COMMERCE OF INDIA. 



207 



inscriptions the Gandhara and Sindhu occur as tributaries to 

 the Persian empire. They are even mentioned in the army 

 of Xerxes, and Greek and Hindu met perhaps in that Grecian 

 war for the first time. 



The earliest accounts of India among Greek writers we 

 owe to Herodotos ; but, though he, and afterwards Ktesias, 

 were tolerably well acquainted with eastern countries, the 

 Greek nations, as such, did not become initiated into Indian 

 knowledge until the expeditions of the great Alexander. It 

 is doubtful, whether, the genius of the Macedonian king 

 shone brighter on a battle field or in the administration of 

 his vast empire. The interest he took in science, literature 

 and arts ; the ability he displayed in the foundation of 

 towns ; the sagacity he evinced in his behaviour towards his 

 newly acquired subjects ; all these are objects of praise and 

 admiration. It was he who removed the mean barriers 

 placed by the Achaemenides in the grand old river ; it was he, 

 who intended Babylon, which had, in former times, been a 

 great emporium of the Indian trade from the East and from 

 the South, to become the commercial metropolis and the 

 residence of his realm. His untimely death proved fatal to 

 the execution of his vast designs. His successor in Asia, 

 Seleukos Nikanor, abandoned Alexander's projects respecting 

 Babylon, and built a new capital, which he named Seleukeia. 

 In the course of time, Seleukos ceded the most eastern part 

 of his empire to Candragupta, and a friendly intercourse 

 ensued between the Seleukides and the Indian kings. 

 Megasthenes, the ambassador of Seleukos at the court of 

 Candragupta wrote at the beginning of the third century 

 his work on India, but only fragments have reached us, 

 otherwise it would have proved a most valuable contribution 

 to our knowledge of India. The same fate shared the 

 writings of Onesikritos, who, a companion of Alexander the 

 Great, had been his envoy to the Indian Gymnosphiste&. 



32 



