Megasthenes tells us that the sages were divided into two sects, of which the one was called Brahmans, the other Sarmans. There was also a third sect, wrangling and quarrelsome men, whom the Brahmans regarded as vain boasters and fools.[599] The Brahmans were held in higher estimation than the Sarmans, because there was more agreement in their doctrines. They occupied themselves with researches into nature, and the knowledge of the stars, and taught everything like the Hellenes; maintaining that the world was created, and globular, and perishable, permeated by the Deity who created and governed it. The earth was the centre of the universe. In addition to the four elements of the Hellenes the sages of the Indians assumed a fifth, out of which arose the sky and the stars. About the nature of the soul, also, the Indians had the same notions as the Hellenes; but like Plato they interspersed many fables on the imperishable nature of the soul, on the judgment which will be held in the under-world on the souls, and other things of the kind. As a rule their acts were better than their words; their proofs were generally supported by the narration of extraordinary stories. They maintained that in itself there was nothing good or bad; otherwise it would be impossible that some persons should be in trouble about an event while others felt delighted at it; that even the same persons should be distressed and then in turn delighted at the selfsame occurrence.[600] According to the account of Onesicritus quoted above (p. 398), the Brahmans of Takshaçila considered that doctrine the best which removed joy and sadness utterly from the soul. In order to attain this the body must be accustomed to pain that the power of the soul may thus be strengthened. That man is the best who has the fewest needs; he is the most free who needs neither presents nor anything else from another; who has to fear no threats; he who equally disregarded pleasure and toil and life and death will be second to no other. The Brahmans spoke a good deal of death, which they regarded as a deliverance from the flesh when rendered useless by age. Life on earth they regarded merely as the completion of birth in the flesh, death as the birth to true life, and to happiness for the wise. Diseases of the body appeared to them dishonourable; and if a man fell into sickness, he anointed himself, caused a pyre to be erected, placed himself on it, gave orders that it should be kindled, and was burnt, without moving. Others put an end to their lives by throwing themselves into water, or over precipices; others by hanging or by the sword. Yet Megasthenes maintains that suicide was no article in the Indian creed.[601]
In all essential points these accounts agree with the native authorities, though the view taken is here and there too favourable, in some points too advanced, in others not sufficiently discriminating. It is true that the Brahmans and the initiated of the Enlightened, the Çramanas, are confounded in the order of the sages; this is shown by the statement that any one could enter into this order.[602] It would have required peculiar acuteness on the part of a stranger to distinguish matters so closely resembling each other in their external appearances; and the one were mendicants no less than the others. It is evidence of clear observation that the Brahmans like the Bhikshus were regarded by the Greeks as philosophers rather than priests; they give prominence to their position as advisers of the king and soothsayers as well as their philosophical inquiries and conduct of sacrifices. The custom of advising the princes agrees with the rules which are known to us from the book of the law, the statements of the sutras, the Epos, the Puranas, and the incidents in the land of the Indus which have been mentioned above (p. 405); and with regard to soothsaying we have already seen from the sutras how much the Brahmans were given to astrology after the year 600 B.C.; how they suggested fortunate names to parents for their children, and favourable times for investiture with the sacred girdle, for cutting the hair, and for marriage. The assemblies at the new year, of which the Greeks tell us, have reference no doubt to the establishment of the calendar, i. e. to the fixing of the proper and fortunate days for sacrifice and festivity, for seedtime, etc., as is done at this day in every village by the Brahmans, and for the court and kingdom by the Brahmans of the king. Even now nothing of importance is undertaken in the state or in the house, before the Brahmans have declared the signs of heaven to be favourable. As to the sacrifices to the departed, we are acquainted with the meals for the dead, and their importance, which the Brahmans retained, while the Bhikshus, as we shall see, had meanwhile gone so far as to worship the manes of Buddha and his chief disciples. The sutras have already informed us of the frequent use of physicians; they were Brahmans who carried on the art of healing on the basis of the Atharvaveda. The care of the young Brahmans and their instruction is correctly stated; the time of teaching which the book of the law fixes at thirty-six years (p. 179) is not forgotten; even among the Bhikshus a noviciate was customary. In the description of the life of the ascetics and wandering sages, the Brahmans and Bhikshus are again confounded, and if the Greeks tell us that the severe sages of the forest were too proud to go to the court at the request of the king, the statement holds good according to the evidence of the Epos of the Brahmanic saints, and the sutras of the great teachers among the Buddhists.[603]
In the examination of the doctrines of the Indian sages Megasthenes distinguished the Brahmans and the Buddhists, inasmuch as he opposes the less honoured sects to the first, and declares the Brahmans to be the most important. From his whole account it is clear that at his date, i. e. about the year 300 B.C., the Brahmans had distinctly the upper hand. But, according to him, the Çramanas took the next place to the Brahmans, among the less honoured sects. Among the Buddhists Çramana is the ordinary name for their clergy (p. 377). The doctrines of the Brahmans of the world-soul and the five elements (by the fifth, with which the Greeks were not acquainted, the æther or Akaça of the Brahmans is meant), the dogmas of liberation from sensuality and the body, are rightly stated by Megasthenes in all essentials, and his assertion that the Brahmans for the most part narrated fabulous stories in support of their doctrines is based very correctly on the numerous Brahman legends about the great saints. Megasthenes takes too favourable a view of the object of Brahmanic asceticism, but he brings out with sufficient prominence the mortification of the flesh, and remarks the diversity of the views on voluntary death or suicide, which, as we have seen, the book of the law, in case of incapacity, regards as a meritorious end to the later years of life, while the Buddhists condemned it altogether.
Of the religion of the Indians the Greeks ascertained that they worshipped Zeus, who brought the rain, and other native, i. e. peculiar, deities, and the Ganges. Of the gods of the Greeks Dionysus was the first to come to India; he instructed the Indians in the culture of the field and the vine, founded the monarchy, and taught them how to wear the mitra and to dance the cordax (a Bacchic dance).[604] Heracles also had been in India, but fifteen generations later than Dionysus. The Indians called Heracles one of the earth-born, who had attained divine honours after his death, because he surpassed all men in power and boldness. This Indian Heracles had cleared land and sea from wild and hurtful animals, and, like the Theban Heracles, had carried the lion's skin and club. He had many sons, among whom India was equally divided, and these had bequeathed their dominions to many descendants, from generation to generation; some of these kingdoms existed even when Alexander came to India. Beside these sons Heracles had one daughter, Pandæa, whom he had also made a queen, and had given her for a kingdom the land in which she was born, the most southern part of India;[605] and when on one of his voyages Heracles had discovered pearls he gathered together all that could be found in the Indian sea in order to adorn his daughter with them. As he had never seen a man worthy of her, when in old age he made her though but seven years old of full age for marriage in order that he might beget with her a successor for her land. After this time, all the women in the land named after her were of marriageable age in their seventh year.[606] The Indians on the mountains worshipped Dionysus, those in the plains Heracles;[607] the latter was chiefly worshipped among the Çurasenas on the Yamuna,[608] and the Çibis (p. 403), who wore the skins of animals and carried clubs like Heracles, and branded their oxen and mules with the mark of a club.[609] The Indians did not slaughter the animals for sacrifice, but strangled them.[610]
The rain-bringing Zeus is the ancient sky-god of the Indians, Indra, who cleaves the clouds with the lightning, and sends down the fructifying water, even as he causes the springs imprisoned in the rocks to bubble forth in freedom. Concerning the sacredness of the Ganges we are sufficiently instructed in Indian authorities. With regard to Dionysus, the Greeks tell us that when Alexander was in the land of the Açvakas, an embassy came from the Nysæans with the message that Dionysus had founded their city, had given it the name of Nysa, and had called the neighbouring hill Meron. In the valleys and on the hills of the Açvakas the Greeks saw the vine growing wild, the thick creepers of a plant not unlike ivy, myrtles, bay, box-trees, and other evergreens, along with luxuriant orchards,[611] a vegetation which reminded them of their own homes and the sacred places of Dionysus. When in the Hindu Kush they heard the name of the tribe of the Nishadas and of the divine mountain Meru, which with the Indians lay beyond the Himalayas (the highest ranges were with them the southern slopes of the divine mountain), there was no longer any doubt that the god of Nysa, who had grown up in the Nysæan cave, and on the Nysæan mountain, had marched to India, just as he had reduced the nations of Asia Minor as far as the Euphrates.[612] In this way the Nysæan mountain, which the Greeks first placed in B[oe]otia and Thrace, was then removed to the borders of Egypt, afterwards to Arabia and Ethiopia,[613] and even to India. To the Greeks the Nishadas were Nysæans and their city Nysa; they were at once convinced that Meru received the name from Dionysus or in honour of Dionysus, whom his divine father had once carried in his thigh (μηρός).[614] Diodorus, after his manner, gives this pragmatic explanation of the story: Dionysus was compelled to refresh his wearied army on a mountain, which was then called Meros after him. Further, the processions of the Indian princes to sacrifices and the chase reminded the Greeks of the Dionysiac processions at home. They caught the sound of cymbals and drums; they saw the number of the royal women with their female servants in these trains; the king and his company in their long gay and flowered robes, with turbans on their heads,[615] which reminded them of the fillet of Dionysus; they saw great cups and goblets, the treasures of the king's palace, and finally, lions and panthers, the animals of Dionysus, brought forth in these processions; coloured masks and beards, just as the Greeks were accustomed to paint the face at the festival of Dionysus.[616]
Among the Indians, as we saw, in the course of the sixth century, the worship of Rudra-Çiva grew up first and chiefly in the high mountains and valleys, where the storms were the most violent. He was a wild deity like Dionysus; like him he was invoked as "lord of the hills" (p. 330), a god of increase and fertility, of nature creating through moisture, of reproduction. And if ecstasy and frenzy were peculiar to the worship of Dionysus, there was also a certain wildness in the nature of Çiva-Rudra, a trait which gradually became more strongly marked among the Indians in contrast to the form of Vishnu.
The culture of the vine on the Indus, the green mountain valleys, the sound of the names Nishada and Meru, the procession of the Indian kings, and the worship of Çiva, convinced the Greeks that they had found the worship of their god. That they restricted this to the inhabitants of the mountains is due, no doubt, to the fact that they were more closely acquainted with the mountain land of the west, that the vine-clad valleys and the names Nysa and Meru belonged to the region of the high mountains, that even in the land of the Ganges the Himalayas passed as the abode of Çiva (p. 330). Moreover, the plains of India did not produce the vine, which indeed does not nourish in India, with the exception of some districts on the Indus, and the inhabitants of the Ganges valley did not drink wine.
As the Indians of the mountains, according to the account of the Greeks, worshipped Dionysus, so were the Indians of the plains worshippers of Heracles. According to the statement of Megasthenes, he was worshipped especially among the Çurasenas on the Yamuna and in the cities of Mathura and Krishnapura, and therefore Krishna must be meant (p. 105). Among the Indians Vishnu-Krishna carries the club, which Varuna once gave to him, and is called the club-bearer (gadadhara); with the club Krishna smote the wild tribes, the heroes, and the monsters. The weapon carried by Krishna's nation, the extinct Yadavas, was the club. The Greeks tell us that the Indian Heracles begot many sons; in the Mahabharata Krishna entreats Mahadeva, i. e. Çiva, the god of fertility, for hundreds of sons; the Vishnu-Purana ascribes to Krishna 16,100 wives and 180,000 sons.[617] According to the Greeks, Krishna was first placed among the gods after his death; in the ancient conception of the Indians, Krishna, as we know, was a strong herdman, who overcame bulls, kings, and giants, gave crafty counsel in the great wars, and at length died, wounded by the arrows of a hunter (p. 95); he becomes a deity by amalgamation with Vishnu. That the Greeks overlook the peaceful side of the deity in the incarnations of Vishnu as Paraçurama, Rama, and Krishna, and their heroic achievements, is easily explained from their tendency to find their native gods in India. The derivation of the royal races of India from Heracles has reference only to the dynasties which claimed to be derived from the Pandus, the extinct royal houses of the Bharatas and Panchalas, the Pandus in Guzerat and southern Mathura, whose ancestors the Epos places in such close connection with Vishnu-Krishna. This derivation might easily be extended to the families which carried their lineage beyond the Pandus to Kuru, Puru, and Pururavas, like the Pauravas on the Panjab (p. 399), and the oldest dynasty of the kings of Magadha (p. 74). The most southern part of India is said to have fallen to Pandæa, the daughter of Heracles, and to have received its name from her; the pearls were procured from the sea for her adornment. We know that a Pandu family ruled there; among the heroic achievements of Krishna, the Mahabharata mentions the conquest of the giant Panchajana;[618] Vishnu is the bearer of the mussel, the lord of the jewel, and the pearl fishery can only be carried on in the gulf between Mathura and Ceylon. That a daughter and not a son of Heracles founded the kingdom here, is perhaps due to an Indian legend, woven into the history of this kingdom of Mathura. Sampanna-Pandya, the king mentioned above, worshipped the protecting goddess of the city so zealously that in order to reward him she caused herself to be born as his daughter. She succeeds her father on the throne, marches through India performing great deeds as far as the lake of Kailasa, the lofty Himalayas, where she overcomes even Çiva by her beauty, so that he follows her to Mathura, and there reigns at Sundara-Pandya (i. e. the beautiful Pandya), and gives prosperity to the land.[619] Hence it is possible that the protecting deity of Mathura and her warlike achievements are the basis underlying the story of the daughter of Heracles. If Heracles begets a son with this daughter in her seventh year, and all the women of the land became henceforth marriageable at that age, the latter part of the statement is correct; the fact is due to the position of the country under the equator. Even the law of Manu, which is adapted to the land on the central Ganges, permits marriage in the twelfth and even in the eighth year (p. 254).
Whatever may be the case with regard to the several items of the statements of the Greeks about the worship of Dionysus and Heracles, they make it certain that in the fourth century B.C. the worship of Indra was indeed in existence, but not prominent, while the worship of Rudra-Çiva and Vishnu was in the foremost position. The worship of Vishnu was the chief worship of the Indians of the plains, i. e. of the land of the Ganges, and Krishna and Rama, the figures in the Epos, were already transformed into incarnations of Vishnu.
Of the justice of the Indians, their contempt of death, and reverence towards the kings, Ctesias has much to tell.[620] The companions of Alexander extol their love of truth; no Indian was ever accused of a lie. Megasthenes adds that the Indians lent money without witnesses or seals; a man ought to know whom he could trust; if he made a mistake he must bear the loss with equanimity. Wives were generally bought of their parents for a yoke of oxen; but Megasthenes assures us that in Magadha marriages were made without giving or receiving.[621] In that case the rule of the book of the law (p. 255), had become current here. The Indian wives were faithful and chaste, though it was the custom to have more than one. The Greeks also extol the moderation of the Indians in eating and drinking. The majority ate nothing but a little rice and fruits of the field; the mountaineers alone lived on the flesh of the wild animals which they caught in the chase. So little importance did they ascribe to eating that they had no fixed hour for meals. Nor did the inhabitants of the plains drink wine except at sacrifices, and this was not prepared from the grape but from rice.[622] At the banquets of the rich a separate table was set apart for each guest, with a golden cup; in this first rice and then other vegetables were brought, which the Indians were very skilful in cooking.[623] They were partial to singing and dancing, and paid great attention to beauty and the care of the body. They anointed themselves and had their bodies frequently rubbed; even when the king was dispensing justice four men frequently rubbed him with strigils. The hair of the Indians was plaited, and a band worn like the Persian mitre. They preferred white garments, which among them seemed brighter than with other nations, either because cotton was whiter than linen or because they appeared brighter owing to the dark colour of the Indians.[624] Over the cotton shirt, reaching half way down the thigh, many threw a mantle, which was fastened under the right shoulder. Many also wore linen clothes instead of cotton, and gay garments embroidered with flowers. Their shoes were of white leather, delicate in workmanship, and provided with high parti-coloured heels, that the figure might appear taller. They allowed the beard to grow, and tended it carefully; some tribes even stained the beard with various lively hues—white, green, dark-blue, and purple-red—and the country provided excellent colours for this purpose. The richer men had rings of gold and ivory in their ears and on their hands; they had beautiful parasols held over them, and did everything that could enhance the beauty of their appearance.[625] Persons of importance rode only in chariots with four horses; it was thought mean to make a journey on horseback without a retinue.[626]