Strabo And India In His Works

Strabo, a classical author who lived in Augustan times, wrote two works:History and Geography. For most of History had been lost, only fragments were reserved by other works, and most of Geography have been luckily saved, Strabo is known as a geographer. With the rise and development of the modern geography, human geography has attracted more and more attention from the learning circle, and increasing importance has been given to the study on Strabo. However, a thorough and penetrating research still awaits its students. As far as our Chinese academic circle is concerned, only a few studies have been dedicated to Strabo.In first chapter, the author of this thesis gives a long introduction of Strabo’s works of history and geography. And the author focuses on study of the characteristics of Strabo’s Geography, namely its descriptions on natural geography and culture geography. P. Pedech, Bunbury, H. F. Tozer, J.O. Thomson and others are among the early scholars who studied on the human geography of Strabo, the scholars in the later times, especially those in the recent ten years, have extended their studies to dealing with the biography of Strabo, the various cultures and historical information contained in Geography. Some examples of the development have been shown in this paper.The descriptions on India in Geography were made mainly in two parts, of which the first one is on the expedition by Alexander the Great, the second one is on Indian society. Some other works also exist about the expedition by Alexander, such as Arrian, Plutarch and others, however, their sources were almost exclusively derived from the generals of the army led by Alexander. In Chapter two, discussion is made on sources Geography depended on, concluding that they were in most parts what the soldiers of army had seen and heard in their expedition to the East. In Chapter Four, a comparative study is made on the knowledge of the Orient existed prior to Alexander’s expedition and later on, showing that the Greek knowledge about Indian society is very different after the expedition. The significance of Strabo’s work lies not only on that fact that it shows the great consequences of the expedition, but also on its usefulness for the study of Indian society.