The Greek Experience of India: From Alexander to the Indo-Greeks
The Greek Experience of India: From Alexander to the Indo-Greeks
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Abstract
When the Greeks and Macedonians in Alexander's army reached India in 326 BCE, they entered a new and strange world. They knew a few legends and travelers' tales, but their categories of thought were inadequate to encompass what they witnessed. The plants were unrecognizable, their properties unknown. The customs of the people were various and puzzling. While Alexander's conquest was brief, ending with his death in 323 BCE, the Greeks would settle in the Indian region for the next two centuries, forging an era of productive interactions between the two cultures. This book explores the various ways that the Greeks reacted to and constructed life in India during this fruitful period. From observations about botany and mythology to social customs, the book examines the surviving evidence of those who traveled to India. Most particularly, it offers a full and valuable look at Megasthenes, ambassador of the King Seleucus to Chandragupta Maurya, and provides a detailed discussion of Megasthenes' now-fragmentary book Indica. The book considers the art, literature, and philosophy of the Indo-Greek kingdom and how cultural influences crossed in both directions, with the Greeks introducing their writing, coinage, and sculptural and architectural forms, while Greek craftsmen learned to work with new materials such as ivory and stucco and to probe the ideas of Buddhists and other ascetics. The book is an account of the encounters between two remarkable civilizations.
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Front Matter
- Prologue: The Moon at Noon
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Part I First Impressions
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Part II Megasthenes’ Description of India
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Part III Interactions
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11
The Indian Philosophers and the Greeks
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12
Two Hundred Years of Debate: Greek and Indian Thought
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13
The Trojan Elephant: Two Hundred Years of Co-existence from the Death of A lexander to the Death of Menander, 323–135 BCE
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14
Bending the Bow: Krṣṇa, Arjuna, Rāma, Odysseus
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15
Greeks and the Art of India
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16
Apollonius of Tyana and Hellenistic Taxila
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11
The Indian Philosophers and the Greeks
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End Matter
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