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They estimate that China’s population then stayed close to 50 million until the beginning of the second millennium AD, when it began to rise with the greater cultivation of rice in the Yangtze valley, reaching 115 million in 1200, but then falling back in the Mongol era and not recovering until 1500. None of the above affects the general point about the exceptionally high population density of Egypt and China in the pre-modern world.

26. Figures derived from Russell (1958).

27. Pritchard (1969: 415).

28. Arnett (1982: 45-7).

29. Sallier 2,9,1 = Anastasi Papyri 7,4,6, quoted in Erman (1894: 328).

30. Anastasi Papyri 5, 10, 8ff., quoted in Erman (1894: 328).

31. Ramsey (1987: 121-3). See Chapter 5, p. 209.

32. Norman (1988: 257-63).

33. Wilkinson (2000: 735).

34. The Economist, 9 March 1996, p. 4, cited in Graddol (1997: 37).

35. Karlgren (1954). Its principles are set out succinctly in Norman (1988: 34-42).

36. Pritchard (1969: 440).

37. Wilkinson (2000: 723).

38. Translated by Mote (1999: 156), from Lin Tianwei (1977): Bei Song jiruo de sanzhong xin fenxi. Song shi yanjiu ji 9, 147-98.

39. Gao (1991: 145).

40. Ramsey (1987: 224).

5 Charming Like a Creeper: The Cultured Career of Sanskrit

1. Rig Veda, vii. 103.

2. ibid., x.34.

3. Mahābhā⋅ya, i.1.

4. Ojha, Bharatiya Prācīna Lipi Mālā, 14, no. 6, attributed to Cānakya-nīti.

5. Caesar, De Bello Gallico, vi. 14.

6. Martin Prechtel, personal communication.

7. Plato, Phaedrus 275A.

8. Mahābhārata, quoted by Kesavan (1992:3).

9. Brough (1968:31).

10. Deshpande (1993: 24), quoting Mahābhā⋅ya, i, p. 2.

11. Patanjali, Mahābhā⋅ya on Panini, vi.3.109, trans. Deshpande (1993: 62).

12. Manu, ii. 18-22.

13. Deshpande (1993: 86).

14. ibid.: 16; Rājaśekhara, Kāvyamimāmsa, iv.

15. Strabo, xv.1.21.

16. ibid., xv. 1.64.

17. Milindapañha, i.9.

18. Fo-Kwo-Ki, xxxvi (in Beal 1884: lxxi).

19. ibid., xl (in Beal 1884: part 1, p. lxxix).

20. ibid., xl (in Beal 1884: part 1, p. lxxxiii).

21. Coedès (1968: 81-2).

22. Si-Yu-Ki, ii.9 (in Beal 1884: part 1, pp. 77-8).

23. Gidwani(1994).

24. Rig Veda, ii.20.7.

25. Chatterji (1966: 78).

26. Si-Yu-Ki, x.9-11 (in Beal 1884: part 2, pp. 204-8).

27. Pañcatantra, v. 31.

28. Keith Taylor, in Tarling (1999: 195).

29. Kamara, Pōdoukē and Sōpatma, ‘lying in a row’, are quoted in the first century AD Periplous of the Erythraean Sea (ch. 60). Of these, the first two are presumably on the delta of the Kaveri river and at Puducherry (better known as Pondicherry).

30. Yule and Burnell (1986: 456): ‘It is a saying in Goozerat,—"Who goes to Java Never returns. If by chance he return, Then for two generations to live upon, Money enough he brings back Ršs Mšlš, ii.82 (1878 edn: 418).

31. Majumdar (1975:21).

32. Coedès (1968: 26-7, 36, 275).

33. ibid.: 37, 276.

34. Majumdar (1975: 13).

35. ibid.: 19-20.

36. ibid.: 48.

37. Mahābhārata, Āranyakaparva, 173; Majumdar (1975: 25-7).

38. Coedès (1968: 369).

39. Fo-Kwo-Ki, xl (in Beal 1884: part 1, p. lxxxi).

40. Coedès (1968: 17); Bechert and Gombrich (1984: 147).

41. Ramsay (1987: 121-4).

42. For the details of the Tibetan script and its origin, I have been dependent on Beyer (1992:40-50).

43. There is some evidence that Tibetans could write earlier than this. There are extant contemporary annals of the period 650 to 747, and for the year 655 we find: The King stayed at Mer-khe, and the prime minister Ston-tsan wrote the text of his commands to Ngor-ti.

In fact the introduction of the script is traditionally (i.e. in a history from the fourteenth century) credited to a Tibetan scholar and government minister, Thon-mi Anui-bu, said to have been sent on a mission to India in the mid-seventh century. But Thon-mi may have been an invented figure, since he is omitted from genuinely ancient records of Tibet found in central Asia, while the earliest grammatical works on Tibetan are also attributed to him.

44. Beyer (1992: 36-7).

45. As conjectured in van