ploughing stupa (19).1 [Beal, ii, p. 19. ] To my thinking there is no ambiguity as to the ‘city’ from which the pilgrim reckons the 40 li. It is Kona. The deductions from this distance, and particularly from this bearing, require notice. Fa-hsien writes: “A few li to the north-east of the city is the royal field where the prince, sitting under a tree, watched a ploughing match.”2 [Beal, i, p. xlix. This quotation is taken from that part of Fa-hsien’s narrative which treats, as we know from Yuan Chwang, of the monuments in the Nyagrodha grove. In using it here in my argument I may be wrong. But I have some justification, for Fa-hsien’s reference to Asita does not occur until he leaves the palace city of Kapilavastu and describes the monuments a long way to the south in the capital, or town to the south of the palace city. Gautama was taken when five months of age to the ‘field’ (twice mentioned in Hardy, Man Buddh., p. 153). This apparently is the same as the “royal field” in Fa-hsien. Gautama also when a young man watched men ploughing (Rockhill, op. cit., p. 22). ] His nurses took the infant Gautama not far I think from the “royal precincts” of Kapilavastu—corresponding to the “inner city” or “palace city” in Yuan Chwang’s description of Kusagarapura3 [Beal, ii, p. 150. ] —or ‘city’ in this part of Fa-hsien’s account of Kapilavastu. Indeed, I believe they took the child no more than 10 li or so from the palace, or 40 li north-east from Kona to the “royal field” less “30 li north-east,” the latter the distance, if this is misplaced in the text, from Kona to the palace. How 10 li is equivalent to 7-5 li of Fa-hsien’s measure, and represents the “a few li” which he gives from the ‘city’ to the “royal field.” If we have to reckon the 40 li (this would be 30 li in Fa-hsien’s scale) from Suddhodana’s palace in Tilaura Kot, it is improbable Fa-hsien would have expressed this by “a few li.” He expresses a distance of about 30 li in other words, “less than one yojana.”

Because the bearing to the “royal field” or ploughing stupa is north-east—north-east of the palace city of Kapilavastu according to Fa-hsien, and north-east the whole way from Kona to the stupa according to Yuan Chwang—Yuan Chwang when recording the 40 li north-east from Kona must have had clearly in his mind that Kona lay to the south-west of the “royal precincts” of Kapilavastu, and to the westward of Kapilavastu, where Fa-hsien places Kona. It now seems tolerably certain that Yuan Chwang’s 'north-east’ from the town of Krakucandra to Kona is either a mistake for north-west, or “30 li north-east” is misplaced in the text and records the distance from Kona to the “royal precincts.” If the latter supposition be correct, Yuan Chwang has not given the distance from Krakucandra’s town to Kona, or, if the former be correct, that from Kona to the “royal precincts.”

Again, according to Beal’s translation, the stupas of the slaughtered Sakyas (20) were seen to the north-west of Kona.1 [Beal, ii, p. 20. ] But Watter’s has ‘north-east.’2 [Op. cit., ii, p. 8. ] If this bearing is not a misprint, Kona of course lay at an unrecorded distance to the south-west and to the west side of Kapilavastu. Yuan Chwang’s reference seems most likely to be to the Sagarahava stupas on the sides of the Sagarahava tank two miles north of Tilaura Kot.

Sagarahava with its tank and stupas is perhaps the site of the ‘Sows tank’ and the Udambara arama of the Parivrajakas where Vidudabha had his captives trampled by elephants and mangled by harrows, and afterwards thrown into a pit. The place was visited by Ananda the day after Vidudabha left for Sravasti.3 [Rockhill, op. cit., p. 120; J.R.A.S., 1898, p. 558. Yuan Chwang says that Vidudabha, after his subjugation of the Sakyas, took 500 of their maidens for his harem. They also were mutilated and cast into a pit near Sravasti city (Beal, ii, p. 11). ]

Now, as “40 li north-east” to the ploughing stupa is to a spot “a few li” north-east of the palace in Tilaura Kot, the distance from Kona to the palace must be somewhat short of 40 li, that is, of one yojana of Yuan Chwang. This agrees with Fa-hsien’s “less than one yojana” eastward or north-east from Kona to the “city of Kapilavastu,” or the palace. South-west exactly four miles (30 li Yuan Chwang north-east = 3-9 miles) we find Gutihava. Mukherji says the distance from Gutihava to Tilaura Kot is “about 4 miles.”1 [Antiquities, p. 49.] If, therefore, Gutihava can otherwise be identified as a part of Kona, Yuan Chwang’s 30 li north-east, if misplaced, should no doubt be calculated from near Gutihava to the “royal precincts.” A place must be found for the 30 li north-east, if the bearing must not be altered, and no other than the line from Gutihava to Tilaura Kot suits so well. In addition to there being no remains, it would seem 30 li north-east of Sisanihava, to correspond to the site of Kona, and as Fa-hsien certainly, and Yuan Chwang too, as we have learned from two possibly of his statements, places Kona to the westward of Kapilavastu, we have two distances which give support to the probability that Kona stood near Gutihava, namely 30 li north-east, if misplaced in the text, 4 miles, from Gutihava to Tilaura, and also 50 li, 6-6 miles, ‘south,’ possibly intended for south-east, if the 50 li are calculated from the southernmost limit of the capital Kapilavastu, which is the distance from Gutihava, the approximate position of Kopa, to Sisanihava.

Gautama, watched ploughers at work at Karsaka (= ploughing), a town in which for a time he was chief magistrate.2 [J.R.A.S., 1898, p. 549. ] This may be the place referred to by the pilgrims. There are ruins “about two furlongs west of Ahirauli,”3 [Antiquities, p. 28. ] a village one and a half miles north-east of Tilaura Kot (40 li north-east less 30 li north-east = 10 li = 1-32 miles). Except at Sagarahava, Bikuli, and Ahirauli, “no ruins have been found in any other villages” in this region.4 [Antiquities, p. 28. ] Bikuli is out of the question; it is “three miles east and a little north” of Sagarahava. Sagarahava seems to be too far from Tilaura Kot, and is not in the right direction; Sagarahava is “about 2 miles north,”5 [Antiquities, p. 25. ] whereas the stupa apparently stood about one and a half miles north-east of Tilaura Kot. The ruins near Ahirauli very probably include the stupa; this position agrees best with the bearing, and with what the distance to it from Tilaura Kot seems to be. "We should note that Fa-hsien is unwontedly particular in giving the exact bearing north-east to the “royal field,” as if he were cautioning us against mistaking the Sagarahava stupas for the site. Asoka was shown the place.

The conclusion I come to from the previous discussion of the bearings and distances is that it is safest to take the 50 li ‘south’ to Krakucandra’s town as the distance to some spot between south-south-west and south-south-east of Kapilavastu. If we go beyond these limits to search for Krakucandra’s town and suppose 'south’ is here southwest, so that the ‘north-east’ to Kona may remain unaltered, we find ourselves in difficulties: if Krakucandra’s town be supposed to lie somewhere to the south-west of the Kona of Fa-hsien it becomes necessary to change ‘south’ in Yuan Chwang to south-west, with the result that the subsequent distances and bearings given by Yuan Chwang do not suffice to cover the ground from Krakucandra’s town to Rummindei, whereas with the bearing ‘south’ Sisanihava corresponds admirably in position with Krakucandra’s town. The distance from Kona to the “royal precincts” was no doubt about 30 li of Yuan Chwang’s reckoning, the same as the 30 li north-west (north-east in the texts) from Krakucandra’s town to Kona, probably to its south-east corner. Fa-hsien makes the corresponding distances each “less than one yojana.” Yuan Chwang certainly appears to contradict himself with regard to the position of Kona, which Fa-hsien places to the westward of Kapilavastu. Although 40 li from the ‘city’ to the Kyagrodha grove agrees with the distance from Lahari Kudan to Sisanihava, I am convinced this distance must be reckoned from Sisanihava (Krakucandra’s town) and not from the south gate of the capital Kapilavastu at Lahari Kudan. As the subsequent distances and bearings to Rummindei prove, the Nyagrodha grove, to which the 40 li is the distance, was situated a long way from Krakucandra’s town. The remains near Ahirauli probably include the ploughing stupa which was distant “a few li” to the north-east of Tilaura Kot and 40 li to the north-east of the north side of Kona. The stupas near Sagarahava, two miles north of Tilaura Kot, are very probably the stupas of the slaughtered Sakyas spoken of by Yuan Chwang, who gives the bearing to them without any distance as ‘north-east’ (so in Watters), which in some texts is ‘north-west.’

Yuan Chwang notices three Asoka pillars in the Kapilavastu district—at Lumbinl, at Krakucandra’s town, and at Kona. The Lumbini pillar has been discovered at Rummindei; the upper inscribed portion of another, evidently from Kona, exists at Niglihava; and in Gutihava village there is an uninscribed lower part of a pillar which stands on its original foundation. It is tempting to regard the Gutihava and Niglihava pillars as one, but that this is so is not certain. The Niglihava pillar if joined to the Gutihava pillar and to the three pieces in this village would form a pillar over 28' 9-1/2" high.1 [The height ( Pioneer, Feb. 6th, 1904) of the Gutihava pillar is 10' 2" and of the pieces 2' 3" and (Antiquities, p. 32) 1' 7" high. Total, 14'. The measurement of one piece is not given. The Niglihava pillar is about 14' 9-1/2" long (Antiquities, p. 30). ] The Gutihava pillar stands south-west of the supa, whereas the Kona pillar was 20' high and stood “in front ” (? east side) of the stupa, and the inscription on the Niglihava pillar does not bear out what Yuan Chwang says of the Kona pillar. The colour and stone of the Gutihava, Niglihava, and Rummindei pillars do not appear to differ.2 [Antiquities, pp. 31, 34. ]

Perhaps Yuan Chwang was misinformed of the purport of the inscription on the Kona pillar, and 20' high may be a mistake for 30', the height of the pillar at Krakucandra’s town, which was probably ordered by Asoka at the same time on one of his visits.

Not far to the north-east of Kona stood the stupa where Konagamana met his father (21), and “farther north” than this was the relic stupa of Konagamana, with the Asoka pillar we have been discussing in front of it (22). To the north of the Gutihava pillar and stupa there is a mound which Mukherji describes:—“On the north of the village [Gutihava] is an ancient ditch, and about 200 feet south of the Stupa is an ancient tank. About two furlongs north [‘north-east’] of Gutiva is a [‘very’] large mound, on the east and south of which are two tanks.”1 [Antiquities, pp. 32, 55. ] Mukherji searched at Gutihava for stupas to the ‘north-west’ of the pillar in this village, but could not find another.2 [Antiquities, p. 55. ]

It is thus seen that there is a mound which may be the remains of a large stupa “farther north” than the stupa in Gutihava. Yuan Chwang has, I suspect, in his description put the pillar in front of the wrong stupa. The Gutihava stupa and the mound northwards of it appear to be the two stupas of which he speaks, and if so the city of Kona was situated to the south-west side of the village Gutihava. To the southwards of Gutihava, so far as I know, there is no trace of the stupa where Konagamana was born (23), or of the “new preaching hall,” Santhagara (24), which stood to the south of Kona city. According to Yuan Chwang it was at this ‘hall’ Vidudabha was slighted by the Sakyas, which occasioned his attacking the city of Kona when he came to the throne. As I understand it the fighting occurred round the hall; he “occupied this place” and the fields close by.3 [ Beal, ii, p. 21. ] The four stupas of the champions (25) who scattered Vidudabha’s army lay to the south-west of the “place of massacre,” the battlefield. Probably they lay somewhere to the southwards of Kona. They were not found at Sagarahava,4 [Antiquities, p. 55. ] which is far to the northward of the supposed position of Kona, whereas the four champions opposed Vidudabha, as I understand Yuan Chwang, to the southwards of Kona.

The City in the Nyagrodha Grove.

When Gautama, after becoming Buddha, was approaching the kingdom of Kapilavastu, Suddhodana “proceeded 40 li beyond the city, and there drew up his chariot to await his arrival.”1 [Beal, ii, p. 22. ] Here “the city” should, I think, be “this city,” the town of Krakucandra, where Yuan Chwang is describing the surroundings of Kapilavastu, and is meaning to give the distance from Krakucandra’s town to the stupa which commemorated  the spot in the Nyagrodha grove where they met for the first time. The grove lay 2 or 3 li to the south of a city of which Yuan Chwang has not given the name, but which we recognize corresponds to the ruins of the city at Piprahava. Yuan Chwang does not mention the distance from this city to the stupa.

There are several accounts of the meeting.2 [Hardy, op. cit., p. 205; Bigandet, op. cit., p. 162; Rockhill, op. cit., p. 52. Yuan Chwang’s is to this effect:—The king and ministers, having reverenced him (Gautama Buddha), again returned to the kingdom (? city), and they (Gautama and disciples) located themselves in this Nyagrodha grove by the side of the samgharama. And not far from it (monastery) is a stupa; this is the stupa where Tathagata sat beneath a great tree with his face to the east, and received from his aunt (Prajapati) a golden-tissued garment. A little farther on is another stupa; this is the place where Tathagata converted eight king’s (? kings’) sons and 500 Sakyas.

Fa-hsien adds some monuments which are not noticed by the later pilgrim.

‘Kingdom’ is a slip for ‘city.’ The grove was formed by Nigrodha, a Sakka.3 [ Hardy, op. cit., p. 205. ] It was prepared for the Buddha’s reception by Suddhodana,3 [ Hardy, op. cit., p. 205. ] who presented it to him along with the Nyagrodha monastery, which was built after the plan of the Jetavana monastery at Sravastl. The presentation was made the day after the Buddha arrived and took up his abode with his disciples in the grove by the side of the city and the Rohini (Rohita) river,1 [Rockhill, op. cit., pp. 51-53. ] which separated the kingdom of Kapilavastu from that of the Kolis.2 [Theragatha, quoted Oldenberg, Buddha, p. 412. ]

The city in the grove had gates, walls, monuments, watch-towers, a palace, several monasteries, and a festival hall or pavilion.3 [Hardy, op. cit., pp. 156, 207, 208, 210. ] It appears to have been called Nyagrodhika.4 [Divyavadana, p. 67; J.R.A.S., 1898, p. 549. ] "We hear of the Buddha begging in the streets of this city, “where he was accustomed to ride in his chariot,”5 [Hardy, op. cit., p. 208. ] and of the conversion here of eight kings’ sons,6 [Beal, ii, p. 22. ] the names of whom vary,7 [Hardy, op. cit., pp. 210-212; Bigandet, op. cit., pp. 170, 171; Rockhill, op. cit., pp. 53-57; Watters, op. cit., p. 12. ] and do not always include the Buddha’s own son Rahula, who was of the number.8 [ Hardy, op. cit., p. 210. ] The majority of these conversions are said to have occurred at Anupiya, a village in the country of the Mallas on the road to Pataliputra.

When “a battle was about to take place”9 [Hardy, op. cit., p. 318. ] between the Kapilavastu and Koli people respecting irrigation from the Rohini river, the Buddha settled the dispute and afterwards admitted to his Order the 500 Sakyas, 250 men from each tribe.10 [ Bigandet, op. cit., p. 194; Hardy, op. cit., p. 319. ] Fa-hsien also refers to this incident, and adds “while the earth shook and moved in six different ways.”11 [Legge’s Fa-hien, p. 66. ] The words within inverted commas explain each other; the Buddhists attribute earthquakes to many causes, one when a great war is imminent.12 [Laidlay’s translation, p. 207, 8th cause. For other causes see Bigandet, op. cit., p. 282. There should therefore be one stupa for this incident, not two as in all the translations but Legge’s. ]

Prajapati on three different occasions headed a deputation of 500 Sakya women, the wives of the 500 Sakyas just mentioned, to the Buddha while in the grove, to seek admission to the Order, but their request was denied.1 [Hardy, op. cit., pp. 320, 321. ] It was probably at one of these times that Prajapati presented the monk’s robe.

There were two, if not three, monasteries in or near the city of Nyagrodhika; one built by Suddhodana,2 [J.R.A.S., 1898, p. 542. ] another by those converted to Buddhism,3 [Watters, op. cit., ii, p. 12. ] and perhaps a third situated close to the banks of the Rohini.4 [Bigandet, op. cit., p. 230. ] Perhaps these accounts refer to one monastery.

The monuments enumerated by Yuan Chwang in the grove to the south of this city are:—

1. Stupa where Gautama Buddha met Suddhodana (26).

2. Stupa where Gautama contended in archery (27).

3. Stupa where Prajapati presented robe (28).

4. Stupa of 500 Sakyas converted (29).

5. Nyagrodha monastery (30). To the list Fa-hsien adds,

6. Hall where the Buddha preached to the Devas (31).5 [See also Rockhill, op. cit., p. 52. ]

Fa-hsien mentions the first four. These I take to be the mounds shown in Antiquities, pl. xxvii, fig. 4, and described at p. 46, and noticed J.R.A.S., 1898, pp. 578, 581.

No. 1 is, I think, the stupa in Ganvaria village (p. 43), from which the distance to Sisanihava (Krakucandra’s town) is given by Yuan Chwang as 40 li; No. 2, the circular mound at the south-west corner of fig. 4, if a stupa may be that from which the distance to the 'arrow-well’ is 30 li south-east; Nos. 3, 4, and perhaps 2 also, may have stood on the ground south of the south-east corner of fig. 4, which is described (p. 46) as covered with “scattered rubbles and bricks” for 300 feet; No. 5 may be the cells at the north-east corner of fig. 4, or possibly the same as the site of Nos. 3 and 4. The central mound in fig. 4 is possibly the hall, noticed alone by Fa-hsien of the two pilgrims, where the Buddha preached to the Devas, and the ‘pavilion’ where young Gautama was examined in the arts and sciences by his relatives.1 [Hardy, op. cit., p. 156. ]

Inside the east gate of the city, on the left of the road, there was a stupa, its site in the Piprahava ruins has not been discovered as yet, to indicate where Gautama practised archery and other accomplishments (32). The site was apparently pointed out to Asoka as that where Gautama was taught riding, driving, and as that of his gymnasium. Outside this gate stood the temple of Isvara Deva (33), perhaps the temple whose foundations are seen 80' north of the (34) Piprahava stupa.2 [Antiquities, p. 44, pi. xxvii, fig. 1. ] Suddhodana, following a custom of his tribe,3 [Rockhill, op. cit., p. 17. ] presented Gautama, then two days of age, to the deity in the temple. The temple was named Sakyavardhana, and its guardian deity, a yaksa, bore the same name. Afterwards, it would appear, the image of this yaksa was replaced by one of Isvara Deva. The temple was pointed out to Asoka. To the east of this, and 88' from the Piprahava stupa, are the ruins of a monastery, the name of which is not known.

The Piprahava vase inscription, as interpreted by Dr. Fleet,4 [J.R.A.S., 1906, p. 149. ] convinces me that the Piprahava stupa (34) must be the stupa noticed by Fa-hsien alone, “where King Vaidurya [Vidudabha] slew the seed of Sakya, and they all in dying became Srotapannas.” The story is told that one day Vidudabha entered the Nyagrodha grove, and the people of Nyagrodhika came out to drive him away. Vidudabha vowed vengeance, and declared: “My first act will be to put these Cakyas to death.”5 [Rockhill, op. cit., pp. 74-79, 116-120. ] He fulfilled his threat with cruel tortures. There is a stupa (35) at Bharaulia6 [ J.R.A.S., 1898, p. 578. ] which may mark the tree under which the Buddha sat when Vidudabha was approaching the city in the grove, and where for a while the Buddha diverted him from his purpose to attack the city.1 [J.R.A.S., 1906, p. 171; Avadana Kalpalata, J. Bud. Text Soc,, 1896, p. 5. A similar place was shown to Yuan Chwang 4 li S.E. from Sravasti, where Vidudabha “on seeing Buddha dispersed his soldiers” (Beal, ii, p. 11). A stupa marked the spot when Fa-hsien visited it (Beal, i, p. xlviii). ]

It is from the Piprahava stupa, I think, that Fa-hsien calculates his 50 li, 8-8 miles, to Rummindei. If we follow the sequence in Fa-hsien’s narrative, it is impossible that the “50 li” was calculated from any site at the capital Kapilavastu. The distance from Taulihava to Rummindei direct is 13-1/4 miles, whereas the distance from the Piprahava stupa to Rummindei on Mukherji’s map is 8-1/3 miles. It is just possible that there was a ploughing stupa “several le” (Fa-hsien) to the north-east of the Piprahava stupa, to indicate where Gautama when a young man, according to some accounts, watched ploughers at work, 2 [Rockhill, op. cit.. p. 22. ] and that the 50 li should be calculated from it. But I think Fa-hsien’s ploughing stupa, the reference to which is delayed, as is his reference to Asita, is the one noticed by Yuan Chwang. But if this is unlikely, I would point out that there is a mound north-east of the Piprahava stupa, on the west side of the Sisva reservoir, and another on the east side of the reservoir.3 [ Antiquities, pp. 43, 46; J.R.A.S., 1898, p. 581. ]

The two Rivers Rohini.

The Lesser Rohini, alias Rohita or Rohitaka. It is likely the Rohini is represented in part of its course by the Sisva (36), which flows southwards between Rummindei and Tilaura Kot, and passes half a mile or so to the east side of Piprahava. The Lesser Rohini must have been a narrow and shallow stream. It is repeatedly described as small.4 [Bigandet, op. cit., pp. 11, 193. ] In Chinese texts, the names Luhita or Luhitaka, for Rohita and Rohitaka, and in the Tibetan accounts Rohita, correspond to the Rohini,5 [J.R.A.S., 1898, p. 547; Rockhill, op. cit., p. 20. ] which flowed between the city of Kapilavastu and the city of Koli,1 [Oldenberg, Buddha, p. 412 (quoting Theragatha); Hardy, op. cit., p. 317; Bigandet, op. cit., p. 11. ] which it was the custom of the inhabitants of both cities to dam to irrigate their fields, which contained little water in times of drought,2 [Hardy, op. cit., p. 318. ] and which could have all its water diverted by a large tree falling across it.3 [Rockhill, op. cit., p. 20; J.R.A.S., 1898, p. 548. ] The Nyagrodha monastery was close to or actually on its bank,4 [Bigandet, op. cit., p. 230; J.R.A.S., 1898, p. 548. ] and at this river Suddhodana waited for Gautama Buddha’s return from Magadha.

The Greater Rohini, which joins the Rapti at the west end of the city of Gorakhpur, is sometimes mistaken for the Rohini just described,5 [Oldenberg, Buddha, p. 96; Hardy, op. cit., p. 318; P.N., p. 18. ] but this is a broad and deep river, “not fordable even in summer for 25 miles above Gorakhpur,” and “in the north its banks are steep and well marked.”6 [Gazetteer, N.W.P., vol. vi, 1881, pp. 294, 295. ] It is scarcely conceivable that it could ever have been diverted by a fallen tree, or that its water fed by melted snow in Summer could run short and lead to dispute.

Arrow Well.

The arrow-well (37) was distant 30 li of Yuan Chwang, 4 miles, south-east of the stupa on the left of the road outside the south gate of the city in the Nyagrodha grove. Fa-hsien makes the distance to it 30 li south-east, about 5-28 miles; Yuan Chwang gives 80 to 90 li north-east, from 10-6 to 11-9 miles, by road from the well to Rummindei. The direct distance from Birdpur to Rummindei (38) is about 12 miles. The well, I think, perhaps lies somewhere near Rasulpur, which is 2-1/4 miles north-east by east from Birdpur. I do not know if there are ruins near Rasulpur. There are several mounds to the south-east of Piprahava, in the Dulha Grant.7 [P.N., p. 18. ] The distance is not given. They are probably too near Piprahava to be identified with the site of the arrow-well, at which we are told the small stupa was built by brahmans and householders.1 [Rockhill, op. cit., p. 19. ]

The Lalita Vistara2 [p. 203. ] gives 10 krosa (=2-1/2 yojanas of Yuan Chwang = 13-2 miles) from a palace in Kapilavastu, probably Gautama’s at Lahari Kudan, to the well.

The City of Devadaha or Koli.

The founding of the city of Devadaha is described in the Burmese legend.3 [Bigandet, op. cit., p. 12. ] The city was situated in the vicinity of a “sheet of water,” and became the capital of the Kolis. The Buddha’s maternal grandfather resided in it, and hither Maya repaired when about to be delivered of Gautama. It is probable the village of Lummini of which Asoka remitted the land tax on account of it being the birthplace of the Buddha is the same city. In one romance we hear of the “city of Devadaho and Lumbini,” apparently as names of one city.4 [Beal, Romantic Legend, p. ] Devadaha was not far from Kapilavastu, for the ladies of Devadaha used to present flowers to the Buddha in the Nyagrodha grove, and we have seen that it was close to the Rohini, now the Sisva, or more probably, one of the former beds of this river.

“About a mile north of Parana village is a very high ground extending east to west for about two furlongs and about a furlong north to south. It represents undoubtedly the site of an ancient town.”5 [Antiquities, p. 34. ] This (39) I propose to identify with Devadaha and the village of Lummini of the Rummindei pillar inscription of Asoka. On the north side of the ruins of the ancient city there is a “long tank, now dry,” which I think was the sheet of water by the side of which the city was built. The sacred site of Rummindei lies on the north side of this dry tank.

The capital of the Koliyas of Ramagrama, where a stupa of the Buddha relics existed, was apparently known to some by the name Koli;1 [J.R.A.S., 1898, p. 566. ] and here also was a tank.2 [ Beal, ii, p. 26. ] The Chinese pilgrims place this other city some miles from Rummindei.

Conclusion.

There is one stupa (40) of which we might have expected the pilgrims to tell us something. It stands 600' south-east of the east gate of Tilaura Kot. From its size, and the number of times it has been repaired, it must have commemorated an important event. Unfortunately it has been rifled ages ago.3 [Antiquities, pp. 21, 22, pls. ii, iv. ] Possibly this was the stupa, erected at Kapilavastu to receive the share of the Buddha’s relics.

MAP INDEX.

Kapilavastu.

1. “Royal precincts,” citadel, of Kapilavastu.

2. Palaces of Suddhodana and Mahamaya.

3. Asita stupa.

4. Monastery and two Deva temples, by the side of “royal precincts.”

5. Stupa where elephant blocked south gate of citadel.

6. Stupa where elephant fell in capital.

7, 8. Two temples on site of Gautama’s palace.

9. Hastigarta, or fallen elephant ditch.

10. Site of schoolroom of Prince Gautama.

11. Temple of 'sick man’ outside south gate of capital.

12. Temple of representation of Gautama on white horse.

13. Temple of ‘old man’ outside east gate of capital.

Krakucandra’s Town.

14. Krakucandra’s Town.

15. Stupa of Krakucandra’s birth.

16. Stupa where Krakucandra met his father.

17. Asoka pillar and Krakucandra’s relic stupa.

KAPILAVASTU.

Konagamana’s Town.

18. Konagamana’s Town.

19. Ploughing stupa, at Karsaka, 40 li north-east.

20. Sagarahava tank and stupas of slaughtered Sakyas.

21. Stupa where Konagamana met his father.

22. Asoka pillar and relic stupa of Konagamana.

23. Stupa where Konagamana was born.

24. New preaching hall.

25. Four stupas of champions.

City in Nyagrodha Grove (Nigrodhika).

26. Stupa, where Gautama Buddha met Suddhodana, in Ganvaria village.

27. Stupa where Gautama contended in archery.

28. Stupa where Prajapati presented robe.

29. Stupa of 500 Sakyas converted.

30. Nyagrodha monastery.

31. Hall where Gautama Buddha preached to Devas.

32. Stupa where Gautama practised archery.

33. Temple of Isvara Deva.

34. Piprahava vase stupa, where Vaidurya slew the Sakyas.

35. Bharaulia stupa, ? where Gautama Buddha sat under a tree.

36. Sisva river, the Rohini or Rohitaka of Buddhist books.

37. Arrow-well, approximate position.

RUMMINDEI.

38. Asoka pillar at Rummindei.

39. Site of city of Devadaha, Koli, or Lummini village.

40. ? Kapilavastu stupa of the Buddha’s relics.  

[admin]

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

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


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


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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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

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


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.


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


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


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


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


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



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


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]


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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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

47. The country inland from Barygaza is inhabited by numerous tribes, such as the Arattii, the Arachosii, the Gandaraei and the people of Poclais, in which is Bucephalus Alexandria. Above these is the very warlike nation of the Bactrians, who are under their own king. And Alexander, setting out from these parts, penetrated to the Ganges, leaving aside Damirica and the southern part of India; and to the present day ancient drachmae are current in Barygaza, coming from this country, bearing inscriptions in Greek letters, and the devices of those who reigned after Alexander, Apollodorus and Menander. [Librarian's Comment: A significant and presumably knowing omission from the Wikipedia article on the Periplus is paragraph 47, missing along with everything from 42-48, this extraordinary piece of testimony that cuts against the general trend of Indian pseudo-history that contends Alexander never reached the Ganges. Indeed, never crossed the Indus, spooked by Sandrocottus' herd of war elephants.]

-- The Periplus of the Erythraean Sea: Travel and Trade in the Indian Ocean by a Merchant of the First Century, Translated & edited by W.H. Schoff (London, Bombay & Calcutta 1912).

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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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.]

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

"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.

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.

[admin]

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.