Page:Ancient India as described by Megasthenês and Arrian.djvu/25

Rh and fuller accounts are preserved in Herodotos and in the remains of Ktêsias, who, having lived for some years in Persia as private physician to king Artaxerxes Mnêmôn, collected materials during his stay for a treatise on India, the first work on the subject written in the Greek language. His descriptions were, unfortunately, vitiated by a large intermixture of fable, and it was left to the followers of Alexander to give to the Western world for the first time fairly accurate accounts of the country and its inhabitants. The great conqueror, it is well known, carried scientific men with him to chronicle his achievements, and describe the countries to which he might carry his arms, and some of his officers were also men of literary culture, who could wield the pen as well as