“Greek writers viewed India largely from a political perspective, Chinese travellers from a religious perspective, and Arab scholars from a scientific and cultural perspective.” Comment.

The generalisation is broadly sound, because each tradition came to India for a different reason.

The Greeks came with armies and embassies, and wrote politics. Megasthenes, Seleucus Nicator's envoy at the court of Sandrocottus, wrote the Indica, our fullest external account of Mauryan administration — the municipal boards of Pataliputra, the war office, land revenue, and the famous and mistaken division of society into seven classes. Arrian, Strabo and Diodorus preserved him; Ptolemy mapped India; the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea catalogued ports and cargoes.

The Chinese came as pilgrims, and wrote religion. Faxian travelled during the Gupta period, in the early fifth century, and recorded monasteries, the state of the Buddhist order and a mild administration in his Record of Buddhistic Kingdoms. Xuanzang, in India from 629 to 645, studied at Nalanda and left in the Si-Yu-Ki the fullest account of Harsha's reign. Yijing, at the end of the seventh century, wrote specifically on monastic discipline.

The Arabs came as scholars and traders, and wrote science and culture. Al-Biruni's Kitab-ul-Hind, written around 1030, learnt Sanskrit and engaged directly with Indian astronomy, mathematics, philosophy, chronology and religion, comparing them with Greek thought and stating explicitly that he would report what Hindus themselves said. Sulaiman and al-Masudi recorded trade and coastal society.

The exceptions. Megasthenes described society as well as government; Xuanzang gave a careful political account of Harsha; Al-Biruni wrote at length on caste and custom.

The biases matter more. Megasthenes' seven classes misread varna and jati through a Greek lens. The Chinese pilgrims saw India through Buddhism and undercounted Brahmanical life. Al-Biruni travelled in the train of Mahmud of Ghazni's raids and openly noted the hostility this created. Each account is therefore evidence about its author as well as about India.