Sources of Ancient Indian History: Literary sources and foreign accounts

Statements 1 and 2 are correct. Shruti is the body of texts held to be revealed: the four Vedic Samhitas with their Brahmanas, Aranyakas and Upanishads. Smriti is the remembered tradition composed by human authors: the Dharmasutras and Dharmashastras (such as Manu and Yajnavalkya), the Puranas, the epics (itihasa) and the Vedangas. Statement 3 is wrong because the Upanishads, as the concluding part of the Veda (Vedanta), are shruti.

The Kitab-ul-Hind was written in Arabic by Al-Biruni (973-1048), a scholar from Khwarizm who came to India in the train of Mahmud of Ghazni. He learnt Sanskrit, studied texts such as the Puranas, the Bhagavad Gita and works on astronomy, and arranged his book in 80 chapters, each opening with a question and comparing Indian ideas with Greek ones. He also described the Somnath temple. Ibn Battuta came in the fourteenth century and wrote the Rihla; Al-Masudi and Sulaiman were ninth-tenth century Arab writers on India.

The Mahabhashya ('Great Commentary') of Patanjali is a commentary on Panini's Ashtadhyayi, the Sanskrit grammar, taking in the varttikas of Katyayana. To illustrate grammatical forms it uses examples from its own time, such as 'the Yavana besieged Saketa' and 'the Yavana besieged Madhyamika', and 'here we perform sacrifices for Pushyamitra'. These incidental examples make it a source for the Indo-Greek raids and for the Shunga king Pushyamitra, whose contemporary Patanjali is believed to have been. Panini himself lived much earlier, around the fifth or fourth century BCE.

All three statements are correct. Faxian left China in 399 CE, crossed Central Asia and reached north-west India, visited the Buddhist sites of the Ganga valley in the reign of Chandragupta II, and then went to Tamralipti, from where he sailed to Sri Lanka and, after two years there, returned by sea via the Indonesian islands. His account, the Foguoji, praises the mild government and the absence of harsh punishments in the Middle Kingdom, and records that the Chandalas lived outside the towns and struck wood to warn others of their approach, an early account of untouchability. Notably, he never names the reigning king.

Yijing sailed from Guangzhou in 671 CE, stayed at Srivijaya in Sumatra to study Sanskrit, and reached Tamralipti in 673. He spent about ten years at Nalanda and returned by sea, again via Srivijaya, where he wrote his record of Buddhist monastic practice in India and the Malay archipelago. His work is a key source for the daily routine of Nalanda and for the importance of Srivijaya as a Buddhist centre. Faxian came overland around 400 CE, Xuanzang came and went overland (629-645 CE), and Song Yun came overland to the north-west in the sixth century.

Barygaza is Bhrigukachchha, modern Bharuch at the mouth of the Narmada in Gujarat. The Periplus, written by an anonymous Greek-speaking merchant from Roman Egypt around the mid-first century CE, describes its difficult approach, its imports (wine, copper, tin, coral, Roman coins) and its exports (cotton cloth, spices, precious stones). Sopara (Souppara) is a separate port further south near Mumbai; Muziris was the great pepper port on the Malabar coast; and Tamralipti (Tamluk) was the port of Bengal on the east coast.

Statements 1 and 3 are correct. The Puranas are cast as ancient narrations, so the dynasties of the Kali age are described as what 'will' happen: the kings 'will rule'. Tradition gives a Purana five subjects (pancha-lakshana): sarga (creation), pratisarga (re-creation), vamsha (genealogies of gods and sages), manvantara (the ages of the Manus) and vamshanucharita (the history of royal lines). Statement 2 is wrong: the lists go well beyond the Mauryas, covering the Shungas, Kanvas and Andhras (Satavahanas), the Ikshvakus (called Shriparvatiya) and other later lines, and the Vayu and Brahmanda Puranas describe the early Guptas ruling along the Ganga up to Prayaga, Saketa and Magadha.

Statements 1 and 2 are correct. The Indica survives only in fragments quoted by Strabo, Arrian, Diodorus and others, so what we read is filtered through later authors. Megasthenes described seven 'classes' (philosophers, farmers, herdsmen and hunters, artisans and traders, soldiers, overseers and councillors), a scheme that does not match the varna system and is best seen as an outsider's classification. Statement 3 is wrong: he described Pataliputra as surrounded by a wooden wall (palisade) with loopholes for archers, 570 towers and 64 gates, and by a moat; excavations at Bulandibagh have exposed remains of this timber palisade.