Page:A Comprehensive History of India Vol 1.djvu/55

 Chap. I.] EXPEDITION OF SESOSTRIS. 21

India. He returned, but it was only to recommence his victorious career, and b.c. imo? lead a mighty army eastward, not only to the frontiers of India, but beyond the Ganges, and still on till he traversed the whole country and reached a new ocean. On his return, he caused pillars to be erected in various places, with inscri})tion3 attestinij his victories, and at the same time lauthncj the courajje or stiifmatizinof the cowardice of those who had encountered him.

The above narrative, which Diodorus admits to be only the most probable Narrative of of several contradictory accounts circulated in Egypt, can'ies some extravagances on the face of it. One of the most palatable of these is the number of the youths who are said to have been born on the same day with Sesostris. When tiiat monarch set out on his Eastern expedition, he must have been on the borders of forty, and yet even then more than 1700 persons born on the same day were still sm*viving. Assuming that they were subject to the ordinary law of mortality, their number at forty years of age could not be more than a third of what it was at fii'st. In other words, the number of male children born in Egy])t on the same day with Sesostris must have been 5000, and, consequently, adding female children, the whole number of births must have been 10,000. At the usual rate of increase, this would give Egypt a population bordering upon 40,000,000 — a population so enormous as to be utterly incredible. Founding on this discrepancy, and some other objections, which, besides being somewhat hypercritical, are stated more strongly than facts seem to justify, Dr. Robertson, in the first note to his Historical Disquisi- tion concerning Ancient India, labours to prove that the whole account of the expedition of Sesostris to India is fabulous. It ought to be observed, however, that, in this instance, Diodorus does not stand alone. Herodotas, whom Dr. Testimony of Robertson not very fairly quotes against him, bears strong testimony in his favour, and in fact confirms his statement in all that is essential to it. He distinctly refers both to the maritime and the land expeditions of Se.sostris, and though he does not expressly use the word India, he says that in the one Sesostris continued sailing eastward till he came to a sea so shallow a.s to be no longer navigable, and that in the other he subdued every nation that came in his way, and built pillars of the very kind and for the very piu'pose mentioned by Diodorus. To reject a statement thus supported, because some Haws may be picked in particular parts of it, is to strike at the foundation of luunan testimony, and countenance the captious quibbling process under which all ancient history, sacred as well as profane, runs some risk of being converted into a mji,h. The fair conclusion concerning the Indian expeditions of Sesostris seems to be that they really took place, but that in the accounts given of them, both the means which he emj^loyed and the extent of country which he subdued or traversed are exasrcerated.

Of another Indian expedition, also mentioned by Diodorus Siculus on the Expedition authority of Ctesias, gi-eater doubt may reasonably be entertained, notwith- amis.