Indica

Indica (Arrian)

Indica is the name of a short military history about interior Asia, particularly India, written by Arrian in the 2nd century CE. The subject of the book is the expedition of Alexander the Great that occurred between 336 and 323 BCE, about 450 years before Arrian. The book mainly tells the story of Alexander's officer Nearchus' voyage from India to the Persian Gulf after Alexander the Great's conquest of the Indus Valley, which was explored in Arrian's earlier text, Anabasis, meant to be the companion text to the Indica. However, much of the importance of the work comes from Arrian's in-depth asides describing the history, geography, and culture of Ancient India. Arrian wrote his Indica in the Ionic dialect, taking Herodotus for his literary mode.

Indica (Ctesias)

Indica is a lost book by the classical Greek physician Ctesias purporting to describe the Indian subcontinent. 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.

Indica (Megasthenes)

Indika is an account of Mauryan India by the Greek writer Megasthenes. The original work is now lost, but its fragments have survived in later Greek and Latin works. The earliest of these works are those by Diodorus Siculus, Strabo (Geographica), Pliny, and Arrian (Indica).

indica

Noun

1. Any of the indica subspecies of the rice, Oryza sativa, which (unlike the japonica or sinica subspecies) are non-sticky and long-grained.
2. Marijuana of the species Cannabis indica.