give an account of foreign travellers on Indian political thought
Answers
ndia had a thriving foreign trade with the west. One of most extensive and authentic source of this fact is the famous work Periplus of the Erythrean Sea. This work by an anonymous Greek author who settled in Egypt and came to India in around A.D. 80. He has left for us detailed information about navigational, commercial and even political information about India at that time. In fact, we even find some of the Satavahana rulers mentioned by name in his account. This short account of full of many valuable information about the economic activities of ancient India, otherwise unknown to us. It is, therefore, not surprising that the Periplus is regarded by the historians as ‘worth its weight in gold’.
Apart from the Greeks, India had a flourishing trade with Rome: hence, it was natural that contemporary Roman authors too mention India in their narratives. Thus we have a geographical account of India by Ptolemy in his book Geography of India, written in about 130 A.D.
Hieun Tsang began his journey at the age of 29, and set out for the land of Buddha in 629 AD. Like Fa Hian, he was away from home for about fifteen years, i.e. from 629 to 644 AD. The greater part of this period was spent in India. Hieun Tsang carefully noted down all that he saw, but unlike Fa Hian and I Tsing, his observations were not confined to religious matters alone. His travel account, known as Travels or Records of Western Lands, comprises of twelve books, containing details of political, social, economic and religious lives of the 7th century Indians.