Megasthenes ( ; , died 290 BCE) was an ancient Greek historian, indologist, diplomat, ethnographer and explorer in the Hellenistic period. He described India in his book Indica, which is now lost, but has been partially reconstructed from literary fragments found in later authors that quoted his work. Megasthenes was the first person from the Western world to leave a written description of India.
Megasthenes visited Pataliputra sometime during the reign of Chandragupta Maurya but it is not certain which other parts of India he visited. He appears to have passed through the Punjab region in north-western India, as he provides a detailed account of the rivers in this area. He must have then traveled to Pataliputra along the Yamuna River and the Ganga River rivers. The exact dates of his visit to India, and the duration of his stay in India are not certain. The dates of Megasthenes' visit or visits to India is uncertain and disputed among scholars. A.B. Bosworth argued for an early date pre-Seleucus.A.B Bosworth, The Historical Setting of Megasthenes, Indica, CPh. 91, 1996, 113-27 This is contested by Stoneman and others who argue for a date following the Mauryan-Seleucid settlement of 303 BCE.Stoneman, R., The Greek Experience of India, 130-135 Arrian claims that Megasthenes met Porus; this implies that Megasthenes accompanied Alexander the Great during the Macedonian invasion of India.
He then compiled information about India in the form of Indica, a document which is now a lost work. It partially survives in form of quotations by later writers.
Other Greek envoys to the Indian court are known after Megasthenes: Deimachus as ambassador to Bindusara, and Dionysius, as ambassador to Ashoka.
Modern scholars such as E. A. Schwanbeck, B. C. J. Timmer, and Truesdell Sparhawk Brown, have characterized Megasthenes as a generally reliable source of Indian history. Schwanbeck finds faults only with Megasthenes's description of the gods worshipped in India. Brown is more critical of Megasthenes, but notes that Megasthenes visited only a small part of India, and must have relied on others for his observations: some of these observations seem to be erroneous, but others cannot be ignored by modern researchers. Thus, although he was often misled by the erroneous information provided by others, his work remained the principal source of information about India to subsequent writers.
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