Foreign travelers’ accounts provide a different perspective on the Indian history. While they often contain obvious confusions on Indian practices, in many cases they are well dated. The earliest of these sources record the campaign of Alexander the Great into northwestern India in 326 BCE (Briant 2002; McCrindle [1926] 2000; Thapar 2002). Upon his departure from India, Alexander left governors to rule over the territories he conquered. Many of the most useful Western accounts of early India are derived from court officials posted in these territories. The best of these sources is the Indika of Megasthenes, a Greek ambassador who traveled in India during the fourth century BCE (McCrindle [1926] 2000). Unfortunately, Megasthenes’ writings are only preserved as long quotations in later, secondary works. Other accounts of India are found in the writings of numerous Greek and Roman authors (e. g., Ptolemy, Arrian, Strabo, Pliny, and Herodotos), but are generally based upon secondhand accounts and are of lesser value (see McCrindle [1901] 1979, [1927] 2000).
Among the most important Greek sources is the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea (Casson 1989; Schoff 1974). The Periplus was a guide for Greek sea captains trading on the west coast of India in the first century CE. It provides valuable information on the geography of the west coast, as well as political, economic, and social issues (see Ray 1999). While there is some discussion of the main ports and geography of the east coast, it appears that most of this was reported secondhand.
In addition to the Greek and Persian accounts are several important Chinese sources. These record pilgrimages to India by Chinese Buddhists beginning in the fifth century CE. Among the most important of these pilgrims were Faxian, Xuanzang, and Yijing. For the most part, Faxian’s travels in India (c. 399-412 ce) were limited to the Gangetic Plain in the north (Giles 1923; Liu 1988; Rongxi and Dalia 2002). A couple of centuries later (c. 629-645), Xuanzang extensively traveled through much of India, providing careful descriptions of numerous Buddhist establishments he visited along the way (Beal 1908; Rongxi 1997). Together, Faxian and Xuanzang’s accounts guided much of the archaeological research conducted in India in the nineteenth century (Trautmann and Sinopoli 2002). A few decades after Xuanzang visited India, Yijing spent about a decade (c. 675-685 ce) studying at the great monastery of Nalanda in North India (Rongxi 2000). While Yijing’s account does not provide the same broad-scale information found in Faxian’s and Xuanzang’s accounts, his extensive account of Nalanda provides impressive detail on one of the most important monasteries of later Indian Buddhism.
While important, the Chinese pilgrim accounts have their own problems. First, particularly in the case of Yijing, the accounts were written with a reformist agenda. Indian Buddhism, as presented in Chinese pilgrimage accounts, is treated as the true version of Buddhism that Chinese Buddhism had fallen from. In places, these accounts also seem to contain the inevitable cultural misunderstandings of any foreigner traveling to a distant land, wondering at seemingly mundane details. For example, Yijing’s account of life at Nalanda includes an extensive—and somewhat baffling—discussion of toilet practices that included detailed descriptions of fourteen balls of earth and a board or brick on which to carry them (Rongxi 2000:88).
By the end of the first millennium and the beginning of the second millennium ce, pilgrims from China, Sri Lanka, Southeast Asia, and the Himalayas increasingly note the abandonment of Buddhist monasteries and pilgrimage sites. By the mid-second millennium ce, foreign accounts document attempts to refurbish and restore abandoned Buddhist pilgrimage sites in India, restorations that only began to succeed in the late nineteenth century ce.
World History
