Mentor’s Comment:

Start the answer by mentioning 2-3 lines about importance of literary accounts in writing history of Ancient India.After that discuss the important Greek and Roman works which deals with Ancient Indian history and how they help in writing the history of Ancient India. You also have to mention how in some ways their works were more reliable and superior account of Indian history than Indian literary works.

Model Answer:

Introduction:

• Indian History has been divided into three timelines mainly Ancient, Medieval and Modern and while there are several literary sources for understanding Medieval and Modern history, there are very few for ancient history. Some of the available sources for understanding –ancient history are archaeological excavations, deciphering of inscriptions (E.g. writings of Ashoka) religious literary sources (Puranas, Ramayana, Mahabharata, Shastras etc.) and literary accounts of foreigner.
• Among all the above sources the literary accounts of foreigners have been of special importance because unlike Indians, people in countries like Greek and Rome had a culture of writing about events of their time not limited to their own regions but they travelled to other places and wrote about them.
  Many travellers visited India and wrote about India from their knowledge and information. Being foreigners their works were useful because they gave importance to some aspects of Indian life which Indians used to overlook. All these knowledge was then utilised by the Historians to write ancient history.

  Greek and Roman literary Contributions

• Alexander left detailed historical and geographical accounts of his invasion. This helps us in understanding the geography of the age and also clearly builds Indian chronology. They also tell us in detail about the social conditions like sati, sale of girls by poor parents etc.
• Justin tells us about the accession of Chandra Gupta Maurya when he overran Indus. The literature also frequently mentions the autonomous towns in NW indicating the continuation of the gana sanghas.
• There are various famous work of Greek scholars for example Megasthenes wrote the famous Indika where he mentions the life and victory of Chandragupta Maurya through which we understand about the Maurayan Empire its economic, social and political life, similarly another scholar Ptolemy’s work in Indian geography tells us about India ports and harbours through which we understand India trade relations
• It is only in the works of Arian, Curtius, Diodorus and Plutarch that the work of Alexander’s invasion of India is available which has no records in India’s contemporary literature. The authors of the book ‘Periplus of the Erythrean Sea’ flourished presumably, in the first century A.D present valuable information about the economic and geographical conditions of ancient India.
• Pliny’s Natural history gives us lot of information on economic relations of India with Europe. On the Indo-Roman trade, he complains that Rome was being drained of her wealth due to the trade. He also tells us about the ships in the Sangam age where he says Indian ships were 75 tonnes.It tells us about the flora and fauna, the minerals, geography etc. of India
• This kind of enriching literary work would not have been available without the painstaking efforts of the foreign travelers.

Conclusion:

As the Indian literary sources were unavailable, the foreigners’ account proved very useful for the historians. Whether it is Greek and Romans accounts or the Chinese and Muslim historians all their accounts helped in writing the ancient Indian history.