Megasthenes (350–290 BCE)

Megasthenes was a Greek historian, explorer, ambassador and chronicler most famous for his accounts of India in his book Indika, of which only fragments found in works by later writers remain.

Megasthenes was sent by Seleukos Nikator (former general under Alexander and subsequent founder of the Seleucid Empire) on an embassy to the Mauryan King Sandrakottos (Chandragupta). He appears to have been based in Arachosia (an area in the vicinity of modern Kandahar, Afghanistan), from where he made frequent visits to Sandrakottos. He was referred to by Arrian, Pliny and Strabo, though the exact timing of his visits is not clear – they possibly started around 302 BCE. The veracity of his accounts was called into question by Eratosthenes, Strabo and Pliny, but he is now generally regarded as an important and mainly reliable source about India in that era. The most troublesome passages are those that describe certain races, which are plainly absurd, e.g. a race with their feet back-to-front, mouthless peoples who sustain themselves by vapours from roasted meats and fruits, people who have ears that extend to their feet, etc.²⁰

His description of the Suppers of the Indians in Fragment XXVIII can surely be interpolated as an early account of rice and curry:

And Megasthenes, in the second book of his Indian History, says – ‘Among the Indians at a banquet a table is set before each individual; and it is like a sideboard or beaufet; and on the table is placed a golden dish, in which they throw first of all boiled rice, just as if a person were going to boil groats, and then they add many sorts of meat dressed after the Indian fashion.’²¹

Fragment XLI lists plants that grow in the mountainous land (presumably northern India), including laurel (could include cinnamon, malabathrum and camphor), myrtles (could include Indian bay leaf and myrobalan), box-tree and other evergreens, ‘none of which are found beyond the Euphrates’.²² He described Brahmins, who ‘abstained from hot and highly seasoned food’.

In Fragment LVI, several trade emporia are described, e.g. the Cape of Perimula, ‘where there is the greatest emporium of trade in India’, and Automela (possibly in Gujurat).²³ In this section, Megasthenes, via Pliny, appears to be describing the area around the Gulf of Cambay, which McCrindle notes was the chief seat of Indian trade with the West, which was monopolised by the port of Barygaza.