INFLUENCE OF GREECE ON ASIA IN GENERAL AND INDIA IN PARTICULAR.
The most important contribution to this question, however, is Plutarch’s _Speech_ on Alexander’s fortune and virtue (περὶ Ἀλεξάνδρου τύχης καὶ ἀρετῆς), the keynote to which may be found in the passage which contains the assertion that he Κατέσπειρε τὴν Ἀσίαν ἑλληνικοῖς τέλεσι, but the whole speech refers to that marvellous influence.
That this influence was at any rate believed in, may be also gathered from a passage in Aelian, in which he speaks of the Indians and Persian kings singing Homer in their own tongues. I owe the communication of this passage to Sir Edward Fry, Q.C., which runs as follows; Ὄτι Ἰνδοὶ τῆ παρα σφίσιν ἐπιχωριά φωνη τά Ὁμήρου μεταγράψαντις ᾄδουσιν οὐ μάνοι, ἀλλὰ καὶ οἲ Περσῶν βασιλεῖς εὶ τι χρη πιστεύειν τοῖς ὕπερ τούτων ἱστοροῦσι.—Aeliani Variæ Historiæ, Lib. XII., Cap. 48. [I find from a note in my edition that Dio Chrysostom tells the same story of the Indians in his 53rd Oration.—E.F.]
I trust to be able to show, if permitted to do so, in a future note (1) that the Aryan dialects of Dardistan are, at least, contemporaneous with Sanskrit, (2) that the Khajuná is a remnant of a prehistoric language, (3) that certain sculptors followed on Alexander’s invasion and taught the natives of India to execute what I first termed “Græco-Buddhistic” sculptures, a term which specifies a distinct period in history and in the history of Art.
P.S. in 1893.—The above, which appeared in “the Calcutta Review” of January 1878, was also reprinted in the _Asiatic Quarterly Review_ of April 1893 with reference to Mr. J. W. McCrindle’s recent work on “Ancient India: Its Invasion by Alexander the Great,” in which he omits to draw attention to the importance of Plutarch’s _Speech_ on the civilizing results of Alexander’s invasion, and makes no mention whatever of the traces which Greek art has left on the Buddhistic sculptures of the Panjab.
He only just mentions Plutarch’s speech on page 13 of his otherwise excellent work, published by Messrs. Constable of 14 Parliament Street, London. As that speech, which is divided into two parts, is, however, of the utmost importance in showing what were believed to be in Plutarch’s days the results of Alexander’s mission, I think it necessary to quote some of the most prominent passages from it relating to the subject under inquiry. I also propose to show in a monograph on the græco-buddhistic sculptures, now at the Woking Museum, which I brought from beyond the Panjab frontier, that Alexander introduced not only Greek Art but also Greek mythology into India. I will specially refer to the “Pallas Athene,” “the rape of Ganymede,” and “the Centaur” in my collection, leaving such sculptures as “Olympian games,” “Greek soldiers accompanying Buddhist processions,” “the Buddhist Parthenon,” [if not also Silanion’s “Sappho with the lyre,”]—all executed by Indian artists—to tell their own tale as to the corroborations in sculpture of passages in ancient Greek and Roman writers relating to the genial assimilation of Eastern with Western culture which the Great Conqueror of the Two Continents, “the possessor of two horns,” the “Zu’l-Qarnein” (Al-Asghar) of the Arabs, endeavoured to bring about.