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At the time when king Kalaçoka sat on the throne of Magadha (453 B.C. -425 B.C.) the initiated in a monastery in the city of Vaiçali are said not to have strictly kept the rules and commands of the Enlightened, and to have abandoned the correct mode of conduct. They permitted themselves to sit on carpets, to drink intoxicating liquors, and to receive gold and precious things as alms. Relying on the protection of king Kalaçoka, they disregarded the exhortations of pious men. To put an end to this scandal, Revata, who surpassed all the Buddhists in the depth of his knowledge and the purity of his conduct, warned, as it is said, by a dream, declared himself against these deviations, and summoned a great council of Bhikshus to Vaiçali. With the usual exaggeration of the Indians the legends maintain that more than a million of the initiated met together. Revata chose four of the wisest Sthaviras of the west and four of the east, and with these he retired into the Balukarama-Vihara, a sequestered monastery at Vaiçali, in order to ascertain whether the conduct of the monastery could be maintained in the face of the teaching of Buddha or not. The result of the investigation was, that the teaching of Buddha did not permit such proceedings, and that the monastery must be expelled from the community of the faithful. In order to establish this decision, to revise the discipline, and "maintain the good law," seven hundred initiated were selected from the great assembly and met in the Vihara under the presidency of Sarvakami. This more limited council is said to have ordered the exclusion of 10,000 ecclesiastics of Vaiçali as heterodox and sinners from the community of the believers in Buddha, and to have established the general rule that everything which agreed with the prescripts of the ethics and spirit of the doctrine of Buddha, must be recognised as legal, whether it dates from an ancient period or comes into existence in the future; all that contradicts this, even though already in existence, is to be rejected.

Whatever be the case with the separate facts in this tradition, we may regard it as certain that when the first assembly of Sthaviras after Buddha's death had collected his sayings, this second council undertook the first statement in detail of the rules of discipline (vinaya). The council was held one hundred and ten years after the death of the Enlightened, in the year 433 B.C., in Vaiçali, i. e. in the territory of Magadha, and consequently under the protection of king Kalaçoka; their labours are said to have lasted eight months.⁵⁰¹ Owing to the protection which Kalaçoka extended to Buddhism he is called among the Brahmans, Kakavarna, i. e. Raven-black.⁵⁰²

Kalaçoka was succeeded on the throne of Magadha by his sons Bhadrasena, Nandivardhana, and Pinjamakha.⁵⁰³ Pinjamakha, according to the statements of the Buddhists, was deposed by a robber of the name of Nanda. The band to which Nanda belonged is said to have attacked and plundered villages after Kalaçoka's time. When the chief was killed in an attack, Nanda became the leader, and set before his companions a higher aim in the acquisition of the throne. Strengthened by reinforcements, he formed an army, conquered a city, and there caused himself to be proclaimed king. Advancing further, and favoured by success, he finally took Palibothra, and with the city he gained the kingdom. This Nanda, who ascended the throne of Magadha in the year 403 B.C., is called by the Brahmans Ugrasena, i. e. leader of the terrible army, or Mahapadmapati, i. e. lord of the innumerable army, and they maintain that he was the son of the last king of Kalaçoka's tribe, who had begotten him with a Çudra woman.⁵⁰⁴ This statement and the epithets quoted at any rate confirm the usurpation and the fact that it was accomplished by force.

Nanda's successors did not maintain themselves on the throne of Magadha beyond the middle of the fourth century. We are without definite information about their achievements, and can only conclude from the renown of the kingdom at this time, that the supreme power which Magadha had acquired in the land of the Ganges, under Ajataçatru and Kalaçoka, was not lost under their dominion; and from the confusion in the statements of the Buddhists about this dynasty we may gather that they favoured the Brahmans. The last genuine Nanda was Daçasiddhika. He was deposed and murdered by the paramour of his wife, Sunanda, a barber, who is sometimes called Indradatta, and sometimes Kaivarta after his despised caste. Indradatta bequeathed the crown thus obtained to his son, whom the Buddhists called Dhanananda, i. e. the rich Nanda, or Dhanapala, i. e. the rich ruler, and the Brahmans Hiranyagupta, i. e. the man protected by gold. His reign lasted from the year 340 B.C. to 315 B.C., and he is said to have amassed great treasures. Western writers called this king Xandrames or Agrames, and his kingdom the kingdom of the Prasians, i. e. of the Prachyas (the Easterns) or the Gangarides. They tell that Xandrames was of such a low and contemptible origin that he was said to be the son of a barber. But his father had been a man of extraordinary beauty, and by this means had won the heart of the queen, who by craft killed her husband, the king. In this way the father of Xandrames acquired the throne of the Prasians, and he bequeathed it to his son, who nevertheless was detested and despised for his low origin and his wickedness. At the same time the Greeks tell us that Xandrames could put into the field an army of 200,000 foot soldiers, 20,000 horses, 4000 elephants, and more than 2000 chariots of war; others raise the number of the horse to 80,000, of the elephants to 6000, and put the chariots at 8000.⁵⁰⁵ From these statements of the Greeks and what they tell us elsewhere of the kingdom of the Prasians or Gangarides, the western border of which is the Yamuna, it follows that neither the change in the dynasty owing to the accession of the first Nanda, nor the usurpation of Indradatta, interrupted the rise of the power of Magadha, which had begun under Ajataçatru, and attained greater dimensions under Kalaçoka. Not the army only but the gold of Dhanapala-Xandrames, the son of Indradatta, is evidence of the splendour and extent of the kingdom, which must have comprised the whole valley of the Ganges to the east of the Yamuna.

CHAPTER IV.
THE NATIONS AND PRINCES OF THE LAND OF THE INDUS

The examination of the accounts of exploits said to have been performed by Cyrus (Kuru), the founder of the Persian kingdom, in the region of the Indus, showed us above (p. 16) that it was the Gandarians, the neighbours of the Arachoti, whom Cyrus subjugated. Hence the spies of Darius could travel from Caspapyrus, i. e. from the city of Cabul (Kabura) down the Cabul and the Indus; from the mouth of the latter they sailed round Arabia and returned home by the Arabian Gulf. Not quite thirty years after the death of the Enlightened, towards the year 515 B.C., Darius subjugated the tribes dwelling to the north of Cabul on the right bank of the Indus, the "northern Indians," as Herodotus calls them, as far as the upper course of the Indus. His inscriptions at Persepolis add the "Idhus" to the Gandarians and Arachoti, who are mentioned in previous inscriptions as subjugated.⁵⁰⁶ The Gandarians were united with the Arachoti and Sattagydæ into a satrapy of the Persian kingdom; the Açvakas, who dwell on the left bank of the Cabul, formed with the tribes who dwell further north up the course of the Indus a separate satrapy, the satrapy of the Indians. By the successor of Darius the soldiers in both satrapies were summoned to take part in the campaign against Hellas. Herodotus, who wrote at the time when Kalaçoka sat on the throne of Magadha, tells us that the Gandarians, who were commanded by Artyphius, the son of Artabanes, were armed like the Bactrians; the Indians, led by Pharnazathres, were clothed in garments of cotton or bark, and armed with bows of reed, and arrows of reed tipped with iron points. The horsemen among the Indians were clothed and armed like the foot-soldiers, their chariots of war were equipped partly by horses and partly by wild asses.⁵⁰⁷ They marched over the bridges of the Hellespont, and sixty years after the death of the Enlightened they trod the soil of Hellas. They saw the temple of Athens in flames; the infantry, horse, and chariots of the Indians wintered in Thessaly, and were then defeated on the Asopus.⁵⁰⁸

According to Herodotus the satrapy of the Indians paid the highest tribute in the whole Persian kingdom; each year it had to deliver 360 talents of gold to the king. The gold for this payment was obtained, as Herodotus tells us, from a great desert, which lay to the east beyond the Indus. Of that region no one could give any account. Where the desert began there were ants, smaller than dogs and larger than foxes, which dug up gold sand, when after the manner of ants they excavated their nests in the ground. This sand the Indians took, put in sacks, and carried it off as quickly as possible on the swiftest camels; for should the ants overtake them, neither man nor beast could escape; occasionally ants of the kind were captured and brought to the Persian king.⁵⁰⁹ This marvellous story is repeated by Megasthenes with even more definite statements; the Indians who dwelt in the mountains of that region are called Derdæ; the mountain plain, in which the ants are found, is three thousand stades (about 400 miles) in circuit; the sand thrown up by these animals requires but little smelting; and Nearchus assures us that the skins of the ants are like those of panthers.⁵¹⁰ That the Greeks are not relating a fable of their own invention is proved by the Mahabharata, according to which the tribes which dwell in the mountains of the north bring "ant gold" to Yudhishthira as a tribute.⁵¹¹ The Derdæ of Megasthenes must be the Daradas, whom the book of the law counts among the degenerate races of warriors.⁵¹² Even at this day the Dardus dwell on the upper course of the Indus to the north of Cashmere, in the valley of the Nagar, which flows into the Indus from the north, to the east of the highest summits as far as Iskardu, on the Darda-Himalayas (so called after the tribe), and speak a dialect of Sanskrit.⁵¹³ Adjacent to this almost inaccessible mountain-land are table-lands, where the sandy soil contains gold-dust. Numerous marmot-like animals with spotted skins, of which the largest are about two feet long,⁵¹⁴ burrow in this soil. The traveller who first penetrated this region in our times informs us: "The red soil was pierced by these animals, which sat on their hind legs before their holes, and seemed to protect them."⁵¹⁵ We may assume that the Daradas carried away the loose sand which these animals threw up in making their winter holes, in order to extract the gold from it; and the Aryas on the lower Indus and the Ganges, who did not know the marmot, compared them with the ants, which, among them, built and dug holes in the earth, and assuming that they were a large species of ant, called the gold of the north after them (pipilika). What the Greeks tell us of the swiftness and dangerous nature of these animals is fabulous.

What effect the subjugation of the Aryas on the right bank of the Indus, and their dependence on the Persian kingdom, exercised upon them, we cannot ascertain. That they were not greatly alienated from the community of their own nation may be concluded from the fact that in the Aitareya-Brahmana and in the Mahabharata, a king of the Gandharas is mentioned, Nagnajit by name;⁵¹⁶ that in the Epos the daughter of the king of the Gandharas is married to the king of the Bharatas, and Krishna relates that he has overcome all the sons of Nagnajit,⁵¹⁷ the king of the Gandharas. A Rishi and Brahmans of the Gandharas are also mentioned, the latter with the addition that they are the lowest of all the Brahmans.⁵¹⁸ Of the tribes to the north of the Cabul, the Açvakas, the Assacanes of the Greeks, are merely alluded to by name. Whether the Persian kings maintained their dominion on the western bank of the Indus down to the fall of the kingdom, is not certain. The products and animals of India which Ctesias saw at the Persian court are described as gifts of the king of the Indians. According to Arrian, the Indians "from this side of the Indus" fought with some fifteen elephants in the army of the last Persian king at Arbela; according to Megasthenes these were the Oxydrakes (Kshudrakas), soldiers raised on the other side of the stream.⁵¹⁹

From the time that the hymns of the Veda were sung in the land of the Panjab we are without any information about the life in these regions. From the Brahmans of the land of the Ganges and the writings of the Buddhists we hardly learn more about the nations of the Panjab and their fortunes than about the Aryas of the right bank of the Indus. The Çatapatha-Brahmana and the Ramayana mention the nation of the Kaikeyas, whose abodes are to be sought on the upper course of the Iravati and the Vipaça. Both authorities denote the king of the Kaikeyas by the title Açvapati, i. e. lord of horses.⁵²⁰ The horses of the land of the Indus were considered the best in India (p. 318). The metropolis of the Kaikeyas is called in the Ramayana Girivraja, and the daughter of Açvapati is given to wife to king Daçaratha of Ayodhya. The distance from Girivraja to Ayodhya is fixed in the poem at seven days' journey in a chariot on a paved road.⁵²¹ The sutras of the Buddhists mention a region lying still further to the west. Not very far from the left bank of the Indus was the city of Takshaçila. In this, according to the sutras, the law of the Brahmans was current; Chandalas are said to have performed the duties of executioners and buriers of the dead. According to the Mahavança, Brahmans march in the fourth century B.C. from Palibothra to Takshaçila, and from thence to Palibothra.⁵²² The chronicle in this work, which it is true was not completed till the twelfth century A.D., tells us that king Gopaditya, who must be placed in the fourth century B.C., presented Brahmans from Aryadeça with lands, that he observed the castes, and introduced the worship of Çiva.⁵²³

The Brahmans of the Ganges looked down with scorn on the ancient home, and the region of the seven streams, where the arrangement of the castes and the Brahmanic law had not been brought into full recognition and currency, where there were tribes and even whole nations, who lived not only without Brahmans, but even without kings. We know the views of the Brahmans concerning the necessity of the power of punishment, the royal power, "since it is only from fear that all creatures fulfil their duties." In regard to the fact that the Brahmanic arrangement, which with them is the original arrangement given by God, was not entirely observed in the Panjab, the inhabitants of the land are for the most part called Vratyas, i. e. heretics; Bahikas, i. e. excluded; and the tribes without kings Arattas, i. e. kingless. Of the Vratyas the Tandya-Brahmana tells us: "They come on in uncovered chariots of war, armed with bows and lances; they wear turbans and garments with a red hem, fluttering points, and double sheepskins. Their leaders are distinguished by a brown robe and silver ornaments for the neck. They neither till the field nor carry on trade. In regard to law, they live in perpetual confusion; they do indeed speak the same language with the Brahmanic initiated; but what is easily spoken they call hard to be spoken."⁵²⁴ According to the evidence of Panini, the Bahikas dwelt in villages, were without kings and Brahmans, and lived by war; the Kshudrakas and Malavas were the mightiest among those who had no king.⁵²⁵ In the Mahabharata we are told that they are excluded from the Himavat, the Yamuna and the Sarasvati; impure in manners and character, they must be avoided. Their sacred fig-tree is called cow-slaughter, and their market-place is full of drinking-vessels. The wicked drink the intoxicating liquor of rice and sugar; they eat the flesh of oxen with garlic, and other flesh with forbidden herbs. The women wander through the streets and fields adorned with garlands, intoxicated and without garments. With cries like the noise of horses and asses they run to the bathing-places. They shout and curse, intoxicated with wine. What is taught by those acquainted with the sacred books passes elsewhere for law, but here, he who is born a Brahman passes into the rank of the Kshatriya or Vaiçya and Çudra, and the priest may become a barber, the barber a Kshatriya. Nowhere can the priest live according to his pleasure; only among the Gandharas, Kshudrakas and Bahikas is this reversal of everything a custom.⁵²⁶

The path of their development had carried the Brahmans on the Ganges so far from the original basis and motives of the old Arian life, that now they hardly could or would find any common link between themselves and these tribes. But even from their own point of view their attacks are exaggerated. The accounts of western writers from the last third of the fourth century B.C. show us that in the larger states and monarchies on the Indus and in the Panjab the doctrines of the Brahmans were known and practised. They were honoured and influential, though their rules were not entirely observed, least of all, it would seem, in the arrangement and closeness of the castes. From the same accounts we perceive what form of life and civilisation had been attained in the region of the Panjab since the time when the hymns of the Veda were sung there. A considerable number of smaller and larger principalities had arisen on the upper and lower Indus, and on the heights in the Panjab. Between these, on the spurs of the Himalayas, on the middle and lower course of the five streams, lay nations governed by overseers of cantons, chiefs of cities and districts, among which, with the exception of some pastoral tribes, the noble families were numerous and warlike. The territory of the princes no less than that of the free nations was thickly inhabited; even the latter possessed a considerable number of fortified towns. Not only the great principalities but even the free nations could put in the field armies of 50,000 men; and there were cities among them where 70,000 men could be made captive. In the monarchies between the Indus and the Vitasta Brahmans are found busied with penitential exercises, and they are of influence in the councils of the princes on the lower Indus. But even in one of the free nations a city of Brahmans is mentioned. The princes kept without exception a number of elephants for use in war; the ancient chariots were employed in their armies. The free nations were without elephants, but had hundreds and even thousands of chariots, in which, we cannot doubt, the noble families went to battle. There was no lack of martial vigour and spirit in the region of the Indus. With the exception of some minor princes and tribes and one or two larger states who asked for favour and help, the nations knew how to defend themselves with the utmost stubbornness. When defeated in the field, they maintained their cities, which were surrounded by walls and towers, chiefly, it appears, built of bricks, but also of masonry, and containing no doubt a citadel within them. Yet the walls of the cities cannot have been very strong, nor the citadels very high; if they forced the enemy to a regular siege, the walls did not long withstand the missiles and powerful besieging engines, and when the walls were surmounted it was possible to leap down without injury from the rampart to the ground.

The dominion of the Persians cannot have exercised any deep influence on the life of the Aryas on the right bank of the Indus, and still less on the nations beyond the river. A new enemy, a dangerous neighbour, came upon the Indians from the distant west, who brought upon their states the first serious disaster from without. The extensive Persian kingdom was broken before the mighty arm of Alexander of Macedon. His expedition came from a greater distance than the armies of the kings of Asshur, of Cyrus, and Darius; it penetrated further to the east than the Assyrians and Persians had ever done, and brought with it important consequences, which extended over the whole land of the Indus.

What essentially tended to make the attack of these enemies easier was the discord among the states and tribes of the land of the Indus. The mightiest kingdom on this side of the Indus was the kingdom of Cashmere, whose princes had extended their territory over the mountains in the south, and the land of Abhisara. They were in excellent relations with the princely race of the Pauravas, which reigned between the upper course of the Vitasta and the Asikni. In common both states had sought to subjugate the free nations between their territories and on the borders of the Pauravas. They marched out with a great army, but they were unable to accomplish anything.⁵²⁷ In the land of the Panjab the Pauravas possessed the most important warlike power; a neighbouring family of the same name ruled between the upper Asikni and the Iravati. Such a power was dangerous to the kingdom of Takshaçila, which lay to the west between the upper Iravati and the Indus; the princes of this state had long been at enmity with their neighbours, the Pauravas. A similar feud on the lower Indus separated the princes of the Mushikas and those of the region of Sindimana, which lay opposite, on the right bank of the Indus. Of the free nations the Kshudrakas and Malavas could together put 100,000 warriors in the field, but they were in a state of feud and hostility.

Alexander assembled his army for the march against the Indians at Bactra, whither, according to the Epos of the Persians, Semiramis had once summoned her troops against the Indian king Stabrobates. In the spring of the year 327 B.C. he crossed the Hindu Kush with 120,000 foot soldiers and 15,000 horse,⁵²⁸ and when he arrived at Cabul he began the reduction of the Aryas, who dwelt on the right bank of the Indus.⁵²⁹ At the confluence of the Cabul and the Indus lay the city of Pushkala, of which the territory was called among the Greeks Penkelaotis (Pushkalavati), and the prince Astes.⁵³⁰ This city could not be reduced without a siege of 30 days. To the north of the Cabul the Açvakas, to the south the Gandarians had to be overpowered. Of the war against the Gandarians we know very little; the Açvakas made such a stubborn resistance that they were not completely subjugated till the winter. The Greeks call the Açvakas Assacanes, Aspasians, and Hippasians. They were under a king, who resided in the city of Maçaka (Massaga) on the Maçakavati,⁵³¹ no doubt an affluent of the Suvastu; lived in fruitful valleys, and kept horses and numerous herds of cattle on the high mountain pastures.⁵³² Beside the metropolis there were other walled cities and rocky citadels in the land of the Açvakas. At the approach of Alexander they fled to the mountains and to their fortified cities. When the Macedonians had taken the outer walls of the first city which they attacked, and the assault on the second seemed likely to succeed, the besieged sallied forth from the gates, and the majority escaped to the nearest mountains. Retiring with his army to the mountains from the open field before the Macedonians, the king of the Açvakas (western writers call him like his people Assacanus) fell in single combat; his people made the most violent efforts to recover his corpse from the enemies, but in vain.⁵³³ Then, by means of a surprise at night, Alexander succeeded after a severe battle in dispersing the army of the Açvakas; forty thousand Indians are said to have been made prisoners, and above 230,000 cattle were taken as booty.⁵³⁴ Before Maçaka, where the mother of the fallen king (the Greeks call her Cleophis) had assumed the conduct of affairs,⁵³⁵ Alexander found an army of 30,000 foot soldiers, 2000 horse, 30 elephants, and 7000 men raised in the further part of India. By pretending to retire Alexander induced the Açvakas to advance further from the walls of the city, but though he made the movement he had prepared with all speed, he did not succeed in slaying more then 200 men. The walls of the city, it is true, gave way before his battering-rams on the very first day, yet he could not take the place, though the assault was carried on with the utmost vigour for four successive days. Then a shot from an engine killed the commander of the besieged; and they began to negociate. Alexander merely required that the mercenaries from the interior of India should leave the city and take service with him. The condition was accepted; the mercenaries marched out of the city and encamped on a hill opposite the Macedonian camp. Then, according to the Greek account, they intended to return to their homes in the night, to avoid bearing arms against their own nation. This intention was made known to Alexander, who caused the hill to be surrounded by his whole army, cut down the Indians to the last man, and then took the city by storm; the mother and daughter of Assacanus were captured. Whatever may have been the case with the supposed intention of the Indian mercenaries, and the intelligence which Alexander is said to have received of this intention – the city had fulfilled the condition imposed upon it, and had given up the mercenaries, why then was it attacked in this unexpected and unmerited manner against the terms of the capitulation? Alexander hoped that the fall of the metropolis would terrify the remaining cities into submission. But Ora had in turn to be regularly invested, and when this had been done Alexander in person took the city by storm. Lines were constructed against Bazira during the siege of Ora in order to cut off the supplies of the inhabitants. But on receiving the intelligence that Ora had fallen the inhabitants of Bazira left their city, and with many of their people sought refuge in the citadel of Aornus (no doubt avarana, protection), which is said to have been situated close to the Indus not far from its confluence with the Cabul, on an isolated hill, above 5000 feet in height, and above twenty miles in circuit at the foot. What is meant is apparently the steep height on the Indus, on which the citadel of Ranigat now lies.⁵³⁶ Though Indians were found to point out to the Macedonians a hidden path to the summit of the hill, and select Macedonian troops thus reached a rock opposite the citadel, concealed themselves there during the night by a barricade of trees, and occupied the defenders by their unexpected attack, Alexander on the other side of the mountain could not force his way up. When the Indians had driven him back, they attempted to overpower the troops on the rock. To save these, Alexander had to take the same path which they had taken; after a severe struggle, which lasted from early dawn to night, he succeeded in joining his troops on this side. Then he caused his army to labour incessantly for four days in constructing a dam of wood-work and stones across the gorge which separated the ridge of rock from the citadel. As the work rapidly extended to a second eminence, which the Macedonians could now occupy, close to the citadel, the Indians abandoned the latter. But even so the war against the Açvakas was not ended. The brother of the fallen king (Diodorus calls him Aphricus, and Curtius Eryx) had taken the government into his hands, and got together a new force of 20,000 men and 15 elephants in the north of the land. Alexander marched against it to Dyrta. He found the city abandoned; even the population of the surrounding country had fled. Prisoners declared that the king, and the whole nation with him, had sought refuge beyond the Indus with Abhisares, i. e. in the region of Cashmere.⁵³⁷ Alexander was pursuing him, when the king's head and armour were brought in by some of his people. When a few of his elephants had been captured, Alexander returned in sixteen marches to Pushkala on the bank of the Indus, and his army wintered in the land of the Açvakas.⁵³⁸

Early in the year 326 B.C. Alexander prepared to cross the Indus in order finally to measure himself against the fellow-tribesmen of the nations who had so long detained his arms on the right bank of the river. Even when he was in Sogdiana, Mophis the son of the prince of the Indians, who ruled between the Indus and the Vitasta (the Greeks call his territory the kingdom of Taxiles after the metropolis Takshaçila), sent envoys requesting that he would take his part and receive him as a vassal.⁵³⁹ Mophis was moved to this step by the ancient feud between the kingdom of Takshaçila and the greater empire of the Pauravas between the Vitasta and the Asikni (the Greeks call this the empire of Porus). In the meantime the father of Mophis had died, and Alexander now received as the sign of submission on the part of the new prince, 3000 bulls, 10,000 sheep, 25 elephants, and about 200 talents of silver. He directed his march against the city of Takshaçila which lay half way between the Indus and Vitasta.⁵⁴⁰ Mophis came to meet him with his warriors and elephants, and led him into his metropolis.⁵⁴¹ This city, the Greeks tell us, was large (the largest between the Indus and the Vitasta) and flourishing, and its constitution well arranged. The land, which sank gradually to the plain, was cultivated and very fruitful.⁵⁴² The king of Cashmere had sent his brother to Takshaçila to announce his submission; some smaller princes, neighbours of the territory of Takshaçila, came in person to pay homage to Alexander.

At Takshaçila the Greeks found "wise men" of the Indians. Aristobulus tells that he had there seen two Brahmans, one older and shaven, the other younger and wearing his hair. Both had been accompanied by their pupils. In the market-place they could take what pleased them, so that they had abundant food of honey and sesame without any cost, and everyone whom they approached drenched them so plentifully with sesame oil that it ran down into their eyes. Not far from the city they had given an example of endurance; the older, lying on the earth, exposed himself to the heat of the sun and then to torrents of rain; the younger went even further, for he stood on one leg and with both hands supported a log of wood three cubits in length, and when one limb was tired, he stood on the other, and continued standing the whole day long. Alexander desired to have one of these sages, who were in the greatest repute there,⁵⁴³ about him, that he might learn their doctrine.⁵⁴⁴ The younger one accompanied him a short time, but soon returned to his home; the older one remained with Alexander, and changed his clothing and mode of life; to those who reproached him on this account he replied that the forty years for which he had vowed asceticism (p. 179) were past.⁵⁴⁵ Onesicritus relates that he had found fifteen of these sages to the south of the city, each in a different position, one sitting, another standing, a third naked and lying immovable on the ground till evening. The severest trial was the endurance of the heat, which at midday was so great that no one else could touch the ground with the naked foot. Among these sages, lying on stones, was the Calanus who afterwards followed Alexander, and subsequently ended his life in Persia. But Mandanis,⁵⁴⁶ who was the first among them in age and wisdom, had said: That doctrine was the best which removed pleasure and pain from the soul; pain and effort were different things; effort was the friend, pain the enemy of the soul; they exercised the body by toil and nakedness and scanty nourishment, in order to stablish the spirit, that so the division between them might be ended, and they might give the best counsel to everyone. That house was the best which required the least furniture.⁵⁴⁷ Megasthenes assures us that the sages of the Indians reproached Calanus because he renounced the blessedness which he might have enjoyed among them, in order to serve another master than God.⁵⁴⁸ These accounts of the Greeks fully confirm the statements of the Buddhists given above (p. 387), that the law and order of the Brahmans were current in Takshaçila.