According to Herodotus 4.44, Scylax of Caryanda, a Greek explorer sailed down the length of the Indus in the service of Darius. Hecataeus of Miletus, around 500 BC, wrote about the geography and peoples of India. The Greek physician Ctesias also wrote about India. Most of these works have not survived in their original form but fragments are known through transmission by later writers. Not only individual Greeks, but also large groups of Greeks were forced to settle in Bactria, who must have had prolonged contact with Indians. Herodotus's account is believed to be based on these accounts.
Description
The Greeks were not aware of the geography of India east of the Indus basin. Herodotus in 4.40 is explicit about India being on the eastern fringe of the inhabitable world, But he knew of Indians living beyond the Persian province of Hinduš : In book 3, Herodotus gives some account of the peoples of India; he describes them as being very diverse, and makes reference to their dietary habits, some eating raw fish, others eating raw meat, and yet others practicing vegetarianism. He also mentions their dark skin colour. In 3.38, Herodotus mentions the Indian tribe of the Callatiae for their practice of funerary cannibalism; in a striking illustration of cultural relativism, he points out that this people is just as dismayed at the notion of the Greeks practicing cremation as the Greeks are at that of eating their dead parents. In book 7 and in 8.113 Herodotus describes the Indian infantry and cavalry employed in Xerxes' army. Only after the conquests of Alexander the Great and the emergence of the Indo-Greek kingdoms did the Mediterranean world acquire some first-hand knowledge about the region. By the 3rd century BC, Eratosthenes recognized "India" as terminating in a peninsula instead of just placing it generically at the far eastern end of "Asia". Eratosthenes was also the first Greek author to postulate an island Taprobane at the far south of India, later becoming a name of Sri Lanka. European knowledge of the geography of India did not become much better resolved until the end of Antiquity, and remained at this stage throughout the Middle Ages, only becoming more detailed with the beginning of the Age of Sail in the 15th century.
