Indians

So I, for my part, know no city more fortunate than this, nor men living better, except the Indians.

For there, as they say, rivers flow, not, as among you, of water, but one of milk, another of clear wine, another of honey, another of oil.

And there are most beautiful meadows there and a nature of flowers and trees furnishing the shade from above on high, and the fruit within reach for those wishing to take it, the branches bending down.

"All that has been said about nature by the ancients is said also among those who philosophize outside Greece — some things among the Indians by the Brahmans, and some in Syria by those called Jews.

And there are among the Indians those who follow the precepts of Buddha, whom, for his surpassing solemnity, they have honoured as a god.

and if you say Egyptians or Indians or Babylonians or the Magi themselves, I shall not cease asking for their teacher.

Cum hisce litteris perveniet ad te exemplum typis impressum Edicti quod faciendum curavi, quo, ob rationes quas expressas videbis, aliasque meis rebus conducentes prohibeo commercium omne externorum in ipsis partibus Indiae aliisque regionibus transmarinis.

Primum Indis, quos ut extra Ecclesiam positos Pontifici nulla ex parte subditos esse diximus.

neque prodesset Lusitanis etiamsi primi hominum cum Indis habuissent commercia, quod tamen non potest non esse falsissimum.

Diodorus bestows an encomium upon the Indians, who, in all their wars with each other, forbore destroying or even hurting those employed in husbandry, as being the common benefactors of all.

Among the Indians, as we are informed by Strabo, the person, who had maimed another, was condemned, in addition to the penalty of retaliation, to lose his hand.

and at the same time lay waste the country round about of the Indians and of the Saracens, until all these too come, in a second rank, to be tributary and subject to me.

the Indians suffer themselves to be scorched;

I pass over the Cappadocians, the Syrians, and the beings who inhabit the land of India toward the ends of the earth, all of whom have had the misfortune to suffer many terrible and grievous afflictions.

When they had arrived in Thessaly, Mardonius first chose all the Persians called Immortals, save only Hydarnes their general who said that he would not quit the king's person, and next, the Persian cuirassiers and the thousand horse and the Medes and Sacae and Bactrians and Indians, alike their infantrymen and the rest of the horsemen.

And had you heard or seen some of what the Indians have prepared of these conjuring tricks in the houses of their worship, you would know that God, exalted be He, has bestowed a favour upon the ignorant among men in the mutakallimūn who have arisen among them — meaning the scholars of kalām and the philosophers of religion, God's good pleasure be upon them

the men of charms and seizures and incantations and magic and sleight of hand claim that the number and the strength among the jinn and the satans belong to the settled folk of al-Shām and India;

The Indians say something like this of the planet called ʻUṭārid.

At that time the most holy Thomas also, who was one of the company of twelve disciples of Christ, was sent out to the land of the Indians, proclaiming to them the saving message.

And when in Egypt too the monasteries began to be established and the multitudes of monks to be gathered together, and the fame of their virtue and their angelic manner of life spread to the ends of the inhabited world and came also to the Indians, it stirred these as well to the like zeal, so that many of them, leaving all things behind, took to the deserts and, in a mortal body, took up the way …

From this many, enjoying that most sweet teaching, withdrew from the bitter darkness of deceit and were added to the sweet light of the truth;

You alleged that the Indians are the children of Khindif — and that there is kinship between you and the Berbers, And that Daylam is of the seed of the son of Ḍabbah the valiant — and Burjān of the children of ʻAmr ibn ʻĀmir.

Then, when the dawn of the second and third centuries broke and the age of Arab-Islamic civilisation came, the Muslims turned their resolve to the translation of the books of philosophy which the advanced nations had composed, such as the Greeks, the Romans, the Persians and the Indians;

For if you saw fifty Indians all of them learned, this would not entitle you to say that all the people of al-Hind are learned, unless you had examined them all;