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Megasthenes records the existence of a creature in the ocean, near Taprobane, with the aspect of a woman ; and Ælian, adopting and enlarging on his information, peoples the seas of Ceylon with fishes having the heads of lions, panthers, and rams, and, stranger still, cetaceans in the form of satyrs.
Such as far as they are known were the military exploits of this great king. He defeated Neco, recovered Syria, crushed rebellion in Judaea, took Tyre, and humiliated Egypt. According to some writers his successes did not stop here. Megasthenes made him subdue most of Africa, and thence pass over into Spain and conquer the Iberians.
He dwelt there, at the court of the sovereign, soon after the time that Megasthenes was there; and he wrote a report of what he saw and learned. But it is sad to find, in our search for what is valuable in the history of past times, that the information gained on this interesting journey of discovery is wholly lost.
The suttas of the Dîgha Nikâya in which these lists of deities occur were perhaps composed before 300 B.C. About that date Megasthenes, the Greek envoy at Pataliputra, describes two Indian deities under the names of Dionysus and Herakles. They are generally identified with Kṛishṇa and Śiva.
Even as late as Strabo, the sole knowledge possessed at Alexandria of Indian places was that given by Megasthenes, the ambassador to India in the third century B.C. Meanwhile, in the western portion of the civilised world a similar process had gone on. In the Italian peninsula the usual struggle had gone on between the various tribes inhabiting it.
Megasthenes who resided at Pataliputra about 300 B.C. does not appear to have been aware of the existence of Buddhism as a separate religion, but perhaps a foreign minister in China at the present day might not notice that the Chinese have more than one religion.
That one may sooner believe Hesiod, and Homer, and the Tragick Poets speaking of their Hero's, than Ctesias and Herodotus and Hellanicus and such like. All who have wrote of India for the most part, are fabulous, but in the highest degree Daimachus; then Megasthenes, Onesicritus, and Nearchus, and such like. The Satyrist therefore had reason to say, Satyr.
You shall see; out of their own mouths we will convict them. It is the very burden of Megasthenes' song. Alexander had certain larger than Greek conceptions, which one must admire in him. Though he overthrew the Persians, he never made the mistake of thinking them an inferior race.
Megasthenes notes it with wonder. War implied no ravaging of the land, no destruction of crops, no battering down of buildings, no harm whatever to non-combatants. Kshatriya fought Kshatriya. If you were a Brahmin: which is to say, a theological student, or a man of letters, a teacher or what not of the kind you were not even called up for physical examination.
In this city, Megasthenes resided several years, and on his return he published an account of that part of India; fragments of this account are given by Diodorus Siculus, Strabo, and Arrian; and though it contains many false and fabulous stories, yet these are intermixed with much that is valuable and correct.
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