164 EPOCHS IN IHE HISTORY OP THE CONTEMPLATION 



eeat of the higher Indian civilisation. Seleucus Nicator, 

 the founder of the great empire of the Seleucidse, was the 

 first who advanced from Babylon towards the Ganges, and 

 by the repeated missions of Megasthenes to Pataliputra ( 254 ) 

 connected himself by political relations with the powerful 

 Sandracottus (Chandragupta) . 



Thus first arose an animated and lasting contact with 

 the civilised parts of the Madhya-desa (" the central land"). 

 There were indeed in the Pendschab (Punjaub, or Pentapo- 

 tamia) learned Brahmins living as hermits. We do not know, 

 however, whether those Brahmins and Gymnosophists were 

 acquainted with the fine Indian system of numbers, in which 

 t few characters receive their value merely by "posi- 

 tion " nor are we even certain whether at that period the 

 method of assigning value by position was known even in 

 the most cultivated parts of India, although it is highly 

 probable that such was the case. "What a revolution would 

 have been effected in the more rapid development of 

 mathematical knowledge, and in the facilities of its appli- 

 cation, if the Brahmin Sphines (called by the Greeks Calanos) 

 who accompanied Alexander's army; or at a later period, 

 in the time of Augustus, the Brahmin Bargosa, before 

 they voluntarily ascended the funeral pile at Susa and at 

 Athens, had been able to communicate the knowledge of 

 the Indian system of numbers to the Greeks, so that 

 it might have been brought into general use ! The acute 

 and comprehensive researches of Chasles have indeed shewn, 

 that what is called the method of the Pythagorean Abacus 

 or Algorismus, as we find it described in Boethius' Geo- 

 metry, is almost identical with the position- value of the 



