15/11/2024
"The Greek Experience of India: From Alexander to the Indo-Greeks (Richard Stoneman).
An exploration of how the Greeks reacted to and interacted with India from the third to first centuries BCE.
While Alexander’s conquest was brief, ending with his death in 323 BCE, the Greeks would settle in the Indian region for the next two centuries, forging an era of productive interactions between the two cultures.
The Greek Experience of India explores the various ways that the Greeks reacted to and constructed life in India during this fruitful period.
From observations about botany and mythology to social customs, Richard Stoneman examines the surviving evidence of those who traveled to India.
Most particularly, he offers a full and valuable look at Megasthenes, ambassador of the King Seleucus to Chandragupta Maurya, and provides a detailed discussion of Megasthenes’ now-fragmentary book Indica.
Stoneman considers the art, literature, and philosophy of the Indo-Greek kingdom and how cultural influences crossed in both directions, with the Greeks introducing their writing, coinage, and sculptural and architectural forms, while Greek craftsmen learned to work with new materials such as ivory and stucco and to probe the ideas of Buddhists and other ascetics.
Relying on an impressively wide variety of sources from the Indian subcontinent, The Greek Experience of India is a masterful account of the encounters between two remarkable civilizations."
https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691154039/the-greek-experience-of-india
"The core of my research interests has been the continuity of the Greek world and Greek tradition up to the present day. I have written anthologies and travel guides reflecting this interest. Since the early 1980s the main focus of my research has been Alexander the Great, especially in later legend. I have recently participated in several international conferences on the Ancient Novel and on Philip and Alexander. I am currently writing a biography of Xerxes and a study of Megasthenes."
https://education.exeter.ac.uk/people/profile/index.php?username=rs303