Of the nations which lay to the west of the Gangarides, i. e. to the east of Magadha, the Greeks can mention few. First come the Kalingas who dwelt on "the other sea," below the mouths of the Ganges. The kings of this nation were masters of 60,000 foot soldiers and 700 elephants. Next to them dwelt the Andhras in numerous villages and thirty cities with walls and towers; these were followed by the most southern realm in India, the land of Pandæa[574]—the kingdom of the southern Mathura, the southern Pandus (p. 369) is meant—and the great island of Taprobane, which lay off the southern shore of India. The mention of the Kalingas and Andhras shows that the Arian colonisation must have made considerable advances in the course of the fourth century in the region between Orissa (p. 368) and the southern Mathura.
To grasp clearly the picture which the contemporaries of Alexander received of the life and pursuits of the Indians in its essential lines, in order to compare it with the native traditions and to supplement them, is of great importance owing to the peculiar nature of the latter. The splendour of the Indian princes is described by the Greeks in glowing colours. Gold and silver, elephants, herds of cattle and flocks of sheep were possessed by them in abundance. Their robes were adorned with gold and purple, even the soles of their shoes glittered with precious stones.[575] In their ears they carried precious stones of peculiar size and brilliance; the upper and lower arm no less than the neck were surrounded by pearls, and a golden staff was the symbol of their rank.[576] Every one showed them the greatest reverence; men not only prostrated themselves before them but even prayed to them.[577] Nevertheless conspiracies against them were common. For this reason the kings were waited upon by women only, who had been purchased from their parents. These had to prepare the food, bring the wine, and accompany them to the bed-chamber, which for the sake of security was frequently changed. In the daytime the kings of the Indians did not venture to sleep.[578] Even when hunting the king was accompanied by his wives, who were in turn surrounded by his bodyguards. Any one who ventured to advance as far as the women lost his life. If the king hunted in a park, he shot from a framework, on which stood also two or three women, equipped for hunting; if in the open, he was still followed by the women, partly in chariots, partly like the king himself on elephants. In the same way women accompanied the Indian kings to war.[579] Except for hunting and war the kings only left the palace to offer sacrifice. Then they appeared in a beautifully-flowered robe.[580] Drum-beaters and bell-players preceded them; then came elephants adorned with gold and silver, four-yoked chariots, and others yoked with pairs of oxen. The soldiers marched out in the best armour; gold utensils, great kettles and dishes quite a fathom in diameter—tables, seats, and water-basins of Indian copper, set with precious stones, emeralds, beryls, and carbuncles, and gay robes adorned with gold were carried in procession. After these wild animals were brought out—buffaloes, panthers, and bound lions and tigers.[581] On waggons of four wheels stood trees with large leaves, on which were various kinds of tame birds, some distinguished by their gorgeous plumage, others by their fine voices.[582]
The splendour of the princes, the hundreds of "lotus-eyed" women who surrounded and waited on them, no less than their anxious cares for their own safety are well-known to us from the native authorities; and the change in the succession, which we have so frequently met with, proves that these precautions were not superfluous.[583] The sutras describe how the kings at festivals march out on elephants to the sound of all kinds of instruments, amid the scent of perfumes and clouds of frankincense, accompanied by their ministers and multitudes of people. An inscription of Açoka of Magadha ordains processions of elephants and festal chariots, "announced by trumpets;"[584] and the Epos goes to great length in the description of the processions of the princes for the consecration of the king (p. 225), and on other occasions of a similar kind.
According to the Greeks the kings of the Indians gave great attention to justice; they occupied themselves with it almost the whole day. The other judges were also conscientious, and the guilty were severely punished.[585] We remember how urgently the book of the law impressed on the princes the duty of dispensing justice, the protection of persons and property, the awarding of punishment (p. 203). The Indians were, the Greeks assure us, honest in trade, and had few lawsuits. Personal assaults were forbidden; no one might offer or receive them; and so the Indians were accustomed to bring charges merely for wounding and murder. Theft was rare, though little was locked up in the houses. Any one who mutilated another was mutilated in the same manner and lost a hand in addition; but any one who deprived an artisan of a hand or an eye must be put to death. False witness was punished with loss of the hand or foot; the worst criminals were punished at the king's order by flaying.[586]
The Indian nation was divided, we are told, into seven tribes. The first was formed by the sages; in numbers it was the weakest, but in importance and honour the most considerable. The second by the magistrates, who "distinguished themselves by wisdom and justice." Out of this order the kings, no less than the free nations of India, took their supreme council; from them the kings also selected the overseers of the cantons, the judges and leaders in war. The third was the order of spies, whose business it was to find out everything that took place in the cities and in the country; the kings maintained them for their own safety, and the spies were assisted by the public women, both those in the cities and those who in time of war went out in the camps. The fourth order, that of the warriors, was numerous. It enjoyed great liberty, and was the most prosperous, inasmuch as it had no other duty but to practise the use of arms. The warriors were paid out of the treasury of the king, and so liberally that they could even support others on their pay. The armour, horses and elephants which they required they received from the king, together with the necessary servants, so that others forged their weapons for them, tended and led their horses, adorned and drove their chariots and guided their elephants. In time of war the soldiers fought; in time of peace they lived in idleness and enjoyment, in pleasure and festivity. Those also who practised arts and handicraft, or carried on trade, formed in India a separate order (the fifth). Of these some made what the husbandmen required, others were makers of armour and builders of ships. Most of them were subject to taxes and had to give service beside; only the artisans who manufactured implements of war, and the carpenters who built ships were free not only from service and taxes but even received maintenance from the king, for whom alone they were permitted to work.[587] The most numerous order by far was that of the husbandmen (the sixth). These never went to war, nor possessed weapons, nor were employed in other public services; they even withdrew from dealings with the cities. The Indian peasant lived undisturbed with his wife and children on his farm, occupied only with the tillage of the field. Even the outbreak of a war did not disturb his employment; under the protection of the kings he carried on his labours quietly.[588] Some accounts of the Greeks go so far as to assure us that the farms were sacred and inviolable; that even the soldiers of the enemy were not permitted to lay them waste, to burn trees and houses and lay hand on the people, so that the peasants fearlessly followed the plough amid the arrangements of battle and warfare, got in their harvest, and gathered the fruits of the field.[589] The seventh and last class of the Indians consisted of the hunters and herdmen. The herdmen led a wandering life in the mountain regions and lived on their cattle, from which they had to pay tribute to the king; the hunters were bound to cleanse the land of wild animals, and protect the crops of the husbandmen against them.[590] These seven orders of the Indians might not contract marriage with each other, nor was it permitted to pass from one order into another, or to carry on the occupation of two orders at once. Only those who belonged to the first order could carry on the occupation of any other, just as any one in any order could enter the order of the sages.
This conception of the Indian castes is idealized in some points, and in others falls into errors, of which the causes are easily detected and pardonable. The happy, careless, and free life of the Kshatriyas is obviously exaggerated for all the states in which they had not maintained the position of a landed warlike nobility, as they did in the free nations,[591] unless indeed among the monarchies a king sat on the throne who especially favoured the Kshatriyas, and was in a position to treat handsomely the soldiers in service, or registered for service. It has already been mentioned that all Kshatriyas did not serve (p. 244); and it would not occur to any prince to pay men who were not in service. Still less do the idyllic descriptions of the honoured and inviolable life of the husbandmen agree with the taxes and exactions and miserable position of the villagers, to which we find such frequent references in the native authorities. It is true that the Brahmanic law laid emphasis on settled life, and gave the preference to agriculture over trade and handicraft (p. 244), but of such a respect for husbandry as the Greeks describe we often find the opposite. These and similar traits in the Greek accounts owe in part their origin to the exaggerated picture of this distant land, which the fame of Indian marvels, of the wisdom and justice of the Indian nation, had produced among the Greeks. Yet we must not overlook the fact that agriculture was carried on with industry and care, that these accounts are essentially based on the impression which Megasthenes received of the condition of India circumstances in the period soon after Alexander, when a great prince on the throne of Magadha maintained peace and order in his wide dominions with a powerful hand. Even the sutras of the Buddhists dwell on the flourishing condition of agriculture at this period.
If the Greeks give seven orders instead of four, if they speak of the magistrates, spies, handicraftsmen, and finally of the hunters and herdmen, as separate tribes beside the priests, warriors, and husbandmen, the error is founded in the fact that they had a tendency to find the distinction of castes everywhere. Beside the chief castes were the castes of mixed origin, and it has been observed above how strong was the tendency of persons engaged in similar occupations to form into separate bodies within the castes. It was natural for an observant foreigner to think that the retired life of the sages was separated from the busy occupation of the magistrates by a sharper line, and to make the special calling of the magistrates into a caste, though on the other hand it did not escape the Greeks that the sages also were counsellors of the kings. Manu's law had wisely prescribed that kings should diligently avail themselves of the help of spies, whom they must select out of all the orders; these spies were more especially to watch the courtesans,[592] and the Ramayana extols the ministers of king Daçaratha of Ayodhya for their skill in giving information of everything that went on in the land.[593] If the Greeks could regard these spies as a special caste, many persons must have been employed by the system of secret police in the fourth century B.C. in India. That the unity of the caste, which comprised agriculturists, merchants, and handicraftsmen, and on the other hand the distinction between the Vaiçyas and the Çudras, was overlooked, is easily to be explained, for even Manu's law permitted the Çudras to be handicraftsmen, and the Brahmans and Kshatriyas to descend to the occupation of the other castes (p. 243), a permission which, in the case of the Brahmans, did not escape the Greeks. That the handicraftsmen and others had to perform tax-labour for the king, is an arrangement fixed by the book of the law (p. 212). Lastly, the Greeks apparently included among the hunters and the herdmen the impure and despised castes; the book of the law had also fixed what castes, i. e. what tribes of the pre-Arian or Arian population, were to occupy themselves with hunting and the capture of wild animals.[594]
Of the order of the sages the Greeks tell us that it assisted the king in the conduct of sacred worship, as the Magians assisted the Persians. Nor was it kings only, but communities and individuals who employed the services of these sages at sacrifices, because they stood nearest the gods, to whom a sacrifice offered by others could not be acceptable. Together with the sacrifice the sages conducted the burial and worship of the dead, as they were acquainted with the under world. They even occupied themselves with prediction, and soothsaying was in their hands. They rarely told individual persons their fate, for this was too insignificant and beneath the dignity of prophecy, but they foretold the fortunes of the state. At the new year the kings annually summoned the sages and a great assembly, when they announced whether the year would be good or bad, dry or wet; whether there would be sickness or not. At this assembly any sage also stated what he had observed that was of use in the affairs of the community, to promote the prosperity of the fruits and animals, etc. If any one prophesied falsely, no punishment awaited him; but any one who for the third time announced what did not take place was bound to keep silence for ever, a penalty so strictly observed by those on whom it was imposed, that nothing in the world could move them to utter another word.[595]
The life of these sages was no easy one; on the contrary, it was the most burdensome of all. From their earliest childhood they were brought up to wisdom; nay, even before their birth guardians from among the sages were allotted to them, who visited the mothers in order to ensure them a happy delivery by magic arts; so at least it was believed; as a fact they gave them wise exhortations. After birth other sages undertook the education of the children, and with advancing years the boys ever received better instructors. When grown up they lived for the most part in groves, in solitary isolation from the cities, lay on the earth, clothed themselves with the skins of animals, ate nothing that had life, refrained from sexual intercourse, and exercised great firmness both in bearing pain and in endurance, inasmuch as they sometimes remained in one position for the whole day, or stood for a long time on one leg, and carried on conversations on important matters. These could be listened to even by the common people; but such listeners must sit in profound silence; they must neither speak nor cough nor spit. Any sage who had lived in this manner for thirty-six or forty years, which they call the years of practice (p. 398), departs to his possessions and henceforth lives a less severe life. He wears garments of cotton, and rings of gold of moderate size on his hands and in his ears; he may eat the flesh of animals which are useless, but he may not eat acid food. The sages then take several wives, because it is important to have many children, in order to propagate wisdom the better. Others, clad in cotton garments, wander through the cities and teach, and are accompanied by pupils. The greater part of the time they spend in the market-place, where they are visited by many persons for advice. Others again live in the forest under the huge trees and eat nothing but bark and ripe herbs. In summer they endured without clothing the burning heat of the midday sun, and the winter also they passed in the open air, amid torrents of rain. The sages who live in the forest do not go to the kings, even though requested to do so; but the kings from time to time ask questions of them by messengers, and entreat them to call upon and worship the gods on their behalf. Others of the sages, however, manage the business of the state, and accompany the kings as counsellors; others are physicians, who live simply on rice and barley, and heal sickness by diet more than by any other means;[596] others again are soothsayers and magicians, and acquainted with the sacrifices to the dead and the ritual, and go about begging among the villages and cities. These were the least cultivated of the sages, but even the others did not contradict the fables of the under-world, "because they advanced piety and sanctity."[597]
The sages were one and all highly honoured by the kings and the nation. They paid no taxes, they had no duties and services to perform, but on the contrary received valuable presents. Those who lived in the cities and gave advice in the market-place could take whatever and as much as they pleased of the food exposed for sale there, especially of oil and sesame; any one who is carrying figs or grapes gives to them of his store without payment. All whom they visit feel themselves honoured, and every house is open to them, except the apartments of the women; they enter when they choose, and take part in the conversation and the meal. Even the physicians among the sages are hospitably entertained in all the houses, and receive rice and barley wherever they lodge.[598]