CHAPTER I.

INTRODUCTION.

Information of Mediæval Europe Concerning India and
Persia--Travellers--India and Persia in Mediæval German
Poetry.


The knowledge which mediæval Europe had of India and Persia was mostly
indirect, and, as might be expected, deficient both in correctness and
extent, resting, as it did, on the statements of classical and patristic
writers, on hearsay and on oral communication. In the accounts of the
classic writers, especially in those of Pliny, Strabo, Ptolemy, truth
and fiction were already strangely blended. Still more was this the case
with such compilers and encyclopædists as Solinus, Cassiodorus and
Isidorus of Sevilla, on whom the mediæval scholar depended largely for
information. All these writers, in so far as they speak of India, deal
almost entirely with its physical description, its cities and rivers,
its wealth of precious stones and metals, its spices and silks, and in
particular its marvels and wonders. Of its religion we hear but little,
and as to its literature we have only a few vague statements of
Arrian,[1] Aelian[2] and Dio Chrysostomus.[3] When the last mentioned
author tells us that the ancient Hindus sang in their own language the
poems of Homer, it shows that he had no idea of the fact that the great
Sanskrit epics, to which the passage undoubtedly alludes, were
independent poems. To him they appeared to be nothing more than versions
of Homer. Aelian makes a similar statement, but cautiously adds εἴ τι
χρὴ πιστεύειν τοις ὑπὲρ τούτων ἱστορουσιν. Philostratus represents the