Anecdotes of India, two thousand years back

A few months back I read The Culture and Civilization of Ancient India in Historical Outline by D. D. Kosambi. This exceptional piece of work demonstrates to the non-historian that history as a subject is far removed from being a collection of dates and proper nouns; it is a huge puzzle waiting to be solved, involving a systematic and logical approach. The investigative methods in history require inputs from fields as diverse as archaeology, anthropology, linguistics, genetics, geology and statistics. D. D. Kosambi is known for his seminal contributions to the study of Indian history. Interestingly, he was by training a mathematician and a Professor of mathematics at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research in Mumbai. (I came to know of this fact after joining the same institute to do a Ph.D. in physics.)

After going through Culture and Civilization, I thought of taking up some of the original works dating back to ancient times which are now available in popular editions. One of them is Greek and Roman Lives by Plutarch, brought out by Dover Publications. Plutarch was a Greek historian of the 1st century A.D. and the biographies he wrote of Greek and Roman statesmen are the sources of much of our information regarding these civilizations. The pursuit of knowledge is a virtue which Plutarch glorifies. In proclaiming the greatness of his heroes, the power of the sword is not the only quality he speaks of. Alexander, in his conversations, quotes Euripides and on being brought a precious casket, which was found amongst the treasures of the vanquished Darius, honours it by placing in it the Iliad of Homer. Much of what Plutarch says may only be stories, fiction added to historical narratives. But at the same time, these stories (and not the things that really happened) build the image and perception about some particular person or place.

Plutarch's view of India finds detailed mention in his Life of Alexander. The first Indian king whom Alexander encountered was Taxiles. (He may have been the ruler of Taxila or Taksasila in north-western India. 'Taxiles' is the name given to him by the Greeks. Plutarch, it must be remembered, was writing his account four centuries after these events took place and some of the historical facts may have been lost by then.) Taxiles was known as a wise man. In his conversation with Alexander, he opined that wise men should fight only for water and food that sustain life. 'As for other riches and possessions', said Taxiles, 'as they are accounted in the eye of the world, if I am better provided of them than you, I am ready to let you share with me; but if fortune has been more liberal to you than me, I have no objection to be obliged to you.'

The ascetic sages of India were referred to as the gymnosophists. There is a tale of ten gymnosophists who were imprisoned by Alexander and asked to please the emperor by answering his questions. One of them gave a striking reply on being asked which are more in number - the dead or the living. The gymnosophist answered, 'The living, because those who are dead are none at all.'

When the Greeks decided to stop their march into India and turned back, they were accompanied by an Indian philosopher called Calanus. Somewhere in Persia, he requested that a funeral pile be built. Calanus embraced death on a burning pyre out of his own wish, and silently. The western world saw another such incident a few centuries later when an Indian, who came with Julius Caesar to Athens, immolated himself. Plutarch writes that even during his time, Athenians would show to visitors a memorial called 'the Indian's monument'.

The most famous of historians, Herodotus (5th century B.C.), never came to India, but his story of the gold-digging ants in the noth-western parts of India has intrigued people for long. The sand of the desert was said to have gold dust mixed in them. The giant ants would bring them to the surface while digging their mounds and the gold would be collected by the local tribes. This reference by Herodotus had often been dismissed as fiction and a result of hearsay. Some researchers have claimed that a species of rodents share a resemblance to Herodotus' ants. I had read about Herodotus' works mentioning these 'gold-digging ants' on the internet. Recently, I was also reading the Mahabharat, in the Bengali translation in prose form by the noted writer Rajshekhar Basu. I came across a curious reference, in Duryodhana's dialogue with Dhritarashtra where the former speaks of the wealth possessed by the Pandavas.

'Those who live by the Shailoda River in between the mountains Meru and Mandar - the Khas, Parad, Kulinga and other tribes, have brought loads of ant gold, which ants dig out of the ground.'

This is quite interesting. The story of the gold-digging ants, whatever the actual creatures may be, was prevalent even in India and not a figment of Herodotus' imagination. Rajshekhar Basu remarks in a footnote that these ants are also mentioned in Megasthenes' travelogue of India.