r triennial voyages to India. Indeed, the
story of Joseph bears witness to the caravan trade from India, across
Arabia, and on to the banks of the Nile. About the same time as Hecataeus,
Scylax, a Persian admiral under Darius, from Caryanda on the coast of Asia
Minor, traveled to {76} northwest India and wrote upon his ventures.[295]
He induced the nations along the Indus to acknowledge the Persian
supremacy, and such number systems as there were in these lands would
naturally have been known to a man of his attainments.

A century after Scylax, Herodotus showed considerable knowledge of India,
speaking of its cotton and its gold,[296] telling how Sesostris[297] fitted
out ships to sail to that country, and mentioning the routes to the east.
These routes were generally by the Red Sea, and had been followed by the
Phoenicians and the Sabaeans, and later were taken by the Greeks and
Romans.[298]

In the fourth century B.C. the West and East came into very close
relations. As early as 330, Pytheas of Massilia (Marseilles) had explored
as far north as the northern end of the British Isles and the coasts of the
German Sea, while Macedon, in close touch with southern France, was also
sending her armies under Alexander[299] through Afghanistan as far east as
the Punjab.[300] Pliny tells us that Alexander the Great employed surveyors
to measure {77} the roads of India; and one of the great highways is
described by Megasthenes, who in 295 B.C., as the ambassador of Seleucus,
resided at P[=a]tal[=i]pu[t.]ra, the present Patna.[301]

The Hindus also learned the art of coining from the Greeks, or possibly
from the Chinese, and the stores of Greco-Hindu coins still found in
northern India are a constant source of historical information.[302] The
R[=a]m[=a]yana speaks of merchants traveling in great caravans and
embarking by sea for foreign lands.[303] Ceylon traded with Malacca and
Siam, and Java was colonized by Hindu traders, so that mercantile knowledge
was being spread about the Indies during all the formative period of the
numerals.

Moreover the results of the early Greek invasion were embodied by
Dicaearchus of Messana (about 320 B.C.) in a map that long remained a
standard. Furthermore, Alexander did not allow his influence on the East to
cease. He divided India into three satrapies,[304] placing Greek governors
over two of them and leaving a Hindu ruler in charge of the third, and in
Bactriana, a part of Ariana or ancien