Date of the Jain Scriptures. minerals being endowed with souls, finds no place in Buddhist philosophy.1 Jacobi believes that the Jain texts were composed or collected at the end of the 4th century B.C.; that the origin of the extant Jain literature cannot be placed earlier than about 300 B.C.; and that their sacred books were reduced to writing in the 5th century A.D.2 He thinks that the two existing divisions of the Jains, the Swetambaras and the Digambaras, separated from each other about two or three hundred years after the death of the Founder; but 'that the development of the Jain church has not been at any time violently interrupted.' That, in fact, we can follow this development from its true indepen- beginning through its various stages, and that Jainism is as much independent from other sects, especially from Buddhism, as can be expected from any sect.' 3 Jains an dent sect. Modern Jainism. Survivals ism in India. In its superficial aspects, modern Jainism may be described as a religion allied in doctrine to ancient Indian Buddhism, but humanized by saint-worship, and narrowed from a national religion to the exclusive requirements of a sect. The noblest survivals of Buddhism in India are to be found. of Buddh- however, not among any peculiar body, but in the religion of the people; in that principle of the brotherhood of man, with the re-assertion of which each new revival of Hinduism starts; in the asylum which the great Vaishnav sect affords to women who have fallen victims to caste rules, to the widow and the outcast; in that gentleness and charity to all men, which take the place of a poor-law in India, and give a high significance to the half-satirical epithet of the 'mild' Hindu. 1Op. cit. xxxiii. 2 Jacobi, op. cit. xxxv. and xliii. 3 Op. cit. xlvi. CHAPTER VI. THE GREEKS IN INDIA (327 TO 161 B.C.). RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY have been the great contributions of India to the world. We now come to deal with India, not as a centre of influence upon other nations, but as acted on by them. THE EXTERNAL HISTORY OF INDIA commences with the External Greek invasion in 327 B.C. Some indirect trade between India sources of the history and the Mediterranean seems to have existed from very ancient of India. times. Homer was acquainted with tin,1 and other articles of Indian merchandise, by their Sanskrit names; and a list has been made of Indian products mentioned in the Bible." The ship captains of Solomon and Hiram not only brought Indian apes, peacocks, and sandal-wood to Palestine; they also brought their Sanskrit names. This was about 1000 B.C. The Assyrian monuments show that the rhinoceros and elephant were among the tribute offered to Shalmaneser II. (859–823 B.C.).4 But the first Greek historian who speaks clearly of India is Early Hekataios of Miletos (549-486 B.C.); the knowledge of Hero- Greek dotos (450 B.C.) ended at the Indus; and Ktesias, the physician 549-401 (401 B.C.), brought back from his residence in Persia only a few facts about the products of India, its dyes and fabrics, monkeys and parrots. India to the east of the Indus was first made known to Europe by the historians and men of science who accompanied Alexander the Great in 327 B.C. Their narratives, although now lost, furnished materials to Strabo, Megasthenes, Pliny, and Arrian. Soon afterwards, Megasthenes, as Greek 306-298 1 Greek, Kassiteros; Sanskrit, Kastíra; hence, the Kassiterides, the Tin or Scilly Islands. Elephas, ivory, through the Arabian eleph (from Arabic el, the, and Sanskrit ibha, domestic elephant), is also cited. 2 Sir G. Birdwood's Handbook to the British Indian Section of the Paris Exhibition of 1878, pp. 22-35. For economic intercourse with ancient India, see Del Mar's History of Money in Ancient Countries, chaps. iv. and v. (1885). = 3 Hebrew, Kophim, tukijim, almugim Sanskrit, kapi, sikhí, valgukam. • Professor Max Duncker's Ancient History of India, p. 13 (ed. 1881). writers, B.C. B.C. Alexander's expedition, 327-325 B.C. ambassador resident at a court in the centre of Bengal (306-298 B.C.), had opportunities for the closest observation. The knowledge of the Greeks concerning India practically dates from his researches, 300 B.C.1 Alexander the Great entered India early in 327 B.C.; crossed the Indus above Attock, and advanced, without a struggle, over the intervening territory of the Taxiles to the Jehlam (Jhelum) (Hydaspes). He found the Punjab divided into petty kingdoms jealous of each other, and many of them inclined to join an invader rather than to oppose him. One of these local monarchs, Porus, disputed the passage of the Jehlam with a force which, substituting chariots for guns, about equalled the army of Ranjit Singh, the ruler of the Punjab in the present century. Plutarch gives a vivid description of the battle from Alexander's own letters. Having drawn up his troops at a bend of the Jehlam, about 14 miles west of the modern field of Chilianwala, the Greek general crossed under cover of a tempestuous night. The chariots hurried out by Porus stuck in the muddy margin of the river. In the engagement which followed, the elephants of the Indian prince refused to face the 3 1 The fragments of the Indika of Megasthenes, collected by Dr. Schwanbeck, with the first part of the Indika of Arrian; the Periplas Maris Erythræi, with Arrian's account of the voyage of Nearkhos; the Indika of Ktesias; and Ptolemy's chapters relating to India, have been edited in four volumes with prolegomena by Mr. J. W. M'Crindle, M.A. (Trübner, 1877, 1879, 1882, and 1885). They originally appeared in the Indian Antiquary, to which this volume and the whole Imperial Gazetteer of India are much indebted. General Cunningham's Ancient Geography of India, with its maps, and his Reports of the Archæological Survey, Vincent's Commerce and Navigation of the Ancients (2 vols. 4to, 1807), and the series of maps, on an unfortunately small scale, in GeneralLieutenant von Spruner's Historisch-Geographischen Atlas (Gotha), have also been freely availed of. 2 The Takkas, a Turanian race, the earliest inhabitants of RAWAL PINDI DISTRICT. They gave their name to the town of Takshásila or Taxila, which Alexander found a rich and populous city, the largest between the Indus and Hydaspes,' identified with the ruins of DERI SHAHAN. Taki or Asarúr, on the road between Lahore and Pindi Bhatiyán, was the capital of the Punjab in 633 A.D. When names are printed in capitals, the object is to refer the reader to the fuller information given in the Imperial Gazetteer of India. 3 Namely, 30,000 efficient infantry; 4000 horse; 300 chariots; 200 elephants' [Professor Cowell]. The Greeks probably exaggerated the numbers of the enemy. Alexander's army numbered 'about 50,000, including 5000 Indian auxiliaries under Mophis of Taxila.'-General Cunningham, Anc. Geog. of India, p. 172. See his lucid account of the battle, with an excellent map, pp. 159-177, ed. 1871. And about 30 miles south-west of Jehlam town. ALEXANDER IN INDIA, 327-325 B.C. 165 Punjab, 327-326 Greeks, and, wheeling round, trampled his own army under foot. His son fell early in the onset; Porus himself fled wounded; but on tendering his submission, he was confirmed in his kingdom, and became the conqueror's trusted friend. Alexander built two memorial cities on the scene of his victory, -Bucephala on the west bank, near the modern JALALPUR, named after his beloved charger, Bucephalus, slain in the battle; and Nikaia, the present MONG, on the east side of the river. Alexander advanced south-east through the kingdom of the Alexander younger Porus to Amritsar, and after a sharp bend backward in the to the west, to fight the Kathaei at Sangala, he reached the Beas (Hyphasis). Here, at a spot not far from the modern B.C. battle-field of Sobráon, he halted his victorious standards.1 He had resolved to march to the Ganges; but his troops were worn out by the heats of the Punjab summer, and their spirits broken by the hurricanes of the south-west monsoon. native tribes had already risen in his rear, and the Conqueror of the World was forced to turn back, before he had crossed even the frontier Province of India. The Sutlej, the eastern Districts of the Punjab, and the mighty Jumna, still lay between him and the Ganges. A single defeat might have been fatal to his army; if the battle on the Jehlam had gone against him, not a Greek would probably have reached the Afghán side of the passes. Yielding at length to the clamour of his men, he led them back to the Jehlam. He there embarked 8000 of his troops in boats previously prepared, and floated them down the river; the remainder marched in two divisions along the banks. The 325 B.C. The country was hostile, and the Greeks held only the Alexander land on which they encamped. At Múltán, then as now the in Sind, capital of the Southern Punjab, Alexander had to fight a pitched battle with the Malli, and was severely wounded in taking the city. His enraged troops put every soul within it to the sword. Farther down, near the confluence of the five rivers of the Punjab, he made a long halt, built a town,-Alexandria, the modern Uchh,-and received the submission of the neighbouring States. A Greek garrison and Satrap, whom he here left behind, laid the foundation of a more lasting influence. Having constructed a new fleet, suitable for the greater rivers on which he was now to embark, he proceeded southwards through Sind, and followed the course of the Indus until he reached 1 The change in the course of the Sutlej has altered its old position relative to the Beas at this point. The best small map of Alexander's route is No. v. in General Cunningham's Anc. Ge›g. of India, p. 104, ed. 1871. Leaves 325 B.C. Results of 327-325 B. C. the ocean. In the apex of the delta he founded or refounded a city-Patala-which survives to this day as Haidarábád, the native capital of Sind.1 At the mouth of the Indus, Alexander beheld for the first time the majestic phenomenon of the tides. One part of his army he shipped off under the command of Nearkhos to coast along the Persian Gulf; the other he himself led through Southern Baluchistán and Persia to Susa, where, after terrible losses from want of water and famine on the march, he arrived in 325 B.C.2 During his two years' campaign in the Punjab and Sind, Greek ex- Alexander captured no province, but he made alliances, pedition, founded cities, and planted Greek garrisons. He had transferred much territory from the tribes whom he had halfsubdued, to the chiefs and confederations who were devoted to his cause. Every petty court had its Greek faction; and the detachments which he left behind at various positions from the Afghán frontier to the Beas, and from near the base of the Himalayas to the Sind delta, were visible pledges of his At Taxila (DERI-SHAHAN) and Nikaia (MONG) in the Northern Punjab; at Alexandria (UCHH) in the Southern Punjab; at Patala (HAIDARABAD) in Sind; and at other points along his route, he established military settlements of Greeks or their allies. A body of his troops remained in Bactria. In Seleukos, the partition of the Empire after Alexander's death in 323 B.C., Bactria and India eventually fell to Seleukos Nikator, the founder of the Syrian monarchy. 323-312 B. C. Chandra 326 B.C.; return. Meanwhile, a new power had arisen in India. Among the Indian adventurers who thronged Alexander's camp in the Punjab, each with his plot for winning a kingdom or crushing a rival, Chandra Gupta, an exile from the Gangetic valley, seems to have played a somewhat ignominious part. He tried to tempt the wearied Greeks on the banks of the Beas with ' For its interesting appearances in ancient history, see General Cunningham's Anc. Geog. of India, pp. 279-287, under Patala or Nirankot. It appears variously as Pattala, Pattalene, Pitasila, etc. It was formerly identified with Tatta (Thatha), near to where the western arm of the Indus bifurcates. See also M'Crindle's Commerce and Navigation of the Erythræan Sea, p. 156 (Trübner, 1879). An excellent map of Alexander's campaign in Sind is given at p. 248 of Cunningham's Anc. Geog. of India. 2 The stages down the Indus and along the Persian coast, with the geographical features and incidents of Nearkhos' Voyage, are given in the second part of the Indika of Arrian, chapter xviii. to the end. The river stages and details are of value to the student of the modern delta of the Indus. M'Crindle's Commerce and Navigation of the Erythraan Sea, pp. 153-224 (1879). |