INFLUENCE OF THE MACEDONIAN CAMPAIGNS. 635 



higher Indian civilisation. Seleucus Nicator, the founder of 

 the great empire of the Seleucidao, penetrated from Babylon 

 towards the Ganges, and established political relations with 

 the powerful Sandrocottus (Tschandraguptas), by means of the 

 repeated missions of Megasthcnes to Pataliputra.* 



In this manner a more animated and lasting contact was 

 established with the most civilised 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 num- 

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

 position, or whether, as we may however conjecture, the 

 value of position was already at that time known in the 

 most civilised portions of India. What a revolution would 

 have been effected in the more rapid development and the 

 easier application of mathematical knowledge, if the Brahmin 

 Sphines, who accompanied Alexander, and who was known in 

 the army by the name of Calanos, or at a later period in the 

 time of Augustus, the Brahmin Bargosa, before they volun- 

 tarily ascended 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 investi- 

 gations 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 continued devoid of practical utility 

 among the Greeks and Romans, first obtained general appli- 

 cation in the middle ages, and especially when the zero had 

 been substituted for a vacant space. The most beneficent 

 discoveries have often required centuries before they were 

 recognised and fully developed. 



Lassen, Ind. AlterthumsL, bd. i. B. 5, 10, and 93. The ancient Indian 

 free states, the territories of the " kingless" (condemned by orthodox 

 eastern poets), wers situated between the Hydraotes and the Hyphasil 

 (the present Ravi aud Beas). 



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



