known to Moses, who introduces the name Gen. x. 29. In Job xxii. 24, comp. xxviii. 16, it is used as a synonym of gold, its most valuable commodity. Other Indian products bearing their native names are spoken of in the books of Moses, as bdellium and lign aloes; and in the Song of Solomon spikenard 7 and saffron or crocus .

Another interesting fact in this connection is that the written character of India is of Semitic origin. The possibility of this was doubtfully suggested by Kopp in 1821, who endeavoured to establish a resemblance in the case of five letters. The first effective steps in this direction, however, were taken by James Prinsep, of Calcutta, who, in the Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, for 1837 and 1838, first deciphered the letter upon the most ancient Sanscrit monuments. Subsequent monuments exhibit in regular series the successive changes by which it has been brought to its present form, and the several points of divergence of the various Asiatic alphabets which are based upon it. Prinsep's own conclusion was, "that the oldest Greek was nothing more than Sanscrit turned topsy-turvy." The conformity is so constant and so close as to demonstrate their common origin.

Now it is sufficiently plain that the Greeks did not derive their alphabet from India. Nor on the other hand could India have borrowed letters from Greece. For, 1. Alexander the Great found the art of writing in familiar use among the Hindoos. Strabo quotes Nearchos, one of the generals of Alexander, as saying that they wrote their letters on cotton cloth of close texture. The same thing is implied in what he says of their erecting mile-stones and guide-boards every ten stadia to indicate the distances and the turns of the road. Curtius also speaks of their writing on the inner bark of trees. 2. The oldest native monuments belong to the middle of the third century before Christ, and are therefore not long subsequent to the march of Alexander into the East. Upon these occurs the word meaning "to write," whose radical signification is not that of carving or engraving, but of anointing, and implies in its origin the use of a fluid ink. Inasmuch as there is no indication of letters having been coloured after they were carved in stone, this shows that writing was at that time not merely a

monumental art, but in current use on soft materials. The time when alphabetical writing was introduced into India cannot be accurately defined. It appears evident that the Vedas were at first unwritten, for the orthographic laws often require contractions which conflict with the metre. It has been made a question whether even the pratiçakhyasutras or Vedic grammars presuppose a written text.

However this may be, the only conclusion to which we can come is that the alphabets of Greece and of India must have been alike derived from a common source. And this can be no other than the Semitic; the additional sounds required in the Sanscrit being represented by varying the forms of already existing letters. The Phenicians or perhaps the Babylonians must have been their teachers.

From the Phenicians, who maintained an intercourse with India such as has now been described, the Greeks may doubtless at a very early period have become acquainted with some of the productions of India. But the name of the country was not known to them until they learned it from the Persians. Homer speaks of Ethiopians, or men of burnt countenances and dark skins, in both the extreme east and west. Those in the east have been conjectured to mean the Hindoos, as some things proper to them are by later writers attributed to Ethiopians, which might be explicable from this wide usage of the word. The xaooirepo or tin of Homer is identical with the Sanscrit kastîra; though as tin was imported into India, and not exported from it, the word may have been carried thither in the Alexandrian period, as was probably the case likewise with the Sans. kastûrî, musk, from xaστópezov. Many of the fables attributed to Esop and others are found again in the writings of India. The oldest which has been identified is in Archilochus in the eighth century before Christ. In the opinion of Lassen these were indigenous in India: but Weber, who was originally of the same mind, after further investigation satisfied himself that they were in the majority of instances borrowed from the Greek.

The first knowledge of India properly so called came, however, to the west through the Persians. They had the advanfage of being a kindred people and their language was closely allied to the Sanscrit, particularly in its old Vedic form.

Scylax, a Greek in the employ of Darius Hystaspes, led an expedition to the Indus and sailed down it to the ocean, of all which he wrote an account which is now lost; a brief narrative of it is however preserved by Herodotus. The cuneiform inscriptions of Darius make mention of the Gadâra and Hidu, dwellers on the Indus, as tributary to him. They are also spoken of as having served in the armies of Xerxes against Greece, which is the first time that the two nations were brought in any way in actual contact. In the armies of Darius Codomanus, the antagonist of Alexander the Great, there were few Indian auxiliaries, so that the Persian rule in that region would seem to have been less extended or powerful than formerly. He is said to have had fifteen war elephants, which is the first appearance of this formidable animal in history. It is worth while to observe the precise accordance of the statements of the sacred writers with these facts recorded by profane historians. The Ahasuerus of the book of Esther, who is the same with Xerxes, is said (i. 1,) to have reigned from India to Ethiopia over one hundred and twenty-seven provinces. The Darius of the book of Daniel, who is the Cyaxares of Xenophon, had (vi. 1,) but one hundred and twenty provinces. The empire was not so large and had not yet been extended into India.

Herodotus, whose knowledge was derived directly or indirectly from the Persians, speaks of India as lying at the farthest limit of the habitable world, beyond which lay an unknown and impassable desert: it was occupied by many different nations speaking distinct languages. His theory that the extremes of the world possessed the noblest productions, was doubtless based on what he knew of the animal and vegetable wonders of India and of Africa. He speaks of the Indus as the only river known to him beside the Nile, which contained crocodiles, referring of course to the alligators; of the bamboo and its uses, of trees bearing a wool superior to that of sheep and used for clothing, which is the earliest mention of cotton; of an abundance of gold brought down by streams, or dug out by an enormous species of ants nearly as large as foxes and as fleet as horses. It is impossible to conjecture from what this story could have arisen, though it is repeated by subsequent writers, one of whom avers that he had seen their stuffed skins. He also speaks of the

Brahmanical hermits as killing no living thing, and subsisting entirely on the spontaneous products of the earth, having no dwellings, and when sick receiving no attention but dying in solitude.

The most complete account of India that was given to the Greeks during this period, however, was by Ctesias, who was taken prisoner by the Persians, and on account of his skill in medicine was retained for seventeen years as physician at the court of Alexander Mnemon. Among other works written by him after his return to Greece, B. C. 398, was a treatise on India, of which we now possess some scattered fragments, together with a very imperfect abstract by the Byzantine patriarch Photius, in the middle of the 9th century. It is impossible to acquit Ctesias altogether of the charge of exaggeration and the love of the marvellous. Although the fabulous stories, on the ground of which his truthfulness has been impeached, it is now well ascertained, were not inventions of his own, but fictions popularly credited in India, many of which are still found in native writings, and which he reported as he had heard them. Here belong the races of one-eyed men; of onefooted men, who could nevertheless run with incredible swiftness; of men with ears reaching to their elbows, which they used as cloaks; of pigmies three feet high, with domestic animals to match; of macrobians who lived four hundred years, which is very moderate, for Indian writings attribute to them an age of from one to ten thousand years; of water in which nothing could swim, the same doubtless that was fabled to convert everything it touched to stone. It is not perhaps strange that he should have believed that elephants were used in war to pull down fortified walls, when he had seen them tear up palm trees by the roots; or that the reports of India's tropical heat should have been magnified into the statement that the sun appeared there to be ten times as large as in other lands, and that the surface of the sea was so hot that fish could not approach it. These exaggerations and fables were mingled with sober and reliable accounts of the country, its population, and productions. He described India as it was known and conceived by the Persians. One remarkable statement, which seems to imply some knowledge of electrical laws and the power of VOL. XXXVIII.-NO. III. 51

metals as conductors, is that he had seen iron swords which had the property of dispelling clouds and lightning.

The era of direct intercourse between Greece and India was opened by the march of Alexander into the East. He entered the country in the spring of 327, and in the course of a year subdued a large portion of the Panjâb. Those native princes who submitted to his sway, he left undisturbed in their dominions and even enlarged their boundaries; while all who offered opposition were severely chastised. Cities were founded and garrisons stationed at important points with a view both to secure his conquests and to facilitate trade. His desire to extend his march to the Ganges was frustrated by the unwillingness of his troops to proceed farther. He consequently built a fleet of boats and sailed down the Indus to its mouth, whence Nearchos conducted the transports homeward by sea, while Alexander with the rest of the troops marched overland to Persia and Babylon, where he died June 11th, B. C. 323.

The political consequences of this conquest were neither deep nor lasting. The Indian provinces being left under their native governors were but loosely attached to the Macedonian empire. And even this shadow of Greek authority was resisted and thrown off by Sandrocottus or Chandragupta. Friendly relations were established between this prince and Seleucus Nicator, which continued through successive reigns, signalized and cemented by the exchange of ambassadors between the courts of Babylon and Palibothra. About B. C. 256, the satrap of Bactria revolted from the Seleucidæ and founded an independent line of Greco-Bactrian kings, whose sway was extended beyond the Indus and as far as Guzerat. This kingdom was subsequently divided and one part overturned by the Parthians; but the eastern or Indian portion continued to maintain itself until about B. C. 85, when it was swallowed up by the advance of the Indo-Scythians. The last relic of Greek government in India thus disappeared about 240 years after its sudden and brilliant beginning.

The indirect results of this conquest were more important. Its effect on the Greek mind was prodigious. Humboldt remarks that the march of Alexander deserves to be entitled a scientific expedition. The boundaries of the known world