ANTIQUI TEMPORA VERIS.•
PROFESSOR RAWL/1150N has chosen a romantic subject for his book and, within the limits he has proposed to himself, has done justice to iti Academic India is at present very busy studying the records of the earliest periods of Indian civilization, and is discovering with just pride and pleasure that 'the Hindu culture had much in common with the origins of the politics of Western nations. The prohibition of crossing the " black water " (now rapidly becoming obsolete) has already 'been shown to be due to a comparatively recent misinterpretation of an ancient text. The old Hindus were certainly daring navigators, keen traders, and colonists in distant lands. They were skilled administrators, and possessed a copious literature dealing with all the affairs of men in organized society, and lacking only in historical accounts of their own doings. The suggestion is natural that the West may owe larger debts to India than have hitherto been recognized.
But before such patriotic antioipations can be accepted we must have proofs, and Professor Rawlinson, for his part, has collected into one compact and very interesting volume all that Roman and Greek literas ture can tell us of ancient intercourse between East and West. Trade there was, of great importance and value, but it " changed hands at great emporia like Balkh, Aden, or Palmyra." There is little in the existing records to show that, even when Islam had not imposed its barrier between the Western and Eastern branches of Indo-European civilization, there was a very intimate contact between the two. Indians themselves rightly deny that their philosophy or drama was affected by Greek examples. Indian folk-tales and mathematics were brought to Europe by Arabs for the most part. The miraculous conquests of Alexander the Great were followed by Greek and semi-Greek Empires in Asia, which extended to the Panjab. But, save in the Gandhara sculpture of North-West India, there is little trace of Greek influence in that country, and Indian impressions on Western life, interesting indeed], and not infrequent, aro sporadic and unimportant.
Professor Rawlinson has said little (perhaps advisedly) about one of the most surprising proofs of ancient commerce between the West and India. The evidence is scanty and dubious. But it is a fact that about
• Intercourse between India and the Western World, from the Earliest Times to the Fall of Rome. By 11. G. Saw•tinaon. Cambridge: at the University rms. 17s. N. net.] the reign of Constantine I. India adopted the Greek system of astrology, its signs of the Zodiac, and its planetary week, with the odd result that when it is Sunday, Monday, &c., in Christian Europe, it is also Sunday, Monday, &c., in Hindu India. But we have not room to make a detailed examination of a book so full of interesting and suggestive topics—a work that will be even more useful to Indian students than to Western readers of Indian history. The book is an admirable continuation of its author's excellent Bads-la : the History of a Forgotten Empire.
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