R ichard S toneman . The Greek Experience of India

Richard Stoneman’s The Greek Experience of India: From Alexander to the Indo-Greeks is presented as a contribution to the history of ancient Greece and India, especially to Greek interaction with Indian civilization. The author writes in a breezy, colloquial style saturated with quotations—often a string of quotes, drawn from later antiquity, the Middle Ages, and modern times—about India and other topics. Many are by recent writers, including writers from India and the author’s and other modern writers’ personal accounts of India. This sometimes gives the book the feel of a traveler’s guide, while simultaneously dissolving any solid image of the historical in a shifting mirage of hazy literary impressions that support the stereotype of “India’s immemorial past” as an unchanging culture (395). Even though Stoneman occasionally rises above the fantasy, the book’s Greek accounts are effectively footnotes to the modern quasi-historical beliefs about ancient India followed unquestioningly today by most...

Ancient history · Archaeology · Art · Civilization · Fantasy · Greeks · Literature · Style (visual arts) · Classics · Eurasian Exchange Networks · History · Indian and Buddhist Studies · Politics and Conflicts in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Middle East