Indica (Ctesias)

Indica (Greek: Ἰνδικά Indika) is the name of a book by the classical Greek physician Ctesias purporting to describe Sindh. Written in the fifth century BC, it is the first known Greek reference to that distant land. Ctesias was the court physician to king Artaxerxes II of Persia, and the book is not based on his own experiences, but on stories brought to Persia by traders, along the Silk Road from Serica, a land north of China and India where domesticated silk originated.

The book contains the first known reference to the unicorn, ostensibly an ass in India that had a single 1.5 cubit (27 inch) horn on its head, and introduces the European world to the talking parrot, and falconry, which was not yet practiced in Europe.

Among the information apparently conveyed in the book (mostly according to second-hand accounts of its contents):

Ctesias' books contains such a mix of obviously dubious apocrypha among its truths that it was sometimes mocked by subsequent authors as a source of wild yarns and myths.

In the Second Century AD, the satirist Lucian depicted Ctesias as being condemned to a special part of hell reserved for those who spread wild lies during their lifetimes. Indica apparently included such anecdotes as the description of a race of one-legged people called the Monosceli, another whose feet were so big they could be used as umbrellas (the Skiopolae), men with tails like satyrs, and claimed that people in the actual land of Serica were 18 feet tall. Lucian's own similar book, A True Story, was presented as a satire of Indica, including an introduction that calls Ctesias and other similar authors inexperienced liars. Lucian states that he, himself, will now present a similar lie, but unlike his predecessors, he is at least honest enough to state this plainly up-front.

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