Few reliable records exist of the practice before the time of the Gupta empire (c. 400 CE). Among those that do reference the practice, the lost works of the Greek historian Aristobulus of Cassandreia, who traveled to India with the expedition of Alexander the Great in c. 327 BCE, are preserved in the fragments of Strabo. There are different views by authors on what Aristobulus hears as widows of one or more tribes in India performing self sacrifice on the husband's pyre, one author also mentions that widows who declined to die were held in disgrace. In contrast, Megasthenes who visited India during 300 BCE does not mention any specific reference to the practice.