Ctesias: On India

Ctesias: On India
Author: Andrew Nichols
Publisher: A&C Black
Total Pages: 190
Release: 2013-11-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 1472519973

A Greek doctor serving at the court of the Persian king Artaxerxes II in the fifth century BC, Ctesias met travellers and visitors from the far eastern reaches of the Persian Empire, merchants from along the Silk Road and Indians from near the Indus Valley. His Indika (On India), was the first monograph ever written on India by a western author, introducing its readers to such fantastic creatures as the unicorn and the martichora, along with real life subjects such as the parrot and the art of falconry. Confirming pre-existing conceptions of what were considered to be the edges of the earth, Ctesias' Indika helped shape the Greek view of India. This English translation is accompanied by explanatory notes and includes all extant fragments of the Indika, as well as fragments of Ctesias' other minor works.

The Greek Experience of India

The Greek Experience of India
Author: Richard Stoneman
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 548
Release: 2021-06-08
Genre: History
ISBN: 0691217475

An exploration of how the Greeks reacted to and interacted with India from the third to first centuries BCE. When the Greeks and Macedonians in Alexander's army reached India in 326 BCE, they entered a new and strange world. They knew a few legends and travelers' tales, but their categories of thought were inadequate to encompass what they witnessed. The plants were unrecognizable, their properties unknown. The customs of the people were various and puzzling. While Alexander's conquest was brief, ending with his death in 323 BCE, the Greeks would settle in the Indian region for the next two centuries, forging an era of productive interactions between the two cultures. The Greek Experience of India explores the various ways that the Greeks reacted to and constructed life in India during this fruitful period. From observations about botany and mythology to social customs, Richard Stoneman examines the surviving evidence of those who traveled to India. Most particularly, he offers a full and valuable look at Megasthenes, ambassador of the Seleucid king Seleucus to Chandragupta Maurya, and provides a detailed discussion of Megasthenes's now-fragmentary book Indica. Stoneman considers the art, literature, and philosophy of the Indo-Greek kingdom and how cultural influences crossed in both directions, with the Greeks introducing their writing, coinage, and sculptural and architectural forms, while Greek craftsmen learned to work with new materials such as ivory and stucco and to probe the ideas of Buddhists and other ascetics.

Megasthenes' Indica

Megasthenes' Indica
Author: Richard Stoneman
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 166
Release: 2021-07-27
Genre: History
ISBN: 1000411834

This book provides a new translation of all the surviving portions of the description of India written by Megasthenes in about 310 BCE, the fullest account of Indian geography, history and customs available to the classical world. The Indica was a pioneering work of ethnography that exemplified a new direction in Hellenistic writing; India was little-known to the Greeks before the expedition of Alexander the Great in 326–325 BCE, and Megasthenes, who resided as an ambassador in the Maurya capital Pataliputra for some time, provided the classical world with most of what it knew about India. Megasthenes’ book, which became a classic in antiquity, now survives only in fragments preserved in other Greek and Latin authors. Stoneman’s work offers a reliable and accessible version of all the writings that can plausibly be ascribed to Megasthenes. His subject ranges from detailed accounts of social structure and the royal household, to descriptions of elephant hunting and Indian philosophical ideas. His book is the only written source contemporary with the Maurya kingdom of Candragupta, since writing was not in use in India at this date. This translation provides a path to clearer understanding of Greek ethnography and a valuable resource on Indian history. The book will be of value not only to classical scholars with an interest in Hellenistic history and cultural attitudes, and to their students, but also to scholars working on the early history of India, who have had to rely (unless they are also Greek scholars) on scattered and dated collections of evidence.

Ātharvaṇā

Ātharvaṇā
Author: Abhijit Ghosh
Publisher:
Total Pages: 216
Release: 2002
Genre: Vedas
ISBN:

Contributed articles.

Information Gathering in Classical Greece

Information Gathering in Classical Greece
Author: Frank Santi Russell
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
Total Pages: 290
Release: 1999
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780472110643

"Information Gathering in Classical Greece opens with chapters on tactical, strategic, and covert agents. Methods of communication are explored, from fire-signals to dead-letter drops. Frank Russell categorizes and defines the collectors and sources of information according to their era, methods, and spheres of operation, and he also provides evidence from ancient authors on interrogation and the handling and weighing of information. Counterintelligence is also explored, together with disinformation through "leaks" and agents. The author concludes this fascinating study with observations on the role that intelligence-gathering has in the kind of democratic society for which Greece has always been famous"--Publisher description.