India and the Hellenistic World.

• Author: NARAIN, A. K.
• Position: Review

India and the Hellenistic World. By KLAUS KARTTUNEN. Studia Orientalia, ol. 83. Helsinki: FINNISH ORIENTAL SOCIETY, 1997. Pp. x + 439, map (paper).

This study is a sequel to the author's doctoral dissertation, entitled India in Early Greek Literature (1989), which I was pleased to review earlier for this periodical. The author promises to follow it up by three more volumes in the series. I am happy to have this opportunity to review the present volume, which is, like the first one, a valuable contribution in the field of studies related to South Asian interactions with the Greeks.

This book under review is a good example of painstaking research into primary sources, particularly the Greek and Latin literature. The author's "methods are philological, but [he has] also made an earnest attempt to find out and utilize the new evidence offered by such disciplines as archaeology, epigraphy and numismatics." He admits that "the vexed question of possible influences or interactions in the sphere of philosophy and religion" is left "to the next volume." The present volume is divided into seven chapters, namely "Introduction' "Conquerors of the World," "Ancient Diplomacy: Megasthenes," "The Natural Sciences' "Bird-watchers and Story-tellers," "Greeks in the East' "India and the Greek West." These chapters, of unequal lengths, are followed by an exhaustive list of references running into fifty pages and a general index of about forty pages. About half of the text (chapters IV and V. consisting of 158 pages) deals with the natural sciences, birdwatchers, and story-tellers. These chapters, based o n an overwhelming package of Western literature, of mixed quality, datable over a span of almost five hundred years, are full of fascinating information on "exotic India' and remind the reviewer of the predilection for curiosities and tell-tales found in the first Western reports on India that often attract readers' attention at the cost of ideas and institutions, social and political relations, and inter-actions of, or with, the "others" of the outside world.

The remaining four chapters deal with aspects of human historical significance. These may be read as one of the latest statements on controversial aspects of the subject as a whole, Many of these statements may be questioned but discussing them summarily in a short review will do justice neither to the author nor to this reviewer. The latter hopes to deal with them in his forthcoming writings. But in the...