sign in sign up
<<
Home , Megasthenes, Nearchus

CHAPTER FIVE

THE IRRADIATION OF THE HELLENISTIC FABLE

I. Influence ef the Greek Fable on the Indian Fable

I. Relationships between and Leaving for a moment the theme of the continuation of the Greek fable in the Latin fable, which has occupied us throughout this vol• ume and will occupy us in the following one, as well as other influences of the Greek fable that must be attributed to the Imperial Age, generally late, here we will consider the influence exercised by the Greek fable on other literatures, which could be dated, in gen• eral terms, in the Hellenistic Age. This is the influence of the Greek fable on the Indian and the Egyptian fables. We have already said that in the different versions of the Panchatantra we believe we can discern Greek influences, together with elements of Mesopotamian origin and other properly Indian ones. The same must be said of other Indian fables to which we have referred, those of the Sendebar, fables of the Mahabharata, of the ]iitaka, etc. 1 The influence of the Greek fable on the Indian one in the Hellenistic Age (and, through India, throughout the East) is a very important fact that has not received the attention it deserves. It is, in a cer• tain sense, comparable to the influence of Graeco-Buddhist art, of Hellenistic influence, on the sculpture of the East and also of the painting that we may call Graeco-Buddhist and which we know through the frescoes in the Ajanta Caves. The point of departure for all these facts is the close contact between the Indian and Greek cultures throughout the valley of the Indus and in , between the Hindu Kush and the Oxus and in Afghanistan. It is not only a question, then, of the conquest by of the Indus basin, which lasted a short time. When in the year 302 Seleucus Nicator, one of Alexander's successors, ceded

1 On these works, cf. Hausrath, art. "Fabel", cit., col. 1728 f. THE IRRADIATION OF THE HELLENISTIC FABLE 687 the territories to the East of the Indus to the Indian monarch Chandra Gupta, communication was not interrupted with a continent that extended from Afghanistan to . Seleucus married one of Chandra Gupta's daughters and , the author of a book on India that was the main source of knowledge on same for the Greek public, was an ambassador to his court. Not the only source, we must add the writings of and , who accom• panied Alexander, as well as those of Daimachus, another envoy of Seleucus, and others besides. 2 The relations between the and the Indian dynasty of the Maurya, that of Chandra Gupta, in the 3rd and 2nd centuries, were close. India was by no means an unknown region (except, partly, for Bengal and the Deccan), but was very well-known through ambas• sadors and travellers such as those mentioned. We do not know whether Chandra Gupta had representatives in the Greek courts. But Asoka, his grandson, the great king protector of Buddhism and author of the famous rock edicts that are to be found throughout his vast domains, almost the whole of India, sent ambassadors or missionaries to all the Greek courts, in addition to those of East, as he tells on one of his edicts (no. XIII); indeed, one of the other edicts, no. XXV, is written in Greek and Aramaic. Furthermore, during this period, the Greeks were neighbours and, on occasions, conquerors of the Indians. They were neighbours through the Kingdom of Bactria, which included, in modern terms, Afghanistan and part of Central Asia. But they were conquerors when the kings and established an Inda-Greek kingdom in the first half of the 2nd century throughout the basin of the Indus, the Central and Kashmir. These kings had to fight with Greek armies such as that of Eucratides, or Indian ones such as that of Pusyamitra, who had dethroned the Maurya. They founded Inda-Greek cities such as the new , and coined money with inscriptions in Greek and Indian; in short, they created a whole new environment in which Indian culture continued living under Greek power and organization.3 There was close contact.4 This is reflected in numerous facts. For example, as we have said,

2 Cf. the edition on Megasthenes in the FGH by Jacoby, as well as the work by Stein already cited Megasthenes und Kautifya; for Daimachus, FHG II, pp. 440 ff. 3 Cf. Tarn, 7he Greeks in Bactria and India, Cambridge 1928, p. I 81, etc. • On the history of this period, see particularly Tarn, op. cit.