Indika
Topic: The Mauryan Empire · NCERT: Class 7, Ch 5 "The Rise of Empires"; Class 7, Ch 6 "The Age of Reorganisation"
Meaning
The Indika is a book about India written by Megasthenes. He was a Greek historian and diplomat at the court of Chandragupta Maurya in Pāṭaliputra. It is the first written foreign account of India. The original book is lost. It survives only in excerpts (quoted passages) in the works of later Greek writers such as Strabo and Arrian. It is a key source for Mauryan administration and daily life.
Example
The Indika describes a military committee with six subcommittees: navy, transport and provisions, foot-soldiers, horses, chariots and elephants. It puts the army at 600,000 foot soldiers, 30,000 cavalry and 9,000 elephants. Some historians think these figures are exaggerated. It also describes Pataliputra's wooden houses and its water vessels kept along the streets in case of fire.
Don't confuse with
- Arthashastra: Kautilya's Indian treatise on statecraft, which describes how a state should be run. The Indika is a foreigner's description of what he saw.
Related concepts
- Mauryan empire
- Chandragupta Maurya
- Kautilya
- Seleucus-Chandragupta treaty
- Megasthenes
- Deimachus
- Dionysius