Essay name: Purana Bulletin
Author:
Affiliation: University of Kerala / Faculty of Oriental Studies
The "Purana Bulletin" is an academic journal published in India. The journal focuses on the study of Puranas, which are a genre of ancient Indian literature encompassing mythological stories, traditions, and philosophical teachings. They represent Hindu scriptures in Sanskrit and cover a wide range of subjects.
Purana, Volume 8, Part 1 (1966)
27 (of 340)
External source: Shodhganga (Repository of Indian theses)
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Jan. 1966] MEGASTHENES AND THE INDIAN CHRONOLOGY 19 some legendary hero who, unlike Shiva, was celebrated as a
primal king and who carried even more than Shiva a Soma-colour
in some way affining him to the wine-aspect of the Hellenic god.
The fusion is to be expected, since he was to the Greeks as
much an empire-builder as a god. In the imagination of the
Macedonian soldiers he was the subject of Euripides's fable-a
conqueror of the East whom they endowed with a constructive
role in the remote past of India. This role bulked large in the
thought of Megasthenes and it is well spotlighted by Arrian,
(Indica, I, vii) drawing upon the Greek ambassador's book:
"Dionysus,...when he came and conquered the people, founded
cities and gave laws to these cities and introduced the use of
wine among the Indians, as he had done among the Greeks, and
taught them to sow the land, himself supplying seeds for the
purpose...It is also said that Dionysus first yoked oxen to the
plough and made many of the Indians husbandmen instead of
nomads, and furnished them with the implements of agriculture;
and that the Indians worship the other gods, and Dionysus
himself in particular, with cymbals and drums, because he so
taught them; and that he also taught them the Satyric dance,
or, as the Greeks call it, the Kordax; and that he instructed the
Indians to let their hair grow long in honour of the god, and to
wear the turban; and that he taught them to anoint themselves
with unguents, so that even up to the time of Alexander the
Indians marshalled for battle to the sound of cymbals and
drums." Then Arrian refers to Dionysus's departure from India
after having established the new order of things and having
appointed as king of the country one of his companions who was
the most conversant with Bacchic matters and who subsequently
reigned for 52 years. Among the cities founded by Dionysus,
Arrian (Anabasis, V.1; Indica, I. 1) in company with all his
fellow-annalists names only Nysa (in the Hindu Kush), so called
after either Dionysus's nurse or his native mountain.
Some further points may be cited from Diodorus. Like
others he (II. 38) mentions the Indian mountain "Meros" (Meru),
at whose foot lay the city of Nysa, as a place where Dionysus
