greece, the final frontier? 135
is explained as the consequence of a military victory of Candragupta
over Seleucus.^14 With Hartmut Scharfe, one can, however, also view it
from a different angle: the supply of elephants is reminiscent of and
perhaps included the supply of auxiliaries, the typical duty of a vas-
sal.^15 The title devnpriya “friend of the gods” borne by Candragupta
and his successors points in the same direction, for it is a translation
of the Greek title
borne by the Hellenistic vassals.^16
It may therefore be that Candragupta and his successors were at the
same time sovereign in their Indian possessions and Seleucid vassals
in Arachosia and Gedrosia.
In view of this, it is not surprising that the Mauryas in general
entertained good relations with their western neighbours, the Seleucids.
The relationship seems to have been even more intricate than com-
monly supposed. In this connection, I propose to rethink the position
of Megasthenes, the so-called ambassador of Seleucus to the Mauryan
court at the end of the fourth and the beginning of the third century
BC. In reality Megasthenes belonged to the court of Sibyrtius, satrap
of Arachosia. Even if in Arachosia and Gedrosia the Mauryas were
vassals of the Seleucids, as we saw, these areas must have been under
the direct administration of the Mauryas. Thus, Megasthenes was not
delegated from one empire to another, but from a remote province to
the centre of the Mauryan empire. Hence, his function may have been
that of a functionary working for the integration of a minority com-
munity. His task, then, was to inform the Greeks living under Indian
rule on local administration, society and culture, in order to facilitate
their integration into the empire. This explains the slightly propagan-
distic tone of Megasthenes’ book on India, the Indica (
). Now,
in the fragments that have survived of this work, there is no special
reference to a separate religion called “Buddhism”, nor to anything
speci cally Buddhistic. It may be that this information was not rightly
understood by the compilers who used it, or that it is simply lost. What
then about the claims that Megasthenes mentions the Buddhists as
Sarmánai, whom he opposes to the Brakhmánai, the Brahmans? It should
be clear that the class of Sarmánai or ramaas includes all types of
historiarum Philippicarum 15.4.21; Orosius, Historia adversum paganos 3.23, 46; Strabo,
Geographica 15.2.9.
(^14) E.g., by Tola & Dragonetti 1991, p. 126.
(^15) Scharfe 1971, p. 217.
(^16) Scharfe 1971, pp. 215–216.