^hu^ l/4^fA hUd rnui^K. ^Jjf^trv^ 'PHE INDIAN TRAVELS APOLLONIUS OF:TirA.NA, THE INDIAN EMBASSIES TO EOME REIGN OF AUGUSTUS TO THE DEATH OF JUSTINIAN. /■^.\/h^i BY OSMOND DE BEAUVOm PRIAULX. LONDON : QUARITCH, PICCADILLY. MDCCCLXXIII. T)S4o9 CARPENTIER T. RICHAUDS, 37, GREAT QUEEN STREET, W.O. PREFACE. The several pieces, all relating to India, which make up this volume, appeared some years back in the Journals of the Asiatic Society. I cannot say that they then or ever excited the least interest, and but that there were omissions and faults in them which I wished to supply and correct, I certainly should not have thought of republishing them. I now for my own satisfaction reprint a small number of copies. With regard to the Indian Embassies I began the series in the hope that all of them would be as interest- ing and important as those to Augustus and Claudius ; but when I found that they were only barely mentioned by historians, and the later ones so mentioned that it was scarcely possible to ascertain whether they were Ethio- pian or Hindu, I was led on to enlarge my plan and to inquire into the Kelations of the Eoman Empire with India. My last paper had but just appeared, or was iv PREFACE. about to appear — it was read in 1862 and came out in 1863 — when the late M. Eeinaud, the distinguished President of the Soci^t^ Asiatique published, first in the Journal Asiatique for 1863 and afterwards in a separate form, his " Eelations Politiques et Commer- ciales de I'Empire Eomain avec TAsie Orientale."* If I had been aware of M. Eeinaud's intentions, I as- suredly would not have ventured on a subject which I regarded as especially his own. As it is, we travelled the same road and naturally enough read the same guide-books, but we read them with a difference. Our stand-points were not the same. He sees everywhere the Eoman Empire; for him its wealth and civiliza- tion acted upon, and its majesty overawed, the most distant nations; from the heights of its Capitol he looked down upon a subject world. I on the other hand put myself in the Hindu's place — and this Empire spite its greatness then faded into a mere phantom, which still loomed large in the hazy distance, and which now * The whole title of his work is " Eelations Politiques et Com- merciales de TEmpire Eomain avec I'Asie Orientale (I'Hyrcanie, rinde, la Bactriane et la Chine) pendant les cinq premiers siecles de I'Ere Chretienne, d'apres les temoignages Latins, Grecs, Arabes, Persans, Indiens et Chinois." I do not know which were first published of the two journals, the English or the French. PREFACE. V and again, whenever some enterprising Eoman mercliant strayed to any far Eastern land, stirred up to wonder and speculation kings and princes, but never influenced their policy, and never occupied the imagination in any way of the people. After reading Eeinaud's work I must own that I hold still to my own view, but whether after reading Keinaud others will hold it with me is quite another matter. TRAVELS OF APOLLONIUS OF TYANA. THE INDIAN TEAVELS OF APOLLONIUg; hp' ' TYANA. .^'^ ■'• ' • > Philostratus, in liis life of Apollonius Tyanensis/ has given an account of that philosopher's visit to India. And as he professes to have drawn his materials from the note-book of Damis, ApoUonius's fellow-traveller and friend; as moreover he professes to have edited that note-book much as Hawkes worth edited the jour- nals of Cook, we may fairly assume that he has given an original and authentic account of India — and indeed the only one that has come down to us from the olden world in a complete state. Again, as Apollonius was the only Greek who up to his time had visited India for other purposes than those of war, negotiation, or commerce ; as he visited it to make himself acquainted with its rites, discipline, and doctrines ; and as he tra- velled unencumbered by a retinue, and was welcomed by its kings, and was with Damis for four months the 1 For another account of Apollonius, by the aid of Satan a miracle worker and maker of talismans, reKeafxara, bat without mention of his Indian travels, see from Domninos (Malalas, Chron. B. X, pp. 263-4, Bonn ed., and Cedrenus, who refers to Philostratus, Hist, i, p. 431). B 2 TRAVELS OF guest of its Brahmins ; he and Damis with him had every opportunity of familiar intercourse with all classes of its population, and of thus acquiring much and accu- rate information on matters beyond the reach of ordi- nary travellers. Philostratus's account then is full of pT^omiae ; and I propose to give a condensed translation of it, and afterwards to examine into its authority and value. ' Towards the close of the first half century of our era, Apollonius, then upwards of forty years of age^ and resident at Antioch, set out to visit India, its Brahmins and Sramans (T6p/jLav6<;), taking with him two family slaves to act apparently as his secretaries.^ At Nine- veh, he met with and was joined by Damis, a native of the place, who recommended himself to his notice by a practical knowledge of the road to Babylon, and an acquaintance with the Persian, Armenian and Cadusian languages. Together they journey on to Babylon, but warned by a dream first turn aside to visit Sissia and those Eretrians, whom Darius five hundred years before had settled there, and whom they find still speaking G-reek, and still as they heard using Greek letters,* and ^ Tet he speaks of himself as a young man, -KpocrriKeiv yap v«^ avSpi airoSrjiJLeiv — I. B. 18 c ; and in Domninos he dies in his thirty- fourth year. — Malalas, u. s. ^ I presume this from their qualifications ; the one is a good, the other a quick penman : fiera Svuiv OepairovToiv, olirep avrcp irarpiKO) TjaTTiu, 6 juev €s raxos ypacpuv, 6 5' es kuWos. ih. * Herodotus, vi, 119, cotemporary with the sons of the exiles, tells of these Eretrians and of their use of the Greek language — nothing improbable — but Philostratus intimates that when Apol- lonius visited them some four hundred years alterwards, they APOLLONIUS OF TYANA. 3 still dwelling near that wondrous petroleum well so carefully described by Herodotus. After a stay at Babylon of eighteen months, ApoUo- nius, his friend and attendants, in the beginning of summer proceed for India on camels and with a guide furnished by the Parthian king Bardanes. Of their route we know only that it lay through a rich and pleasant country, and that the villages they traversed hurried to do them honour and to supply their wants ; still continued to use the Greek language and character. Is this credible ? The scattered Jews have not forgotten Hebrew. The Germans, whom Theodoric in the sixth century located in the mountains of the Vicentino, and who are known as the " Sette Com- muni," are to this day Germans ; and the French refugees who, after the edict of Nantes, settled at Friedrichsdorf in Hesse Hom- burg, are still French. But these fragments of nations lived in their own villages and married only among themselves ; and the Jews, if unlike them, they have in a certain sense mixed with the peoples among whom they have settled, yet they like them have only married with their own race ; and they have besides a sacred book written in a sacred language, the study of which is imperative and necessary to their happiness here and hereafter. But these Eretrians when they reached Susa were reduced, so writes Philo- stratus, to four hundred men and but ten women. Not more then than ten of their families spoke Greek as their mother tongue. Of the remaining three hundred and ninety men, all who married must have married native women, and their children spoke Persian certainly and possibly Greek— but with every succeeding genera- tion more Persian and less Greek— till after a few generations Greek must have been all but forgotten. And that this was so does not history by its very silence show ? Or how is it that from the age of Herodotus to that of Apollonius we never hear the voice of these Eretrians save in these pages ? And how is it that though so near to Babylon they escaped the notice of Alexander and his historians, who, the one so signally punished, and the other so carefully recorded the punishment of the perfidious and self-exiled Branchidse ? — Strabo, B. xi, xii, c. 49. 4 TRAVELS OF for a gold plate^ on their leading camel announced them, guests of the king. We then hear of them enjoying the perfumed air^ at the foot of Caucasus, the mountain range which, while it separates India from Media, ex- tends by one of its branches to the Eed SeaJ Of this Caucasus, they heard from the barbarians myths like those of the Greek. They were told of Prometheus and Hercules, not the Theban, and of the eagle ; some pointed to a cavern, others to the mountain's two peaks, a stadium apart, as the place w^here Prometheus was bound ; and his chains, though of what made it is not easy to guess,^ still hung, Damis says, from the rocks. His memory too is still dear to the mountaineers, who for his sake still pursue the eagle w^ith hate ; and now lay snares for it, and now with fiery javelins destroy its nest.^ On the mountain they find the people already ^ So Marco Polo relates that the monks sent by Kublai Khan on an embassy to the Pope, receive " une table d'or en laquel se contenoit ke les trois messages en toutes les pars qu'il alaissent lor deust estre donnee toutes les messions que lor bazongnoit et ohevalz et homes por lor escodre de une terre a I'autre." — P. 6, Ed. Societe Geographique. '^ So Burnes describes the plain of Peshawar, *' thyme and vio- lets perfumed the air," (Bokhara, ii, 70). At Muchnee " a sweet aromatic smell was exhaled from the grass and plants." (ih., 101.) 7 Wilford says " the Indian ocean is called Arunoda, or the Red Sea, being reddened by the reflection of the solar beams from that side of Meru of the same colour." (As. Ees., viii, p. 320, 8vo.) s Kai Seafia 6 Aafxis an)ayoi 5€...Ii'5oi eiaiv, daoi ye fir} opeioi avruw ovroi Se ra 6r}pfia Kpea anfovrai ("Indica," xvii, § 5), e. g. "bear's flesh and anything else they can get" (Elphinstone of Caufiristaun, ih., II, 434), " they all eat flesh half raw" {ih., 438). Sir C. Malet in a letter to Forbes tells of a lion killed by him near Cambay. "The oil of the lion was ex- tracted by stewing the flesh when cut up with a quantity of spices : the meat was white and of a delicate appearance, and was eaten by the hunters."— Orient. Mem., II, p. 182, 8vo. Sir H. Holland, in his Eemains, speaks of having tasted " filet de lion" in Algeria, but of it as coarse and unpleasant. 16 Of the same mountaineers, Elphinstone : " they drink wine to excess" {ih.) And see from the Karnaparva an account of the people of the Panjab, their irreverence, drunkenness, and disso- luteness, to be matched however in our moral and Christian Lon- don (Slokas, 11-13 ; in the Appendix to vol. i of Raj. Taran., 562). JElian, i, 61, speaks of the Indian drinking bouts ; Pliny of the wine : " Eeliquos vinum, ut Indos, palmis exprimere" (Hist. Nat., vi, 32) : the Vishnu Purana of wine from the Kadamba tree. — P. 571, note 2. 17 The Indian money is : u\7j KfKoix^euixevri, metal refined, prepared ; APOLLONIUS OF TYANA. 7 deep, themselves in boats, their camels on foot, and now entered a country subject to a king. Here they saw Mount Nysa ; it rises up to a peak, like Tmolus^^ in Lydia. It is cultivated, and its ascent has thus been made practicable. On its summit they found a moderate sized temple of Bacchus ; this temple was a circular plot of ground, enclosed by a hedgerow of laurels, vines, and ivy,^^ all of which had been planted by Bacchus himself, and had so grown and intertwined their branches together as to form a roof and walls impervious to the wind and rain. In the interior Bacchus had placed his own statue — in form an Indian youth, but of white stone. About and around it lay crooked knives, baskets and wine-vats in gold and silver, as if ready for the vintage. Aye, and the cities at the foot of the mountain hear and join in his orgies, and Nysa itself quakes with them. About Bacchus,2^Philostratus goes on to say — whether and the Eoman K^xf^pay/xsp-n, stamped. In Menu's time gold and silver coins were probably unknown, for he gives (viii, 131) " the names of copper, silver, and gold weights commonly used among men," TAtj KeKofirpiv/xevr), probably; but when ApoUonius visited India we know that money, gold and silver coins, were current, issued by the Indo-Greek and Indo-Scythic kings, vide Lassen, ** Baktrische Konige," passim. *8 Nishadha, probably to the south of Meru (Vishnu Purana, 167). Arrian similarly connects Tmolus with Nysa. — Exped. Alex., V, 1. 19 Laurels and ivy Alexander finds on Meru ; vines too by impli- cation (Arrian, Exped., v, ii, § 6), but vines on which the grapes do not ripen (Strabo, xv, § 8). Burnes says that in Cabool the vines are so plentiful that the grapes are given for three months in the year to cattle \^ut sup., ii, 131. See also Wilson's Ariana Antiq., p. 193). ^ Chares, Hist. Alex., p. 117, § 13, one of the historians of Alex- 8 TRAVELS OF speaking in his own person or from tlie journal of Damis I know not — Greeks and Hindus are not agreed; for tlie former assert that the Theban Bacchus with his bacchanals conquered and overran India, and they cite, among other proofs, a discus of Indian silver in the treasury at Delphi, with this inscription : " Bacchus, Jove and Semele's son, from India to the Delphian Apollo." But of the latter, the Indians of the Caucasus believe that he was an Assyrian stranger, not un- acquainted however with him of Thebes ; while those of the Indus and Ganges declare that he was the son of the Indus,^^ and that the Theban Bacchus was his dis- ciple and imitator, though he called himself the son of Jove, and pretended to have been born of Jove's thigh,^^ /mrjpo^f Meros, a mountain near to N"ysa. They add, that in honour of his Indian prototype, he planted Nysa with vines brought from Thebes, and on Nysa the Greek historians assert that Alexander celebrated the Bacchic orgies,^^ but the mountaineers will have it that Alex- ander, speaks of an Indian god, 'Sopoadeios, Sanscrit, Suradevas (von Bohlen), Suryadeva, the Sun God (ScLlegel, Ind. Bib., i, 250) ; whicli being interpreted is oivoiroios, tlie wine maker ; but the Vishnu Parana knows of no wine god, only of a wine goddess (Varuna, vide, pp. 76, 571, 4to. ed.) In general, however, Bacchus may be identified with Siva, and Hercules with Vishnu and Krishna. 21 For the Indo-Bacchus myth, see Arrian, v, i, who receives it with hesitation ; and Strabo, xv, I, 9, who rejects it ; Lassen, Ind. Alt., II, 133 ; von Bohlen, ut sup., I, 142 ; and Schwanbeck on Megasthenes, " Frag. Hist.," II, 420, Didot. 22 « Aroushi fille de Manou fut I'epouse de ce sage. Elle con9ut de lui ce fameux Aaurva qui vint au monde en per9ant la cuisse de son pere." — Mahabharata, i, 278; Fauche, tr. 23 According to Arrian, ut sup., and II, 5, it was Meru that Alexander ascended, and on Meru that he feasted and sacrificed to Bacchus. APOLLONIUS OF TYANA. 9 ander, notwithstanding his love of glory and of anti- quity, never ascended the mountain, but satisfied him- self with prayer and sacrifice at its foot. He so feared lest the sight of the vines should raise in his soldiers, long accustomed to water, a longing for wine and the ease and pleasures of home. The rock Aornus,^* though at no great distance from Nysa, Darnis says they did not visit, as it was somewhat out of their way. He heard however that it had been taken by Alexander, and was fifteen stadia in Jieight ; and that it w^as called Aornus, not because no bird could fly over it, but because there was a chasm on its summit which drew down to it all birds, much like the Parthenon at Athens, and several places in Phrygia and Lydia.25 On their way to the Indus, they fell in with a lad about thirteen years old riding an elephant and urging him ojk with a crooked rod, which he thrust into him like an anchor. On the Indus itself they watched a lierd of about thirty elephants, whom some huntsmen were pursuing.^^ Apollonius admired the sagacity the elephants displayed in crossing the river ; the smallest and lightest led the way, the mothers followed holding ^ Strabo, xv, L. i, § 8. Aornus ; Awara, Awarana, a stockade. — Wilson, Ariana Antiqua, p. 192; but Eenas according to v. Bohlen, and Rani-garh according to Lassen, Indische Alterthums : 140, note 7. 25 See Eustathius Com. in Dionys., p. 403, II Geog. Min. Ac- cording to one of his authorities, the lake Lycophron like the lake Aornus was impassable to birds because of its noisome exhalations. 26 Just in the same locality (see Arrian, IV, xxx, 7) Alexander first sees a troop of elephants, and afterwards joins in an elephant hunt. 10 TRAVELS OF up tlieir cubs with their tusks and trunks, while the largest brought up the rear. He spoke of their docility ; their love for their keeper, how they would eat out of his hand like dogs, coax him with their trunks, and, as he had seen among the nomads, open wide their mouths for him to thrust his head down their throats. He told too, how during the night they would bewail their sla- very, not with their usual roar, but with piteous moans ; and how, out of respect for man, they would at his approach stay their wailing; and he referred their docility and ready obedience more to their own self- command and tractable nature, than to the skill or power of their guide and rider. From the people they heard that elephants were found in the marsh, the mountain, and the plain. According to the Indians,^'' the marsh elephant is stupid and idle ; its teeth are few and black, and often porous or knotted, and will not bear the knife. The mountain elephants are treacherous and malignant, and, save for their own ends, little attached to man ; their teeth are small, but tolerably white, and not hard to work. The elephants of the plain are useful animals, tractable and imitative ; they may be taught to write, and to dance and jump to the sound of the pipe f^ their teeth are very long and white and may be easily cut to any shapes. The Indians use the elephant in war ; they fight from it in turrets, large enough for ten or fifteen archers or spearmen ; and they say that it will itself 2'' All this was borrowed probably from Juba, but is so put as to seem to rest on Hindu authority ; for ^lian, § 4 ; xiii, II, 1, of the kinds of elephants. — tovs h^v e/c tuv €\<»v aKiaKofievovs avorjTovs Tjyovv- Tai IvSoi. 'Q Confer Porphyry de Abstinentia, III, 15 ; died a.d. 305. APOLLONIUS OF TYANA. 11 join in the fight, holding and throwing the spear with its trunk as with a hand. The Indian elephant is of a large size, as much larger than the Lybian as this than the Nissean horse. It lives to a great age, and Apol- lonius saw one in Taxila which had fought against Alexander about three hundred and fifty years before, and which Alexander had honoured with the name of Ajax. On its tusks were golden bracelets, with this inscription: ''Ajax to the sun, from Alexander, the son of Jove." The people were accustomed to anoint it with unguents, and ornament it with garlands."^ When about to cross the Indus, their Babylonian guide, who was unacquainted with the river, presented to the Satrap of the Indus a letter from Bardanes. And the Satrap, out of regard to the king, though no ofi&cer of his, supplied them with his own barge for them- selves, boats for their camels, and a guide to the Hydra - otis. He also wrote to his sovereign, to beg him that, in his treatment of this Greek and truly divine man, he would emulate the generosity of Bardanes. Where they crossed, the Indus was forty stadia in breadth.^^ It takes its rise in the Caucasus f^ and, from 29 Pliny (vili, v) describes the elephant as crossing rivers in the same way ; he speaks of their wonderful self-respect, " mirus pudor," and of one called Ajax; Arrian (Indica, c. 14 and 15) of their grief at being captured, of their attachment to their ke*^pers, their love of music, and their long life extending though to but two hundred years (Onesicritus gives them three hundred, and sometimes five hundred years. — Strabo, xv) ; JElian (xiii, § 9) and Pliny (viii) state that they carry three warriors only, and are much larger than the African. The division into marsh and plain, etc., I suspect is from Juba. *• Ctesias, 488, says the Indus is forty stadia where narrowest. 12 TR/VVELS OF its Yerj fountain, is larger {/jbet^co avroOev) than any other river in Asia.'^^ In its course it receives many navigable rivers. Like the Mle^^ it overflows the country, and deposits a fertilizing mud, which, as in Egypt, prepares the land for the husbandman. It abounds, like the Mle, with sea-horses and crocodiles,^^ as they themselves witnessed in crossing it {/cofit^ofjuevoi, Be Boa Tov IvBov) ; and it produces, too, the same flowers. In India the winter is warm, the summer stifling ; but the heat, providentially, is moderated by frequent rains. The natives told him, tliat when the season for the rise of the river is at hand, the king sacrifices on its banks black bulls and horses (black among them, because of their complexion, being the nobler colour), and after tlie sacrifice throws into the river a gold measure like a corn measure, — why, the people themselves knew not; but probably, as Apol- lonius conjectured, for an abundant harvest, or for such a moderate^^ rise of the river as would benefit the land. See Lassen, ut sup., II, 637, who accounts for Ctesias's exag-gera- tion (his reasons do not apply to Damis ), and Wilson's Notes on the Indica of Ctesias, who excuses it (p. 13). 8^ " Indus... in jugo...Caucasi montis...effusus...undeviginti ac- cipit Simn.es... nusquam latior quinquaginta stadiis." — Pliny, Hist. Nat., vi, 23. ^■^ So Ctesias, so Ibn Batuta : " the Scinde is the greatest river in the world, and overflows during the hot weather just as the Nile does ; and at this time they sow the land." Burnes, I think, shows that it carries a greater body of water than the Ganges. 33 Strabo, xv. § 16. 31 Eratosthenes gives it the same animals as the Nile, except the sea-horse ; Onesicritus the sea-horse also. — Strabo, u. s., 13. 35 Sir C. Napier attributed a fever which prostrated his army and the natives to an extraordinary rise of the Indus. — Quarterly Eeview, October 1858, p. 499. APOLLONIUS OF TYANA. Ii3 Tlie Indus passed, their new guide led them straight to Taxila,^^ where was the palace of the Indian king. The people here wore cotton, the produce of the country, and sandals made of the fibre or bark of the papyrus^^ {vTTohrjfiara /SvjSXov), and a leather cap when it rained. The better classes were clad in byssus, a stuff wdtli whicli Apollonius, who affected a sombre colour in his dress, was much pleased. This byssus grows on a tree, like the poplar in its stem, but with leaves like the wiUow ; it is exported into Egypt for sacred uses. Taxila^^ was about the size of Nineveh, w^alled like a Greek cit}^, and was the residence of a sovereign who ruled over what of old was the kingdom of Porus. Just outside the walls^^ was a temple of near a hundred feet, of porphyry'^ (\l6ou KoyxyXcarov) , and in it a shrine, ^ See Aristobulus, Account of the Progress of Alexander. — Strabo, u. s., § 17. =" AiTian's Indica : *' Their dress is of cotton, their sandals of leather;" but Herodotus gives the Egyptian priests, virodrjuaTa Pv&\ipa—II, 37. i8 Wilford (As. Ees., viii, 349) speaks of Tacshaila and its ruins ; Wilson identifies Taxila with Taksha-sila of the Hindus between the Indus and Hydaspes, in the vicinity of Manikyala (Ar. Ant., 196, Elphinstone, ed. 1, 130). Arrian celebrates its size and wealth the largest city between the Indus and the Hydaspes. — V, 8, Exp. Alex. '■^^ Ram Eaz (Architecture of the Hindus, p. 2), of the temples of Vishnu and Siva, says that the latter should be without the village. Hiouen-Thsang (I, 151), describes Taxila, and speaks of a stupa and convent outside the walls, built by Asoka. ■^o The tope of Manikyala described by Elphinstone is a hundred (150) paces in circumference, and seventy feet high {Ari. Ant., 31). Lassen (II, 514, com. 1181) speaks of the influence of Greek art on Indian architecture; but adds, that the Indians built with brick. They may, however, have faced their buildings with stone; and 14 TRAVELS OF small considering the size of the temple and its many columns, but still very beautiful. Eound the shrine were hung pictures on copper tablets, representing the feats of Alexander and Porus. The elephants, horses, soldiers, and armour, were portrayed in a mosaic*^ of orichalcum, silver, gold, and oxydised copper {fiekavo 'XoXkg)); the spears, javelins, and swords in iron; but the several metals were all worked into one another with so nice a gradation of tints, that the pictures they formed, in correctness of drawing, vivacity of expression, and truthfulness of perspective,*^ reminded one of the productions of Zeuxis, Polygnotus and Euphranor. They told too of the noble character of Porus, for it was not till after the death of Alexander that he placed them in the temple, — and this, though they represented Alexander as a conqueror, and himself as conquered and wounded, and receiving from Alexander the king- dom of India. In this temple they wait until the king can be apprised of their arrival. Apollonius whiles away the time with a conversation upon painting, in the course of which he remarks that colour is not necessary to a picture; that an Indian drawn in chalk would be known as an Indian and black of colour, by his some- what flat nose, his crisp hair, his large jaws, and wild the X160S Ko'yx^'^^o-T'n^ ma-y have been of tliat porphyry, or red marble, used in the tombs at Tattah. — Life of Sir C. Napier, iv, 38. ^^ Lassen (513-14) states, on Sinhalese authority, that the Hin- dus were skilled in mosaics ; and (II, 426-7) he describes a casket, the figures on which he supposes were of a mosaic of precious stones. *^ To evax^ov TO efiirvovy Kai to ea^xop T€ Kai e|exor. APOLLONIUS OF TYANA. 15 eyes."^^ While they are thus talking, a messenger and interpreter arrive from the king, with a permit for them to enter the city, and to stay in it three days, beyond which time no strangers are allowed in Taxila. They are taken to the palace. They found the city divided by narrow streets, well-arranged, and remind- ing them of Athens. From the streets, the houses seemed of only one story, but they all had an under- ground floor.** They saw the Temple of the Sun, and in it statues of Alexander and Porus, the one gold, the other of bronze {/uueXavi 'xoKkm) ; its walls were of red marble, but glittering with gold ; the image of the god was of pearls,*^ having, as is usual with the barbarians in sacred things, a symbolical meaning. The palace was distinguished by no extraordinary magnificence, and was just like the house of any citizen of the better class. There were no sentinels or body- guards and but few servants about, and perhaps three or four persons who were waiting to talk with the king. The same simplicity was observable in the courts, halls, waiting and inner rooms ; and it pleased ApoUonius more than all the pomp of Babylon. When admitted to the king's presence, ApoUonius, through the inter- preter, addressed the king as a philosopher, and com- ''^ Arrian, Indica, vi, and compare with it Vishnu Parana, note 4, p. 100, where is a description of the barbarous races of India. •''* Lassen, ut siijp., 514. The underground floor, Elphinstone says, even the poor have at Peshawur. — Caubul, Introduc, p. 74. ^^ "On represente le soleil la face rouge... ses membres sont prononcps, il porte des pendants a ses oreilles. Un collier de perles lui descend du cou sur la poitrine." — Reinaud, Mem. sur I'lnde, p. 121. "Albyrouny rapporte que de son temps il y avoit un temple erige au soleil, avec une statue." — pp. 97, 98, 99. 16 TRAVELS OF plimented him on his moderation. The king, Phraotes, in answer, said that he was moderate because his w^ants were few, and that as he was wealthy, he employed his wealth in doing good to his friends and in subsidizing the barbarians, his neighbours, to prevent them from themselves ravaging, or allowing other barbarians to ravage his territories. Here one of his courtiers offered to crowm him with a jewelled mitre, but he refused it, as well because all pomp was hateful to him, as because of ApoUonius's presence. Apollonius inquired into his mode of life. The king told him that he drank but little wine, as much as he usually poured out in libation to the sun ; that he hunted for exercise/^ and gave away wdiat he killed ; that, for himself, he lived on vegetables and herbs, and the head and fruit of the palm, and other fruits^^ which he cultivated with his own hands. With this account of his kingly tastes and occupations Apollonius was de- lighted, and he frequently looked at Damis. They now talked together a long time about the road to the Brah- mans ; and when they had done, the king ordered the Babylonian guide to be treated with the hospitality wont to be shown to travellers from Babylon, and the satrap guide to be sent back home with the usual travel- ling allowance. Then taking Apollonius by the hand, ^^ V. Strabo, of the Mysicani, ih., 34.' "But drinking, dice, women and hunting, let the king consider as the four most per- nicious vices." — Menu, vii, 50. 47 Arrian, Indica, xi, c. § 8. So Nacir Eddin of Delhi, " copiat des exemplaires du livre illustre, les vendait, et se nourrissait avec le prix qu'il en retirait." — Ibn Batoutah, 169, iii, tr. d. 1. Soc. Asiatique. APOLLONIUS OF TYANA. 17 and ordering the interpreter to leave them, Phraotes asked him, in Greek, to receive him, the king, as a table companion. ApoUonius, surprised, inquired why he had not spoken Greek from the first. " Because", an- swered the king, " I would not seem bold, or to forget til at I am, after all, only a barbarian ; but your kind- ness, and the pleasure you take in my conversation, have got the better of me, and I can no longer conceal myself from you. And how I became thus acquainted with Greek I will presently show you at large." " But why," again asked ApoUonius, " instead of inviting me, did you beg me to invite you to dinner ?" " Because," said the king, " I look on you as the better man ; for wisdom is above royalty {to ^ap ^aaCKiKcoTepov o-ora.i APOLLONIUS OF TYANA. 19 it and tumbled head over heels while in the air, but in such a way that lie passed over the javelin as it fell, and with the certainty of being wounded if he did not properly time his somersault ; indeed the weapon was carried round, and the guests tested its sharpness. One man also was so good a marksman, that he set up his own son against a board, and then threw his darts, so aiming tliem that, fixed in the board, they traced out his son's outline.^* Damis and tlie others were much amused with these entertainments ; but ApoUonius, who was at .the king's table, paid little attention to them ; and, turning to the king, asked him, how he came to know Greek, and where he acquired his philosophy. The king, smiling, answered, " In old times when a ship put into port, the people used to ask its crew if they were pirates,^^ piracy was then so common. But now, though philosophy is ^ A Cliinese juggler lately performed the same feat in London, and a very small feat compared with that of Baresanes, an Arme- nian, which Julius Africanus himself witnessed. He shot his arrows with such precision as with them to sketch out on a shield the portrait of the man who had it. See the passage from the Keo-rot, quoted by Hilgenfeld (Bardesanes, p. 14, n. 6). This archer, Bar- desanes, Hilgenfeld is inclined to think is the same man as the heresiarch Bardesanes; for they were cotemporaries, and both were connected with the court of the Abgari. But one was a learned man and a philosopher, the other skilled in archery — and so skilled, that whatever his natural aptitude, he never could have attained to his wonderful proficiency but by life-long painstaking practice, a devotion to his art only to be met with in him who has to live by it, and quite incompatible with the cultivated tastes and scholarship of his namesake. It would require some very strong evidence to induce me to identify them as one and the same. *5 Allusion to Thucydides, I. 20 TRAVELS OF God's most precious gift to man, the first question you Greeks put to a stranger, even of the lowest rabble, is 'Are you a philosopher ?' And in very truth with you Greeks, I speak not of you Apollonius, philosophy is much the same as piracy, for to the many who profess it, it is like an ill-fitting garment which they have stolen, and in which they strut about awkwardly, trail- ing it on the ground. And like thieves, on whom the fear of justice presses, they hurry to enjoy the present hour, and give themselves up to gluttony, debauchery, and effeminacy ; and no wonder, for while your laws punish coiners of bad money, they take no cognizance of the authors and utterers of a false philosophy. Here, on the other hand, philosophy is a high honour, and be- fore we allow any one to study it, we first send him to the home of the Brahmans, who inquire into his charac- ter and parentage. He must shew that his progenitors, for three generations, have been without stain or re- proach, and that he himself is of pure morals and of a retentive intellect. The character of his progenitors," the king went on to say, " if of living men, was ascer- tained from witnesses ; and if of dead, was known from the public records.^^ For when an Indian died, a legally appointed officer repaired to his house, and inquired into, and set down in writing, his mode of life, and exactly, under the penalty of being declared incapable ^ Strabo of the Indian city sediles says a part took note of the birth and deaths, that the birth or death of good or bad men may be known : jjltj a(pav€is eieu al Kpeiroves Kat x^^^P^^^ yovai Kai Qavaroi (XV, 1, 51) ; from Megasthenes, Frag. Hist., II, p. 431, § 37, and consult Bardesanes' account of the 2a^aj/atot in 1. iv, c. 17, of Por- phyry de Abstinentia. APOLLONIUS OF TYANA. 21 of holding any public office. As to the youth himself, they judged him worthy or otherwise from his eyes, eye- brows, and cheeks, which as in a mirror reflect the mind and disposition." The king then told how his father, the son of a king, had been left very young an orphan ; and how during his minority two of his relatives according to Indian custom acted as regents, but with so little regard to law, that some nobles conspired against them, and slew them as they were sacrificing to the Indus, and seized upon the government ; — how on this his father, then sixteen years of age, fled to the king beyond the Hydaspes, a greater king than himself, who received him kindly, and oftered either to adopt him, or to replace him on his throne ; and how, declining this offer, he requested to be sent to the Brahmans ; and how the Brahmans edu- cated him ; and how in time he married the daughter of the Hydaspian king, and received with her seven villages as pin-money (ek ^cov7]v), and had issue one son, — himself, Phraotes. Phraotes told of himself, that he was brought up by his father in the Greek fashion till the age of twelve; that he was then sent to the Brahmans, and treated by them as a son, for "they especially love", he observed, "those who know and speak Greek, as akin to them in mind and disposition"; that his parents died ; and that in his nineteenth year, just as, by the advice of the Brahmans, he was begin- ning to take into his own hands the management of his estates, he was deprived of them by the king, his uncle, and was then supported with four servants by willing contributions from his mother's freedmen {aireXevdepoov). 22 TRAVELS OF As however he is one day reading the Heraclidse, he hears from a friend of his father's, that if he will return home, he may recover his family kingdom, but he must he quick. The tragedy he was reading he accepts as an omen ; and he goes on to say : — " When I crossed the Hydraotis, I heard that, of the usurpers, one was already dead, and the other besieged in this very palace ; so I Imrried on, proclaiming to the villages I passed through who I was, and what were my rights : and the people received me gladly; and declaring I was the very picture of my father and grandfather, they accompanied me, many of them armed with swords and bows, and our numbers increased daily; and when we reached this city, the inhabitants, with torches lit at the altar of the Sun, and singing the praises of my father and grandfather, came out and welcomed me, and brought me hither. But the drone within they walled up,^'' though I begged them not to kill him in that way. Apollonius then enquired whether the Sophoi of Alexander and these Brahmans were the same people. The king told him they were not; that Alexander's Sophoi were the Oxydracse,^^ a free and warlike race, but rather dabblers in philosophy than philosophers f^ that the Brahman country lay between the Hyphasis and the Ganges ; and that Alexander never invaded it — not through fear, but dissuaded by the appearance 57 I prefer Olearius's reading, rov Se eiaao xvl^V^o- ""ept, to reixos fip^uv, better suited to tlie xv^PW"" 53 Strabo, xv, I, 33, connects them with the Malli. Bumes identifies them with the people of Ooch, the Malli with those of Mooltan. — Ut sup., I, p. 99. 59 ^o So the pseudo-Callistlienes notices the OxydracaB as speaking Greek, p. 88, and as visited but not conc[uered by Alexander, p. 99, ed. Muller. 61 These embossments represented, the king goes on to say, Hercules setting up his pillars at Gades, and driving back the ocean ; proof, he asserts, that it was the Egyptian, and not the Theban Hercules, who was at Gades. «2 Menu, among the vices the king is to shun, names dancing and instrumental music (vii, 47), but afterwards advises that, " in the inmost recesses of his mansion, having been recreated by musical strains, he should take rest early." — vii, 224-5 ; see, how- ever. As. Ees., ix, p. 76. 24 TEAVELS OF SO talking, they went to bed. The next morning, Apol- lonius discourses upon sleep and dreams, and the king displays his knowledge of Greek legends. They then separate — the king to transact the business of his kingdom and to decide some law-suits — Apollonius to offer his prayers to the Sun. When they again meet, the king tells Apollonius that the state of the victims had not permitted the Court to sit on that day, and he lays before him a case in dispute — one of treasure- trove, and in land which has just changed hands, the buyer and seller both claiming the treasure. The king is in much perplexity, and states the pleas on both sides ; and the suit might have been drawn out to the same length, and become as celebrated as that of the ass and the shadow at Abdera, had not Apollonius come to his assistance. He inquires into the life and character of the litigants ; finds that the seller is a bad, and the purchaser a good man ; and to the last there- fore awards the treasure. When the three days of their sojourn were expired, and the king learns that their camels from Babylon are worn out, he orders that of his white camels^ on the Indus, four shall be sent to Bardanes, and four others given to Apollonius, together with provisions and a guide to the Brahmans. He offers him besides gold and jewels and linen garments ; the gold Apollonius refuses, but he accepts the linen garments because they are like the old genuine Attic cloak, and he picks out besides one jewel, because of its mystic and divine ^ Elphinstone {ut supra, I, 40) speaks of white camels as rare. APOLLONIUS OF TYANA. 25 properties. He receives also a letter for larchas,^ to this effect : — " The King Phraotes to the Master larchas and the wise men with him, greeting: Apollonius, a very wise man, thinks you wiser than himself, and has travelled hither to learn your doctrine. Send him back knowing all you know. Your lessons will not be lost, for he speaks better, and has a better memory than any man I ever knew. Shew him. Father larchas, the throne on which I sat when you gave me the kingdom. His followers are worthy of all praise, if only for submitting to such a man. Farewell." They leave Taxila, and after two days' journey, reach the plain, where Porus is said to have en- countered Alexander. There they saw a triumphal arch serving as a pediment to a statue of Alexander in a four-horse chariot, as he appeared on the Issus. A little farther on, they came upon two other arches, on one of which was Alexander, on the other Porus — the one saluting, the other in an attitude of submission. Having passed the Hydraotis,^^ they pursued their way through several countries^^ to the Hyphasis. Thirty stadia from the river, they saw : the altars Alex- ander had built there " To Father Ammon and Brother Hercules, to the Providence Minerva and Olympian Jove, and to the Samo-Thracian Cabiri and the Indian Sun and Brother Apollo :" and also a bronze pillar with this inscription : — " Here Alexander halted." And this ^ Probably, suggests Wilford, a corruption from Eac'hyas.— As. Res., ix, 41. ^ Hydraotis, in Strabo Hyarotis, Sanskrit Iravati; Hyphasis, Vipasa. —Vishnu Purana, p. 181. ^ Strabo gives the number as nine. — xv, I, 3, 33. 26 TRAVELS OF pillar Philostratus conjectures was raised by the Indians in joy at the return homeward of Alexander. In reference to the Hyphasis and its marvels, we are told that it is navigable at its very source, in a plain ; but that lower down alternate ridges of rock impede its course, and cause eddies which render navigation impossible. It is about as broad as the Ister, the largest of our European rivers, and the same sort of trees grow upon its banks. From these trees the people obtain an unguent with which if the marriage guests neglect to anoint the bride and bridegroom, the marriage rite is thought informal and not pleasing to Venus. To Venus indeed its groves are dedicated, as also a fish found here only, the peacock, so called from its cserulean crest, spotted scales, and golden tail, which it can open out at, its pleasure. In this river is also found a sort of white, worm, the property of the king, which is melted into an oil so inflammable, that nothing but glass will hold it. This oil is used in sieges, and when thrown on the battlements, it burns so fiercely, that its fire, so far as yet known, is inextinguishable.^^ In the marshes they catch wild asses with a horn on their foreheads,^^ with which they fight, bull-fashion. From this horn is made a cup of such virtue that if 67 This worm is mentioned and described by Ctesias, but he places it in the Indus.— Frag. Ctes., ed. Didot, 27, p. 85. ® This ass and its horn, with some slight difference, are also in Gtesias {ih., p. 25). Wilson sees in this horned ass two animals " rolled into one," the gorkhar, or wild horse, found north of the Hindu -Koh, and the rhinoceros, whose horn has to this day in the East a high reputation as an antidote. — Notes on Ctesias, 63 and 49. APOLLONIUS OF TYANA. 27 any one drinks out of it, he need for that day fear no sickness, nor wounds, nor fire, nor poison. It belongs to the king, who also reserves to himself the right of hunting the ass. Apollonius saw the animal, and admired it ; but when Damis asked him if he could believe all that was said of the virtue of the cup, he answered, " Yes, when I see any Indian king immortal." Here they met with a woman black to her breasts, white from her breasts downwards. She was sacred to the Indian Venus, and to this goddess piebald women are sacred from their birth, as to Apis among the Egjrptians. Here they crossed that spur of the Cau- casus which stretches down towards the Eed Sea ; it was full of all sorts of aromatic plants. The headlands produced cinnamon,^^ a shrub very like a young vine (yeoL^ K\i]/jLaias Si rjv Ivdoi deovs EWtjvikovs rrpojKvvovai. — Plutarch de Fortuna Alex. Op. Var., I, p. 585. APOLLONIUS OF TYANA. 3o tained from tlie sun's rays, and at noon daily liyirin its praise. Apollonius, in an address to the Egyptians, somewliat enigmatically describes the life of the Sophoi : — "I have seen," he says, " Brahmans who dwell on the earth, and yet not on the earth ; in places fortified, and yet with- out walls; and who possess nothing, and yet all things." According to Damis they used the earth as a couch, but first strewed it with choice grasses: they walked too the air^^ — Damis himself saw them — and this not to excite wonder — all ostentation is abhorrent to their nature, — but in imitation of and as a more fitting ser- vice to the sun. He saw too the fire which they drew down from the sun's rays, — and which though it flamed on no altar and was confined by no hearth, took shape and body (crw/iaroef-Se?) and floated in mid-air,^^ where spite of the darkness, under the charm of their hymned praises^^ it stayed unchanged. As in the night they worshipped this fire, so in the day they worshipped the sun and besought it to order the seasons for India's good. In this way is to be understood ApoUonius's first assertion : " The Brahmans live on the earth, and yet not on the earth." His second, Damis refers to that 88 Atto ttjs 77)s es irrix^is dvo (Pkilos., Ill, c. 15), two cubits from the ground, no great height, but — ce n'est que le premier pouce qui coute. 89 Sir C. Napier says, of Trukkee, *' On reaching the top, where we remained during the night, every man's bayonet had a bright flame on the point. A like appearance had also been observed going from Ooch to Shapoor." — Life, III, 272. May not the night light of the Sophoi be referred to some similar phenomenon ? ^ Compare with c. xv the xxxiii. III. 36 TRAVELS OF covering of clouds which they draw over themselves at pleasure, and which no rain can penetrate. His third, to those fountains which bubble up for his Bacchanals when Bacchus shakes the earth and them, and from which the Indians themselves drink and give to others to drink. Well therefore may ApoUonius say, that men, who at a moment's notice and without preparation can get whatever they want, possess nothing and yet all things.^^ They wear their hair long,^^ like the old Macedonians, and on their head a white mitre.^^ They go bare-foot ; and their coats have no sleeves, and are of wild cotton, of an oily nature, and white as Pamphy- lian wool, but softer.^* Of this cotton the sacred vest- ments are made ; and the earth refuses to give it up if ^^ Compare with these fountains those of milk, wine, etc., of which Calanus speaks in his interview with Onesicritus (Strabo, ut sup., § 64); and that happy India, a real pays de Cocagne, which Dio Chrysostom ironically describes in Celsenis Phrygise Orat., XXXV, II, p. 70. 92 Hardy, Eastern Monachism (p. 112), by which it would seem that the Brahmans wear long hair ; the Buddhist priest, on the other hand, shaves his head; so also Bardesanes describes the newly-elected Samansean; ^vpa/xevos Se rov aiD/xaros ra irepiTra Aa/xj8ai/6t aroX-qv aTreiai re rrpos ^afiavaiovs. — Porphyry, ut supra. 93 Still worn by some of the mountain tribes about Cabool. Elphinstone says of the Bikaneers, "they wear loose clothes of white cotton, and a remarkable turban which rises high over the head."— Cabool, I, 18. 94 Hierocles speaks of the Brahman garments as made from a soft and hairy (S6piw:;Ta)5r?) filament obtained from stones (asbestos). — Frag. Hist., iv, p. 430. In the Mahawanso among the presents of Asoka to Dewananpiatisso, are "hand-towels cleansed by being passed through the fire," p. 70. Burnes says of the Nawab of Cabool, he "produced some asbestos, here called cotton-stone, lound near Jelalabad" (ii, 138) ; see also Pliny, xix. 4. APOLLONIUS OF TYANA. 37 any but tliemselVes attempt to gather it. They carry a stick,^^ and wear a ring, both of infinite and magic power. Apollonius found the Sophoi seated on brazen stools, their chief, larchas, on a raised throne of bronze orna- mented with golden images. They saluted him with their hands, but larchas welcomed him in Greek, asked him for the King's letter, and added, that it wanted a 8. As soon as he had read it, he asked Apollonius, " AVhat do you think of us?" "Oh!" said Apollonius, "the very journey I have undertaken — and I am the first of my countrymen who has undertaken it — answers that question." " In what, then," enquired larchas, " do you think us wiser than you ?" " I think your views wiser, more divine," answered Apollonius ; " and should I find that you know no more than I, this at least I shall have learned-^that I have nothing more to learn." "Well," said the Indian, " other people usually ask of those who visit them, whence they come and who they are ; but we, as a first proof of our knowledge, show strangers that we know them ;" and so saying, he told Apollonius who his father was, who his mother, all that happened to him at ^gae, and how Damis joined him, and what they had said and done on the journey; and this so distinctly and fluently, that he might have been a companion of their route. Apollonius, greatly aston- ished, asked him how he knew all this. "In this knowledge," he answered, " you are not wholly wanting, and where you are deficient we wiU instruct you,*^ for ^5 " The first three classes ought to carry staves." — Menu, i, 45; ** the priest's should reach to his hair." — lb., 46. ^ When Damis speaks of his knowledge of languages to Apollo- 38 TKAVELS OF we think it not well to keep secret what is so worthy of being known, especially from you, ApoUonius, — a man of most excellent memory. And Memory, you must know, is of the Gods the one we most honour. " But how do you know my nature ?" asked ApoUonius. " We," he answered, " see into the very soul, tracing out its qualities by a thousand signs. But as midday is at hand,^^ let us to our devotions, in which you also may, nius, ApoUonius merely observes that he himself understands all languages, and that without having learned them ; and more, that he knows not only what men speak, but their secret thoughts (L. I., c. xix). But as in India he is accompanied by, and frequently makes use of an interpreter; this pretension of his has, from the time of Easebius (in Hieroclem, xiv), been frequently ridiculed as an idle boast. Philostratus, however, was too practised a writer to have left his hero open to such a charge. His faults are of another kind. His facts and statements too often, and with a certain air of design, confirm and illustrate each other : thus, with regard to this very power claimed by ApoUonius, observe, that he professes not to speak, but to know aU languages and men's thoughts — a difference intelligible to all who are familiar with the alleged facts of mesmerism ; and look at him in his first interview with Phraotes ; watch him listening to, and under- standing the talk of the king and the sages, and only then asking larchas to interpret for him when he would himself speak. Ob- serve, also, that larchas admits only to a certain extent the power of ApoUonius, and remember his surprise when he finds that Phraotes knows and speaks Greek. ^ " At sunrise, at noon, and at sunset, let the Brahman go to the waters and bathe." — Menu, vi, 22. " Sunrise and sunset are the hours when, having made his ablution, he repeats the text which he ought to repeat." — ii, 222. From the Vishnu Purana, however, it seems the Eichas ( the hymns of the Eig-veda) shine in the morning, the prayers of the Yajush at noon, and portions of the Saman in the afternoon. — p. 235. Bardesanes, ut supra, rov roivvv xpovov ttjs r^fxepas Kot ttjj pvktos rov irKiKrrov eis vfivovs twv Becav APOLLONIUS OF TYANA. 39 if you will, take part." Tliey then adjourned to tlie bath, a spring like that of Dircae in Boeotia as Damis says who afterwards saw Dircae. They first took off their clothes, and then anointed their heads with an uncruent which made their bodies run down with sweat, and so jumped into the w^ater. After they had well bathed they put garlands on their heads and proceeded to the temple, intent on their hymn. There standing round in a circle with larch as as their leader they beat the ground with their staves, till bellying like a wave it sent them up into the air about two cubits ; and then they sang a hymn, very like the Psean of Sopliocles sung at Athens to ^sculapius. When they had again come down to the earth and had performed their sacred duties, larchas called the youth with the anchor, and bade him take care of Apollonius's companions ; and he in a shorter space of time than the swiftest birds, was gone and was back again, and told larchas, — " I have taken care of them." Apollonius was then placed on the throne of Phraotes, and larchas bade him question them on any matter he pleased, for he was now among men who knew all things. Apollonius therefore asked, as though it was of all knowledge the most difficult, " Whether the Sophoi knew themselves ?" But larchas answered quite con- trary to his expectation, that they knew all things, be- cause they first knew themselves. That, without this first and elementary knowledge, no one could be ad- mitted to their philosophy. Apollonius, remembering his conversation with Phraotes and the examination they had been obliged to undergo, assented to this. 40 TRAVELS OF more especially as lie felt the truth of the observation in himself He then asked " What opinion they held of themselves ? " and was told, " that they held them- selves to be gods, because they were good men." Apol- lonius then enquired about the soul, and, when he heard that they held the opinions of Pythagoras, he further asked, whether, as Pythagoras remembered him- self as Euphorbus, so larchas could speak of some one of his previous lives, either as Greek or Trojan, or other man ? larchas, first reproving the Greeks for the reverence they pay to the Trojan heroes and to Achilles as the greatest of them, to the neglect of better men, Greek, Egyptian, and Indian, related : how years long ago he had been one Ganges king of the Indian people, to whom the Ethiopians then Indians were subject: how this Ganges, ten cubits in stature and the most comely of men, built many cities and drove back the Scythians who invaded his territories : and how, though robbed of his wife by the then king of Phraotes^s coun- try, he had unlike Achilles kept sacred his alliance with him : how too he had rendered his father the Ganges^^ river propitious to India, by inducing it to keep within its banks and to divert its course to the Ked Sea -} how, notwithstanding aU this, the Ethiopians murdered him, and were driven by the hate of the In- 98 This is a favourite idea of Philostratus, i. e. the Heroica, II, V, 677, ed. 01ea.rii, fol. 99 The Ganges is a goddess. — Vishnu Purana. 1 Wilford refers this to the legend of Bhagiratha, *' who led the Ganges to the ocean, tracing with the wheels of his chariot two furrows, which were to be the limits of her encroachments." — As. Ees., viii, 298. APOLLONIUS OF TYAXA. 41 dians and the now sterile earth and the abortive births of their wives to leave their native land : and li^^w, pur- sued by his ghost, and still suffering the same ills, they wandered from place to place, till having at length pun- ished his murderers they settled in that part of Africa from them called Ethiopia. He told too, how Ganges had thrust seven adamantine swords deep into the ground in some unknown spot, and how when the gods without indicating it ordered that on that spot a sacri- fice should be offered, he then a child of four years old immediately pointed it out.^ But ceasing to speak of himself, he directed ApoUonius's attention to a youth of about twenty, and he described him as patient under all suffering and by nature especially fitted for philo- sophy, but beyond measure averse to it ; and his aver- sion was attributed to the ill treatment and injustice he had received from Ulysses and Homer in a former life. He had been Palamedes. While they were thus talking, a messenger announced the king's approach and that he would arrive towards evening, and came to consult with them on his private affairs. larchas answered that he should be welcome, and that he would leave them a better man for having known " this Greek." He then resumed his conversa- tion with ApoUonius, and asked him to tell something of his previous existence. ApoUonius excuses himself, because as it was undistinguished he did not care to remember it. " But surely," observed larchas, " to be 2 So the sword of Mars found by a shepherd and presented to Attila constituted him "totius mundi principem." — Jornandes, 42 TRAVELS OF the pilot of an Egyptian ship is no such ignoble occu- pation, and a pilot I see you once were." " True," re- plied Apollonius, " but an office which should be on a par with that of the statesman or the general has by the fault of sailors themselves become contemptible and degraded. Besides my very best act in that life no one deemed worthy even of praise." "And what was that?" asked larchas. " Was it the doubling with slackened sail Malea and Sunium, or the carefully observing the course of the wdnds, or the carrying your ship over the reefs and swell of the Euboean coast ?" " Well/' said Apollonius, " if I must speak of my sailor life, I will tell you of something I did then which I think was wise and honest. In those days pirates infested the Phoe- nician Sea. And some of their spies knowing that my ship was richly laden came to me and sounded me, and asked me what would be my share of the freight. I told them a thousand drachmas, for we were four pilots. ' And what sort of a home have you V they asked. 'A hut on Pharos, where Proteus used to live,^^ I answered. * AVell,' they went on, ' would you like to change the sea for land — a hut for a house — to receive ten times the pay you look for, and rid yourself at the same time of the thousand ills of the tempestuous sea ?' ' Aye, that I would,' I said. They then told me who they were, and offered me ten thousand drachmas, and promised that neither myself nor any of my crew should suffer harm 3 Homer, Odys., iv, 355, and frequently alluded to in Byzantine writers as vrjaov rriv Xeynftcprtv Tlpwrews. Pharos ubi Proteus cum Phocarum gregibus diversatum Homerus fabulatur inflatius. — Amin. Marcell., xx, 16, 10. APOLLONIUS OF TYANA. 43 if I gave them an opportunity of taking my ship. So we agreed that I should set sail in the night, but lie-to under the promontory ; and that the pirates, who w^ere at anchor on the other side, should then run out and seize my ship and cargo. All this took place in a temple, and I made them swear to fulfil their promises ; while I agreed on my part to do as they wished. But instead of lying-to I made sail for the open sea and so got ofi'." " And this," observed larchas, " you think an act of justice ?" " Yes," said ApoUonius, " and of hu- manity ; for to save the lives of my men, and the pro- perty of my employers, and to be above a bribe, though a sailor, 1 hold to be a proof of many virtues." larchas smiled, and remarked : " You, Greeks, seem to think that not to do wrong is to be just. Only the other day, an Egyptian told us of the Eoman procon- suls : how, though knowing nothing of the people they were to govern, they entered their provinces with naked axes ; and of the people : how they praised their go- vernors if they only were not venal, just like slave- dealers who to vaunt their wares warrant that their Carians are not thieves ! Your poets too scarcely allow you to be just and good. For Minos the most cruel of men and who with his fleets enslaved the neighbouring peoples, they honour with the sceptre of justice as the judge of the dead. But Tantalus, a good man, who made his friends partakers of immortality, they deprive of food and drink." And he pointed to a statue on the left inscribed " Tantalus." It was four cubits high, and of a man of about fifty, dressed in the Argolic fashion with a Thessalian chlamys. He was drinking from a 44 TPtAVELS OF cup as large as would suffice for a tliirsty man, and a pure drauglit bubbled up in it without overflowing. Their conversation was here interrupted by the noise and tumult in the village occasioned by the king's arrival ; and larchas angrily observed, " Had it been Phraotes, not the mysteries had been more quiet." ApoUonius, seeing no preparations made, inquired whe- ther they intended offering the king a banquet ? " Aye, and a rich one, for we have plenty of everything here," they said, " and he is a gross feeder. But we allow no animal food, only sweetmeats, roots, and fruits such as India and the season afford. But here he comes." The king, glittering with gold and jewels, now approached. Damis was not present at this interview, for he spent the whole of the day in the village, but Apollonius gave him an account of it which he wrote in his diary. He says that the king approached with outstretched hands as a suppliant, and that the sages from their seats nodded as if granting his petition, at which he rejoiced greatly as at the oracle of a god ; but of his son and brother they took no more notice than of the slaves who accompanied him. larchas then rose and asked him if he would eat. The king assented, and four tripods like those in Homer's Oljrmpus rolled them- selves in, followed by bronze cup-bearers. The earth strewed itself with grass, softer than any couch ; and sweets and bread, fruits and vegetables, all excellently well prepared, moved up and down in order before the guests. Of the tripods two flowed with wine, two with water hot and cold. The cups, each large enough for four thirsty souls, and the wine-coolers, were each one of APOLLONIUS OF TYANA. 45 a single stone, and of a stone in Greece so precious as to be set in rings and necklaces. The bronze cup-bearers poured out the wine and water in due proportions, as usual in drinking bouts.^ They all lay down to the feast, the king with the rest, for no place of honour was assigned him. In the course of the dinner larchas said to the king, ''I pledge you the health of this man," pointing to Apollonius, and with his hand signifying that he was a just and divine man. On this the king observed, " I understand that he, and some others who have put up in the village, are friends of Phraotes." " You under- stand rightly," said larchas, ''for even here he is Phraotes' guest." " But what are his pursuits ? " asked the king. "Those of Phraotes," answered larchas. " Worthless guest worthless pursuits ! they prevent even Phraotes from becoming a man indeed," said the king. " Speali more modestly of pliilosophy and Phra- otes," observed larchas, — "this language does not be- come your age." Here Apollonius, through larchas, inquired of the king " what advantage he derived from not being a philosopher?" "This, that I possess all virtue and am one with the sun," answered the king. Apollonius : " You would not think thus if you were a philosopher." The king: "Well friend as you are a philosopher, tell us what you think of yourself." Apol- lonius : " That I am a good man so long as I. am a philosopher." The king : " By the sun, you come here full of Phraotes." Apollonius : " Thank heaven then, 4 So Marco Polo's description of the feasts of the great Khan, borrowed probably from Apollonius, c. Jxxv, pp. 71-9, French ed. 46 TEAVELS OF that T have not travelled in vain ; and if you could see Phraotes, you would say he was full of me. He washed to write to you about me, but when he told me that you were a good man, I bade him not take that trouble, for I had brought no letter to him." When tlie king heard that Phraotes had spoken well of him, he was pacified and forgot his suspicions ; and in a gentle tone said: "Welcome, best friend." "Welcome you," said Apollonius, " one would think you had but just come in." " What brought you to this place ? " asked the king. " The Gods and these wise inen,'^ answered Apollonius. " But tell me stranger, what do the Greeks say of me ? " he next inquired. " Just what you say of them,'^ said Apollonius. " But that is just nothing," he replied. "I will tell them so, and they wdll crown you at the Olympic games,^' Apollonius observed. Then turning to larchas : " Let us leave this drunken fool to himself. But why pray do you pay no attention to his son and brother, and do not admit them to your table ?" "Be- cause," answered larchas, " they may one day rule, and by slighting them we teach them not to slight others." Apollonius then perceiving that the number of the Soplioi was eighteen, observed to larchas that it w^as not a square number, nor indeed a number at all honoured or distinguished. larchas in answer, told him that they paid no attention to number, but esteemed virtue only ; he added, that the college wdien his grand- father entered it consisted of eighty-seven Sophoi, and that his grandfather then found himself its youngest, and eventually in the one hundred and thirtieth^ year 5 Ibn Batuta speaks of Hindus 120, 130, and 140 years of age. APOLLONIUS OF TYANA. 47 of liis age, its only surviving member ; that no eligible candidate having in all that time offered himself for admission, he remained four years without a colleague : and that when he then received from the Egyptians congratulations on his alone occupying the seat of wisdom, he begged them not to reproach India with the small number of its wise men. larchas then went on to blame the Elians, in that as he had heard from the Egyptians, they elected the Olympic dikasts by lot, and thus left to chance what should be the reward of merit ; and that they always elected the same number, — never more, never less ; and that they thus sometimes ex- cluded good men and sometimes were obliged to choose bad ones. Better, he said, it had been if the Elians had allowed the number of the dikasts to vary with circum- stances, but had always required in them the same qualifications. The king here rudely interrupted them, and expressed his dislike of the Greeks, and spoke of the Athenians as the slaves of Xerxes ; ApoUonius turning to him asked if he had any slaves of his own ; " Twenty thou- sand," he answered, " and born in my house. "^ " Well, then," said ApoUonius (always through larchas), " as you do not run away from them, but they from you, so Xerxes fled like a worthless slave from before the Athenians when he had been conquered at Salamis." Burnes of one at Cabul of 114, apparently with all his faculties about him.— II, 109. 6 According to Megasthenes, civai Se kuI toSc n^ya cv ttj li'dwv yrj vavras lv5uvs (ifol f\(v6e^)ovs. — Ai'rian, Indica, xi. ovSe IvSois aWos ZovKos eo-Tt. Onesicritus limits this to the subjects of Musicanus. — Strabo, ut sup., § 54-. 48 TRAVELS OF " But surely," observed the king, " Xerxes, with his own hands set fire to Athens?" "Yes," said Apol- lonius, "hut how fearful was his punishment! He became a fugitive before those whom he had hoped to destroy ; and in his very flight was most unhappy : for had he died by the hands of the Greeks, what a tomb would they not have built for him ! what games not in- stituted in his memory ! — as knowing that they honoured themselves when they honoured those whom they had subdued." On this the king burst into tears, and excused himself, and attributed his prejudices against the Greeks to the tales and falsehoods of Egyptian travellers, who while they boasted of their nation as wise and holy and author of those laws relating to sacrifices and mysteries which obtain in Greece, described the Greeks as men of unsound judgement, the scum of men, (rvyK\vha<;, insolent and lawless, romancers, and miracle-mongers, poor, and parading their poverty not as something honourable but as an excuse for theft. "But now," he went on to say, "that I know them to be full of goodness and honour, I hold them as my friends, and as my friends praise them and wish them all the good I can. I will no longer give credit to these Egyptians." larchas here observed that though he had long seen that the Egyptians had the ear of the king, he had said nothing but waited till the king should meet with such a counsellor as Apollonius. Now however that you are better tauglit, let us", he con- cluded, "drink together the loving-cup of Tantalus and then to sleep : for we have business to transact to-night. I will however as occasion offers indoctrinate you in APOLLONIUS OF TYANA. 49 Grecian learning, the fullest in the world. And so stooping to the cup he first drank and then handed it to the other guests ; and there was enough for all, for it bubbled up as if from a fountain. They lay down to rest, and arose at midnight, and aloft in the air hymned the praises of the sun's ray. The Sophoi then gave private audience to the king. 'Next morning early, after the sacred rites, the king, for the law forbade his remaining more than one day at the college, retired to the village and vainly pressed Apol- lonius to visit him there. The Sophoi then sent forDamis, whom they admitted as a guest. The conversation now began ; and larchas discoursed on the world : how it is composed of five elements — water, fire, air, earth, and aether ;^ and how they are all co-ordinate, but that from aether the Gods, from air mortals, are generated ; how moreover the w^orld is an animal and hermaphrodite ; and how as hermaphrodite it reproduces by itself and of itself all creatures ; and how as intelligent it provides for their wants, and with scorching heats punishes their wrong-doing. And this world larchas further likened to one of those Egjrptian ships^ which navigate the 7 Megasthenes (Strabo, ut sup., § 59) gives pretty nearly the same account of the Brahminical doctrines, that the world has a beginning, and will have an end ; that God, its ruler and creator, pervades it ; and that besides the four elements there is a fifth, aether ; and Alexander Polyhistor asserts that Pythagoras was a disciple of the Brahmans ; Frag. Hist., Ill, § 238, p. 239, and p. 241 mentions aether as one of the Pythagorean elements. Also Aristotle de Mundo, II, from a note to Mas'udis Meadows of Gold, Or. Tr. Fund, p. 179. 8 The boat among the Hindus is one of the types of the earth. — Wilford, As. Res., viii, 274 ; Von Bohlen quotes this passage to E 50 TRAVELS OF Ked Sea. " By an old law, no galley is allowed tliere ; but only vessels round fore and aft (aToyyvXoi), fitted for trade. Well, these vessels the Egyptians have enlarged by building up their sides, and fitting them with several cabins f and they have manned them with pilots at the prow, seamen for the masts and sails, and marines as a guard against the barbarians; and over and above them all have set one pilot who rules and directs the rest. So in the world there is the first God, its creator; next him, the gods who rule its several parts — sung by the poets, as gods of rivers, groves, and streams: gods above the earth, and gods under the earth ; and perchance too below the eartli, but distinct from it, is a place terrible and deadly." Here, unable to contain himself, Damis cried out, in admiration: " Never could I have believed that any Indian was so thoroughly conversant with the Greek language, and could speak it with such fluency and elegance ! " A messenger now announced and introduced several Indian suppliants — a child possessed, a lame and blind man, etc., — all of whom were cured. larch as further initiated Apollonius, but not Damis, in astrology and divination and in those sacrifices and invocations in which the gods delight. He spoke of the divining power as raising man to an equality with the Delphian Apollo, and as requiring -a pure heart and prove that the Hindus had the knowledge of one God. — Das Alte Indian, i, 152. 9 See Ibn Batoutah's description of a Chinese boat, iv, 92-3, and 350, and 64, pp. Of the ships employed in the Indian trade, Pliny " Omnibus annis navigatur sagittariorum cohortibua impositis, etenim Piratse nozime impestant." — Hist. Nat., vi, 26. APOLLOXIUS OF TYANA. 51 a stainless life, and as therefore readily apprehensible by the aetherial soul of ApoUonius. He extolled it as a source of immense good to mankind, and referred to it the physician's art — for was not ^sculapius the son of Apollo ? and was it not through his oracles that he discovered the several remedies for diseases, herbs for wounds, etc. ? Then turning, in a pleasant way, to Damis, — " And you Assyrian," he said, " do you never foresee anything — ^you, the companion of such a man?" "Yes, by Jove," answered Damis, " matters that concern myself ; for when I first met with this ApoUonius, he seemed to me a man full of wisdom and gravity and modesty and patience ; and for his memory and great learning and love of learning I looked upon him as a sort of Daemon ; and I thought that if I kept with him, that instead of a simple and ignorant man I should become wise, — ^learned instead of a barbarian; and that if I followed him and studied with him I should see the Indians and see you; and that through his means I should live with the Greeks, a Greek. As to you then, you are occupied with great things, and think Delphi and Dodona or what you will. As for me, when Damis predicts he predicts for himself only like an old witch." At these words all the Sophoi laughed. ApoUonius enquired about the Martichora,^^ an animal the size of a lion, four-footed, with the head of a man, its tail long with thorns for hairs which it shoots out at those who pursue it; — about the golden foun- 1" Ctesias, p. 80, § 7 ; Didot. 52 TKAVELS OF tain^^ too ; and the men who use their feet for "ambrellas^ the sciapods.^^ Of the golden fountain and Martichora larch as had never heard ; but he told Apollonius of the Pentarba and showed him the stone and its effects. It is a wonderful gem about the size of a man's thumb- nail and is found in the earth at a depth of four fathoms ; but though it makes the ground to swell and crack, it can only be got at by the use of certain cere- monies and incantations. It is of a fiery colour and of extraordinary brilliancy, and of such power, that thrown into a stream it draws to it^^ and gathers round it all precious stones within a certain considerable range.^* The pigmies he said lived on the other side of the Ganges and under ground; but the Sciapods and Longheads were mere inventions of Scylax, He described also the gold- digging griffins ; that they were sacred to the Sun (his chariot is represented as drawn by them^^) about the size of lions,^^ but stronger because winged ; that their ^1 Id., p. 73, § 4. Wilson, Notes on Ctesias, explains and ac- counts for these myths. 12 Id., § 104 and 84. Among the people of India, from Hindu authority quoted by Wilford, are the Ecapada, one-footed. " Mo- nosceli singulis cruribus, eosdemque Sciapodas vocari," from Pliny (ih.) From "Wilson's Notes, the one-footed and the Sciapods should be two different races. 13 Something like this was that jewel by the aid of which Tchagkuna recovered that other jewel which he had thrown into the water. — Eadjatarangini, tr. d. Troyer, II, p. 147. 1* Strabo from Megasthenes, ib., § 56. Ctesias also mentions it, 1= In the Vishnu Parana : " The seven horses of the sun's car are the metres of the Yedas," p. 218. Sculptured or painted horses always. 16 Ctesias, p. 82, § 12, and p. 95, § 70. Wilson (Ariana Antiqua) has shown from the Mahabharata, (Mahabharata, 1859-60, Slok., Fauche's tr. II, p. 53), that this story has an Indian foundation. " Those tribes between Meru and Mandura verily presented in APOLLONIUS OF TYANA. 53 wings were a reddish membrane, and hence their flight was low and spiral ; that they overpowered lions, ele- phants, and dragons ; and that the tiger alone because of his swiftness was their equal in fight. He told of the Phoenix, the one of his kind, born of the sun's rays and shining with gold, and that his five hundred years of life were spent in India ; and he confirmed the Egyptian account of this bird — that singing his own dirge he con- sumed himself in his aromatic nest at the fountains of the Mle. Similarly also swans it is said sing themselves to death, and have been heard by those who are very quick of ear. They remained four months with the Sophoi. When they took their departure, larchas gave Apollonius seven rings named after the seven planets ; these rings he ever afterwards wore each in its turn on its name-day. The Sophoi provided him and his party with camels and a guide, and accompanied them on the road ; and prophesying that Apollonius would even during his life attain the honours of divinity they took leave of him, and many times looking back as in grief at parting with such a man returned to their college. Apollonius and his companions, with the Ganges on their right the Hyphasis on their left {sic), travelled down towards the sea-coast, a ten days' journey, and on their road they saw many birds and wild oxen, asses and lions, panthers lumps of a drona weight, that gold which is dug up by Pippi- likas (ants), and which is therefore called ' Pippilika ant-gold'." ( P. 135, note). See also A Journey to Lake Manasarovara, by Moorcroft, who speaks of a sort of marmot in the gold country which Schwanbeck supposes to be the original of this ant. — As. Res., xii, 442. This myth was not unknown to the Arabs. — Gil- demeister Script. Arab, de Eebus Indicis, p. 221. 54 TR.VVELS OF and tigers, and a species of ape different from those that frequent the pepper-groves, black, hairy, and dog-faced, and like little men. And so conversing as their cus- tom was of what they saw, they reached the coast, where they found a small factory and passage-boats of a Tuscan build and the sea of a very dark colour. Here Apollonius sent back the camels with this letter to larchas : — " To larchas and the other Sophoi from Apollonius, greeting : I came to you by land, with your aid I return by sea, and might have returned through the air^'^ — such is the wisdom you have imparted to me. Even among the Greeks I shall not forget these things, and shall still hold commerce with you — or I have indeed vainly drunk of the cup of Tantalus.^^ Farewell, ye best philosophers." Apollonius then embarked, and set sail with a fair and gentle breeze. He admired the Hyphasis, wliich at its mouth narrow and rocky hurries through beetling cliffs into the sea with some danger to those who hug the land. He saw too the mouth of the Indus, and Patala, a city built on an island formed by the Indus, where Alexander collected his fleet. And Damis con- 17 Easy and pleasant as this mode of travel is thought to be, Apollonius had recourse to it but once — on that memorable occa- sion when about mid-day he disappeared from before the tribunal of Domitian, and the same evening met Damis at Diceearchia, Puteoli, Vit. Apol. Philostr., viii, xc. 18 Philostratus, v, 1, has another letter purporting to be written by Apollonius to larchas. He shows us too Apollonius occasionally and always reverentially speaking of larchas and Phraotes, and Porphyry, nepi 'Srvyos, quotes a letter of Apollonius in which he swears fia ro TavraXiov vSatp — from Staboeus. — In Olearius, note c. 51, III, L. Philost. APOLLONIUS OF TYANA. 55 firms what Orthagoras lias related of the Eed Sea — that the Great Bear is not there visible ; that at noon there is no shadow ; and that the stars hold a different posi- tion in the heavens. He speaks of Byblus with its large mussels, and of Pagala of the Oritae where the rocks and the sands are of copper ; of the city Stobera and its inhabitants the Ichthyophagi, who clothe themselves in fish-skins and feed their cattle on fish; of the Carmani, an Indian race and civilized, who of the fish they catch keep only what they can eat, and throw the rest living back into the sea ; and of Balara where they anchored, a mart for myrrh and palms. He tells too of the mode in w^hich the people get their pearls. In this sea which is very deep the white-shelled oyster is fat, but naturally pro- duces no pearls. When however the weather is very calm and the sea smooth and made still smoother by pouring oil upon it, the Indian diver equipped as a sponge-cutter with the addition of an iron plate and a box of myrrh goes down to hunt for oysters. As soon as he has found one he seats himself beside it, and with his myrrh stupefies it and makes it open its shell. The moment it does this, he strikes it with a skewer and receives on his iron plate cut into shapes the ichor which is discharged from its wound. In these shapes the ichor hardens, and the pearls thus made differ in nothing from real pearl.^^ This sea he adds is full of monsters, from which the ^9 Is this an indistinct and garbled account of the Chinese mode of making pearls described in a late Journal of the Society ? Tzetzes says that two origins are ascribed to pearls. Some assert that they are the produce of lightnings others that they are x^'poiTrorjroys; and he then describes the modus operandi, which is that in our text, and probably borrowed from it. — Chiliad., xi, p. 375j 472 L. 56 TRAVELS OF sailors protect tliemselves by bells^^ at the poop and prow. Thus sailing, they at last reach the Euphrates, and so up to Babylon, and again meet Bardanes. In reviewing this account of India, our first enquiry is into the authority on which it rests. Damis was the companion of ApoUonius, so Philostratus and not im- possibly public rumour affirmed. Damis wrote a jour- nal, and though no scholar was according to Philostratus as capable as any man of correctly noting down what he saw and heard.^i But Damis died, and his journal, if journal he kept and such a journal ever existed, lay buried with him for upwards of a century, till one of his family presented it to the Empress Julia Domna the wife of Severus, curious in such matters. But in what state ? — untouched ? — with no additions to suit the Empress's taste ? Who shall tell ? Again, the Em- press did not order this journal to be published, but gave it to Philostratus a sophist and a rhetorician, with instructions to re- write and edit it ; and so re-written and edited he at length published it, but not till after the death of his patroness, the Empress. Weighing then these circumstances all open to grave suspicion, ^ Nearchus drives these same fish away, rats oa\my^ip. — Strabo, XV, II, 12, p. 617, as was still done in Strabo's time.— ih., p. 138, Didot ed. The Arabs similarly. In the Voyages Arabes (tr. Rei- naud) of a monster fish in their seas, we are told, " La nuit les equipages font sonner des cloches semblables aux cloches des Chretiens, c'est enfin d'empecher ce poisson de s'appuyer sur le navire et de le sub merger." — I, p. 2. ^^ AiarpiPrjv apayparpai, Kai 6, ri rjKovaev rj fiSev avarvtrcoaai — (Tv Ivdwv /BaatXeus cirfKVpvKevaaro (}>ihos AtryvaTov yeveadai (/cat ai/ju/xoxoj) ; then going back to the hundred and eighty-fifth 01. (40-36 e.g.), each tells of the death of Antony and the capture of Lepidus, and how Augustus then became sole emperor, and how the Alexandrians compute the years of Augustus, and then adds UavSicov 6 rcov IvSav ^aai\ev5 (f>i\os AxryvaTov Kai avfiimaxos irpea/SeueTat. Georg. Syncellus Byzant. Hist. Niebuhr, 588-9, ih. 13 Indi ab Augusto amicitiampostularunt, 188th 01ym.(Migneed ) 1* Interea Csesarem apud Tarraconem citerioris Hispaniae urbem legati Indorum et Scytharum toto orbe transmisso tandem ibi in- venerunt, ultra quod quserere non possent, refuderuntque in Csesarem Alexandri Magni gloriam ; quern sicut Hispanorum Gal- lorumque legatio in medio Oriente apud Babylonem contempla- tione pacis adiit, ita hunc apud Hispaniam in Occidentis ultimo supplex cum gentilitio munere eous Indus et Scytha boreus oravit. — Orosius, Hist, vi, c. xii. TO AUGUSTUS. 71 west was approached with gifts by suppliant Indian and Scythian Ambassadors." From these authorities, I think we may safely conclude, that an Indian Embassy, or what purported to be an Indian Embassy, was received by Augustus. But while we allow that our authorities are ap- plicable to or certainly not irreconcilable with Damas- cenus' embassy which Augustus received at Samos, 22-20 B.C. ; we cannot but observe that St. Jerome's is referred to the year 26 B.C. and that Orosius brings it to Tarragona, whither Augustus had gone 27 B.C., and where he was detained tiU 24 B.C. by the Cantabrian war. Hence a difficulty, which Casaubon and others have endeavoured to remove by assuming two Indian Embassies ; the one at Tarragona to treat of peace, the other at Samos to ratify the peace agreed upon. But — ^not to mention that this preliminary embassy is unknown to the earlier writers,^^ who all so exult in the so-called second embassy that they scarcely would have failed to notice the first — I would first remark that no author whatever speaks of two Indian Embassies. And I would secondly refer to the ambassadorial letter of which Damascenus has preserved the contents, and in which we find no allusion to any previous contract or agreement between the two sovereigns, but simply an offer on the part of the Hindu prince to open his country to the subjects ^5 I do not overlook the irpoKrjpvKevcrafievoi irporepov ^i\iav rare effirfiaavTo of Dio Cassius. But is it, looking at the context, possible to conceive that those irpoKrjpvKevffafxfvoi were other than those who T0T6 fcireiaavro, and who were at Antioch 22 B.C. and who then probably gave notice of their mission by herald ? 72 THE INDIAN EMBASSY and citizens of Eome in the person of Csesar. Surely- then, than this embroglio of embassies which come to sue for peace where war was impossible, it is more natural to suppose that Jerome a careless writer^^ mis- dated his embassy ; and that Orosius, a friend and pupil of Jerome,^'^ finding that the date in Jerome tallied with Caesar's expedition to Spain, seized the opportunity both of illustrating his native town and of instituting a comparison between Augustus and Alex- ander the Great. I think we may rest content with one embassy. But is Damascenus' account of this embassy a trust- worthy and faithful account ? Strabo evidently gives credit to it, and to some extent confirms it by stating that the Hermes he himself had seen {ov Kai r)fjLec<; eiBofiev) ; and in another place, while he attributes our embassy to a Pandion rather than a Porus, he still connects it with the Indian who burned himself at Athens.^^ Plutarch (a.d. 100, 10) in noticing the self- cremation of Calanus Alexander's Gymnosophist adds, that many years afterwards at Athens another Indian in the suite of Augustus similarly put an end to his life, and that his monument is still known as the Indian's tomb.^^ Horace, Florus, and Suetonius, give indeed another character and other objects to the 16 *f Propter festinationem quam ipse in Chronici prsefatione fatetur.*' — Maius, Can. Chron. Prsef. xix. 17 Smith's Diet, of Greek and Eom. Biog., Art. Orosius. 18 Vide supra, note 7. 19 TouTo iToWois €T€<. passim. Sera, Taylor's Oriental MSS., Appendix II, p. 26. In re-examining the statements of the ambassadors, I read with Gronovius, " lidem narravere latus insulse quod prsetenderetur IndisG x mill. stad. esse ab oriente hy- berno ultra montes Emodos." — i. e., that part of these mountains — '* quorum promontorium Imaus vocatur." — Pliny, c. xxvi, ad cal, '5 Supra, note 15, p. 96. 76 Eeinaud, Mem. s. I'lnde, p. 345. Tennent's Ceylon, 441, II. "^ Thus Pomponius Mela, III, vii, 10 : " Seres intersunt... genus plenum justitiae, ex commercio, quod rebus in solitudine relictis absens peragit notissimum." And Pliny, vi, 20 : " Seres mites EMBASSY TO ROME. 121 have been, his Eoman interlocutor would naturally ask : Did they then know the Seres ? And he would tell of the Seras. Hence a confusion probable enough and explicable. But unluckily he also adds a descrip- tion of this wild race. He gives them large bodies, red hair, blue eyes and a rough voice''^ i.e., he describes a Scythic^^ not a Hindu people and certainly not the Veddahs whose long black matted hair, and large heads and misshapen limbs^^ and miserable appearance at- tracted the notice and excited the pity of Sir E. Tennent. Of course it may be pointed out that Eachias quidem, sed et ipsis feris persimiles coetum reliquorum mortalium fugiunt, commercia expectant." 78 I find from Pritchard (Nat. Hist, of Man, p. 245), that grey- eyed and red-baired Sinhalese are occasionally to be met with, but these are so few that they can never have stood for Pliny's description of the Serae ; nor can we, as I at first supposed, refer either to the Eakshasas (Eamayana, Fauche tr., vi, 140), the mythic aborigines of Ceylon and the supposed ancestors of the Veddahs, or to the demon masks worn by the Sinhalese in their solemn dances (Kolan Nattannawana, Upham's tr.. Or. Tr. Fund), as its originals j for neither have anything in common with, or any pos- sible likeness to, these Serae. 79 " Traces of a Scythic descent are to be found among the Kattees of Kattywar at this day." — Letter from Sir G. le G. Jacob, read at the Asiatic Society, February 19th, 1872. From the Peri- plus, § 38, we learn that they occupied, and that their capital was seated on, the lower Indus, but that they were then subject to the Parthians. We know too that at the commencement of our era they conquered India, but I cannot find that they ever settled in the northern part of the peninsula. If then we suppose Eachias' father sailing to the Indus to meet with those blue-eyed men, we have still to account for their mode of traffic which is not Scythian. *• Pritchard, on Dr. Davy's authority, gives a pleasanter ac- count of the Veddahs, but of the village Veddahs probably. 122 SECOND INDIAN EMBASSY TO EOME. does not speak of liis own knowledge, that his memory may be at fault, that his questions confounded one people with another, but after all this the misunder- standing is not accounted for or cleared up. Finally, if we give this embassy to the Sinhalese proper, then, if our ambassadors were not guilty of absurd and purposeless falsehoods, wliich is very im- probable, they were grossly ignorant of the size and characteristics of their native land — a conclusion which nothing in their history warrants. On the contrary, the frequent retreat of the Court to the Malaya and Eohuna,^^ and the complaint of Gamini,^^ and the tanks and other great works of the native kings, indicate a knowledge of the island, its size, resources, and general features. If on the other hand, we take our ambassa- dors from the Tamils of Ceylon, we then have a story full of errors it is true, but easily accounted for, and the most extraordinary statement of which, that re- lating to the Serae, is capable of possible explanation. SI Whenever driven from Anarajapura tlie native king retires to tlie southern kingdom. Thus after the conquest of Elaro we find him and his queen resident at Mahag'amo. — Mahawanso, p. 134. So the queen Anula on the occasion of the invasion of the seven Damilos flees to the Malaya. — ib., p. 204. 82 " Gamini laid himself on his bed with his hands and feet gathered up. The princess mother inquired ; ' My boy why not stretch thyself on thy bed and lie down comfortably ?* * Confined/ replied he, 'by the Damilos beyond the river (Mahawelliganga), and on the other side by the unyielding ocean, how can I lie down with outstretched limbs ?' " — ih., p. 136. ON. THE INDIAN EMBASSIES TO ROME. ON THE INDIAN EMBASSIES TO EOME, FROM THE REIGN OF CLAUDIUS TO THE DEATH OF JUSTINIAN. After the Sinhalese embassy to Claudius, the Indian embassies to Eome were few and far between. To the death of Justinian, a.d. 565, four only have been no- ticed and barely noticed by historians. The first, to Trajan,^ was present with him at the great shows which he offered to the Eoman people, a.d. 107. The second, to Antoninus Pius,^ A.D. 138-161, came to pay homage to his virtues. The third to Julian,^ though intended Zonaras asserts for Constantius, reached him according to Am- ^ Upos de rov Tpaiavov es ri\v Pcu^tjj/ ^XQovra irXiKnai darai irpia^eiai irapa fiapfiapofu aWoos re Kai Ij'Scci' acpiKouTO' Kai d€a5...€iroiri(T€v ev ats 6r]pia...xiXia Kai fivpia i(TovvT(i>v $paxfJiaP€s 17 ^a/xavaio i. — Hieronymus, " Bardesanes vir Babylonius in duo dogmata apud Indos Gymnosophistas dividit, quorum alterum appellat Bragmanos, alterum Samanceos." See, however, Schwanbeck in Miiller's Hist. Grsec, Frag., p. 437, V. Ill, and Lassen Ind. Alterthum, v. Ill, pp. 355-6. 136 INDIAN EMBASSIES, FKOM not already contained in books. But look now at Clemens Alexandrinus. He lived in Alexandria, then in frequent communication with India, where Hindus occasionally resorted. He was besides a Christian, and as a Christian he necessarily frequented the society of artisans and merchants, and among them if anywhere had opportunities of meeting either with Hindus or with those who had visited India. But could a man of his acquirements and eager, earnest, and inquiring mind meet with such men, and not draw from them some in- formation relating to India before unknown ? His keep- ing within the well beaten path of old facts would be to me as surprising as Polyhistor's straying from it. Again, in no known fragment of Polyhistor are the Buddhist priests called Semnoi; indeed the term as appKed to them is found only in this passage. And I can very well understand Clemens choosing it, because in sound it sufficiently resembles the Tamil Samana,^^ and in sense expresses satisfactorily the ideas attached to an ancient priesthood; and perhaps also because, though unaware of their brotherhood, he thus distinguished the Hindu Buddhist from Polyhistor's Samanseos or Bac- trian priest. Then Philostratus,^^ a cotemporary of Clemens, pub- lished his romance of ApoUonius of Tyana, and ^lian^^ 21 Pronounced, Mr. J. H. Nelson, C.S., Madras, informs me, as semen, the e sounded as in Italian. Boutta too he thinks more closely allied to the Tamil Buttha than the Sanscrit Buddha, though he would hesitate to derive it thence. 22 Philostratus published his AppoUonius after the death of the Empress Julia Domna, as he himself states, consequently some time after a.d. 217.— V. Dio Cassius, L. 78, 6, 24. 23 ^lian flourished ad. 225. CLAUDIUS TO JUSTINIAN". 137 his Variae Historise, in which are many notices of Indian animals and Indian peoples and customs, but from Mega- sthenes and Ctesias principally. ^^ And then too Art em- ployed itself on Indian subjects, as we gather from Calli- stratus' description of the statue of a drunken and reeling IIindu.2^ Then Dio Cassius wrote his history, lost in its entirety, but of which the fragments and summary by Xiphilinus sufficiently attest the interest he took in all that related to India. Then too Bardesanes,^^ as we learn from the extracts preserved by Porphyry,^^ gave to the w^orld his Indica, the materials for which he ob- tained he states from one Dandamis or Sandanes, the chief of some unrecorded embassy to the Csesars, and whom he met it seems at Babylon in the reign of Anto- ninus of Emesa,28 Elagabalus (a.d. 218-222). He 2-* To this age also probably belongs the UepioSos Bona, which speaks of Thomas' visit to India, and tells of an Indian king, Goundaphores, whose agent was in the Eoman Empire looking out for mechanics, and who may be identified with Gondophares of the Indo-Parthian coins, a cotemporary of the last Arsacidan kings (about a.d. 216) Thilo, Acta St. Thomse and Wilson, Ariana Antiqua. And to this age we may refer one of the heresies of the Christian Church introduced by and brought avo 'Xvpov r-qs IlapQias. — Bunsen Analecta Antenicsena, i, p. 378. 25 Descript. iv. ets ro IvSov ayaXfia. On the statue of an Indian evidently ; and not. On the statue of the Indus, as Lassen renders it.— Ind. Alt., Ill, 73. Callistratus wrote about a.d. 250. 26 He speaks also of Indians idolatrous and non-idolatrous in his Book of Fate. 27 Porphyry, de Abstinentid, iv, 17. 28 IvSot oi eiri rrjs fiaaiKeias tt\s Avtoduipov rov 6{ Efieaotv tis rriv "Svpiav BapSrjfTavri rtp e« ttjj Mco-oTroTajUjas €ts Koyovs atpiKOfievoi f^ryyTjaavro. — Stobseus Physica, i, 54. Gaisford's ed. This reading proposed by Heeren and adopted by Gaisford. necessarily, it seems to me, brings down our embassy to the reign of Elagabalus (a.d. 218-222), 138 INDIAN EMBASSIES, FROM writes, that " the Indian Theosophs, whom the Greeks call Gymnosophists, are divided into two sects, Brah- mans and Shamans, Samanseoi. The Brahmans are one family, the descendants of one father and mother, and they inherit their theology as a priesthood. The Sha- mans on the other hand are taken from all Indian sects indifferently,^^ from all who wish to give themselves up to the study of divine things. " The Brahmans pay no taxes like other citizens, and are subject to no king.^'^ Of the philosophers among them, some inhabit the mountains, others the banks of the Ganges. The mountain Brahmans subsist on fruit and cow's milk, curdled with herbs.^^ The others live the only Antonine who can be described as of Emesa. Lassen, how- ever (ut sup.. Ill, 348), is of opinion that it was addressed to An- toninus Pius (a.d. 158-181, an error for 138-151), but as his reference is to Heeren's ed., whose emendation I presume he adopts, I can- not conceive how he arrives at this conclusion. 28 Megasthenes, as quoted by both Arrian and Strabo, had some indistinct notion that the Indian Sophistai or some of them were not so bound to caste as the other Indians. But Arrian so puts it as if the whole Brahman caste was open. Mopov atf Tis €17), and this because of their virtue. — ih., p. 430. Diodorus omits the passage : doubtless it was ambiguous. ^ AA6tToi;p77jTot yap ovres oi vTa> fiiv Kai Tvpcp -noK^ai. rais evi ^oiviKTjs epya^eaOai e/c TraAatou cioodei. ol re tovtwv €/j.Tropoi re Kai cirtdr]- fitovpyoi Kai TexftTot ivravOa ro avcKadfP (pKOvu, evOevSe re fs "yqv airaaav €UTO$' ovto^ 6 2,KvOiavos fV TOis ifpoiiprifJiivois 701T015 TTttiSeuOets ttji/ 'EWrji'cov 'yXoiaaav nat TTjf ruv ypafifxaTcop avrwu traihuav. Epiphan. Ad. Hseres, L. II, Tom. II, H£B., m, § i, p. 618, I. V. 3 " Valde dives ingenio et opibus sicut hi qui sciebant eum per traditionem nobis quoque testificati sunt." Archelaus, ih. 4 Epiphanius, wbo writes with theological bitterness throughout, alone alludes to his Indian acquirements, but makes him little better than an Indian juggler : Kai yao kui yorjs t^v otto ttjs rmv Iv^wv Kai AiyuTTTUv Kai fQvofivQov auiptas, ih., § 3. ^ irhovTcp iroWcp eirapdeis Kai KTrjuairip T^hucrixaroDU Kai tois aWois rois arro ttis IvSias, Kai eKdcov irepi Trjv 0/j)8at5a ets "Viprj^V^- Epipb., ib., § 2. 6 According to Ai*chelaus " quandam captivam accepit uxorem, de Thebaide," u.s. According to Epiphanius, he took her from a common brothel : aviAo/ieuos tout' ano rov areyuvs {farrjKf yap t) Toiaurri tu rri iroKvKoivcp aire/ivoTijTt ) €TeKadea9rj rep yvvaip, ib., p. 619. ' " Quse eum suasit habitare in iEgypto magis quam in desertis," ib., and Cyril, C. vi, c. xxii, ttj^ A\€^uv5pfiav oucrjo-av, he thus locates him in Alexandria. Ib., p. 184, I. Eeischl, ed. 8 " In qua provincia cum . . . habitaret, Egyptiorum sapientiam didicisset." Archelaus, ib. CLAUDIUS TO JUSTINIAN. 173 opinions wlncli with the assistance of his one disciple and slave, Terebinthus, he embodied in four books,^ the source of all Manichaean doctrine. Here too he heard of the Jewish Scriptures ; and wishing to converse with the Jewish doctors^^ he set forth with Terebinthus for Jerusalem, and in Jerusalem met and in a scornful and self-willed spirit disputed with the Presbyters of the Church, and there after a short time died.^^ At his death, Terebinthus either inherited or seized upon his books and other wealth, and hurrying to Babylon pro- claimed himself learned in the wisdom of Egypt.^^ He 9 Epiphanius, § 2 ih., and Cyril assert tliat Scythianus wrote these books; Arcbelaus on the other hand, that Terebinthus was their author. These books Mysteriorum, Capitulorum, Evangelium, (ov XP^^'''""'"^ pa^fi^ Trepiexofra, Cyril, ib.) et novissimum omnium Thesaurum appellavit." Archelaus, ih. ^'^ EireiS/; Se cKriKuei ttcos ol npo^rjrat Kai 6 vo/jios inpi ttjs rov Koafiov cvaraaews, etc. Epiphanius, ib., § 3: " I'lacuit Scythiano discurrere in Judseam, ut ibi congrederetur cum omnibus quicunque ibi vide- bantur doctores." Archelaus, ib. Cyril merely mentions that he ■went to Judsea and polluted the country by his presence ; /cot XvixfivaaQai ttji' x^P°^^i '^^• ^^ 'O irpos Tovs e/fejo-6 T]p(a$VTepov$ avrifiaWeiv Tjp^aro. Epiphanius L. II, III, p. 620, places all this in the time of the Apostles, wept TOWS x^ofoi/s Twv AirmoXoop, quite impossibly. 12 Epiphanius will have it that he fell from the house-top and so died — the death also of Terebinthus. Archelaus merely says that arrived in Judea he died ; and Cyril, that he died of a disease sent by the Lord, rov voacf Bavarwras b Kvpios, ib. 13 Terebinthus dicens omni se sapientia iEgyptiorum repletum et vocari non jam Terebinthums ed alium Buddam nomine, sibique hoc nomen impositum, ex quadam autem virgine natum se esse, simul et ab Angelo in montibus enutritum." — Archelaus, p. 97. Epiphanius asserts that he took the name of Buddha, ha /xtj Kara- ^wpos yevTjT at, ib. Cyril, omitting the virgin birth, that he took it because he was known and condemned in Judea for his doctrine. 174 INDIAN EMBASSIES, FROM also took the name of Buddha [BovBBa^, Buddas), and gave out that he was born of a virgin, and had been brought up on the mountains by an angel.^* Some years after Epiphanius (died a.d. 401), Hiero- nymus (died a.d. 420) incidentally notices the birth of Buddha. Having enlarged on the honour in which virginity has ever been held, and how to preserve it some women have died, or how to avenge its enforced loss others have killed either themselves or their ravishers, he goes on to say, that among the Gymnoso- phists there is a tradition, that Buddha the founder of their philosophy was born from the side of a virgin.^^ Of these writers Hieronymus is the only one who directly refers to the Indian Buddha, and of ancient writers is the first who correctly narrates the manner of ih.y § 23. But Petrus Siculus, a.d. 790, and Photius, 890, give lurther details : 'O /xev ^KvOiauos fToK/x-qae narepa eavrou oponaaar 6 8e BovSSas vtov lou &eou Kai IlaTpos, ck irapdevov 5e yeyeuriadai Kai €V tois optaiv auarp6(pea6ai. 'Odev Kai ScuSewa nadrjTai 6 auTi\piaros tt/s irAoyrjs KTjpvKas air«TT€iXfv. ' Reischl, note to Cyril, ib. 14 Besides this Buddha, Terebinthus, there is a second Buddas, Baddas, or Addas, one of the twelve disciples of Manes, who preached his doctrine in Syria ; and a third Bud or Buddas Perio- dutes, who lived a.d. 570. " Christianorura in Persidi finitimisque Indiarum regionibus curam gerens. Sermonem Indicum coluisse dicitur, ex quo librum Calilagh et Damnagh ( Kalilah va Dimna, de bonis moribus et apta conditione animi, Geldemeister de Eebus Ind.,p. 104) Syriace reddidit." — Asseman. Bib. Orientalis, III, zl9, but as the work had been already translated into Persian by order of Choroes (a.d. 531-579) " Syriacam versionem proxime post Per- sicam fecit Bud Periodutes." — Asseman., ib., p. 222. 1= Contra Jovianum Epistolas, Pt. I, Tr. II, c. 26: "Apud Gymnosophistas inde quasi per manus hujus opinionis traditur auctoritas, quod Buddam principem dogmatis eorum e latere suo virgo generavit." CLAUDIUS TO JUSTINIAIT. 175 Buddha's birth from the side of his mother ; and yet his notice of him is by no means so full and satisfactory as that of Clemens, written some two centuries before. YoT Clemens described Buddha as a man and moral lawgiver, and as a man raised to deity by his own su- preme majesty and the reverence of his followers, shortly indeed, but how truth fully and characteristically! when compared with Hieronymus, who knows him as the founder of the Gymnosophists, i.e., of the Hindu philo- sophy, which is as much as if a Hindu should see in Mahomet the author of the western religions. Again, Hieronymus gives Buddha a virgin mother. But a virgin mother is unknown to the Buddhist books of India and Ceylon, and belongs — derived perhaps from some Chinese or Christian source — to the bastard creed of the Buddhists of Tartary.^^ Under any circum- ^6 According to tlie Nepaulese " Neither Adi Buddha nor any of the Pancha Buddha Dhyani...were ever conceived in mortal womb, nor had they father or mother, but certain persons of mortal wiowl(i have attained to such excellence... as to have been gifted with divine wisdom. ..and these were...Sakya Sinha," Hodgson, Buddhist Eel., p. 68. And the Thibetan books from the Sanskrit, among the qualities required of the mother of Buddha place this one: "elle n'a pas encore enfante," to which Foucaux appends this note : " Mais il n'est pas dit qu'elle sera vierge." Hist, de Bouddha, tr. de Foucaux. The Sinhalese : " Our Vanquisher was the son of Suddhadana and Maya," Mahawanso, Turner, p. 9, Up- ham, p. 25. Indeed the Virgin mother seems strange to the Indian mind, vide Birth of Parasu-Eama, Maurice, Ant. Ind., II, 93, and of Chrishna, Harivansa Lect. 59, Langlois. According to the Mongols, " Soudadani...epou3a Maha-mai, qui, quoique vierge, con9ut par I'influence divine un fils le 15 du dernier mois d' ete,'* Klaproth, Mem. sur I'Asie, II, p. 61. Whether, however, the idea was borrowed from the Christians by the Tartars, or whether it is original among them may bo a question. For I find among the 176 INDIAN EMBASSIES, FROM Stances this dogma of Tartar Buddhism^^ could scarcely have reached Hieronymus ; and he here writes, it may be presumed, on the authority of Archelaus or Epi- phanius and confounds through ignorance theManichaean with the Indian Buddha. With regard to the Buddha of Archelaus, Cyril and Epiphanius, when we remember the many points of at least superficial resemblance between Buddhism and Christianity and the proselytising spirit of both reli- gions, we may well wonder that so few of the early Christian fathers have known the name of Buddha ; and that of these few Archelaus and his copyists have so little appreciated its religious significance, that they speak of it merely as of a name assumed by Terebin- thus, and so assumed Epiphanius asserts, because it is the Assyrian equivalent of the Greek word Tere- binthus.^^ They in fact connect the Manichsean heresy with India,^^ not through the name of Buddha, but Mongols that Alankava, the ancestress of three great Tartar tribes, after a certain night vision, "se trouva fort surprise de cette apparition; mais elle le fut beaucoup plus, lorsqu'elle apper- 9ut qu'elle etait grosse sans qu'elle eut connu aucun homme.'* Alankava. Diet. Orient., D'Herbelot; but see Observations, iv, p. 339, id. And of the great Lao Tseu, who is somewhat anterior to Buddah, the Chinese believe that his mother conceived him impressed " de la vertu vivifiantedu Ciel et de la Terre." Mailla, Hist, de la Chine, xiii, p. 571. 17 Indeed I suspect that the Tartars were not at this time Buddhists, for of the Buddhist faith Klaproth writes, " elle n'a commencee a se repandre au nord de I'Hindoustan que a.d. 60; et beaucoup plus tard (the 7th century, id., p. 88), dans le Thibet et dans les autres contrees de I'Asie Centrale," u. s., p. 93. ^* TepT]Bii^^duv...jxeTOPOiJLaa6cvTos Boi/SSa Kara rrju Aaavpiocv yKcaaaav, Epiph., ih. 19 "Error quoque Indicus Manetem tenuit qui duo pugnantia CLAUDIUS TO JUSTINIAN. 177 tlirongli Scythianus and his Indian travels and famili- arity with Indian learning. But if the Indian Buddha was unknown to Archelaus, he certainly was not unknown to Scythianus, who took the name, prohably because it was symbolical of his own mission, and of himself as destined to inaugurate a new era in the history of mankind; and because by it he connected his own system of religion, which was eclectic and conciliatory, with the religions of the East. But this notwithstanding, Manichaeism, the Gnostic perhaps excepted, is that scheme of Christianity with which the Buddhist faith has the least afi&nity. For the Mani- chsean was an essentially speculative, metaphysical creed, or rather a philosophy from and to which a reli- gion and morality were derived and attached, and of which Manes was but the author and expounder. Buddhism on the other hand spite of its real atheism and its Nirvana is a religion eminently practical, formal, and ritual, of which Buddha is the great central sun, and his example, wisdom, and precepts, the world wherein his followers live, move, and have their being.^^^ numina introduxit/' Eplarem Syrus from Assemann, thoug-li as Assemann very justly observes the two hostile deities are evidence not of an Indian but a Zendian origin. 20 See, however, Lassen, Ind. Alterthumsb., Ill, p. 406, who finds traces of the influence of Buddhism in the religion of Manes. 1st. In the two opposite principles of Manichaiisin. 2nd. In its account of the world's origin. 3rd. In the laws which it supposes determine the several existences of individual souls in their pro- gress towards final emancipation ; and 4th. In its final destruction of the world. But without denying that these dogmas may have been borrowed from Buddhism, it must be allowed that they may just as probably be the result of independent thought, applied to N 178 INDIAN EMBASSIES, FROM These notices relating to Biidcllia and extending over some century and a half, I have thrown together for convenience sake and because they show that Eoman knowledge of India and Indian matters was on the decline. I return now to the times immediately suc- ceeding the fall of Palmyra. It would be absurd to suppose that tlie destruction of Palmyra however much it affected put an end to the Indian trade through the Persian gulf. That would find new channels for itself and live on so long as it proved remunerative to the carriers and merchants engaged in it. It seems in fact as we gather from a passage of Amimianus Marcellinus to have been trans- ferred to Batne. This Batne situated at no great distance from the Euphrates, about sixty miles north of Thapsacus, and a day's journey from Edessa,^^ was when Strabo and even Ptolemy wrote a place of so little im- portance that it escaped their notice ; in the reign of Constantius some seventy-three years after the fall of Palmyra Ammianus describes it as a rich commercial the great problems of which they are one of a very limited num- ber of solutions. 21 "Ab Euphrate flumine brevi spatio disparatur." Am. Marc, X, 2, iii, iro\t(Tna fnv Ppaxv kui \oyov ovSevos a^iop, rjfxepas Se 65(f Edcaarjs Siexoy- Procopius de Bel. Persico, II, 12, 209. Asseman (I, 2S3) in the opening chapters to his life of S. Jacob Sarugensis has collected agooddeal of information about Batne, yet strange to say, he makes no mention of Ammianus Marcellanus' notice of it, far the most important of all that have come down to us, and confounds with it a Batne in Chalcis, which Julian so pleasingly describes in a letter zo Libanius, Epistola xxvii. Of tJie Batne, for he visited it also, he could have had no such pleasing an impression. Am. Mar. xxiii, II. CLAUDIUS TO JUSTINIAN. 179 city, and as celebrated for its great fair which took place in the early part of September and was frequented by merchants and all sorts of people from every part of the world, who crowded thither to trade for the products and wares of India and the Seres. How many years after the ruin of Palmyra passed away before Batne reached this height of prosperity we have no means of ascertaining; btit however rapid its growth, its decay must have been almost as rapid, for in less than two centuries its wealth and glory were already forgotten and Procopius contemptuously mentions it as a small and insignificant town,^^ We now turn to Eufinus, born A.D. 330, died a.d. 410, and his short notice of the Indian travels of Metro- dorus and Meropius.^^ He speaks of them as philoso- phers, and of their having gone to India for the purpose of seeing its towns and country, and the world gene- rally.2* He tells besides of Meropius, that he was a Tyrian and travelled, stirred by the example of Metro- dorus; that he took with him ^desius and Frumen- 22 Zosimus speaking too of Julian's visit, calls it an insignificant town, TToKixviov ri. Hist. 1. iii, c. 12. From Asseman, u. s., it would seem as if Batne rose or fell according as Persians and Romans were at peace or at war with each other. He shows how it flourished under St. James of Sarug, and there was then peace between Chosroes and the Romans. 23 Hist. Eccles,, L. I, c. ix. 24 " Inspiciendorum locorum et orbis perscrutandi gratis ulteri- orem dicitur Indiam penetrasse." ih. Schrockh however sends Meropius to Ethiopia only ( Kirschengeschichte, vi, 24, as also Socrates, a.d. 439, Hist. Eccles., I, xv, and Sozomen, a.d. 446, II, xxiii), though both evidently writing on the authority of Rufinua. Their India interior is from the context clearly Ethiopian. 180 INDIAN EMBASSIES, FROM tins, lads, "piierulos," liis relations and pupils, and that after he had examined and observed every thing in India that was noteworthy,^^ he and his wards took ship to return home. He goes on to say, that on the way their w^ater and provisions failed them, and that they made for an Ethiopian port ; and that the inhabi- tants happening to be at variance with Eome, seized the ship and massacred all the crew and passengers save Frumentius and ^desius, whom for their youth's sake they spared, and presented to the king. He adds, that in the course of time the king died, and that his widowed queen entrusted his one infant son and suc- cessor, together with the government, to the care of Frumentius, who in fact ruled the country till the king came of age, when he gave up his trust and authority together, and asked, and with difficulty got, permission to return to his native land. That he then came to Alexandria, and there visited Athanasius, not long be- fore consecrated its bishop, a.d. 336, and that to him he spoke of the spread of Christianity in Ethiopia, and his labours in its cause ; and was by him induced to accept the see of Auxume, the first Ethiopian bishopric. With the visits of these Eoman travellers we may connect an Indian embassy ,2^ which reached Constan- tinople in the last year of Constantine's life, a.d. 336-7, 25 « igitur pervisis et in notitiam captis his quibus animus pascebatur." — ih. 26 iv^aov rwp irpos aviaxovra r]\iov rrpea fie is... So/pa KO(xt^ovTes..,a Se irpoff'qyov Tw fiaariXd, ttjv €ts ( avrctiv) coK^avov Sr]\ovvTes avrov KparrjaiV KOiojs ul rwv Ii/Sajj/ X'^P**^ Kadrjyffioves eiKovcov ypacpais, avdpiauTCct/ r' avrov avaQr]fxaai Tinupres, avTOKparupa Kai fiaaiXea yvwpt^eiv ufxoKoyuvv. — Eusebius, de Vita Constant., L. iv, c. 50. CLAUDIUS TO JUSTINIAN. 181 and broiiglit with it strange animals, and all sorts of brilliant and precious stones. These the ambassadors presented to Constantine, in token that his sovereignty- extended to their ocean. They told him too of pictures and statues dedicated to him by the Princes of India who thus acknowledged him as their autocrat and king. I have no doubt whatever that its many and often successful wars with Persia, and its large and continued demand for the products of the East had magnified throughout India the wealth and power of the Eoman Empire; and I understand how the appearance of Eomans at their courts might probably induce the Hindu kings to express, by an embassy, their respect and friendly feelings for the Eoman Emperor; but I cannot easily believe that any independent princes should, of their ow^n motion and with no prospect of gain, thus hurry to bow themselves before Eoman supremacy. In the lowly homage attributed to them, I trace the flattery of court interpreters and court news- men, who would thus raise Constantine to a level ^vitli Augustus, as his court-poets had before raised Augustus to a level with Alexander. To return to the travellers, Ammianus Marcellinus^^ (and he refers to some Book of his History now lost, where the matter was treated at length), in defending' Julian against those who charged him with having instigated the Persian war, asserts that that war was ^ XXV, iv. " Sciaiit...non Julianum sed Constantium ardores Parthicos succendisse cum Metrodori mendaciis avidius acquiescit, ut dudum retulimus plane.'* 182 INDIAN EMBASSIES, FROM brought on by Constantius, who too rashly gave credit to the falsehoods of Metrodorus. ISTow this Metrodorus, Cedrenus, of the eleventh century, has identified with the Metrodorus of Eufinus. He tells us of him, that he was Persian-born and pretended to philosophy ; that he travelled to India and the Brahmans, and made for and introduced among them water-mills and baths ; and that by his strictly ascetic life, he won their confidence and respect, and was admitted into the very penetralia of their temples, whence he stole pearls and other precious stones. These jewels, together with others entrusted to him by the Hindu king as presents for the Eoman Emperor, he offered to Constantine as gifts from himself, and at the same time gave him to understand that the Persians had seized and appropriated a parcel of other jewels which he had sent overland. On this, Constan- tine wrote curtly to the Persian king, and receiving no answer, put an end to the peace between them.^^ Valesius is of opinion that Cedrenus has here given us those falsehoods of Metrodorus which produced the Persian war, and the falsehoods to which Marcellinus referred. But I w^ould observe : — 28 T^ fiai gT-ft 7-fjj jSao'iAewy rov K(avaravTivov...MriTpo^wpos ris ITepco- yevTjs Trpoairon](Taii€uos (piKo(ToK6. 85 Theophanis Chronog., p. 346, speaks of the Auxumites E|ou- Hiroov as Jews and converted to Christianity in Justinian's time, in consequence of a vow made by their King Adad, to become Christian should he conquer Damiau the Homerite king. 186 INDIAN EMBASSIES, FROM side, we have Eufiniis' reminiscences, wliicli are but the reflection of what -^desius himself remembered and told.26 What credit then is due to ^desius ? Schrockh tells of Eufinus,^'' that he was born in Concordia, almost on the Adriatic, about a.d. 330 ; that he was baptised in 371 ; that shortly afterwards at Alexandria he made the acquaintance of a noble Eoman lady, Melania,^ whom in a.d. 378 he accompanied to Jerusalem, and then first visited Palestine. At or about this time he must have known ^desius, priest at Tyre. But ^desius, if "puerulus" in 302,^^ was in 378 much past eighty, though Eufinus makes no allusion to his age, and his memory, especially as regards dates, could not have been very bright and clear. Between his authority then and that of a royal letter who could hesitate, would also hesitate between Fox's Book of Martyrs and an Act of Parliament. But, if we accept the letter, we must set aside ^^ Quae nos ita gesta, non opinione vulgi sed ipso ^desio Tyri presbytero postmodum facto, qui Frumentii comes prius fuerat, referente cognovimus, x, ix, c. 3~ Kirchengesch. x, pp. 12-14; the Art. Eufinus, in Smith's G. and R. Biographical Diet., v. Eufinus — might be a translation of Schrockh's account. 38 In his Lausiaca Hist, cxix, Palladius has given a life of Mela- nia, and how the east and west, north and south were not un- knowing of her charities. His next chapter is directed to another Melania, a niece of the first, which I recommend to those who would wish to know something of the wealth and possessions of a Eoman lady. 39 Socrates, unde edoctus nescio, calls the children vai^apia... 'E\\-nvtKr)5 ovK ufioipa ha\eKTrjs, more than ten years of age probably. Hist. Eccl., ut sup. CLAUDIUS TO JUSTINIAN. 187 CeJrenus* narrative as apocryphal, and Eufinus' dates as incorrect ; and as Atlianasius was condemned by the Arian Council of Aries, A.D. 353, and finally deposed by that of Milan, a.d. 355 f^ but seems to have ordained and consecrated Frumentius while yet only under the imputation of heresy ; I conclude that he ordained and consecrated Frumentius between the years 352 and 354 A.D. ; and allowing, as we have done, twenty-five years for the events of his life, he will have set out for India under the guardianship of Meropius about a.d. 327-8, but whether immediately after, or as Valesius supposes on the return of, Metrodorus, we have no means of ascertaining. But if we put aside Eufinus' date, what about his facts ? Both from his narrative and the royal letter, we gather that at Auxume there were many Christians, and that the Government also was Christian. But here all agreement ends. The letter is addressed to two kings, the joint sovereigns of Auxume ; the narrative knows of but one king, the ward from his childhood of Frumen- tius, and shows a state of things scarcely compatible with a double sovereignty ; unless indeed we assume that this double sovereignty was the result of a revolu- tion which broke out in the short interval between Frumentius' departure from, and his return to, Auxume. But if we see no reason to assume anything of the kind, we must again choose between the royal letter and the senile reminiscences of ^desius ; and for the royal letter I avow a weakness. ^ Athanasias, Smith's Bio graphical Diet. 188 INDIAN EMBASSIES, FROM During the reign of Constantius we also hear of Theophilus the Indian. Philostorgius relates of hiin,*^ that he was born at Dibons, an island of the Indians, that when very young he was sent by his people as a hostage to Constantino, and that, educated in a monastery, he was sent at the head of a mission to the Homerites. Dibous, or rather the Dibenoi, Valesius,^^ and Shrockh after him, have identified with the Diu of the embassy to Julian, and Dibous with Divu, Diu, an island lying off the Indus. But what relation could possibly have existed between the Divi and Constantino, which should have obliged them to send hostages to Eome ? I find that Theophilus is often called the Blemmyan, and his mission points to an Arab origin, and I incline to think that Dibous*^ is some Arab island or promontory connected with the Debai or Dedebai of Agatharcides. *^ TttyTTjs 5e T77S irpfd^eias (to the Homerites) cv rois irpoorois tjv kui &eo(l>L\o5 6 IvSos, 6s naXai n^v Kwv(TTauTivov...€Ti Tr)v r}\iKiau Vfuraros, Kad^ 6fjL7]pLav irapa rwv Ai^rjfoop KaKovpavwv ct$ Voufxaiovs ecnaXT]. Aj/SouS y idriv avrois rj uTjaos x^P°'-^ *''*"' I»'5w*' Se KOi oinoi vviiiov ...Tov fievToi @eovei, XevKov /xev ojairep TO Uaix freipaQrjv evSuTcpov aireKesiv, viii, p. 103. The Latin : " In rubrio mari navem con- scendens navigavit primo sinum Adulicum et Adulitarum oppidum vidit, mox Aromata promontorium et Troglodytarum emporium penetravit; hinc et Auxumitarum loca attigit, unde solvens... Muzirim pervenit, ih., 103. The Greek version is evidently de- fective, for it never brings our scholar to India at all, while the Latin traces out an itinerary confused and improbable. For after leaving Adule, our traveller makes for Aromata, the most eastern point of Africa, and the emporium of the Troglodytes ; — but " Adu- liton... maximum hie emporium Troglodytarum etiam Ethiopum ; " (Plin., iv, 34) — or suppose it some port in the Adulitic Bay, still he is always retracing his steps till he comes to Auxume, an inland town {^lea-TTjKcvat rrjv A5ov\iv ttjs Av^ovfiecos irevreKaideKa Tinepwu 65o$. Nonnosus, p. 480, Hist. Bizant.), whence he sets sail for India. CLAUDIUS TO JUSTINIAN. 197 joined tliem, and together they crossed the Ocean. After several days' voyage they reached Mnziris, the chief port on this side the Ganges and the residence of a petty Indian rajah. At Muziris our traveller stayed some time, and occupied himself in studying the soil and climate of the place and the customs and manners of its inhabitants. He also made inquiries about Ceylon and the best mode of getting there ; but did not care to undertake the voyage when he heard of the dangers of the Sinhalese Channel, of the thousand isles, the Maniolai, which impede its navigation, and the load- stone rocks^^ which bring disaster and wreck on all iron-bound ships. They told him, however, of this island, of its happy climate^^ and its long-lived inhabit- ants, of its four satrapies and its great king, king of all the Indias,^^ of whom the petty sovereigns of the coast were but the governors. He knew too of its great trade, of its markets thronged with merchants from 59 Ptolemy knows of the Maniolai and the loadstone rocks, but limits their number to ten, and throws them forward some degrees east of Ceylon, vii, p. 221 ; and before Ceylon places a group of 1378 small islands, vii, 4, p. 213. And Masoudi, who had tra- versed this sea, says that ships sailing on it were not fastened with iron nails, its waters so wasted them, p. 374. ^ So Fa-hian : " Ce pays est tempere, on n'y connait pas la difference de I'hiver et de I'ete. Les herbes et les arbres sont toujours verdoyants. L*ensemencement des champs est suivant la volonte des gens." Tr. de Remusat, c. xxxviii., p. 332. <5^ Eu ravrri Se r-p vrjarcp Kai 6 /xfyas fiaaiKfvs Karoixfi twv Iv^cdv, <^ iro»'T€S 01 ^aaiXiKoi tijs x^P**' fKfiurjS vvoKfivrai ws carpanai, de Bra- manibus, p. 3. " Huic quatuor moderantur ... satrapes, inter quos unus est maximus cui...C8eteri obediunt." — Latin version. These satrapies would be those of Jafna, Malaya, Kohuna, with that of Anarajapura as the. chief. 198 INDIAN EMBASSIES, FROM Ethiopia, Persia, and Auxume (Latin version only) ; of its five great navigable rivers,^^ and perpetual fruit- bearing trees, palms, cocoa, and snialler aromatic nuts. And he had heard how its sheep were covered not with wool but hair, gave much milk, and had broad tails ; and how their skins were prettily worked up into stuffs, the only clothing of the people, who would on feast-days eat both mutton and goat's flesh, though their usual food was milk, rice, and fruit. And the scholar further said: "I tried to penetrate into the interior of their country, and got as far as the Besadse, a people with large heads and long untrimmed hair, dwarfish and feeble but active and good climbers, who occupy themselves with gathering the pepper from the low and stunted trees on which it grows. They seized on me ; and their king, the consumption of whose palace was one measure of corn a year (the year in the Latin version only), whence got I know not, gave me as slave to a baker. With him I stayed six years, and in this time learned their language and a good deal about the neighbouring nations. At length the great king of Ceylon^ heard of me, and out of respect for the 62 Ptolemy likewise gives five rivers to Ceylon, ut sup. the Soana, Ayanos, Baraeos, Ganges, and Phasis ; and after Mm Mar- cianus Heracleensis, Geog. Minor. Didot, p. 534. 63 This tract is imperfect. The Greek version sends our tra- veller direct from Auxume into the interior of Africa, where he was not likely to hear anything about the Brahmans; the Latin on the other hand after saying every thing to dissuade him from the voyage to Ceylon, suddenly and without a hint that he had left Muziris sets him down in the midst of its angry and excited popu- lation. But it is rarely consistent with itself, for 1st, it describes Ceylon on hearsay as an island of the blest, " in qua sunt illi quibus CLAUDIUS TO JUSTINIAN. 199 Roman name and fear of the Eoman power, ordered me to be set free, and severely punished the petty rajah who had enslaved me." Of the Brahmans this scholar reported, that they were not a society like our monks but a race, born^ Brahmans. They lived he said near the Ganges and in a state of nature. They went naked^ wandering in the woods, and sleeping on leaves. They had no domestic animals, tilled no land, and were without iron or house or fire or bread or wine; but then they breathed a pleasant, healthful air, wonderfully clear. They worshipped God, and had no slight, though not a thorough, knowledge of the ways of Providence. They prayed always turning. Beatorum nomen est," and seems to countenance that description, and yet the people our scholar fell among he found a weak, hideous, and inhospitable race. 2nd. It speaks of pepper as the chief produce of the island: "piper ibi nascitur in magnaque col- ligitur copia ; " but though pepper certainly grows in Ceylon, it is not and never has been among its staple productions (Ptolemy, viii, p. 212), nor to gather it the occupation of its people. But from their name and description. Sir E. Tennent (Ceylon) has iden- tified the Besadee with the Sinhalese Veddahs. Let me observe that the name is unknown to the Latin version and belongs to the Greek, which expressly states that our scholar never went to Oeylon : ov yap dedvvrfrat ovS* avros ets ttjj/ v-qaov eiaeAdnv, lib. Ill, vii, ib., and appears there in several shapes as Thebaids, Bethsiads, and Bethsads. 2ndly, that the Besadse are in Ptolemy a people living in the extreme north of India. 3rdly, that the Besadae, except in those great features common to the ill-fed barbarous races, bear no resemblance to any Sinhalese people. For though like the Veddahs they are puny, ill-shaped, live in caves and recognize a domestic chief, the Veddahs unlike them have no king living in a palace, no political existence, and no arts such as the existence of a baker implies, fi* Vide from Bardesanes, swjpra, pp. 152-3. 200 INDIAN EMBASSIES, FROM but not superstitiously, to the East. They ate whatever came to hand, nnts and wild herbs, and drank water. Their wives, located on the other side of the Ganges, they visited during July and August,^^ their coldest months, and remained with them forty days.^^ But as soon as the wife had borne her husband two children, or after five years if she were barren, the Brahman ceased to have intercourse with her.^^ The Ganges is infested by the Odonto, a fearful monster, but which disappears during the Brahman 65 "In India... December, Jannary, and February are their warmest months ; our summer being their winter ; July and August are their winter." — Masoudi's Meadows of Gold, p. 344, Though Masoudi confirms the statement of our traveller, in fact, the summer in India corresponds with our summer. 66 Among the Buddhists : " Quand venait la saison des pluies ...les Religieux pouvaient cesser la vie vagabonde des mendiants. II leur etait permis de se retirer dans des demeures fixes. Cela s'appelait sejourner pendant la Varcha: c'est-a-dire, pendant les quatre mois que dure la saison pluvieuse." Burnouf, Hist, du Bond., p. 285. The rainy season, however, is not the same on the East and West of the Ghauts. See too in the Mahabharata, the observance of times and seasons in the relations between the Brahmans and the widows of the Kshatryas exterminated by them. I, p. 268, Fouche's tr. 67 Suidas, s. v. Bpoxiuaves, has, with a slight alteration, copied this account of the Brahmans. He says " they are a most pious people (c0i/os), without possessions and living in an island of the ocean given them by God; that Alexander came there and erected a pillar (the bronze pillar of Philostratus, As. Jour., xviii, p. 83) with the inscription * I, the great king Alexander came thus far ; * that the Makrobioi live here to 150, the air is so pure... The men thus dwell in the parts adjoining the ocean, but the women be- yond the Ganges, to whom they pass over in the months of July, etc.'' The island of the Indian Makrobioi is probably bor- rowed from the Atlantic Erythia, where dwelt the Ethiopian CLAUDIUS TO JUSTINIAN. 201 pairing months, and by serpents seventy cubits long. The ants are in these parts a palm, and the scorpions a cubit in length ; and hence the difficulty of getting there. The tract then concludes with a series of letters, which purport to have passed between Dandamis, the chief of the Brahmans, and Alexander the Great, and which might have been written anywhere and by any- body, except one who had learned to think or was accus- tomed to command.^ Our author's account of his own experience of India, its great heat, is so absurdly impossible, that we lose all faith in his veracity. I believe neither in his own story, nor in that of his travelled lawyer who seems to me introduced merely to give reality and interest to the narrative. In the narrative itself we first hear of the loadstone rocks attached to the Maniolai, as guard- ing the coasts of Ceylon. These rocks, which the voy- Makrobioi according to Eustatius. Com. in Dion. Per., § 558, p. 325, II, Geog. Min. Hrot fjLcu paiovai $ooTpo(t>ov ajx XvKa^avTi diappaiffeis iroXiv luSoav. 363-7, XXV. 82 Those who would identify the different places, in the text I CLAUDIUS TO JUSTINIAN. 207 muddy waters of the Indian Zorambos ; the people, too, of the well-turreted Ehodoe, the craggy Propanisos, and the isle Gerion,^ where not the mothers, but tlie fathers, suckle their children. There, too, were found the in- habitants of the lofty Sesindos and of Gazos^* girt about with impregnable linen-woven bulwarks. Near them were ranged the brave Dardae^^ and the Prasian force with the gold-covered tribes of the Sarangi,^^ who live on vegetables and grind them down instead of corn. Then came the curly-haired Zabians with their wise ruler Stassanor ; then Morrheus^^ and Didnasos eager to avenge the death of his son Orontes. Now followed the many-languaged Indians from well-built sunny ^thra. refer to M. de Marcellus' notes to the twenty-sixth book of his edi- tion of Nonnos. They will at the same time see how he has ac- commodated, and I think not unfairly, the names to the Geogra- phies of Ptolemy, etc. ^ r-npeiav, PoSorjj' re Kai ot Xtvoreixea Ta^ov. Stephan, Byzant., s. v., Ta^os from the third book of the Bassarics of Dionysius. 84 This description of Gazos is borrowed from the BacraaptKa of Dionysius (n. 12, xxvi, B. de Marcellus), and from the same source he probably took his account of Gereion and the Sarangii, for Nonnos is of those poets who repeat but do not invent. Stephanos Byzantinus by the way frequently quotes the Bassarics of Dionysius as a historical authority, e. g., s. v. BAf/uues and Fa^os. ^ AapSa* IvBiKov fOuos viro Arjoiadrj noAffirjarav Aiovva^ as Aiovvaios fv 76 BaaaapiKwv, Steph., s. v. AapSay. 86 2apa77ai 5e ct/tiara /uev ^ffia/xfieva eveirpeirov ex^"*^^^* Herod., vii, c. 67. ^ Lassen, u. s., derives Morrheus from fioppea, the material of the vasa murrhina. Prof. W. H. Wilson, ih., suggests Maha- rajah. Neither derivation seems to me satisfactory, — the first strange and far-fetched, the second scarcely applicable, for Mor- rheus is no rajah, a soldier of fortune merely, though of high birth, an autocthon : ijAtjSaTow Tvpa fiev epdeov e A/cos, 6 fxiv Xax^, ^aifxovn] x^ip AvaiTTOvov BpaxfJi-Wos aKeaaaro 4>oij8a5t rexvT), diCTTiaij) fxayov vfxvov {nrorpv^ovros aoidrj. xxxix, 369. CLAUDIUS TO JUSTINIAN. 213 Deriades disgraces Habraatos by depriving him of his hair — thus Yasichta punishes the Sacas by cutting off the half of their hair, and the Yavanas by shaving their heads f and chooses two soldiers of fortune^ for his sons-in-law — thus their fathers give Sita and Draupati,* the one to the strongest, the other to the most skilful, bowman ; and as when Morrheus neglects and deserts his wife, daughter of Deriades, for a Bacchante — thus the Hindu Theatre^ affords more than one example of kings and Brahmans in love with women other than their wives, as in the Toy-cart, the Necklace, the Statue,^ etc. But however warranted by Indian custom these several acts, as presented by Nonnos, scarcely associate themselves with Hindu life, certainly not more than the name of Deriades with that of Duryodhana, though they sufficiently remind us of the Greeks of the Lower Empire/ 2 Harivansa, I, p. 68. Langlois, tr.. Or. Tr. Fund ; and Wilson, Hindu Theatre, 332, II. 3 Of Morrheus — vvfi(j)ios uKTijiJicov, op6T77 S'e/cTrjtTaro vvfKprjv. xxxiv, 163. And when Deriades married his daughters, all gifts . . . . ayfXas $€ jSoevc Kat rrtoea ixr\\o»v Arjpia^fis aireenre' Kat eypeixodoKTi /iaxTjTOiS &vyaT€poi)v e^ev^ev aStopoSoKovs ifxevaiovs. ih., 169, 170. * With a certain reserve " Un roi puissant ne doit introduire dans un alliance qu'un mortel de la plus haute renommee," says the father of Draupadi. Mahab. II, p. 167. 6 Wilson's Hindu Theatre, pp. 326 and 364, II. * See the several plays in Wilson's Hindu Theatre, and some observations of Wilson's on the plurality of wives among the Hindus, II, 359. 7 I do not however know that this inappreciation of Indian life is an evidence of Nonnos's ignorance of the Hindu books, only of 214 INDIAN EMBASSIES, FROM 3rdly. Such as are unsupported by Hindu authority. Thus Deriades shows himself skilled in the niceties of Greek mythology, and his wife and daughter Bacchanal- like rush to the battle f and, as if India were deficient in wonders, the fathers in Gereion suckle their children, and Gazos is impregnable with its cotton bulwarks. The Topographia Christiana (a.d. 535) next claims our attention. Its author, Cosmas, who had been a merchant, and who as a merchant had travelled over the greater part of the then known world, betook him- self in his latter years to a monastery, and there, though weak of sight and ailing in body, and not regu- larly educated,^ set himself in this work to prove, that our world was no sphere, but a solid plane.^^ He de- scribes it, and illustrates this and indeed all his descriptions by drawings,^^ as a parallelogram lying lengthways east and west, and sloping up very gradually his want of imagination. With, some play of fancy and the faculty of verse Nonnos is essentially without the poet's power. His per- sonages are all conventional, and I suspect that no knowledge of India, not even had he trudged through it on foot, would have made them more Indian, more real, and more lifelike. 8 In the Hanuman Nataka, nevertheless, the wife of Ravana, to animate his drooping courage, offers *' If you command, by your side I march Fearless to fight, for I too am a Kshatrya." Hind. Theat., II, p. 371. ® aaOevwv Tjucov rvyxo-vovToev rcfi re aoofxari, rais tc o^pev...a KaXovai (Tova apyeWia (p. 336 Cosmas). The narikala of the Hindus, and the nardgyl of the Arabs. Eel. Arabes, LVII Discours Prel. ; and for an account of the islands, id., p. 4. •»i Hiouen-Thsang (a.d. 648, some century after Cosmas) thus : 222 INDIAN EMBASSIES, FROM other kingdom occupies the rest of the island, and is celebrated for its harbour and much frequented markets. The king is not of the same race as the people. In Cosmas's time India seems to have been parcelled out into many petty sovereignties ; for besides these two kings of Ceylon he knows of a king of Malabar, and kings of Calliena, Sindus, etc., but all these rajahs seem to have acknowledged the supremacy of, and paid tri- bute to, Gollas, king of the White Huns,*^ a white people settled in the northern parts of India. Of this Gollas he relates that besides a large force of cavalry he could bring into the field two thousand elephants, and that his armies were so large that once when besieging an inland town defended by a water fosse, his men, horses " A c6te du palais du roi s'el^ve le Yihara de la dent de Bouddha. . . . Sur le sommet du Vihara on a eleve une fleche surmontee d'une pierre d'une grande valeur, appellee rubis. Cette pierre precieuse repand constamment un eclat resplendissant. Le jour et la nuit en regardant dans le lointain, on croit voir une etoile lumineuse," II, p. 141. Fa-hian, however, who was at Ceylon, A.D. 410 : " Dans la ville on a encore construit un edifice pour une dent de Foe. II est entierement fait avec les sept choses pre- cieuses," p. 333. Fa-hian thus mentions this Vihara, and, as if only lately built, but says nothing of the hyacinth, probably placed there subsequently to his time, v. Marco Polo, 449, Societe Geog., ed. ^2 To OvvvcDV r(ov E(f)6a\ir(av tQvos, ovairep XevKovs ovofia^ovcri. Pro- copius, de Bell. Pers., I, III, p. 15. EtpBaKirai 5e Owvikov fiev sBvos €uri /cat ovofJi.a^ovrai...ixovoi. Se ovtoi AeuKOi re ra aufxara Kai ovk afxaptpoi Tas o^eis f Iff IV, p. 16, id. The valley of the Indus seems to have been occupied by a Tartar tribe, even in the first century of our era. Ptolemy calls the lower Indus Indo-Scyth. Eeinaud, Mem. sur rinde, p. 8 1 and p. 104. CLAUDIUS TO JUSTINIAN. 223 and elephants, first drank up the water, and then inarched into the place dryshod.*^ He speaks of elephants as necessary to the state of an Indian monarch, and of the petty rajahs of the sea-board as keeping some five, some six, hundred elephants, and of the king of Ceylon as having moreover a stud of horses which came from Persia and were admitted into his ports duty free.^ His elephants he bought and paid for according to their size at from fifty to one hundred golden pieces^^ each, and sometimes even more. They were broken in for riding and were sometimes pitted to fight against one another, but with their trunks only, a barrier raised breast high preventing them from coming to closer quarters. The Indian elephants he observes have no tusks and are tameable at any age, while those of Etliiopia to be tamed must be caught young.*^^ As a Christian he naturally observed, and as a monk willingly recorded, the state of Christianity in the East. *3 Cosmas Indicopleustes. Montfaucon, Nova Coll. Patrum, I, p. 338. ** Tows 86 liTTTOvs airo Tlepaidos s avros iyw irf^ovaas rovs roTTovs p.apTvpa>. aiiva nai rives lovSaioi avayvovres SirjyovvTO Vfxiu^ \iyoVT€i y€ypa(pOai ovrws — ampais rov 5e, eK ^uAtjs rrfS Se, erei rcfSe, fi.rji'i rifSf — Kada Kai Trap' Tjfxiv voWaKis rivis iv rais lenois ypa