Rawlinson, H. G. Intercourse between India and the western world from the earliest times to the fall of Rome

(Cambridge :  University Press,  1916.)

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i6o  Effects of the Intercourse between

on the whole doubtful and comparatively insignifi¬
cant. India may owe to her intercourse with the
Semitic races her earliest script, perhaps too her
calendar, her system of weights and measures, and
some Puranic legends. Persia, of course, was in
close contact with India for nearly two centuries,
and the Panjab was a Persian satrapy for that
period. Indian architecture appears to have as¬
similated a great many Persian forms, but on the
whole, the effects of the contact were surprisingly
few. Indian literature could find nothing to borrow
from her great neighbour.

We now come to the invasion of Alexander.
Alexander himself, owing to his untimely death,
had no direct influence upon India, and in the
great upheaval which followed, the Macedonian
power in the Panjab, with its colonies and wharfs
and harbours, was swept away in a moment.
But the contact between East and West, once
established, was never entirely severed. Alexan¬
der's followers, in their numerous narratives of
their great adventure, first informed their country¬
men of the beliefs and customs of the East. Greeks
heard for the first time of Brahmins and Sramanas,
people with superstitions and beliefs strangely like
their own. Besides considerable bodies of settlers
who remained behind in the Panjab, there was
the great Greek colony at Baktra, on the highroad
to India. At the same time, the Maurya Emperors,
thanks to the extraordinarily enlightened policy
of the great founder of their dynasty,  kept in
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