Mr. Heitland has the following note on this passage: “Arrian (v. 16, sec. 2) tells us that Alexander was making a flanking movement (παρήλαυνεν) with the bulk of his cavalry to attack the enemy’s left wing. He then goes on (sec. 3):Against the right wing he sent Koinos at the head of his own regiment of horse and that of Dêmêtrios, and ordered him, when the barbarians on seeing what a dense mass of cavalry was opposed to them, should be riding along to encounter it, to hang close upon their rear,[411]a hard passage, it is true, but one which need not be unintelligible to any one who bears in mind that Alexander’s movement was a flanking one, and reads with care the description of his attack in c. 16, sec. 4, and c. 17, sec. 1, 2. The situation is this: Alexander was not himself in position on the right wing, but put Coenus there with some of the cavalry, while he himself with the main body made the flanking movement. This he did with speed, so as to take the Indian horse in flank, before they had time to change their front and meet him. They tried to execute this movement, but had not time; and while they were in the confusion thus brought about, Coenus fell upon what had been their front, but was now their disordered flank. Whether the Indian horse from their right wing was brought over to succour that on their left or not, does not affect the probable position of Coenus. The one difficulty in the way of this explanation is the presence, according to Arrian, 15, sec. 7, of the war-chariots in front of the Indian horse. But it seems easier to suppose that Coenus was able to elude these clumsy adversaries than that Alexander expected him to see from the Macedonian left the right moment for his own charge, and then wheel round the rear of the whole Indian army and execute his orders opportunely. Diodorus, xvii. 88, says:The Macedonian cavalry began the action, and destroyed nearly all the chariots of the Indians.[412]If thisrefers, as I think it does, to the beginning of the main battle, the chief objection is removed” (Alexander in India, pp. 122, 123). This explanation is different from that offered by Moberly, as the reader will see by referring to my note on Arrian,p. 104,n.2.
Diodôros gives the length of the serpents at sixteen cubits, or about twenty-four feet. Ailianos also gives this as their length. He says (xvii. 2): “Kleitarchos states that about India a serpent sixteen cubits long is produced, but mentions there is another kind which differs in appearance from the rest. They are many sizes shorter, and display to the eye a variety of colours, as if they were painted with pigments. Stripes extend from the head to the tail, and are of various colours, some tinted like bronze, some like silver, some like gold, while others are crimson. The same writer notices that their bite proves very quickly fatal.” Arrian in hisIndika(c. 15) states on the authority of Nearchos that there are serpents in India spotted and nimble in their movements, and that one was caught which measured about sixteen cubits, though the Indians alleged that the largest snakes were much larger. Nearchos adds that Alexander summoned to his camp all the Indians most expert in the healing art, and that these succeeded in curing snake-bites, to find a remedy for which quite baffled the skill of all the Greek physicians. Strabo relates (XV. i. 28), that Abisaros, as the ambassadors he sent to Alexander reported, kept two serpents, one of 80 cubits, and the other, according to Onesikritos, of 140 cubits in length; but Strabo no more believed in this land-serpent than we do in the sea-serpent, for he adds that Onesikritos might as well be called the master-fabulist as the master-pilot of Alexander. He afterwards says that Aristoboulos saw a snake nine cubits and a span long, and that he himself while in Egypt had seen another of the same length which had been brought from India. Megasthenes wrote that serpents in India grow to such a size that they swallow deer and oxen whole. He referred no doubt to the python. The python of the Sunderbuns about the mouths of the Ganges are known to swallow deer whole. The Elzevir editor of Curtius cites statements about the size of Indian serpents which leave the extravagant estimate of Onesikritos far behind. Thus Maximus Tyrius (Dissert.38) says: “Taxiles showed Alexander various wonders, and among these was a very large animal sacred to Bacchus, to which the Indians every dayimmolated victims. This animal was a serpent (draco), of such a size that it equalled five acres of land.”
The peacock (mayûra) abounds in India especially in the forests at the foot of the Himalayas. Ailianos has several notices of it in his work on animals. In Book v. 21, after he has described its habits, and the pride it takes in displaying its gorgeous plumage, he states that it was brought into Greece from the barbarians. Being for a long time rare, it was exhibited at the beginning of each month to the men and women of Athens who were lovers of the beautiful. The charge for admission to the spectacle was a considerable source of gain. The price of a pair (cock and hen) was a thousand drachmas (or about £40 of our money). Alexander the Macedonian, on seeing these birds in India, was so struck with admiration of their beauty that he denounced the severest penalties against any one who should kill them. In Book xvi. 2 he notes that the Indian peacocks are the largest to be anywhere found. In xiii. 18 he says: “In the palace where the greatest of all the Indian kings resides, besides many things else which excite admiration, eclipsing the splendour alike of Memnonian Sousa and all the boasted magnificence of Ekbatana, there are reared in the Royal Park tame peacocks and tame pheasants.... Within that park are shady groves, grassy meads planted with trees, and bowers woven by the craft of skilful woodmen. So genial withal is the climate, that the trees are ever green, and never show signs of age, nor even shed their leaves. Some are native to the soil, while others which are brought with great care from foreign parts, contribute to enhance the beauty of the landscape. Not the olive, however, which is neither indigenous to India, nor thrives if brought into it. The park is therefore frequented by wild birds as well as by the tame. They seek its groves from choice, and there build their nests and rear their young. Parrots too are bred there, which, flitting to and fro, keep hovering around the king. Notwithstanding they are so numerous, no Indian will eat them, for they regard them as sacred, while the Brahmans esteem them above all other birds, and with good reason, since the parrot alone with a clear utterance repeats the words of human speech.” In xi. 33 he tells a story about a peacock of extraordinary size and beauty, which had been sent from India as a present to the King of Egypt, who thereupon dedicated the bird to Jupiter, the guardian god of hiscapital city. His work has several other passages which refer to the peacock; but as these have no bearing upon India we do not cite them. The bird was introduced into Greece long before Alexander’s time, for Dêmos, the friend of Perikles, reared peacocks at Athens, which many people came from Lacedaemon and Thessaly to see, as we learn from Athenaios, ix. 12. It is said that peacocks were first introduced into Greece from Samos.
A breed of dogs, large, powerful, and of untamable ferocity, is still found in the parts of India here mentioned.[413]Pliny, speaking of these Indian dogs, ascribes their savage disposition to the cause mentioned by Diodôros, the tiger blood that runs in their veins. The Indians, he says (viii. 40), assert that these dogs are begotten from tigers, for which purpose the bitches when in heat are tied up amid the woods. They think that the whelps of the first and second brood are too ferocious, but they rear those of the third. Ailianos (viii. 1) varies this statement by saying that tigers are the offspring of the first and second connection, but dogs of the third. He then proceeds thus: “Dogs that boast a tiger paternity disdain to hunt deer or to enter into an encounter with a wild boar, but delight to assail the lion as if to show their high pedigree. So the Indians gave Alexander, the son of Philip, a proof of the strength and mettle of these dogs in the manner following: They let go a deer, but the dog never stirred; then a boar, but he still remained impassive. Then they tried a bear, but even this failed to rouse him to action. At last they let go a lion. Then the dog fired with rage, as if he now saw a worthy antagonist, did not hesitate for a moment, but flew to encounter him, gripped him fast, and tried to strangle him. Then the Indian who provided this spectacle for the king, and who knew well the dog’s capacity of endurance, ordered his tail to be cut off. It was accordingly cut off, but the dog took not the least heed. The Indian ordered next one of his legs to be cut off. This was done, but the dog held to his grip as tenaciously as at first, just as if the dismembered limb were not his own, but belonged to some one else. The remaining legs were then cut off in succession, but even all this did not in the least make him relax the vigour of his bite. Last of all, his head was severed from the rest of his body, but even then his teeth were seen hanging on bythe part he had first gripped, while the head dangled aloft still clinging to the lion, though the original biter no longer existed. Alexander was very painfully impressed by what he saw, being lost in admiration of the dog, since after giving proof of his mettle he perished in no cowardly fashion, but preferring to die rather than to let his courage give way. The Indian, seeing the king’s vexation, gave him four dogs like the one that was killed. He was much gratified with the gift, and gave in return a suitable equivalent. Joy at the possession of the four dogs soon obliterated from the mind of Philip’s son his sorrow for the other.” The same author writes nearly to the same effect in the nineteenth chapter of his fourth book: “I reckon Indian dogs among wild beasts, for they are of surpassing strength and ferocity, and are the largest of all dogs. This dog despises other animals, but fights with the lion, withstands his attacks, returns his roaring with baying, and gives him bite for bite. In such an encounter the dog may be worsted, but not till he has often severely galled and wounded the lion. The lion is, however, at times worsted by the Indian dog and killed in the chase. If a dog once clutches a lion, he retains his hold so pertinaciously that if one should even cut off his leg with a knife he will not let go, however severe may be the pain he suffers, till death supervening compels him.” Aristotle, in hisHistory of Animals(viii. 28), refers to these Indian dogs and the story of their tigrine descent. Even an earlier mention of them is to be found in Xenophon (Kyn.c. 10). We may hence infer that their fame had spread to Greece long before Alexander’s time. Marco Polo mentions a province in China where the people had a large breed of dogs so fierce and bold that two of them together would attack a lion—an animal with which that province abounded (Yule’s ed. ii. pp. 108, 109).
This people occupied the country about the mouths of the Ganges, and may best be described as the inhabitants of Lower Bengal. The likeness of their name to that of the Gandaridai, the people of Gandhâra, whose seats were in the neighbourhood of the Indus and the Kôphên or Kâbul river, has been the source of much confusion and error. Fortunately the notice of them in theIndikaof Megasthenes has been preserved both by Pliny and Solinus, from whom we learn that they were a branch of the great race of the Calingae, that their capital was Parthalis (Bardwan?), and that their king had an army of 60,000 foot, 1000 horse, and700 elephants, which was always ready for action (Pliny, vi. 18; Solin. 52). They are mentioned in Ptolemy’sGeographyas a people who dwelt about the mouth of the Ganges and whose capital was Gangê. The name of theGangaridaihas nothing corresponding with it in Sanskrit, nor can it be, as Lassen supposed, a designation first invented by the Greeks, for Phegelas used it in describing to Alexander the races that occupied the regions beyond the Hyphasis. According to Saint-Martin, their name is preserved in that of the Gonghrîs of S. Bihâr, with whom were connected the Gangayîs of North-Western and the Gangrâr of Eastern Bengal. These designations he takes to be but variations of the name which was originally common to them all. Wilford, in his article on the chronology of the Hindus (Asiat. Res.v. p. 269), says that “the greatest part of Bengal was known in Sanskrit under the name of Gancaradesa, or ‘country of Gancara,’ from which the Greeks made Gangari-das.” But this view must be rejected on the same ground as Lassen’s. The Gangaridai are mentioned by Virgil,Georg.iii. l. 27. As their king, at the time when Megasthenes recorded the strength of the army which he maintained, was subject to Magadha, we may infer that Sandrokottos treated the various potentates who submitted to his arms as Alexander treated Taxilês and Pôros, permitting them to retain as his vassals the power and dignity which they had previously enjoyed.
The Sanskrit wordPrâchyâs(plur. ofPrachya, “eastern”) denoted the inhabitants of the east country, that is, the country which lay to the east of the river Sarasvatî, now the Sursooty, which flows in a south-western direction from the mountains bounding the north-east part of the province of Delhi till it loses itself in the sands of the great desert. The Magadhas, it would seem, had, before Alexander’s advent to India, extended their power as far as this river, and hence were called Prâchyâs by the people who lived to the west of it. They are called by Strabo, Arrian, and Pliny,Prasioi,Prasii; by Plutarch,Praisioi; by Nikolaös Damask.,Praiisioi; by Diodôros,Brêsioi; by Curtius,Pharrasii; by Justin,Praesides. Ailianos in general writesPraisioilike Plutarch, but in one passage where he quotes Megasthenes, he transcribes the name with perfect accuracy in the adjective form asPraxiakê. General Cunningham does not agree in referring the name toPrâchya, as all the other modern writers do, but takesPrasiito be only the Greek form ofPalâsiyaorParâsiya, a “man ofPalâsaorParâsa,” a name ofMagadhaof which Palibothra was the capital. This derivation, he says, is supported by the spelling of the name given by Curtius, who calls the peoplePharrasii, an almost exact transcript of Parâsiya (see hisAncient Geog. of India, p. 454). His view, we think, is hardly destined to supplant the other. Ptolemy describes in hisGeographya small kingdom with seven cities which he locates in the regions of the upper Ganges, and calls Prasiakê. Kanoge is one of these cities, but Palibothra is not in the number, appearing elsewhere as the capital of the Mandalai. One is at a loss to understand what considerations could have led Ptolemy to push the Prasians so far from their proper seats and transfer their capital to another people.
The Sanskrit wordŚividenotes a country, the inhabitants of which,Sivayas, may be the Sibi of Curtius and Diodôros. The Sibi inhabited a district between the Hydaspês and the Indus, and their capital stood at a distance of about thirty miles from the former river, and, as appears from Diodôros, above its confluence with the Akesinês. As they were clad with the skins of wild beasts and were armed with clubs, they reminded the Greeks of Herakles, who was similarly dressed and armed, and thence arose the legend that the Sibi were the descendants of the followers of that wandering hero. The truth, however, is that the Sibi represent one of the chief aboriginal tribes of the regions of the Indus. The Sanskrit poems and the Pauranik traditions give this great tribe its real nameŚibi, and represent it as one of the important branches of the race which originally peopled all the north-western region. According to Moorcroft, the inhabitants of the district of Bimber are called Chibs, while Baber in hisMemoirshad mentioned a people so named as belonging to the same parts. Arrian does not expressly mention Alexander’s expedition against the Sibi in hisHistory, but in hisIndika(c. 5) he thus refers to them: “So also when the Greeks came among theSibai, an Indian tribe, and observed that they wore skins, they declared that theSibaiwere descended from those who belonged to the expedition of Herakles, and had been left behind; for besides being dressed in skins, theSibaicarry a cudgel and brand on their oxen the representation of a club.” In the ordinary texts of Curtius theSibiappears as theSobii, and in Justin as theSilei. They are mentioned in theHistoryof Orosius (iii. 19), along with a people called Gessonae, who are evidently the people called by Diodôros theAgalassi.
Curtius does not give the name of the people whom Alexander proceeded to attack after he had received the submission of the Sibi, but it is supplied by Diodôros, who calls them Agalasseis. Saint-Martin says (Étude, p. 115) that they adjoined the eastern side of the Sibi and occupied the country below the junction of the Hydaspês and Akesinês. ThoughAgalassiis the most commonly received reading of their name, yet there are many variant readings of it, especially in the manuscripts and editions of Justin, where we findAgesinae,Hiacensanae,Argesinae,Agini,Acensoni, andGessonae. The last form occurs also in theHistoryof Orosius (iii. 19), where the people it designates are mentioned along with the Sibi. The original name to which these may be referred is probablyArjunâyana. This name occurs between that of the Mâlava (Malloi) and that of the Yaudheyas on the Pillar at Allahabad, whereon Samudragupta, who reigned towards the end of the 4th centuryA.D., inscribed the names of the countries and peoples included in his dominions. The Arjunâyana are mentioned also by the Scholiast of Pânini, and in the geographical list which Wilford compiled from theVarâha Sanhita. Arrian in hisIndika(c. 4) calls the people situated at the junction of the Hydaspês and Akesinês theArispai(Ibid.p. 116, and footnotes).
Several Indian rivers present the tidal phenomenon called thebore, the most celebrated being those of the Brahmaputra, the Ganges, the Nerbada, and the Indus. The bore is sometimes many feet in height, and the noise it makes in contending against the descending stream frightful. The bore which rushes up the Hughli has a speed of about seventeen or eighteen miles per hour. A vivid description of the tide or bore of the Nerbada has been given by the author of thePeriplûs. “India,” he says (c. 45), “has everywhere an abundance of rivers, and her seas ebb and flow with tides of extraordinary strength, which increase both at new and full moon, and for three days after each, but fall off intermediately. About Barygaza (Bharoch) they are more violent than elsewhere; so that all of a sudden you see the depths laid bare and portions of the land turned into sea, and the sea where ships were sailing but just before turned without warning into dry land. The rivers, again, on the access of flood-tide rushing into their channels with the whole body of the sea,are driven upwards against their natural course for a great many miles with a force that is irresistible.” In c. 46, after explaining how dangerous these tides are to ships navigating the Nerbada, he thus proceeds: “But at new moons, especially when they occur in conjunction with a night tide, the flood sets in with such extraordinary violence that on its beginning to advance, even though the sea be calm, its roar is heard by those living near the river’s mouth, sounding like the tumult of battle heard in the distance, and soon after the sea with its hissing waves bursts over the bare shoals.”
Arrian has given the account here promised of the Indian sages, whom he callsSophists, in the eleventh chapter of hisIndika. They formed the highest and most honoured of the seven castes into which, he says, Indian society was divided. His account is, however, very meagre compared with that which Strabo, quoting from the same authority, Megasthenes, has given in the fifteenth book of hisGeography. We may subjoin a notice of the more important points. The philosophers were of two kinds, the Brachmânes and the Garmanes (Śramanas, i. e.Buddhist ascetics). The Brachmans were held in greater repute, as they agreed more exactly in their opinions. They lived in a grove outside the city, lay upon pallets of straw and on skins, abstained from animal food and sexual intercourse. After living thirty-seven years in this manner each individual retired to his own possessions, led a life of greater freedom, and married as many wives as he pleased. They discoursed much upon death, which they held to be for philosophers a birth into a real and happy life. They maintained that nothing which happens to a man is bad or good, opinions being merely dreams. On many points their notions coincided with those of the Greeks. They said, for instance, that the world was created and liable to destruction, that it was of a spheroidal figure, and that its Creator governed it and was diffused through all its parts. They invented fables also, after the manner of Plato, on the immortality of the soul, punishments in Hades, and similar topics. Of the Śramanas the most honourable were the Hylobioi. These, as their name imports, lived in woods, where they subsisted on leaves and wild fruits. They were clothed with garments made of the bark of trees, and abstained from commerce with women and from wine. The kings held communication with them by messengers, and through them worshipped the divinity. Next in honour to the Hylobioi were the physicians, who cured diseases by diet ratherthan by medicinal remedies, which were chiefly unguents and cataplasms. See XV. i. 58-60.
Arrian, in the opening chapters of the seventh book of hisAnabasis, gives an account of Alexander’s dealings with the Gymnosophists of Taxila which agrees in substance with that given by Strabo (XV. i. 61-65) based on the authority both of Aristoboulos and Onesikritos, the latter of whom was sent by Alexander to converse with the gymnosophists. For the details seeBiog. Appendix,s.v.Kalânos.
But Diodôros, in a subsequent part of his history (xix. 33), relates that the law had been enacted because of the great prevalence of the practice of wives poisoning their husbands. In c. 34 he states that the two widows of Kêteus, an Indian general who fell in the great battle in Gabienê between Eumenes and Antigonos, contended for the honour of being burned on the funeral pile of their husband, and that the younger was selected for the distinction, because the elder, being at the time with child, was precluded by law from immolating herself. Strabo says (XV. i. 62) that Aristoboulos and other writers make mention of Indian wives burning themselves voluntarily with their husbands.
From this it would appear that this cruel practice, known asSuttee(Sansk.satî, “a devoted wife”), which was suppressed by the humanity of the Indian Government in the days of Lord Bentinck, was one of high antiquity, but Mr. R. C. Dutt, in his able and learned work onCivilisation in Ancient India, assigns a much later date to its origin. He says (vol. iii. 199) that the barbarous rite was introduced centuries after Manu, whoseInstitutes, he thinks, were compiled within a century or two before or after the Christian aera. In a subsequent passage (p. 332) he states that Suttee was originally a Scythian custom, and was probably introduced into India by the Scythian invaders who poured into India in the Buddhist age (from 242B.C.to 500A.D.), and formed ruling Hindu races later on. There can be no doubt that Suttee was a Scythian practice. Their kings were entombed with sacrifices both of beasts and of human beings of both sexes, as we see from what Herodôtos relates in the seventy-first chapter of his fourth book. Still the statement of Diodôros shows that several centuries before the Skythian invasions of India took place Suttee was an established institution among a race of the purest Aryan descent such as were the Kathaians—a people whose name shows they were Kshatriyas. The Hindus themselvesbelieve that the custom was of the very highest antiquity, and that a text of theRig-vedasanctioned its observance. It has been discovered, however, that the text in question has been falsified and mistranslated, and that in point of fact no mention is found of the custom in Sanskrit literature till the Pauranik period, the beginning of which Mr. Dutt assigns to the sixth century of our aera.
Fig. 16.—Antimachos.
Fig. 16.—Antimachos.
Fig. 17.—Agathoklès.
Fig. 17.—Agathoklès.
Fig. 18.—Helioklês.
Fig. 18.—Helioklês.
The following remarks on the ancient coinage of India are extracted from two papers contributed by Mr. W. Theobald to theJournal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, Nos. III. and IV. of 1890, under the titleNotes on some of the Symbols found on the Punch-marked Coins of Hindustan:—“The punch-marked coins,” he says, “though presenting neither kings’ names, dates, nor inscriptions of any sort, are nevertheless very interesting not only from their being the earliest money coined in India, and of a purely indigenous character, but from their being stamped with a number of symbols, some of which we can with the utmost confidence declare to have originated in distant lands and in the remotest antiquity. The punch used to produce these coins differed from the ordinary dies which subsequently came into use in that they covered only one of the many symbols usually seen on their pieces. Some of these coins were round and others of a rectangular form. The great bulk of these coins is silver (but some copper, and others gold). Some coins are formed of a copper blank thickly covered with silver before receiving the impression of the punches, and this contemporary sophistication of the currency is found to occur subsequently in various Indian coinages, in the Graeco-Bactrian of the Panjâb, the Hindu kings of Cabul,etc.” Mr. Theobald thinks we may regard these pieces as a portion of those very coins (or identical in all respects) which the Brahman Chânakya, the adviser of Chandragupta, with the view of raising resources, converted, by recoining eachKahapanainto eight, and amassed eighty kotis ofKahapanas(or Kârshâpanas). Mr. Theobald holds that the square coins, both silver and copper, struck by the Greeks for their Indian possessions belong to no Greek national type whatever, but are obviously a novelty adopted in imitation of an indigenous currency already firmly established in the country. He adduces by way of proof the testimony of Curtius, where he states that Taxiles offered Alexander eighty talents of coined silver (signati argenti). What other, he asks, except these punch-marked coins could these pieces of coined silver have been? The name, he then adds, by which these coins are spoken of in the BuddhistSutrasabout 200B.C.was “purana” =old, whence General Cunningham argues that the wordold, as applied to the indigenousKarsha, was used to distinguish it from the new and more recent issues of the Greeks. Mr. Vincent A. Smith writes to the same effect. He considers the artistic coins to be of Greek origin, but holds that the idea of coining money, and the simple mechanical processes for rudecoins, were not borrowed from the Greeks. It is, he thinks, impossible to prove that any given piece is older than Alexander, though some primitive coins may be older. The oldest Indian coins to which a date can be assigned are, in his opinion, those issued by Sôphytes, the contemporary of Alexander. The general adoption of Greek, or Graeko-Roman types of coinage, he assigns to the first century as a result of the Indo-Skythian invasions. Roman coins, it is well known, are found in all parts of India. In Indian writings the Romandênâriusappears in the formdînâra, and the Greekdrachmê(which was about equivalent in value to thedenarius) in the formdramma. The subject of the Indo-Greek coinage is discussed in A. v. Sallet’sDie Nachfolger Alexanders.
Fig. 19.—Apollodotos.
Fig. 19.—Apollodotos.
Transliteration.— ...... yu Ichha shavabhu .... shayama shamachaliyaṁ madava ti. Iyaṁ vu mu ...Devânaṁ Piyeshâ ye dhaṁmavijaye she cha punâ ladhe Devânaṁ Pi ... chashaveshu cha ateshu a shashu pi yojanashateshu ata Atiyoge nâma Yona lâjâ palaṁ châ tenâAṁtiyogenâ chatâli 4 lajâne Tulamaye nâma Aṁtekine nâma Makâ nâ ma Alikyashudale nâma, nichaṁ Choḍa-Paṁḍiyâ avam Taṁbapaṁniyâ hevameva hevamevâHidâlâjâ. Viśa-Vaji-Yona-Kaṁbijeshu Nâbhake Nabhapaṁtishu Boja-PitinikyeshuAdha-Puladeshu shavatâ Devânaṁ Piyashâ dhaṁṁamânushathi anuvataṁti.Fig. 20.—Aśôka Inscription.Translation.—The following is considered of the highest importance by the God-beloved, namely Conquest by law; this Conquest, however, is made by the God-beloved as well here (in his own kingdom) as among all his neighbours, even as far as six hundred yojanas (leagues), where the King of the Yonas (Greeks), Antiyoka by name, dwells; and beyond this Antiyoka where the four kings, Turamaya by name, Aṁtikina by name, Maka by name, Alikasudara by name (dwell farther away) in the south, where the Chodas and Paindas (Pandyas) (dwell), as far as Tambapanini (Ceylon) (where) the Hida king (dwells). Among the Viśas, the Vajris (Vrijis), the Yonas (Greeks), the Kamboyas (Kâbulîs), in Nâbhaka of the Nâbhitis, among the Bhojas, the Pitinikas, the Andhras and the Puladas (Pulindas), the teaching of the law of the God-beloved is universally followed.
Transliteration.— ...... yu Ichha shavabhu .... shayama shamachaliyaṁ madava ti. Iyaṁ vu mu ...
Devânaṁ Piyeshâ ye dhaṁmavijaye she cha punâ ladhe Devânaṁ Pi ... cha
shaveshu cha ateshu a shashu pi yojanashateshu ata Atiyoge nâma Yona lâjâ palaṁ châ tenâ
Aṁtiyogenâ chatâli 4 lajâne Tulamaye nâma Aṁtekine nâma Makâ nâ ma Alikyashudale nâma, nichaṁ Choḍa-Paṁḍiyâ avam Taṁbapaṁniyâ hevameva hevamevâ
Hidâlâjâ. Viśa-Vaji-Yona-Kaṁbijeshu Nâbhake Nabhapaṁtishu Boja-Pitinikyeshu
Adha-Puladeshu shavatâ Devânaṁ Piyashâ dhaṁṁamânushathi anuvataṁti.
Fig. 20.—Aśôka Inscription.
Fig. 20.—Aśôka Inscription.
Translation.—The following is considered of the highest importance by the God-beloved, namely Conquest by law; this Conquest, however, is made by the God-beloved as well here (in his own kingdom) as among all his neighbours, even as far as six hundred yojanas (leagues), where the King of the Yonas (Greeks), Antiyoka by name, dwells; and beyond this Antiyoka where the four kings, Turamaya by name, Aṁtikina by name, Maka by name, Alikasudara by name (dwell farther away) in the south, where the Chodas and Paindas (Pandyas) (dwell), as far as Tambapanini (Ceylon) (where) the Hida king (dwells). Among the Viśas, the Vajris (Vrijis), the Yonas (Greeks), the Kamboyas (Kâbulîs), in Nâbhaka of the Nâbhitis, among the Bhojas, the Pitinikas, the Andhras and the Puladas (Pulindas), the teaching of the law of the God-beloved is universally followed.
This remarkable edict is found inscribed at four different places: Shahbâzgarhi in Yusufzai, Mânsahra in Hazâra of the Panjâb, Kâlsi above Dehra Dûn, and Girnâr in Kathiawâr. In the first two places the character employed is the Karoshtri, that is, the Baktrian Pali, and in the other two the Indian Pali. It is the Kâlsi inscription which is copied in the illustration. By the God-beloved (Piyeshâ or Piyadasi) is meant Aśôka himself. The Grecian kings named in the inscription have already been identified (p. 52), with the exception of Alikyashudale, who is taken to be Alexander, King of Epeiros.v.Senart’sLes Inscriptions de PiyadasiandEpigraphia Indica, vol. ii.