INFLUENCE OF THE MACEDONIAN CAMPAIGNS. 169 



of higher Indian civilization. Seleucus Nicator, the founder 

 of the great empire of the Seleucidse, penetrated from Baby- 

 lon toward the Ganges, and established political relations with 

 the powerful Sandrocottus (Tschandraguptas) by means of 

 the repeated missions of Megasthenes to Pataliputra.* 



In this manner a more animated and lasting contact was 

 established with the most civilized portions of Madhya Desa 

 (the middle land). There were, indeed, learned Brahmins 

 living as anchorites in the Pendschab (Pentapotamia), but we 

 do not know whether those Brahmins and Gymnosophists were 

 acquainted with the admirable Indian system of numbers, in 

 which the value of a few signs is derived merely from position, 

 or whether, as we may however conjecture, the value of posi- 

 tion was already at that time known in the most civilized 

 portions of India. What a revolution would have been effect- 

 ed in the more rapid development and the easier application 

 of mathematical knowledge, if the Brahmin Sphines, who ac- 

 companied Alexander, and who was known in the army by 

 the name of Calanos or, at a later period, in the time of Au- 

 gustus, the Brahmin Bargosa before they voluntarily ascend- 

 ed the scaffold at Susa and Athens, could have imparted to 

 the Greeks a knowledge of the Indian system of numbers in 

 such a manner as to admit of its being brought into general 

 use ! The ingenious and comprehensive investigations of 

 Chasles have certainly shown that the method of the Abacus 

 or Algorismus of Pythagoras, as we find it explained in the 

 geometry of Boethius, was nearly identical with the Indian 

 numerical system based upon the value of position, but this 

 method, which long contimied devoid of practical utility among 

 the Greeks and Romans, first obtained general application in 

 the Middle Ages, and especially when the zero had been sub- 

 stituted for^ a vacant space. The most beneficent discoveries 

 have often required centuries before they were recognized and 

 fully developed. 



Eastern poets), were situated between the Hydraotes and the Hyphasis 

 (the present Ravi and Beas). 



* Megasthenes, Indica, ed. Schwanbeck, 1846, p. 17. 



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