FOOTNOTES
[1] With the exception of Alexander, all the great conquerors who have crossed the Indus to invade India have sprung from provinces towards Tartary and Northern Persia.
[2] According to Plutarch, seventy Asiatic cities at the least owed their origin to Alexander. Of those, forty can still be traced. Grote thinks the number is probably exaggerated, and disparages their importance.
[3] In saying this, I do not forget that the Graeco-Baktrian kings at one time extended their sway in India even far beyond the parts conquered by Alexander; but this cannot be regarded as having resulted from his invasion. It might have equally happened had his invasion been as mythical as the Indian expeditions of Dionysos and Heraklês. Nor do I by any means overlook the effects produced by Greek ideas on the Indian mind—effects which can be traced in a variety of spheres, such as religion, poetry, philosophy, science, architecture, and the plastic arts. On this subject Professor A. Weber read a very learned paper, entitled “Die Griechen in Indien,” before the Prussian Academy of Sciences in July 1890. It is a paper which well deserves to be translated into our language. Scholars now rather incline to believe that, whatever may be the exact degree of the indebtedness of India to Greece, the ancient civilization of India was much less original and self-contained than it was at one time supposed to be.
[4] Patroklês, who held an important command in the East under Seleukos Nikatôr and his son Antiochos I., stated, in a work (now lost) which included a description of India, that while the army of Alexander took but a very hasty view of everything (in India), Alexander himself took a more exact one, causing the whole country to be described by men well acquainted with it. This description, Patroklês says, was put into his hands by Xenoklês the Treasurer. On this subject Humboldt thus writes: “The Macedonian campaign, which opened so large and beautiful a portion of the earth to the influence of one sole highly-gifted race, may therefore certainly be regarded in the strictest sense of the word as a scientific expedition, and, moreover, as the first in which a conqueror had surrounded himself with men learned in all departments of science, as naturalists, geometricians, historians, philosophers, and artists.”
[5] The editors of Alexander in India, however, say that this rhetorician must have flourished early under Claudius, who reigned from A.D. 41 to 54. They add that the Latin of Curtius agrees well with this view, which would place him between Velleius and Petronius.
[6] The author of the Periplous of the Erythraian Sea also conducts Alexander to the Ganges. So too does Lucan—Pharsalia, x. 33.
[7] Sainte-Croix and Professor Freeman both express strong doubts of the authenticity of Alexander’s letters quoted by several writers.
[8] In Persian, Kshatrapa.
[9] The Macedonian line in this part of the field being broken, some of the Indians and of the Persian cavalry burst through the gap and fought their way to the enemy’s baggage, where a desperate conflict ensued.—Arrian, iii. 14.
[10] General Chesney, commenting lately on these numbers, remarks that “numbers without discipline are, after a certain point, worse than useless, the men only get in each others’ way. This was especially the case in the battles of old times fought at close quarters.” “The biographers of Sir Charles Napier,” he continues, “have made a great point of the circumstance that at the battle of Meani the British force of less than 3000 men was opposed by 40,000 of the enemy who fought desperately for several hours. Now, the whole British loss in killed and wounded was under 300, so that, assuming every wound to have been inflicted by a separate sword or bullet, it follows that out of the 40,000 desperate fighters, 39,700 contributed nothing to the fighting.” In another passage he points out that an ancient battle was in some respects a much more formidable thing than a modern one. In the battle of old days the absence of noise, except the words of command, the tramp of men, and the clashing of armour, above all the closeness of one’s adversary, must have been of a kind to try the nerves much more than the rattle of musketry, the crashing of shells, and the thunder of the artillery in a modern battle. What we shall never get back to is hand-to-hand fighting at close quarters. It was this that made a battle so decisive in olden days, and caused the tremendous slaughter that used to be the fate of the beaten side. An ancient battle was really a very short affair. After the marshalling of the troops and the preliminary skirmishing of the cavalry and the archery practice of the light troops, in which a good deal of time would be taken up, the business must have been decided in a very few minutes when once the infantry actually engaged. The fact is that when two bodies of men meet with sword or spear, a prolonged contest is from the nature of the case impossible. In modern warfare when a battle is lost, a large part of the defeated army is already at a distance and gets off unharmed. But there was no escape for the man in armour, and when he turned his back his shield was no defence.
[11] “Against Phoenicians, Egyptians, Babylonians, Alexander had no mission of vengeance; he might rather call on them to help him against the common foe.... If the gods of Attica had been wronged and insulted (by the Persians) so had the gods of Memphis and Babylon”.—Prof. Freeman, Historical Essays, ii. pp. 202, 203.
[12] “From this unhappy time all the worst failings of Alexander become more strongly developed.... Impetuosity and self-exaltation now grew upon him till he could bear neither restraint nor opposition.”—Prof. Freeman, Historical Essays, ii. p. 206.
[13] The Mêdos is now the Polvar and the Araxês the Bund-Amir.
[14] Kinneir places the Ouxian passes to the north-west of Bebehan.
[15] The narrow defile near Kaleh Safed (the white fort), some fifty miles to the north-west of Shiraz.
[16] Curzon thinks that Pasargadai lay to the north-east of Persepolis at a distance of some thirty miles. For a discussion regarding their ruins and the tomb of Cyrus see his great work on Persia just published, vol. ii. pp. 70-92.
[17] The release of these enormous treasure-hoards produced such effects as resulted in recent times from the discoveries of gold in California and Australia. The prices of all commodities were greatly enhanced, and prosperity advanced by leaps and bounds.
[18] Perhaps Damaghan, but its position is very uncertain. According to Apollodoros it was 1260 stadia beyond the Kaspian Gates, but according to Pliny only 133 miles. See Curzon’s Persia, i. p. 287.
[19] Sari, according to Droysen.
[20] “Edicto vetuit ne quis se praeter Apellem Pingeret, aut alius Lysippo duceret aera Fortis Alexandri vultum simulantia.”—Horace.
[21] Pausanias, however, says that it was Philadelphos who brought the body to Alexandreia.
[22] See [Note Ll] in Appendix.
[23] This name, transliterates the Sanskrit Subhagasena, which was not a personal name but an official title. See Lassen, Ind. Alt. II. p. 273.
[24] The Companion Cavalry, called sometimes simply the Companions, were the Royal Horse Guards, a body which at the beginning of the campaign consisted of 1500 men, all scions of the noblest families of Macedonia and Thessaly. In the course of the war their numbers were augmented perhaps to 5000, as Mützell conjectures.
[25] The Parai-tak-ênai possessed part of the mountainous country between the upper courses of the Oxus and the Jaxartes. They were perhaps one in race with the Takkas of India, who had a great and flourishing capital, Taxila (i.e. Takkasila, the Rock of the Takkas), situated between the Indus and Upper Hydaspes. The first part of their name Parai represents perhaps the Sanskrit parvata, a hill, or pahâr (a hill) of the common dialect. A tribe of the same name occupied a mountainous part of Media (Herod. i. 101), and another is located by Isidoros of Charax between Drangiana and Arachosia. Another form of the name is Paraitakai (Arrian, iii. 19; Strabo, xvi. 736; Stephanos Byz.)
[26] The spring of 327 B.C.
[27] Kaukasos here denotes the lofty mountain range, now called the Central Hindu Kush, which forms the northern frontier of Kâbul. Its native designation was Parapamisos, or, as Ptolemy more correctly transliterates it, Paropanisos. Till Alexander’s time these mountains were altogether unknown to the Greeks. The officers of his army who wrote accounts of his Asiatic expedition sometimes considered them to be a continuation of the Tauros, and sometimes of the Kaukasos. Arrian, who regarded them as an extension of the former range, says that the Macedonian soldiers called them Kaukasos to flatter Alexander, as if, when he had crossed them to enter Baktria, he had carried his victorious arms beyond Kaukasos. The Greeks of those days, it must be observed, had no definite knowledge of the mountains to which that name was properly applicable, but vaguely conceived them to be the loftiest and the remotest to be found in the eastern parts of the world. The pass by which Alexander recrossed the Paropanisos was most probably the Kushan or Ghorbund Pass.
[28] See [Note A], Alexandreia under Kaukasos.
[29] The tribes collectively designated Parapamisadai were, according to Ptolemy (who calls them Paropanisadai), the five following:—The Bôlitai, Aristophyloi, Parsioi, Parsyêtai, and Ambautai. They lived along the spurs of the Hindu Kush, chiefly along its southern and eastern sides. They thus occupied the whole of Kabulistân, and part of Afghânistân. The Bôlitai were probably the people of Kâbul, a city which, no doubt, represents that which Ptolemy calls Karoura (Kaboura?) or Ortospana.
[30] The colonies which Alexander planted in the countries he overran were of a military character, designed to secure the permanence, cohesion, and ultimate unification of his conquests. The war-worn soldiers whom he made colonists were condemned to perpetual exile, as may be gathered from the fate which overtook the colonists who of their own accord left Baktra and attempted to return to Greece. They were treated as deserters, and were all put to death.
[31] This is the Kâbul river, called otherwise by the classical writers the Kôphês, except by Ptolemy, who calls it the Kôa. Its name in Sanskrit is the Kubhâ.
[33] Taxilês. His distinctive name, as we learn from Curtius (viii. 14), was Omphis. Diodôros (xvii. 86) less accurately calls him Môphis, and says that Alexander changed his name to Taxiles. This is, however, a mistake, for Taxiles was a territorial title which each sovereign of Taxila assumed on his accession to power. Indian princes are generally designated in the classics by their territorial or dynastic titles. The father of Omphis died about the time Alexander was making his preparations to invade India.
[34] Kleitos had been killed before the army left Baktra, but his brigade continued to bear his name even after his death.
[35] Peukelaôtis designated both a district and its capital city. The name is a transliteration of Pukkalaoti, which is the Pali form of the Sanskrit Pushkalavati, the name by which the ancient capital of Gândhâra was known. General Cunningham has fixed its position at the two large towns of Parang and Chârsada, which form part of Hashtnagar, or eight cities, that are seated close together on the eastern bank of the Landaï or lower Swât river. The position thus indicated is nearly seventeen miles to the north-west of Peshâwar. The city was in early times a great emporium of commerce. Ptolemy, who with the author of the Periplûs of the Erythraian sea, calls it Proklaïs, has correctly located it on the eastern bank of the river of Souastênê, i.e. the river of Swât. Wilson, however, and Abbott take Pekhely (or Pakholi) in the neighbourhood of Peshâwar to be the modern representative of the old Gândhârian capital (v. Cunningham’s Anc. Geog. of India, pp. 49-51).
[36] The route assigned to this division lay along the course of the Kâbul river and through the Khaiber Pass to Peukelaôtis, which was situated where, or near where, Hasht-nagar on the river Landaï now stands.
[37] This name is perhaps a transliteration of the Sanskrit Sanjaya, which means victor. A Shinwâri tribe called Sangu is found inhabiting a part of the Nangrihar district west of the Khaiber Pass.
[38] The hypaspists, so called because they carried the round shield called aspis, while the hoplites carried the oblong shield called hoplon, formed a body of about 3000 men at the outset of the war, but were perhaps augmented to double that number during its progress. They were not so heavily armed as the hoplites, and were therefore more rapid in their movements. The foot companions were another distinguished corps of guards. The Agrianians, who made excellent light-armed troops, were a Paionian people whose country adjoined the sources of the river Strymôn.
[39] Aspasioi and Assakênoi. See [Note C].
[40] Strabo (xv. 697) states the reasons which led Alexander to select the northern route to the Indus in preference to the southern. “Alexander was informed,” he says, “that the mountainous and northern parts were the most habitable and fertile, but that the southern part was either without water or liable to be overflowed by rivers at one time, or entirely burnt up at another, more fit to be the haunts of wild beasts than the dwellings of men. He resolved therefore to master first that part of India which had been well spoken of, considering at the same time that the rivers which it was necessary to pass, and which flowed transversely through the country which he proposed to attack, would be crossed with more facility towards their sources.” The districts through which he passed are now called Kafiristan, Chittral, Swât, and the Yusufzai country. It is more difficult to trace in this than in any other of his campaigns the course of his movements, and to identify with certainty the various strongholds which he attacked. The country through which he passed is but little known even at the present day, and, as Bunbury remarks, a glance at the labyrinth of mountains and valleys, which occupy the whole space in question in the best modern maps, will sufficiently show how utterly bewildering they must have been to the officers of Alexander, who neither used maps nor the compass, and were incapable of the simplest geographical observations. The time occupied by Alexander in marching from the foot of Kaukasos to the Indus was about a year. Like Napoleon, he kept the field even in winter, though in these parts the cold at that season is intense.
[41] Khôês. This is the first river Alexander would reach after he had left his encampment near the junction of the Panjshîr with the Kôphên, which appears to have been the place where he divided his army. It cannot have been, as Lassen thought, the Kamah or Kunâr, but is rather the stream formed by the junction of the Alishang and the Alinghar, which joins the Kôphên on the left in the neighbourhood of Mandrour above Jalâlâbâd. The Alinghar river, as we learn from Masson, is called also the Kow. The Kôa of Ptolemy must not be confounded with the Khôês of the text, for that author in describing the Kôa says that it receives a tributary from the Paropanisadai, and that after being joined by the Souastos (the river of Swât) it falls into the Indus. The Kôa is therefore probably the Kôphên after its reception of the Kamah or Kunâr river.
[42] Euaspla R. This name, which, so far as I know, occurs only in Arrian, has not been satisfactorily explained. It designated, no doubt, the river which Aristotle, Strabo, and Curtius call the Choaspes, and which the best authorities identify with the Kamah or Kunâr, a river which rivals the Kôphên itself in the volume of its waters and the length of its course. It rises at the foot of the plateau of Pamîr, not far from the sources of the Oxus, and joins the Kôphên at some distance below Jalâlâbâd. Strabo says that the Choaspes traverses Bandobênê (Badakshan) and Gandarîtis after having passed near the towns of Plêgêrion and Gorydalê.
[43] The capital of this chief was probably Gorys on the Choaspes.
[44] Arigaion. This place, which was situated to the east of the Choaspes, is perhaps now represented by Naoghi, a village in the province of Bajore. Ritter identified it with Bajore or Bagawar, the capital of this province. The mountains to which the inhabitants fled for refuge may perhaps, as V. de Saint-Martin suggests, be those which Justin (xii. 7) calls Daedali, whereto he says Alexander led his troops after the Bacchanalian revelry with which they had been indulged at Nysa. There is no mention elsewhere of Arigaion, unless it be the “Argacum urbem” of the Itiner. Alex. 105. It is taken by Schneider to be the Acadira of Curtius.
[45] The Gouraios is the river Pañjkora, which unites with the river of Swât to form the Landaï, a large affluent of the Kâbul river. It appears under the name of the Gauri in the sixth book of the Mahâbhârata, where it is mentioned along with the Suvâstu (the Swât river) and the Kampanâ. It owes its name to the Ghori, a great and wide-spread tribe, branches of which are still to be found on the Pañjkora, and also on both sides of the Kâbul River where it is joined by the Landaï. It formed the boundary between the Gouraians and the Assakênians.
[47] Alexander seems to have treated these mercenaries with less than his usual generosity towards brave enemies. Plutarch reprobates his slaughter of them as a foul blot on his military fame. The attack upon the city after it had capitulated on terms admits of no justification.
[49] Abisares. Arrian in a subsequent passage calls this chief King of the Mountaineer Indians. His name shows that he ruled over Abhisâra, that region of mountain-girt valleys, now called Hazâra, which lies between the Indus and the upper Hydaspes. In Hazâra the ancient name of the country seems to be preserved. It has been supposed, but less reasonably, that the district was so called from the great number of its petty chiefs, hazâra being the numeral for a thousand (in Persian). Abisares was a very powerful prince, and it is supposed with reason that Kâshmîr was subject to his sway.
[51] “Heraklês,” says Herodotos (ii. 43, 44), “is one of the ancient gods of the Egyptians, and, as they say themselves, it was 17,000 years before the reign of Amasis, when the number of their gods was increased from eight to twelve, of whom Heraklês was accounted one. And being desirous of obtaining certain information from whatever source I could, I sailed to Tyre in Phoenicia, where, as I had been informed, there was a temple dedicated to Heraklês.” The name of the Egyptian Heraklês was Dsona or Chôn, or, according to Pausanias, Makeris, and that of the Tyrian was Melkart. These were more ancient than the Theban Heraklês, the son of Zeus and Alkmênê. The Indian Heraklês, called Dorsanes, who, according to Arrian, was the father of Pandaia, has been identified with Śiva, but also with Balarâma, the eighth avatâr of Vishnu. Diodôros (ii. 39) ascribes to him the building of the walls and of the palace of Palibothra (now Pâtnâ). Arrian in the second book of this work (c. 16) distinguishes the Tyrian Heraklês from the Egyptian and Argive or Theban. The latter, he says, lived about the time of Oidipous, son of Laios.
[52] The Olympic stadium, which was the chief Greek measure for itinerary distances, was equal to 600 Greek feet, 625 Roman feet, and 606 feet 9 inches English. The stadium of this length was the only one in use before the third century of our aera.
[53] The site of Orobatis must be sought for in the district west of Peukelaôtis, through which Hêphaistiôn advanced on his way to the Indus. The position and name of Arabutt, a village in this locality where ruins exist, plainly show its identity with the Orobatis of the text. It is situated on the left bank of the Landaï, and is near Naoshera. It is probably the Oroppa of the Ravenna geographer.
[54] Nikanor was succeeded in this office by Philippos, who was placed in command of the garrison of Peukelaôtis.
[55] Peukelaôtis, as has been stated, stood on the Landaï at a distance of seventeen miles north-west from Peshâwar. Alexander after the fall of Bazira moved westwards toward that river, judging it expedient before attacking the Rock to reduce all the yet unconquered region west of the Indus. He took Peukelaôtis, and then directed his march eastward till he approached the embouchure of the Kôphên, whence turning northwards he advanced up the right bank of the Indus till he reached Embolima, about eight miles distant from Aornos, and as high up the river as an army could go.
[56] Kôphaios, to judge from his name and from what is here stated, must have been the ruler of the valley of the lower Kôphên or Kâbul river. Hence it is unlikely, as some have supposed, that the dominions of Taxilês lay partly in the country west of the Indus. I find nothing anywhere in the classical writers lending countenance to such a supposition. The name of Assagetes is probably a transliteration into Greek of the Sanskrit Aśvajit, “gaining horses by conquest.”
[57] Ritter taking Embolima to be a word of Greek origin, equivalent in meaning to ἐκβολή, “the mouth of a river,” thought that this place lay opposite to Attak, in the angle of land where the Kôphên discharges into the Indus, and was thus led to identify Aornos with the hill in that locality on which the fort of Raja Hodi stands. Embolima appears, however, to be rather a combination of two native names, Amb and Balimah. Amb is the name of a fort, now in ruins, from which runs the ordinary path up to the summit of Mahâban. It crowns a position of remarkable strength, which faces Derbend, a small town on the opposite side of the Indus. Not far westward from this fort, and on the same spur of the Mahâban, there is another fort also in ruins, which preserves to this day in the tradition of the inhabitants the name of Balimah. It is in accordance with Indian custom thus to combine into one the names of two neighbouring places.
[59] “All this account,” says Abbott, who takes Aornos to be Mount Mahâban, “will answer well for the Mahâban, which is a mountain-table about five miles in length at summit, scarped on the east by tremendous precipices from which descends one large spur down upon the Indus between Sitana and Amb. The mountain spur being comparatively easy of ascent would not probably be contested by the natives, who would concentrate their power to oppose the Macedonians as they climbed the precipitous fall of the main summit. The great extent of the mountain, covered as it is with pine forest, would enable Ptolemy, under the guidance of natives, to gain any distant point of the summit without observation.”
[60] His name seems a transliteration of Śaśigupta, “protected by the moon.”
[61] That is the eastern part of their country. He had already reduced the western and the capital Massaga.
[62] On descending the Mahâban by its northern or western spurs, Alexander would have found himself in the valleys of Chumla and Buner. The fugitives from the rock would no doubt flee for shelter to these valleys or the mountains by which they were enclosed. Dyrta probably lay to the north of Mahâban, near the point where the Indus issues from the mountains. Court’s opinion that Dyrta was a place so far remote from the rock as Dir, which lies beyond the Pañjkora river, seems altogether improbable. Yet it is adopted by Lassen, though the regions in which Dir is situated had already been subdued.
[63] “This road,” says Abbott, “was probably the path leading amongst precipices above and along the torrent of the Burindu, a river which, after watering the valleys of Buner and Chumla, flows into the Indus above Amb. The path even now is very difficult. This would have brought Alexander back to Amb.” On this route probably lay the pass which the chief called Eryx by Curtius and Aphrikes by Diodôros attempted, but unsuccessfully, to defend against Alexander. The river Burindu above mentioned may be identified with the Parenos of the Greek writers.
[64] In doing so they had of course to cross over to the left bank of the Indus.
[65] Arrian in his Indika (c. 14) has described the mode of elephant hunting practised by the Indians. It is still in vogue.
[66] Abbott points out that at Amb large quantities of drift timber are yearly arrested at an eddy near Derbend. It is probable, he thinks, that the pine forest in those days descended lower down the river than it does at present. At one time forests of fine sisoo, mulberry, and willow timber grew along both banks of the Indus at that part of its course.
[67] The bridge in all probability spanned the Indus near Attak, which stands on a steep and lofty part of the left bank about two miles below the junction of the Kâbul and Indus. The width of the latter river at the fortress of Attak is, according to Lieutenant Wood who measured it, 286 yards. A little lower down where the channel is usually spanned by a bridge of boats it varies, as stated by Vigne, from 80 to 120 yards. According to Cunningham, the bridge was made higher up the river, at Ohind. From Alexander’s campaign north of the Kâbul river, General Chesney (in a lecture at Simla) hints that a moral may be drawn:—“We have been accustomed,” he says, “to consider the country north of the Kâbul river as virtually impregnable. The march of Alexander’s army is a practical proof to the contrary, and although he was not burdened with artillery, and had apparently only mule transport, yet the Greek soldiers all marched in heavy armour, which must have added greatly to the difficulties of warfare among those mountains. There is an obvious moral to be drawn by us from these incidents.”
[69] Mount Tmôlos, as we learn from Virgil, Ovid, and Pliny, was famous for its vines. It was therefore considered to be a favourite haunt of the wine-god.
[70] As the Greek φ represents the bh of Sanskrit, his name would be Akubhi.
[71] Ivy abounds, however, in Hazâra as well as in some other parts of India.
[72] His other names were Bacchos, Iacchos, Lyaios, Lênaios, Evios, Bromios, and among the Romans Liber also.
[73] Arrian writes to the same effect in his Indika, c. 5: “When the Greeks noticed a cave in the dominions of the Paropamisadai, they asserted that it was the cave of Promêtheus the Titan, in which he had been suspended for stealing the fire.” At the distance of thirty-four miles from Birikot, a place near the river Swât, is Daityapûr, now called Daiti-Kalli, said to have been built by one of the Daityas, i.e. enemies of the gods, such as were the Titans of the Greeks. In the hill adjacent is a vast cavern which, as Abbott has suggested, the companions of Alexander may have taken to be the cave frequented by the eagle which preyed upon the vitals of Prometheus the Titan. At Bamiân, which lies on one of the routes from Kâbul to Baktria, there are some very notable caves, one of which, some think, must have been that which the Greeks took to be the cave of Promêtheus. But Alexander does not appear to have selected the Bamiân route either in crossing or recrossing the Kaukasos. The mountains of the real Kaukasos were the loftiest known to the Greeks before Alexander’s time, and hence to have crossed them was regarded as a transcendent achievement.
[74] Arrian, like other ancient writers, supposed that the Indus had its sources in those mountains from which it emerges into the plains some sixty miles above Attak. It is now known that it rises in Tibet on a lofty Himalayan peak, Mount Kailâsa, famous in Hindu fable as the residence of Śiva and the Paradise of Kuvera, and that before it issues into the plains it has nearly run the half of its course of about 1800 miles. The number of its mouths has varied from time to time. Ptolemy, the geographer, gives it seven.
[75] Pâtâla in Sanskrit mythology denotes the underworld—the abode of snakes and demons—to which the sun at the close of day seems to descend. It was, therefore, Ritter says, the name applied by the Brahmans to all the provinces in India that lay towards sunset. Cunningham, however, suggests that Pâtali, a Sanskrit word meaning the trumpet-flower (bignonia suaveolens) may have given its name to the Delta “in allusion,” he says, “to the ‘trumpet’ shape of the province included between the eastern and western branches of the mouth of the Indus, as the two branches as they approach the sea curve outwards like the mouth of a trumpet.” But could the idea of such a resemblance have occurred to the minds of the Indians unless maps were in use among them? For a better etymology see [Note U]. It has been conclusively proved that Haidarâbâd is the modern representative of the ancient Pâtâla.
[76] The Indus after receiving the united streams of the great Panjâb rivers is increased in breadth from 600 to 2000 feet. Its breadth is therefore grossly exaggerated here unless the extent to which its inundations spread beyond its banks enters into the account.
[78] The Afghans and Rajputs are still noted for their great stature.
[79] The Greek geographers derived the name of the Aethiopians from αἴθω, I burn, and ὦψ, the visage, and applied it to all the sun-burnt, dark-complexioned races south of Egypt. As the Aethiopic language is, however, purely Semitic, the name, if indigenous, must also be Semitic, since, as Salt states, the Abyssinians to this day call themselves Itiopjawan. Herodotus (vii. 70) speaks of Asiatic Aethiopians. These served in the army which Darius led into Greece, and were marshalled with the Indians, and did not at all differ from the others in appearance, but only in their language and in their hair, which was straight, while that of the Aethiopians of Libya (Africa) was woolly.
[80] The Persians were originally the inhabitants of that poor and insignificant province called Persis, which was included between the Persian Gulf in the south and Mêdia in the north, and which stretched eastward from Susiana (Elam) to the deserts of Karmania. The great empire won by their arms, extended from the Mediterranean to the Jaxartes and Indus. Xenophon says that the Persians in early times led a life of penury and hard toil, as they inhabited a rugged country which they cultivated with their own hands (Kyrop. vii. 5, 67).
[81] Cyrus is said to have perished in this expedition against the Skythians, who lived beyond the Jaxartes, and were led by Queen Tomyris. The account of this expedition, given by Herodotos in the closing chapters of his first book, is examined at length by Duncker in the sixth volume of his History of Antiquity, pp. 112-124. Xenophon represents Cyrus as dying in peace at an advanced age.
[82] Called the Indika, written in the Ionic dialect, and based chiefly on the works (now lost) of Megasthenes and Nearchos.
[83] The Indian Ocean and Persian Gulf, in contrast to the interior sea or Mediterranean.
[84] By the Indian Ocean (called immediately afterwards the Great Sea) is meant here the Bay of Bengal and the ocean beyond, then unknown, which extended to the shores of China. By the Kaukasos, which extended to this eastern ocean, is meant the vast Himâlayan range.
[85] Regarding the Maiôtic Lake, now generally called the Sea of Azof, the ancients entertained very hazy and inaccurate notions. They supposed it to be situated in the remotest regions of the earth (Aisch. Prom. 427), and to be almost equal in size to the Euxine (Herod, iv. 86). Arrian, who might have known better, seems here to have adopted the crude notion current in Alexander’s time that the Jaxartes (which they confounded with the Tanais or Don) entered by one arm the Hyrkanian or Kaspian Sea, and by another the Maiôtic Lake. The Kaspian itself was taken to be a gulf of the Great Eastern Ocean. Herodotos, however, is guiltless of this geographical heresy.
[86] This does not mean that Megasthenes was sent on frequent embassies to Sandrakottos, but that during his embassy he had frequent interviews with him. The former interpretation, however, finds its advocates.
[87] See Herodotos, ii. 5. Diodôros applies to Lower Egypt the epithet ποταμόχωστος, i.e. deposited by the river.
[88] See Odyssey, iv. 477, 581.
[89] Modern science confirms this theory. Thus Sir W. Hunter in his Brief History of the Indian People, says: “In order to understand the Indian plains we must have a clear idea of the part played by these great rivers; for the rivers first create the land, then fertilize it, and finally distribute its produce. The plains were in many parts upheaved by volcanic action, or deposited in an aqueous aera long before man appeared on the earth.”
[90] Arrian has named these in his Indika, c. 4.
[91] See Herod, vii. 33-36; iv. 83, 97, 133-141.
[92] Diodôros says the passage was made by a bridge of boats.
[93] There is a Rhenos in Italy—the Reno, a tributary of the Po, from which the great Rhine is distinguished as the Keltic. The famous bridge made by Caesar over the latter river is described in his De Bello Gallico, iv. 17.
[95] We learn from Curtius that Alexander, before taking hostile action against Pôros, demanded from him through an envoy called Cleochares that he should pay tribute and come to meet him on the frontiers of his dominions. To this Pôros replied that in compliance with the second request he would meet Alexander at the place appointed, but would attend in arms. Alexander was perhaps justified by the laws of war in exacting submission from the tribes west of the Indus, since these had been subject to Darius, whom he had overthrown, and to whose rights he had succeeded, but the tribes of the Panjâb, those at least that lay to the east of the Hydaspês, had never, so far as is known, been under Persian domination, and hence his invasion, according to modern ideas, was altogether indefensible. He could, however, justify himself on the ground of the principles held by the Greeks of his day, who considered that their superiority in wisdom and virtue to the rest of mankind gave them a natural right to attack, plunder, and enslave all barbarians except such only as were protected by a special treaty. Such a view, repugnant as it seems to every principle of justice, was held nevertheless by Aristotle, who no doubt impressed it on the mind of his illustrious pupil. Hence Alexander, in attacking Pôros, was not conscious, like Caesar, when he invaded Britain, of perpetrating an unwarrantable aggression for which some kind of an excuse had to be trumped up.
[96] The Hydaspês, now the Jhîlam, is called by the natives of Kâśmîr, where it rises, the Bedasta, which is but a slightly altered form of its Sanskrit name, the Vitastâ, which means “wide-spread.” In Ptolemy’s geography it appears as the Bidaspês—a form nearer the original than Hydaspês. It is mentioned in one of the hymns of the Rig-Veda, along with other great Indian rivers: “Receive favourably this my hymn, O Gangâ, Yamunâ, Sarasvatî, Śutudrî, Parashni; hear O Marudvridhâ, with the Asiknî and Vitastâ, and thou Arjîkîyâ with the Sushômâ.” In advancing from the Indus at Attak to the Hydaspês, Alexander followed the Râjapatha, that is, the king’s highway, called by Megasthenes the ὁδὸς βασιληίη. It is the route which has been taken by all foreign conquerors who have penetrated into India by the valley of the Kôphês. Elphinstone, who followed this route in returning from Kâbul, describes it thus: “The whole of our journey across the track between the Indus and Hydaspês was about 160 miles; for which space the country is among the strongest I have ever seen. The difficulty of our passage across it was increased by heavy rain. While in the hilly country our road sometimes lay through the beds of torrents” (Mission to Kâbul, p. 78). In another passage (p. 80) he says: “I was greatly struck with the difference between the banks of this river; the left bank had all the characteristics of the plains of India. The right bank, on the contrary, was formed by the end of the range of the Salt Hills, and had an air of extreme ruggedness and wildness that must inspire a fearful presentiment of the country he was entering into the mind of a traveller from the East.” General Chesney, in the lecture already cited, thus remarks on the advance of Alexander to the Hydaspês: “What is remarkable about this part of the advance is that it was not made direct on Jhelum, as would appear natural. True, that line is over what would be a very difficult country, as any traveller by the existing road knows. Still it would be the easiest line; nevertheless it appears certain that Alexander took a more southerly line, and threading his way through the intricate ravines of the upper part of the Salt range, and leaving Tilla and Rhotas on his left, penetrated that range by the gorge through which runs the Bhundar river, and struck the river Jhelum at Jalâlpûr, about thirty miles below Jhelum.”
[97] See [Note I], Site of Alexander’s camp on the Hydaspês.
[98] The Greeks, for the first time, saw elephants used in war at the battle of Arbela.
[99] Arrian, in the nineteenth chapter of this book, states that the battle with Pôros was fought in the Archonship of Hêgemôn at Athens, in the month of Mounychiôn, i.e. between the 18th of April and 18th of May, 326 B.C. Here, however, according to the reading of all the MSS., he makes the battle take place after the solstice of June 21st, μετὰ τροπάς. Editors remove the difficulty by substituting κατά for μετά, and I have translated accordingly. As the rainy season, however, does not set in till near the end of June, and it had set in, as Strabo informs us, during the march to the Hydaspês, the later date has probability in its favour.
[100] Enyalios, an epithet of the war-god.
[101] Curtius mentions that near the bluff there was a deep hollow or ravine which sufficed to screen both the infantry and the cavalry, and on this Cunningham remarks: “There is a ravine to the north of Jalâlpûr which exactly suits the descriptions of the historians. This ravine is the bed of the Kandar Nala, which has a course of six miles from its source down to Jalâlpûr, where it is lost in a waste of sand. Up this ravine there has always been a passable, but difficult road towards Jhelum. From the head of the Kandar this road proceeds for three miles in a northerly direction down another ravine called the Kasi, which then turns suddenly to the east for six and a half miles, and then again one and a half mile to the south, where it joins the river Jhelum immediately below Dilâwar, the whole distance from Jalâlpûr being exactly seventeen miles.” These seventeen miles are about the equivalent of the 150 stadia given by Arrian as the distance from the great camp to the bluff.
[102] “Arrian,” says Cunningham, “records that Alexander placed running sentries along the bank of the river at such distances that they could see each other and communicate his orders. Now, I believe that this operation could not be carried out in the face of an observant enemy along any part of the river bank, excepting only that one part which lies between Jalâlpûr and Dilâwar. In all other parts the west bank is open and exposed, but in this part alone the wooded and rocky hills slope down to the river and offer sufficient cover for the concealment of single sentries.”—Geog. of Anc. India, pp. 170, 171.
[103] With Alexander’s passage of the Hydaspês may be compared Hannibal’s passage of the Rhone made upwards of a century later. The Carthaginian general, whose education included a knowledge of Greek, was no doubt familiar with the history of Alexander’s wars, and from knowing how the Hydaspês was crossed may have laid his plans for crossing the Rhone. v. Livy, xxi. 26-28; Polyb. iii. 45, 46.
[104] Here, or in the immediate neighbourhood, was fought, in 1849, the battle of Chilianwála. On this occasion the inferiority of the British commander as a strategist to Alexander was signally manifested.
[105] The left wing of the Indian army was flanked by the river.
[106] This passage, as interpreted by Droysen, Thirlwall, and indeed as generally understood, intimates that Alexander ordered Koinos to station himself opposite the enemy’s right, and not on the Macedonian extreme right. Thus Moberly, who holds the general view, remarks (Alexander in the Punjaub, p. 61):—“Coenus was ordered to station himself opposite the enemy’s right; then, in case of Porus withdrawing all his cavalry from the right, in order to meet Alexander’s attack on the left, Coenus was to pass from one wing to the other, apparently in front of the Macedonian line, and to attack the Indian cavalry in the rear as soon as, in advancing to meet Alexander, they had got some little distance from their supports.... Distance can be got over quickly by cavalry.” Köchly and Rüstow, however, in their History of the Greek Military System, advocate a different view. “Alexander,” they say, “must have sent Koinos to the extreme right wing with the order, that if the cavalry broke from the line against himself (Alexander) he was to fall upon their rear. Had he been detached to oppose the right wing of Pôros he would have been too far off to support Alexander’s front attack by an attack on the enemy’s rear.” This seems the preferable view.
[107] “To meet the double assault (of Alexander and Coenus) they resorted to one of those changes of front in which Indian cavalry are often so surprisingly rapid—facing partly to the front and partly to the rear. Yet Alexander was beforehand with them; and his renewed charge threw them into utter confusion before they could fully assume their new formation. Flying along the front of their own infantry, they took refuge in the spaces left between every two elephants, and (as it would seem in the absence, from Arrian’s account, of the full details) passed as soon as possible through the intervals of the foot regiments, so as to be for the moment quite outside the battle. As soon as they were out of the way the Indian elephants were sent on, supported by the infantry, but were at once met face to face by the Macedonian phalanx.”—v. Moberly’s Alexander in the Punjaub, Introd. p. 12.
[108] Diodôros gives the number of Indians killed at upwards of 12,000, and of the captured at more than 9000, besides 80 elephants.
[109] The Spitakês here mentioned as one of the slain is probably the same as Pittacus, who is recorded by Polyainos to have had an encounter with Alexander during the march of the latter from Taxila to the Hydaspês, as Droysen and Thirlwall agree in thinking.
[110] The hiatus is supposed to have contained the number of officers killed.
[111] This death-roll evidently greatly under-estimates the loss on Alexander’s side. Diodôros says that there fell of the Macedonians 280 cavalry and more than 700 infantry.
[112] Pôros was the first sovereign that Alexander had captured on the field of battle. Curtius and Diodôros relate somewhat differently from Arrian the story of his capture, representing him to have been protected to the last by his faithful elephant.
[113] See [Note R], Battle with Pôros.
[114] Diodôros says the battle occurred while Chremes was archon at Athens.
[115] Nikaia most probably occupied the site of the modern town of Mong, near the left bank. Nothing is known of its history. With respect to its sister city Boukephala, the ancient writers are not in agreement. Plutarch places it on the left or eastern bank of the Hydaspês, for he says that Boukephalas was killed in the battle, and that the city was built where he fell and was buried. According, however, to Strabo, Arrian, and Diodôros, it stood on the west bank; but while Strabo places it at the point where the troops embarked, Arrian places it farther down the stream on the site of the great camp at Jalâlpûr. It became a great emporium of commerce, as we find from the Periplûs of the Erythraian Sea, c. 47. In the Peutinger Tables it is called Alexandria Bucefalos.
[116] “Schmieder says that Alexander could not have broken in the horse before he was sixteen years old. But since at this time he was in his twenty-ninth year he would have had him thirteen years. Consequently the horse must have been at least seventeen years old when he acquired him. Can any one believe this? Yet Plutarch also states that the horse was thirty years old at his death.”—Chinnock’s Anabasis of Alexander, p. 296, note 4.
[117] This incident is referred by Plutarch to Hyrkania, and by Curtius to the land of the Mardians. The Ouxioi lived on the borders of Persis, between that province and Sousiana.
[118] Alexander, according to Diodôros, halted to recruit his army for thirty days in the dominions of Pôros. He then advanced northwards with a part of his army to the fertile and populous regions that lay in the south of Kâśmîr (the Bhimber and Bajaur districts) between the upper courses of the Hydaspês and the Akesinês and Chenâb. The name of the inhabitants, Glausai or Glaukanîkoi, has been identified by V. de Saint-Martin with that of the Kalaka, a tribe mentioned in the Varâha Sanhita, a work of the sixth century of our aera. In the Mahâbhârata the name is written Kalaja, and in the Rajput Chronicles Kalacha, a form which justifies the Greek Glausai. The second part of the longer name, anîka, means a troop or army in Sanskrit.—v. Saint-Martin’s Etude, pp. 102, 103.
[119] Conf. Strabo, XV. i. 3. “Other writers affirm that the Macedonians conquered nine nations situated between the Hydaspês and the Hypanis (Beas), and obtained possession of 500 cities, not one of which was less than Kos Meropis, and that Alexander, after having conquered all this country, delivered it up to Pôros.”
[120] This was a second embassy. An earlier is mentioned in Chapter VIII. of this book.
[121] Strabo (XV. i. p. 699) says this Pôros was a nephew of the Pôros whom Alexander had defeated, and that his country was called Gandaris. The Gandarai were a widely extended people, occupying a district stretching from the upper part of the Panjâb to the west of the Indus as far as Qandahar. They are the Gandhâra of Sanskrit.
[122] The Akesinês, now the Chenâb, is called in the Vedic Hymns the Asikni, i.e. “dark-coloured.” It was called also, and more commonly, Chandrabhâgâ, which, being transliterated into Greek, becomes Sandrophagos. This word suggested to the soldiers of Alexander another of bad omen, Ale-xandrophagos, which means devourer of Alexander, and hence they adopted its other name, perhaps on account of the disaster which befell the Macedonian fleet at the turbulent junction of this river with the Hydaspês. In Ptolemy’s Geography it is called Sandabala by an obvious error for Sandabaga. The Akesinês, though joined by the other great Panjâb rivers, retained its name until it fell into the Indus.
[123] The Hydraôtês is called by Strabo (XV. i. 21) the Hyarôtis, and in Ptolemy’s Geography the Adris or Rhouadis. It is now the Râvî, which is an abridged form of its Sanskrit name, the Airâvatî. It passes the city of Lahore, and joins the Chenâb about 30 miles above Multân. In former times, however, the junction occurred 15 miles below that city. In Ptolemy’s Geography the Rhouadis is erroneously made to join the Hydaspês, or, as Ptolemy calls it, the Bidaspês. Arrian in his Indika (c. 4) describes the Hydraôtês as rising in the country of the Kambistholoi, and after receiving the Hyphasis among the Astrybai, and the Saranges from the Kêkeans (the Sekaya of Sanskrit), and the Neudros from the Attakênoi, falling into the Akesinês. The Hyphasis does not, however, join the Hydraôtês.
[125] The expression independent shows that the Greeks were cognisant of the Indian village system. Each of its rural units they took to be an independent republic.
[127] The Adraïstai appear to be the people called in the Periplûs of the Erythraean Sea, the Aratrioi. Lassen identifies them with the Aratta of the Mahâbhârata. Diodôros calls them the Adrêstai, and Orosius in his History (iii. 19) the Adrestae. Their capital, Pimprama, has not as yet been identified with certainty, but V. de Saint-Martin suggests that it may be represented by Bhéranah, a place eight leagues distant from Lahore towards the south-east. The same author thinks that the Adrastae are very probably the Aïrâvatâ or Raïvâtaka of Sanskrit.
[128] Chinnock notes that Caesar’s troops were assailed in a similar manner by the Helvetians.—v. Caesar’s De Bello Gallico, i. 26.
[129] Curtius gives the loss of the Kathaians at 8000 killed. Arrian’s numbers here seem to be greatly exaggerated.
[130] The Hyphasis, now the Beäs or Beias, is variously called by the classical writers the Bibasis, the Hypasis, and the Hypanis. Its Sanskrit name is the Vipâsâ, which means “uncorded,” and it is said to have been so called because it destroyed the cord with which one of the Indian sages intended to hang himself. It joins the Satlej (not the Hydraôtês, as Arrian says in his Indika) and the united stream is called in Sanskrit the Śatadru, i.e. “flowing in a hundred channels.” It marked the limit of Alexander’s advance eastward. In his time it flowed in a different channel, one by which it reached the Chenâb about 40 miles above Uchh. Curtius and Diodôros inform us that Alexander before reaching this river had entered the dominions of King Sôphites, who submitted without resistance, and was therefore left in possession of his sovereignty. Another chief (called Phêgeus by Diodôros, but more correctly Phegelas by Curtius), whose dominions adjoined the Hyphasis, entertained Alexander and his army for two days. By this time he had been rejoined by Hêphaistiôn, who had been conducting operations elsewhere, and he then proceeded to the bank of the river. The country beyond it Arrian represents as exceedingly fertile, whereas in Curtius and Diodôros we read how Alexander was informed that a desert lay beyond it which would occupy a journey of eleven days. Arrian’s statement holds true of the northern districts beyond the river, and the other statement of the southern districts. Thirlwall, following the latter statement, takes it that Alexander reached the Satlej after it had received the Hyphasis, but this is a very questionable view.
[131] The name of Ion, the eponymous ancestor of the Ionians, had originally the digamma, and hence was written as Ivon. The Hebrew transcription of this digammated form is Javan, the name by which Greece is designated in the Bible. The Sanskrit transcription is Yavana, the name applied in Indian works to Ionians or Greeks and foreigners generally.
[132] The Tanais is properly the Don, but Alexander meant by it the Jaxartes, which formed the eastern boundary of the Persian empire, and which he had crossed to attack the nomadic Skythians, who had made threatening demonstrations against him on the right or northern bank (v. the 16th and 17th chapters of the fourth book).
[133] It was a prevalent belief in antiquity that the Kaspian or Hyrkanian Sea was a gulf of the great ocean which encircles the earth, and not an inland sea.
[134] Arrian (vii. 1) says: “When Alexander reached Pasargadai and Persepolis he conceived an ardent desire to sail down the Euphrates and Tigres to the Persian sea, and survey their mouths.... Some writers have stated that he had in contemplation a voyage round the greater portion of Arabia, the land of the Aethiopians, Lybia, and Numidia beyond Mount Atlas to Gadeira (Cadiz) inward into the Mediterranean.” One of the writers referred to is Plutarch, who says (Alexander, c. 68): “Nearchos joined him (Alexander) here (at the capital of Gedrosia), and he was so much delighted with the account of his voyage that he formed a design to sail in person from the Euphrates with a great fleet, circle the coast of Arabia and Africa, and enter the Mediterranean by the Pillars of Hercules.” Herodotos (iv. 42) says that Nekô, king of the Egyptians, sent certain Phoenicians in ships with orders to sail back through the Pillars of Hercules into the Northern Sea (the Mediterranean that is), and so to return to Egypt. The pillars designated the twin rocks which guard the entrance to the Mediterranean at the eastern extremity of the Straits of Gibraltar, the one on the European side being called Kalpê, and that on the African side, where now stands the citadel of Ceuta, Abila or Abyla. v. Pliny (iii. prooem.): “Proximis autem faucibus utrimque impositi montes coercent claustra, Abyla Africae, Europae Calpe, laborum Herculis metae, quam ob causam indigenae columnas ejus dei vocant.”
[135] Arrian (iii. 30) informs us that in the opinion of some the Nile formed the boundary of Asia, but he writes here as if Lybia or Northern Africa were part of Asia.
[136] The Macedonian kings claimed to be descended from Heraklês, who resided for some time at Tiryns, one of the most ancient cities in Greece, situated near Argos, and, like Argos, famous for its Cyclopean walls.
[137] “Alexander,” says Arrian (iii. 19), “on reaching Ekbatana, sent back to the sea the Thessalian cavalry and the other Grecian allies, paying them the full amount of the stipulated hire, and giving them besides a donative of 2000 talents.” Was Baktra a slip of memory on the part of Koinos?
[138] The drenching rains to which the Macedonian soldiers were continually exposed during their march from Taxila to the Hyphasis must have had a considerable effect in exhausting their strength and depressing their spirits.
[139] Karchêdon is Carthage. The name is said to be a corruption of Kereth-Hadeshoth or Carth-hadtha, i.e. “new city,” in contra-distinction to Utica, which either signifies in Phoenician “old city,” or is derived, as Olshausen thinks, from a root signifying “a colony.”
[140] See [Note N], Alexander’s altars on the Hyphasis.
[141] “This city,” says Lassen, “lay probably where Wazirâbâd now stands. Here the great road to the Hydaspês parts into two, one leading to Jalâlpûr, and the other to Jhelam. It is the sixth of the Alexandreias mentioned in Stephanos Byz.” v. Ind. Alt. ii. 165, n. The Chenab here has a width of about a mile and a half.
[142] Arsakês, to judge from his name and what is here said of him, was probably the king of Uraśa. This district, the Arsa of Ptolemy, the W-la-shi of Hwen Thsiang, and now Rash in Dantâwar, included all the hill country between the Indus and Kaśmîr as far south as Attak.
[143] v. Strabo (XV. i. 29). Between the Hydaspês and Akesinês ... is the forest in the neighbourhood of the Emodoi mountains, in which Alexander cut down a large quantity of fir, pine, cedar, and a variety of other trees fit for shipbuilding, and brought the timber down the Hydaspês. With this he constructed a fleet on the Hydaspês near the cities which he built on each side of the river where he had crossed it and conquered Pôros. “The timber,” says Sir A. Burnes, “of which the boats of the Panjâb are constructed is chiefly floated down by the Hydaspês from the Indian Caucasus, which most satisfactorily explains the selection of its banks by Alexander in preference to the other rivers.” Bunbury, citing this passage, adds: “The navigation of the Indus itself for a considerable part of its course below Attock is so dangerous on account of rapids as to render it wholly unsuitable for the descent of a flotilla such as that of Alexander.”
[144] This is the nelumbum speciosum, or Cyathus Smithii, the sacred Egyptian or Pythagorean bean. The use of its fruit was forbidden to the Egyptian priests (v. Herod. ii. 37).
[145] “It is remarkable to see how in this respect the geographical information of the Greeks seems to have retrograded since the time of Herodotus. No allusion is found to the voyage of Scylax related by that historian, while the just conclusions derived from it by Herodotus had fallen into the same oblivion. But absurd as was this identification (of the Indus with the Nile), the general resemblance between these rivers, which are constantly brought into comparison by the Greek geographers (Strabo, XV. p. 692, etc.), is certainly such as to justify their observations. The resemblance of the lower valley of the Indus from the time it has received the waters of the Panjab with Egypt is dwelt upon by modern travellers. One description (says Mr. Elphinstone) might serve for both. A smooth and fertile plain is bounded on one side by mountains, and on the other by a desert. It is divided by a large river, which forms a Delta as it approaches the sea, and annually inundates and enriches the country near its banks. The climate of both is hot and dry, and rain is of rare occurrence in either country.”—v. Bunbury’s Hist. of Anc. Geo. p. 510.
[146] Arrian in the 19th chapter of the Indika states that the number of men conveyed in the fleet was 8000, and that the whole strength of his army was 120,000 soldiers, including those whom he brought from the shores of the Mediterranean, as well as recruits drawn from various barbarous tribes armed in their own fashion. In the preceding chapter he gives a list of the great officers whom Alexander appointed to be in temporary command of the triremes. Of these, thirty-three in number, twenty-four were Macedonians, eight were Greeks, and one a Persian. Seleukos is the only officer of note whose name does not appear in this list.
[147] Diodôros and Curtius, as has been pointed out (in [Note M]), place the dominions of Sôpeithês between the upper Hydraôtês and the Hyphasis, but here we find them transferred to a more western position. Strabo was unable to decide where they lay. “Some writers (he says) place Kathaia and the country of Sôpeithês, one of the monarchs, in the tract between the rivers (Hydaspês and Akesinês); some on the other side of the Akesinês and of the Hyarotis, on the confines of the territory of the other Pôros, the nephew of Pôros who was taken prisoner by Alexander, and call the country subject to him Gandaris.... It is said that in the territory of Sôpeithês there is a mountain composed of fossil salt sufficient for the whole of India. Valuable mines, also, both of gold and silver, are situated, it is said, not far off among other mountains, according to the testimony of Gorgos the miner.” Strabo then describes (as do also Diodôros and Curtius) the fight between a lion and four dogs which Sôpeithês exhibited to Alexander. To account for the discrepancy in these statements one is almost tempted to believe that as there were two princes of the name of Pôros, each ruling dominions of his own, so there were also two chiefs of the name of Sôpeithês or (as Curtius more correctly transcribes it) Sôphytês. General Cunningham would identify Gandaris with the present district of Gundulbâr or Gundurbâr, and fixes the capital of Sôphytês on the western bank of the Hydaspês at Old Bhira, a place near Ahmedabad, with a very extensive mound of ruins, and distant from Nikaia (now Mong) three days by water. His rule must have extended westward to the Indus, since the mountain of rock-salt which Strabo includes in his territory can only refer to the salt range (the Mount Oromenus of Pliny, xxxi. 39) which extends from the Indus to the Hydaspês. The transcription of the name Sôphytês will be found discussed elsewhere.
[148] Arrian in his Indika, where he apparently follows Nearchos instead of Ptolemy as here, gives the whole number of ships at only 800, including both ships of war and transports. Schmieder and some other editors would correct this to 1800, but it seems more probable, Bunbury thinks, that the basis of the two calculations was different. Ptolemy, he says, distinctly includes the ordinary river boats which would doubtless have been collected in large numbers to assist in transporting so great an army and its supplies; while the terms of Nearchos would seem to imply only ships of war or regular transports. Krüger would correct the 2000 of the text to 1000, which is the number of the vessels as given by Diodôros and Curtius. The fleet began the downward voyage at the end of October 326 B.C.
[149] Alexander deduced his pedigree from Ammôn, just as the legend traced the pedigree of Heraklês and Perseus to Zeus. He accordingly made an expedition to the oasis in the Libyan desert where Ammôn had his oracle for the purpose of more certainly learning his origin. His mother, Olympias, according to Plutarch, used to complain that Alexander was for ever embroiling her with Juno.
[150] “The Indians (says Arrian in his Indika, c. 7) worship the other gods, and especially Dionysos, with cymbals and drums, which he had taught them to use. He taught them also the Satyric dance, called by the Greeks Kordax.”
[151] See [Note O], Voyage down the Hydaspês and Akesinês to the Indus.
[152] This halting-place was at Bhira or Bheda, if Cunningham is right in fixing the capital of Sôphytês in its neighbourhood.
[153] Diodôros carelessly represents these rapids as occurring at the confluence of the two rivers with the Indus. The dangers of their navigation seem to have been exaggerated by the ancient writers, though their accounts have some foundation in fact. Sir A. Burnes, the first European known to have visited the spot, says there are no eddies and no rocks, nor is the channel confined, while the ancient character is only supported by the noise of the confluence, which is greater than that of any of the other rivers. The boatmen of the locality, however, still regard the passage as a perilous one during the season when the river is swollen (v. Travels, i. p. 109). Thirlwall thinks the principal obstructions have been worn away. According to Curtius, Alexander’s own ship was here in imminent danger of being wrecked.
[154] These barbarians were probably the Sibi (v. Diodôros, xvii. 96).
[155] Hêphaistiôn by this arrangement would beset the banks of the Hydraôtês, Ptolemy those of the Akesinês. The former probably marched to the Hydraôtês by way of Shorkote, which Cunningham thinks may be the Sôrianê of Stephanos Byz.
[156] The Hydaspês loses its name as well as its waters to the Akesinês. The junction of the latter with the Hydraôtês (Râvi) occurs at present at a point more than thirty miles above Multân, but in Alexander’s time it occurred some miles below that city.
[157] See [Note P], The Malloi and Oxydrakai.
[158] General Cunningham has identified this place with Kot-Kamâlia, a small but ancient town situated on an isolated mound on the right or northern bank of the Râvi, marking the extreme limit of the river’s fluctuations on that side. The small rivulet on which Alexander encamped at the end of his first march he believes to be the lower course of the Ayek river which rises in the outer range of hills and flows past Syâlkot towards Sâkala, below which the bed is still traceable for some distance. It appears again, he says, eighteen miles to the east of Jhang, and is finally lost about two miles to the east of Shorkot. Now somewhere between these two points Alexander must have crossed the Ayek, as the desert country which he afterwards traversed lies immediately beyond it. If he had marched to the south he would have arrived at Shorkot, but he would not have encountered any desert, as his route would have been over the Khâdar, or low-lying lands in the valley of the Chenâb. A march of forty-six miles in a southerly direction would have carried him also right up to the bank of the Hydraôtês or Râvi, a point which Alexander only reached after another night’s march. As this march lasted from the first watch until daylight, it cannot have been less than eighteen or twenty miles, which agrees exactly with the distance of the Râvi opposite Tulamba from Kot-Kamâlia. The direction of Alexander’s march must therefore have been to the south-east; first to the Ayek river, and thence across the hard, clayey, and waterless tract called Sandar-bâr, that is the bâr, a desert of the Sandar or Chandra river. Thus the position of the rivulet, the description of the desolate country, and the distance of the city from the confluence of the rivers, all agree in fixing the site of the fortress assaulted by Alexander with Kot-Kamâlia.—Anc. Geog. of India, pp. 208-210.
[159] The city to which Perdikkas was sent in advance of Alexander, Cunningham has identified with Harapa. “The mention of marshes (he says) shows that it must have been near the Râvi, and, as Perdikkas was sent in advance of Alexander, it must also have been beyond Kot-Kamâlia, that is to the east or south-east of it. Now this is exactly the position of Harapa, which is situated sixteen miles to the east-south-east of Kot-Kamâlia, and on the opposite high bank of the Râvi. There are also several marshes in the low ground in its immediate vicinity.” Cunningham then gives a description of Harapa as it now exists. He had encamped at the place on three different occasions. It had been visited previously and described both by Burnes and Masson. Its ruined mound forms an irregular square of half a mile on each side, or two miles in circuit (Anc. Geog. of India, pp. 210, 211). It seems to me a serious objection to this identification that Kot-Kamâlia and Harapa (Harup, in Ainsworth’s large map) lie on opposite sides of the Râvi, while Arrian’s narrative leads us to suppose that they both lay to the west of that river. No mention is made of Perdikkas crossing it, and had the fortress he attacked lain beyond it, he could easily have intercepted the inhabitants in their flight to the marshes of the river.
[160] Cunningham identifies this well-fortified position with Tulamba. “A whole night’s march (he says) of eight or nine hours could not have been less than twenty-five miles, which is the exact distance of the Râvi opposite Tulamba from Kot-Kamâlia.” It was defended by brick walls and enormous mounds of earthen ramparts. Tulamba lies on the high road to Multân, to which, as the capital of the Malloi, Alexander was marching.
[161] The Brachmans, as is well known, formed a religious caste, and were not a distinct race or tribe. Their city Cunningham has identified with the old ruined town and fort of Atâri, which is situated twenty miles to the west-south-west of Tulamba and on the high road to Multân, from which it is thirty-four miles distant. The remains consist of a strong citadel 750 feet square and 35 feet high. On two of its sides are to be found the remains of the old town. Of its history there is not even a tradition, but the large size of its bricks shows that it must be a place of considerable antiquity. The name of the old city is quite unknown, Atâri being merely that of the adjacent village, which is of recent origin. Curtius states that Alexander went completely round the citadel in a boat, and Cunningham thinks this is probable enough, as its ditch could be filled at pleasure with water from the Râvi. Curtius must, however, be romancing when he says that the three greatest rivers in India except the Ganges (Indus, Hydaspês, and Akesinês) joined their waters to form a ditch round the castle (v. Anc. Geog. of India, pp. 228-230). The mention of a special city of the Brachmans, Lassen observes, shows that but few priests lived in this part of the country, and that they had established themselves in particular cities to protect themselves against those people by whom they were held in but small esteem.
[162] See [Note Q], The capital of the Malloi.
[163] Arrian (i. 11) relates that Alexander, after crossing the Hellespont, proceeded to Ilion, where, after sacrificing to the Trojan Athênê, he placed his own armour in the temple of that goddess, and took away in exchange some of the consecrated arms which had been preserved from the time of the Trojan war.
[164] Called in Greek a dimoiritês in Latin a duplicarius.
[165] Alexander’s dress and arms on the day of Arbêla are thus described by Plutarch: “He wore a short tunic of the Sicilian fashion, girt close round him, over a linen breastplate strongly quilted; his helmet, surmounted by the white plume, was of polished steel, the work of Theophilos; the gorget was of the same metal, and set with precious stones; the sword, his favourite weapon in battle, was a present from a Cyprian king, and not to be excelled for lightness or temper; but his belt, deeply embossed with massive figures, was the most superb part of his armour; it was a gift from the Rhodians, on which old Helikôn had exerted all his skill. If we add to these the shield, lance, and light greaves, we may form a fair idea of his appearance in battle.”
[166] The descendants of Asklêpios (Aesculapius) were called by the patronymic name Asklêpiadai. They were regarded by some as the real descendants of Asklêpios, but by others as a caste of priests who practised the art of medicine, combined with religion. Their principal seats were Kôs and Knidos.
[167] Plutarch writes to the same effect: “The great battle with Darius was not fought at Arbêla, as most historians will have it, but at Gaugamêla, which, in the Persian tongue, is said to signify the house of the camel, so called because one of the ancient kings, having escaped his enemies by the swiftness of his camel, placed her there, and appointed the revenues of certain villages for her maintenance.”—Life of Alexander, c. 31.
[168] Kleitarchos, who accompanied Alexander to Asia, and wrote a history of the expedition, and Timagenes, an historian in the reign of Augustus, gave currency to this fiction, which Curtius is at one with Arrian in rejecting. Ptolemy received his title of Sôtêr (saviour) from the Rhodians, whom he had relieved from the attacks of Dêmêtrios Poliorkêtês (v. Pausanias, I. viii. 6).
[169] Thirlwall has noted that this line is found in Stobaeus. It is a fragment from one of the lost tragedies of Aeschylus, δράσαντι γάρ τι καὶ παθεῖν ὀφείλεται.
[170] The Hyphasis is here probably the Satlej, though the application of the name so far down as is here indicated is contrary to Sanskrit usage. Several arms of the Hyphasis may have anciently existed which went to join the Hydraôtês or perhaps the lower Akesinês. Megasthenês was the first who made the existence of the Satlej known. Pliny calls it the Hesydrus, and Ptolemy the Zaradros. The united stream which joins the Indus, called the Panjnad, has before the confluence a width of 1076 yards. The Indus after the confluence is augmented to 2000 yards from 600 yards only above the confluence. From the present confluence to the sea the distance is 490 miles.
[171] The Abastanoi are more correctly designated by Diodôros (xvii. 102) the Sambastai, under which form of the name the Ambashtha, who are mentioned as a people of the Panjâb in the Mahâbhârata and elsewhere in Sanskrit literature, can be recognised. It is evident from the text that they were settled on the lower Akesinês. They appear to be the people called by Curtius the Sabarcae, and by Orosius Sabagrae.
[172] The Xathroi are the Kshâtri of Sanskrit mentioned in the Laws of Manu as an impure tribe, being of mixed origin. In Williams’s Sanskrit Dictionary a Kshâtri is defined as “a man of the second (i.e. military) caste (by a woman of another caste?).”
[173] V. de Saint-Martin suggests that in the Ossadioi we have the Vasâti or Basâti of the Mahâbhârata, a people whom Hematchandra in his Geographical Dictionary places between the Hydaspês and the Indus, on the plateau of which the Salt Mountains form the southern escarpment. If the Vasâti were really so placed, it can scarcely be supposed that they would have sent offers of submission to Alexander, who had already passed through their part of the country, and was now marching homeward, leaving them far in his rear. Cunningham prefers to identify them with the Yaudheya or Ajudhiya, now the Johiyas, who are settled as formerly along the banks of the lower Satlej. Assodioi or Ossadioi seems a pretty close transcription of Ajudhiya.
[174] The name of this city is not given by any of the historians, but in all probability it bore the name of its founder. Its site has generally been referred to the neighbourhood of Mithânkôt, a town situated on the western bank of the Indus a little below the junction of that river with the united streams of the Panjâb. V. de Saint-Martin identifies it more precisely with Chuchpûr or Chuchur, an ancient fort standing on the eastern bank of the Indus right opposite Mithânkôt. This fort bore formerly the names of Askalanda, Askelend, and Sikander, which are but variant forms of Alexandreia. The great confluence, however, did not anciently take place at Mithânkôt, but at Uchh, an old city lying forty miles to the north-east of the confluence at Mithânkôt. The place is called by Rashed-ud-din Askaland-usah, which, as Cunningham points out, would be an easy corruption of Alexandria Uchha or Ussa, as the Greeks must have written it. The word uchha means “high” both in Sanskrit and in Hindi, and Uchh seems to owe its name to the fact that it stands on a mound. “Uchh is chiefly distinguished (says Masson) by the ruins of the former towns, which are very extensive, and attest the pristine prosperity of the locality.” v. V. de Saint-Martin, Etude, pp. 124, 125; Cunningham’s Anc. Geog. of India, pp. 242-245.
[175] v. [Note R], Alexander in Sindh.
[176] In Strabo (XV. i.) we find several references to the country of Mousikanos. These were based on information supplied by Onesikritos, who expatiates in praise of its fertility, on the virtues of its people, and the goodness of the laws and government under which they lived. It seems now generally agreed that Alôr, which was anciently and for many ages the metropolis of the rich and powerful kingdom of Upper Sindh, was the capital of Mousikanos. Its ruins were visited by M’Murdo and Lieutenant Wood, and afterwards by General Cunningham, who thus describes their site: “The ruins of Alôr are situated to the south of a gap in the low range of sandstone hills which stretches from Bhakar towards the south for about twenty miles until it is lost in a broad belt of sandhills which bound the Nâra, or old bed of the Indus, on the west. Through this gap a branch of the Indus once flowed, which protected the city on the north-west. To the north-east it was covered by a second branch of the river, which flowed nearly at right angles to the other at a distance of three miles.... In A.D. 680 the latter was probably the main stream of the Indus, which had gradually been working to the westward from its original bed in the old Nâra.” With regard to the name of the king it appears to be a territorial title, since Curtius designates the people Musicani. Lassen (Ind. Alt. ii. 176) takes this to represent the Sanskrit Mûshika (which means a mouse or a thief), and points out that a part of the Malabar coast was also called the Mûshika kingdom. Saint-Martin thinks that the Mûshika still exist in the great tribe of the Moghsis, which forms the most numerous part of the population of Kach Gandâra, a region bordering on the territories of the ancient Mûsikani (Etude, p. 162).
[177] Curtius calls the subjects of Oxykanos the Praesti, a name which would indicate that they inhabited a level country, since the Sanskrit word of which their name is a transcript—prastha—denotes a tableland or a level expanse. The name, Saint-Martin thinks, is in Justin altered to Praesidae; but Justin, it appears to me, means the Praisioi thereby. Oxykanos is called both by Strabo and Diodôros Portikanos, representing perhaps the Sanskrit Pârtha, “a prince.” It is not easy to determine where his dominions lay. They were not on the Indus, for Alexander left that river to attack them. Cunningham places them to the west of the Indus in the level country around Larkhâna, which, though now close to the Indus, was in Alexander’s time about forty miles distant from it. Their capital he identifies with Mahorta, a place about ten miles north-west from Larkhâna, where there are the remains of an ancient fortress on a huge mound, whence perhaps its name Mâhaurddha, “very high.” Lassen, on the other hand, followed by Saint-Martin, places the country of Oxykanos to the east of the river, and therefore in the vast Mesopotamia (the Prasiane of Pliny) comprised between the old or eastern arm of the Indus and the present channel (v. Lassen, Ind. Alt. ii. 177; Saint-Martin, Etude, p. 165; Cunningham, Anc. Geog. of India, pp. 259-262).
[178] See [note S], Sindimana.
[179] See [Note T], City of the Brachmans, Harmatelia; also [Note Hh], Indian Philosophers.
[180] In the 15th chapter of this book Arrian states that Alexander had sent Krateros away by this route after he had left the Sogdian capital (near Bhakar). From this we may infer that Krateros, soon after he set out on his homeward march, had been temporarily recalled by Alexander, who may have found the resistance to his arms more formidable than he had anticipated. Strabo states in one place (XV. ii. 5) that Krateros set out on his march from the Hydaspês and proceeded through the country of the Arachotoi and the Drangai into Karmania, and in another (XV. ii. 11) that he traversed Choarênê and entered Karmania simultaneously with Alexander. Now the former of these routes would have been so needlessly circuitous that it cannot be supposed it was that which Krateros selected. He no doubt marched through Choarênê (the district of Ariana nearest India), to which there was access from India through the Bolan Pass. Before rejoining Alexander he must have encountered formidable difficulties in traversing the great desert of Karman, which occupies the northern part of Karmania, and extends from thence to the confines of Yezd, Khorasân, and Seïstan. “This desert (says Bunbury) is a vast track of the most unmitigated barrenness, and a considerable portion of this interposed between the fertile districts of Murmansheer in Northern Carmania, and the Lake Zarrah in Seïstan must of necessity have been traversed by Craterus with his army. An Afghan army which invaded Persia in 1719 suffered the most dreadful hardships in this waste” (v. his Hist. of Anc. Geog. p. 522, also Droysen’s Geschichte Alexanders, p. 454, and Lassen, Ind. Alt. ii. 180).
[181] According to Aristoboulos, as cited by Strabo (XV. i. 17), the voyage down stream from Nikaia on the Hydaspês to Patala occupied ten months. “The Greeks (he says) remained at the Hydaspês while the ships were constructing, and began their voyage not many days before the setting of the Pleiades (late in the autumn of B.C. 326), and were occupied during the whole autumn, winter, and the ensuing spring and summer in sailing down the river, and arrived at Patalênê about the rising of the dog-star (towards the end of summer B.C. 325). The passage down the river lasted ten months.” According to Plutarch, Alexander spent seven months in falling down the rivers to the ocean. Sir A. Burnes ascended the Indus up to Lahore in sixty days, a distance of about 1000 miles. He estimated that a boat could drop down from Lahore to the sea in fifteen days, and from Multân in nine days.
[182] In the 41st chapter of the Periplûs of the Erythraian Sea it is said that in the regions adjoining the Indus mouths “there are preserved even to this very day memorials of the expedition of Alexander, old temples, foundations of camps, and large wells.”
[184] This was the northern channel of the Ghâra, the waters of which, some centuries after Alexander, found another channel more to the south, in the southern Ghâra which joins the main stream below Lâri Bandar.
[185] Caesar’s fleet, it is well known, suffered a similar disaster on the shores of Britain. The tides in the Indus are not felt more than sixty miles from the sea, whence Cunningham concludes that Alexander must then have reached as far as Bambhra on the Ghâra, which is about fifty miles by water from the sea. The breaking up of the monsoon, which occurs in October, is attended with high winds, intervals of calm, and violent hurricanes.
[186] Plutarch says that Alexander called this island Skilloustis, but others Psiltoukis. It was from this island Nearchos started on his memorable voyage early in October, before the monsoon had subsided. On his reaching the port now called Karachi, the great emporium of the trade of the Indus, he remained there for twenty-four days, and renewed the voyage as soon as the weather permitted.
[187] The eastern branch of the Indus is that now called the Phuleli. It separates from the main channel at Muttâri, twelve miles above Haidarâbâd, and enters the sea by the Kori estuary, named by Ptolemy the Lonibari mouth. Its bed is now almost dry except at the time of the inundations, when it assumes the appearance of a great river. At the lower part of its course it is known as the Guni. On its east side it receives the branch of the Indus, which in ancient times passed Arôr, and is now called the Purana darya or Old river.
[188] This exaggerated estimate Arrian has taken from the Journal of Nearchos. Aristoboulos said that the distance was 1000 stadia. The truth is here pretty accurately hit.
[189] “This great lake (says Saint-Martin) might have been the western extremity of the Ran of Kachh, a vast depression which abuts on the point where the estuary begins, and which for some months of the year (from July to October) is inundated by the waters of several rivers. By a singular coincidence the terrible earthquake of 1819 has formed a large hollow and created a spacious lake traversed by the Korî, and occupying probably the same site as the lake mentioned by Arrian. Brahmanic tradition, moreover, preserves the memory of a lake formerly existing near the Korî, not far from its embouchure. In the Bhagavata Purâna translated by Bournouf, we read that ‘in the west at the confluence of the Sindhu and the ocean is the vast tank of Nârâyana Saras, which is frequented by the Recluses and the Siddhas.’... A local tradition picked up by M’Murdo refers to the disappearance of this lake of old times, and explains the event by a conflagration of the country” (v. Etude, pp. 178, 179).
[190] In Italy the Pleiades set in the beginning of November. The south-west monsoon prevails from April to October. It sets in on the Sindh coast with strong west-south-westerly winds, which cause a heavy swell on the sea. The north-east monsoon, which is favourable for navigation, begins in the Arabian Sea about the middle of October.
[191] The name of this river has various forms, Arabis, Arbis, Artabis, and Artabius. It is now called the Purâli and is the river which, rising in the mountain range called by Ptolemy the Baitian, flows through the present district of Las into the Bay of Sonmiyâni. It gave its name to the Arabioi, whose territory it divided from that of the Oritai, who were farther west. Curtius states that Alexander reached the eastern boundary of the Arabioi (which may be placed about Karâchi) in nine days from Patala, and their western boundary formed by the Arabius in five days more. The distance from Haidarâbâd to Karâchi is 114 miles, and from Karâchi to Sonmiyâni fifty miles. The average of a day’s march was therefore about twelve miles, the same as now in these parts.
[192] The Arabitai are called in the Indika, Arabies; in Strabo, Arbies; in Diodôros, Ambritai; in Marcian the geographer, Arbitoi; and in Dion. Perieg. Aribes. Their territories extended from the western mouth of the Indus to the river Purâli. This people and their neighbours, the Orîtai, Cunningham would include within the geographical limits of India, although they have always been beyond its political boundaries during the historical period. They were tributary to Darius Hystaspês, and were still subject to the Persians when the Chinese pilgrim Hwen Thsiang visited their country in the seventh century of our aera.
[193] In the country of the Oreitai is a river called the Aghor, from which, it has been supposed, the people take their name, as thus: Aghoritai, Aoritai, Oritai, or Horatae, as they are called by Curtius. They are the Neoritai of Diodôros. The length of their coast Arrian gives in his Indika at 1600 stadia, while Strabo extends it to 1800. The actual length is 100 English miles, somewhere about half of Arrian’s estimate taken from Nearchos. The western boundary of the Oritai was marked by Cape Mâlân (the Malana of Arrian), which is twenty miles distant from the river Aghor. According to Strabo the Oritai were the people by whose poisoned arrows Ptolemy was all but mortally wounded.
[194] This name is probably a transcription of the Indian Râmbâgh, which designated the place where pilgrims assemble before starting for the Aghor Valley, in which the principal sacred places are connected with the history of Râma, the great hero of the Râmâyana. Cunningham accordingly identifies Râmbâgh with Arrian’s Rambakia, and remarks that the occurrence of the name of Râmbâgh at so great a distance to the west of the Indus, and at so early a period as the time of Alexander, shows not only the wide extension of Hindu influence in ancient times, but also the great antiquity of the story of Râma (v. his Anc. Geog. of India, pp. 307-310).
[195] D’Anville and Vincent have assumed that Ora is the Haur mentioned by Edrisi as lying on the route from Dîbal, near the mouth of the Indus, to Firûzâbâd in Mekran. Its situation is uncertain, however, as its name does not occur in any recently published account of the country. Ora may perhaps have been in the neighbourhood of Kôkala, mentioned in the Indika as situated on the Oreitian coast, probably near Cape Katchari, to the east of the Hingul river, where the fleet was supplied with a fresh stock of provisions. Perhaps it may have here denoted the country of the Oreitai.
[196] Gadrôsia in Arrian denotes the inland region which extends from the Oreitai to Karmania. The maritime region between the same limits he calls the country of the Ichthyophagoi. The Gedrôsian desert since the days of Alexander has protected Lower Sindh from any attack by the maritime route. The Persian invader has preferred to encounter the dangers and difficulties of the mountain passes of Afghânistân rather than to expose himself to such horrible sufferings in the burning desert as were experienced by the soldiers of Semiramis, Cyrus, and Alexander. The length of the Makrân or Beluchistan coast between the Oreitai and Karmania is given by Arrian at 10,000 stadia and by Strabo at 7000 only. The actual length is 480 English miles, and the time taken by Nearchos in its navigation was twenty days.
[197] A description of this unguent is given by Pliny (N. H. xii. c. 26). He there mentions that a special kind of it was produced in the Gangetic regions. In the 33d chapter of the same book will be found a description of the myrrh-tree and its produce.
[198] Chinnock notes that this was probably the snow-flake.
[199] This, says Sintenis, can be nothing else than a kind of acacia. He points out that Dioscorides (i. 33) applies to this thorn the expression ἀκακία, which Willdenow identifies with the acacia catechu. It grows abundantly in the Bombay and Bengal presidencies, producing a gum employed both as a colouring matter and a medicinal astringent, and known in commerce by the name of cutch.
[200] These people were the Ichthyophagoi of whom Arrian makes frequent mention in his Indika when describing the voyage of Nearchos along their coast. His description of their appearance and habits closely agrees with that given by Strabo in his chapter on Ariana.
[201] Kallatis or Kallatia was a large city of Thrace on the coast of the Euxine, colonised from Milêtos. Pliny says its former name was Cerbatis.
[202] v. [Note V], Alexander’s march through Gedrôsia, Poura.
[203] In Latin triumphi.
[204] That is, to one who, like Alexander, approached it from Central Asia.
[205] Eratosthenes and other ancient writers describe India as of a rhomboidal figure with the Indus on the west, the mountains on the north, and the sea on the east and the south. Curtius follows them here in reckoning its length from west to east.
[206] These are the mountains of the peninsular part of India.
[207] By the Red or Erythraean Sea is meant the Indian Ocean, which included both the Red Sea proper and the Persian Gulf. Curtius here makes the two great Indian rivers flow into the same sea. His conception of the configuration of India perhaps resembled that of Ptolemy, in whose map India is so misrepresented that it appears without its peninsula, but with a point (a little below the latitude of Bombay) whence the coast bends at once sharply to the east instead of pursuing its actual course southward to Cape Comorin.
[208] “Iomanes, a clever conjectural insertion due to Hedike. Foss had suspected some such omission, as the old attempt to make the Acesines run into the Ganges by finding some other modern name for it was preposterous” (Alexander in India, by Heitland and Raven, p. 90). The Iomanes appears in Ptolemy’s Geography as the Diamouna—that is the Yamunâ or Jamnâ, the great river which, after passing Delhi, Mathurâ, Agrâ, and other places, joins the Ganges at Allâhâbâd. It rises from hot springs not far westward from the sources of the Ganges. Arrian, who in his Indika calls it the Jobares, says that it flows through the country of the Sourasenoi, who possess two great cities, Methora (Mathurâ) and Kleisobara (Krishnapura?). Pliny (vi. 19) states that it passes through the Palibothri to join the Ganges. At its junction with the Jamnâ, and a third, but imaginary river, the Sarasvatî, the Ganges is called the Trivênî, i.e. “triple plait,” from the intermingling of the three streams.
[209] This river is most probably that which is called the Doanas in Ptolemy’s Geography, where it designates the Brahmaputra. The Doanas was probably also the Oidanes of Artemidôros, who, according to Strabo (XI. i. 72), described it as a river that bred crocodiles and dolphins, and that flowed into the Ganges. If the first two letters in Doanas be transposed, we get almost letter for letter the Oidanes of Artemidôros, and we get it again, though not so closely, if we discard r from the Dyardanes of Curtius. That these two writers had the same river in view is confirmed by their mentioning the very same animals as bred in its waters.
[210] No satisfactory identification of this river has as yet, so far as I am aware, been proposed. The river called by Arrian (iv. 6) the Erymandros, and by Polybios the Erymanthus, and now known as the Helmund, has a name pretty similar, but it does not discharge into the sea. It enters the inland lake called Zarah, in the province of Seistan in Afghanistan. According to Arrian it disappears in the sands.
[211] These statements about the north wind as it affects India have no basis in fact, and those that immediately follow reach the very acme of absurdity. The cold season occurs in India as in Europe during winter, but snow never falls on the plains. During the hot season, however, hailstorms occasionally occur and inflict more or less damage on the crops. I have myself witnessed in Calcutta a thunderstorm accompanied with a descent of hail, commingled with large pieces of ice, and this in one of the hottest months of the year, June or July, I forget which.
[212] Agatharchides, a writer of the second century B.C., begins his work on the Erythraean Sea by inquiring into the origin of its name. On this point four different opinions were held, and of these he adopted that which fathered the name on King Erythrus. He then tells the story of this king (who was a Persian) as he had learned it from a Persian called Boxos who had settled in Athens. Strabo (xvi. 20) gives a brief summary of this passage, and Pliny (N. H. vi. 28) a still briefer. Nearchos, as we learn from Arrian’s Indika (c. 37), in the course of his memorable voyage put into an island called Oärakta (now Kishm), where the natives showed him the tomb of the first king of the island. They said that his name was Erythrês, and that the sea in those parts was called after him the Erythraean. Opinions still differ as to the origin of the name. According to some it was given from the red and purple colouring of the rocks which in some parts border the sea, according to others from the red colour sometimes given to the waters by the sea-weed called Sûph. Fresnel, however, rejecting such views, interprets the name as meaning the sea of the Homêritai, i.e. Himyar or Hhomayr, or red men, whose name and the Arabic word ahhmar (red) have the same root. The people here indicated occupied Yemen, and were called red men in contrast to the black men of the opposite coast. Others again attribute the name to Edom (Idumea), which bordered the Gulf of Akaba, the eastern arm of the Red Sea, at its northern extremity. Edom signifies red. Further references to this subject will be found in Mela (III. viii. 1), Solinus (c. 36), Dio Cassius (lxviii. 28), and Stephanos Byz. s.v. Ἐρυθρά.
[213] As the dress of the natives was made in ancient times as at present, chiefly from cotton, this perhaps may be the substance meant here by flax. The valuable properties of the wool-like product of the cotton plant (Gossypium herbaceum, the Karpâsa of Sanskrit) were early known, as in one of the hymns of the Rig-veda mention is made of female weavers intertwining the extended thread. “The dress worn by the Indians (says Arrian, citing Nearchos) is made of cotton, a material produced from trees. They wear an under-garment of cotton which reaches below the knee half-way down to the ankles, and also an upper garment which they throw partly over their shoulders, and partly twist in folds round their head” (Indika, c. 16). This costume is mentioned in old Sanskrit literature, and is carefully represented in the frescoes on the caves of Ajanta. We learn from the Periplûs of the Erythraean Sea that muslin (othonion) was imported into the marts of India from China, and exported thence along with Indian muslin and coarser cotton fabrics to Egypt.
[214] Strabo (XV. i. 67) states on the authority of Nearchos that the Indians wrote letters upon cloth, which was well pressed to make it smooth, but adds that other writers affirmed that the Indians had no knowledge of writing. They were, however, acquainted with writing for some centuries before Alexander’s time, but whence they got their alphabet is a question not yet quite settled, though the weight of opinion inclines to assign it a Himyaritic origin. We learn from Pliny (xiii. 21) that paper made from the papyrus plant did not come into common use out of Egypt till the time of Alexander the Great. He then goes on to say that for writing on, the leaves of palm-trees were first used, and then the barks (libri) of certain trees. Some of the Egyptian papyrus-rolls are as old as the sixth dynasty.
[215] Nearchos, as we learn from Arrian’s Indika, c. 15, was taken with surprise when he heard in India parrots talking like human beings. Pliny says (x. 58) that India produces this bird, which is called the Septagen, and that it salutes its masters, and pronounces the words it hears. If it fails to do so it is beaten on the head, which is as hard as its bill, with an iron rod, until it repeats the words properly. Ovid (Amores, ii. 6) calls the parrot the imitative bird from the Indians of the East. Another Indian bird, the Maina, which in size and appearance somewhat resembles the thrush, can be taught to speak with great distinctness. It is probably the bird which Aelian (Hist. Anim. xvi. 3) describes under the name of the Kerkiôn.
[216] Here Curtius makes a mistake, for not only is the rhinoceros bred in India, but the Indian species is the largest known, and its flesh was, by the Brahmans, allowed to be eaten, though most other kinds of animal food were interdicted. Ktêsias describes it, but very incorrectly, under the name of the one-horned ass. It is described also in Aelian’s History of Animals (xvi. 20) in a passage supposed to have been copied from the lost Indika of Megasthenes. It is there called the Kartazôn. The fables about the unicorn had their source most probably in the fanciful account Ktêsias has given of the Indian wild ass. Aristotle, referring to it, says briefly: “We have never seen a solid-hoofed animal with two horns, and there are only a few of them that have one horn, as the Indian ass and the oryx.” Kosmas Indikopleustes, who, as his surname shows, had visited India, gives in the eleventh book of his Christian Topography a description of the rhinoceros, illustrated with a picture of the animal which represents it as somewhat like a horse, with its nose surmounted by a pair of horns slightly curved. We know that the picture is meant to be that of the rhinoceros from the name being attached. Kosmas says that he had only seen the animal from a distance. He has also given a description and picture of the unicorn, an animal which he had never seen, but had delineated from four brazen statues of it which adorned a palace in Aethiopia. A single straight horn of great length is represented as springing up from the top of its head.
[217] Pliny (Nat. Hist. viii. 11) notes, like Curtius here, that India produced the largest elephants. He had, however, stated previously (vi. 22) that, according to Onesikritos, the elephants of Taprobane (Ceylon) were larger and more warlike than those of India. Many references to the Indian elephants occur in the classics. Arrian, in the thirteenth and fourteenth chapters of his Indika, describes the mode in which they were hunted, and other particulars regarding them. Polybios (v. 84) says that the African elephants could neither endure the smell nor the trumpeting of their Indian congeners.
[218] Herodotos (iii. 106) says that gold was produced in great abundance in India, some of it washed down by the streams, and some dug out of the earth, but the greater part of it being the ant-gold surreptitiously procured. The heavy tribute levied by Darius on the Indian provinces (chiefly west of the Indus) was paid in gold-dust. We learn, notwithstanding, from Arrian that the companions of Alexander found that the Indian tribes they met with, which were numerous, were destitute of gold. The ant-gold produced in Dardistan seems therefore to have found its way rather to the provinces west of the Indus than to the Panjâb. Strabo (XV. i. 57), quoting Megasthenes, says that the rivers in India bring down gold-dust, a part of which is paid as a tax to the king. By the king is here meant Chandragupta (Sandrokottos), at whose court Megasthenes for some years resided. As the river Sôn, which in his time entered the Ganges at Palibothra (now Patna), was called poetically the Hiranyavâha—i.e. “bearing gold,”—we may assume that gold was found in the sands of that river. The grandson of Chandragupta, Aśôka, as is stated in the Mahavansâ, sent missionaries to preach Buddhism into the gold district of Suvarnabhûmi, a region which Turnour identified with Burma, but which Lassen took to be a maritime district situated somewhere in the west (v. his Ind. Alt. ii. pp. 236, 237; also i. 237, 238). Strabo (XV. i. 30) says that in the country of Sopeithês there were valuable mines both of gold and silver among the mountains.
[219] Pliny, in the latter part of his 37th book, treats of the various kinds of precious stones found in India, and of the uses to which they are there applied. In some of the other books incidental notices of them are also to be met with, while his 9th book is full of details about the pearl. From Strabo (II. iii. 4) we learn that an adventurer, Eudoxos of Kyzikos, who had been sent by Ptolemy Physkôn, king of Egypt, to India, returned thence, bringing back with him precious stones, some of which the Indians collect from among the pebbles of the river, and others of which they dig out of the earth. In his 15th book he states that India produces precious stones, as crystals, carbuncles of all kinds, and pearls. In Ptolemy’s Geography of India, and in the Periplûs of the Erythraean Sea mention is made of the diamond, beryl, onyx, carnelian, hyacinth, and sapphire as precious stones of India. They mention also various pearl fisheries existing in and near India. Arrian states in his Indika (c. 8) that the pearl in India is worth thrice its weight in refined gold, and that it was called in the Indian tongue Margarita. This, which is also its classical name, may represent either the Sanskrit manjari, or the Persian marwarîd.
[220] Arrian, on the authority of Nearchos, states in his Indika (c. 16) that the Indians wear shoes of white leather elaborately trimmed, and having thick soles (or heels) to make them look taller.
[221] Strabo notes from Kleitarchos similar statements regarding the treatment of their hair by the Indians (XV. i. 71), and Arrian has noted the Indian practice (which is still in vogue) of dying the beard of a variety of colours.
[222] “In the processions at Indian festivals (says Strabo, XV. i. 69) are to be seen wild beasts, as buffaloes, panthers, tame lions, and a multitude of birds of variegated plumage and of fine song.” Aelian, in a passage copied most probably from Megasthenes, says that the favourite bird of the king of the Indians (Chandragupta no doubt) was the hoopoe. He carried it on his wrist, and amused himself with it, and never tired gazing with admiration on its exquisite beauty, and the splendour of its plumage. The luxurious mode of life in which the Indian king (Chandragupta) indulged is described by Strabo (XV. i. 55) much in the same terms as by Curtius here. The native writings called sutras describe in like manner how the kings at festivals march out on elephants to the sound of all kinds of instruments, amid the scent of perfumes and clouds of frankincense.
[223] Strabo adds the significant statement that the king at night is obliged from time to time to change his couch from dread of treachery. The frequency of changes in the succession shows that such a precaution was not unnecessary. If a woman put to death a king when he was drunk, she was rewarded by becoming the wife of his successor. From Athênaios we learn that among the Indians the king might not get drunk. The assertion made by Curtius that the Indians all use much wine is contrary to the testimony of Megasthenes, who said that they use it only on sacrificial occasions. Wine was no doubt imported into the marts of the Malabar coast, but the quantity must have been limited, and could only have been purchased by the rich. The Brahmans of the Ganges, from whom Megasthenes obtained much information, punished indulgence in intoxicating drinks with great severity. The Aryans of the Panjâb were less abstemious, and this led to dissensions, and a final rupture between them and their brethren of Iran. The wine used at sacrifices was the fermented juice of the plant called soma. When required for drinking it was mixed with milk.
[224] The diversity of views which prevailed in India regarding suicide was noticed by Megasthenes. The book of the law, in case of incapacity, regards it as meritorious, but the Buddhists altogether condemned it. Pliny (vi. 19) says that the Indian sages always ended their life by a voluntary death on the funeral pile.
[225] This is a very vague and meagre account of the opinions and practices of the Indian philosophers and ascetics. Other writers are more copious on the subject, as Strabo (XV.), Arrian (Anab. vii. 2, 3; Indika, 11), Diodôros (ii. 40), Plutarch (Life of Alexander, 64, 65). References are made to it by Mela, Suidas, Orosius, Philo, Ambrosius, Aelian, Porphyrius, and others (v. [Notes W] and [Hh]).
[226] Certain trees are still held sacred in India. The pipal, for instance, is thought to be frequented by bhûts, i.e. demons.
[228] Arrian says, however, that most of the inhabitants of this city, which belonged to the Aspasians, and was fortified by a double wall, escaped to the mountains.
[229] Philostratos (ii. 4) says that Alexander did not ascend the mountain, but, though anxious to do so, contented himself with offering prayers and sacrifices at its base. He was afraid that the Macedonians on seeing the vines would be reminded of home, and have their love of wine revived after being accustomed to do without it.
[230] The Elzevir editor aptly quotes here Tacit. H. i. 55: Insita mortalibus natura, propere sequi, quae piget inchoare.
[231] Justin (xii. 7) speaks of mountains which he calls Daedali, and these Cunningham (p. 52) takes to be Mount Dantalok, which is about three miles distant from Palo-dheri (or Pelley, as General Court calls it), a place forty miles distant from Pashkalavati (Hasht-nagar). In the spoken dialect, he adds, Dantalok becomes Dattalok, which the Greek Daidalos may fairly be taken to represent. I think, however, Alexander had not penetrated so far eastward as this identification implies. It has been taken by Müller to be Arrian’s Andaka or Andêla, which he would therefore alter to Daidala. An Indian city called Daidala is mentioned by Stephanos Byz., and in Ptolemy’s Geography another city of the same name is mentioned as belonging to the Kaspeiraioi (or Kashmirians), who in Ptolemy’s days had extended their rule as far eastward as the regions of the Jamna. Abbot in his Gradus ad Aornon seems to identify Daedala with Doodial, and Acadira, which is mentioned immediately after, with Kaldura.
[232] Arrian calls this river the Euaspla. It is most probably the Kâmah or Kunâr river. Its name, Cho-asp-es, has one of the elements of the name of the people in its neighbourhood, the Asp-asioi. The prefix cho may, like eu or su, mean river, and Aspa means a horse, in Zend.
[233] Beira, it has been supposed, is the Bazira of Arrian; but as this has been on adequate grounds identified with Bazâr of the present day, the supposition is untenable. Bazâr lies too far east to suit the requirements.
[234] “How this arrangement was to prevent the upper part of the wall from settling down is a mystery as the text stands; and we can only suppose that (a) Curtius has not understood his authorities, or (b) has left out some important steps in the description, or (c) that the text is mutilated so as to conceal his real meaning.”—Alex. in India, p. 107.
[235] Seneca (Epistle 59) puts almost the same words into his mouth: “All swear that I am the son of Jupiter, but this wound proclaims me to be a man.” This is perhaps the occasion to which Plutarch refers when he states (Alex. 28) that Alexander when shot with an arrow turned in his pain to his attendants, and said: “This blood, my friends, is not the ichor which blest immortals shed”—a quotation from Homer.
[236] Pratt (ii. 276, n.) notices from Athenaios that these movable towers were invented by Dyades, pupil of Polyeîdes, who accompanied Alexander.
[237] According to Arrian, the besieged lost heart not from terror of the engines, but on seeing their commander killed. We read in Caesar that his engines produced a similar effect on the minds of the Gauls. They said that they could not believe the Romans were warring without the help of the gods since they were able to move forward engines of so great a height and with such celerity (De Bell. Gall. ii. 31).
[238] Curtius had no doubt here in his eye a passage from Livy, whose picturesque style was his exemplar: “Ipse collis est in modum metae in acutum cacumen a fundo satis lato fastigatus” (B. xxxvii. 27). In the centre of the Roman circus ran lengthways down the course a low wall, at each extremity of which were placed, upon a base, three wooden cylinders of a conical shape which were called metae—the goals.
[239] Ex sua cohorte—that is, from the retinue of pages in immediate attendance on the king. From this body officers were selected to fill the highest civil and military posts in the Macedonian state.
[240] Perhaps passed by a council of war or a general assembly of the troops. Philôtas, the son of Parmenion, was condemned to death by the Macedonian army.
[241] The readers of Virgil will be reminded by this episode of that of Euryalus and Nisus. Curtius indeed seems to me to have borrowed his account of the death-scene from that poet rather than from any historical authority.
[242] He is called Aphrikês by Diodôros.
[243] Diodôros less accurately calls him Môphis. His name Ambhi (in Sanskrit) is found in the Gana-pâtha, a genuine appendix to Pânini’s Grammar (v. Journal Asiatique, Series VIII. tome xv. p. 235). For remarks on the coined money which he gave to Alexander, see [Note Kk].
[244] It was Krateros, however, and not Ptolemy, who was left in charge of the division of the army which faced the camp of Pôros. Curtius has therefore here made a mistake.
[245] That is, Pôros had been enticed down the bank so far that the island which lay where the passage was really to be made was no longer visible. Curtius says nothing of the other island on which the Macedonians landed under the erroneous impression that they had gained the bank of the river, and Diodôros is equally silent.
[246] According to Arrian this force was commanded by the son of Pôros.
[247] See [Note Y], Battle with Pôros.
[248] Boukephalos was no doubt the horse to which Curtius here refers, but according to some accounts that famous steed was not in the battle. Curtius here follows Chares, as the following passage quoted from this writer by Aulus Gellius (Noct. Attic. v. 2) will show: “The horse of King Alexander was both by his head and by his name Bucephalas (i.e. ox-head). Cares has stated that he was bought for thirteen talents, and presented to King Philip.... Regarding this horse it seems worth recording that when caparisoned and armed for battle he would not suffer himself to be mounted by any one but the king. It is also told of this horse that in the Indian war when Alexander, mounted upon him, and performing noble deeds of bravery, had with too little heed for his own safety entangled himself amid a battalion of the enemy, where he was on all sides assailed with darts, his horse was stabbed with deep wounds in the neck and sides. Ready to expire, and drained of nearly all his blood, he nevertheless bore back the king from the midst of his foes at a most rapid pace; and when he had conveyed him beyond reach of spears, he straightway dropped down, and having no further fear for his master’s safety, he breathed his last as if with the consolation of human sensibility. Then King Alexander having gained the victory in this war, built a town on this spot, and in honour of his horse called it Bucephalon.”
[249] Arrian says that the first messenger sent was Taxilês himself.
[250] According to Arrian, Taxilês escaped by a hasty flight.
[251] Diodôros states, on the contrary, that Alexander checked the slaughter.
[252] This is scarcely probable. The incident is mentioned by no other writer.
[253] Curtius has here marred with his rhetoric and moral reflections the simple and dignified answer of Pôros, that he wished to be treated like a king. Lucan similarly has dilated into some twenty lines of rhetoric Caesar’s famous words to the boatmen in the storm: “Fear not, you carry Caesar and his fortunes.” Plutarch, both in his Life of Alexander and in his De Ira Cohibenda (c. 9), has stated the reply of Pôros in the same terms as Arrian.
[254] Cicero (pro Marcello) extols Alexander in the highest terms for acting thus towards his vanquished enemy; and Seneca in his De Clementia follows in a similar strain.
[255] Philostratos, in his life of Apollonios of Tyana, states that Alexander dedicated likewise to the sun one of the elephants of Pôros, the first of them that deserted to his side, and which he called Ajax, and also the altars which he reared on the banks of the Hyphasis to mark the limits of his advance. As the same author states that Apollonios saw Ajax still alive at Taxila some 370 years later, his veracity may be suspected.
[256] See [Note Z], Indian Serpents.
[257] The Sanskrit name of the rhinoceros is Ganda, also Gandaka and Gandânga.
[258] This is the ficus Indica, commonly called the banyan-tree, because of the frequent use made of its shelter by traders who dealt in grain, called in India Banyans. Strabo (XV. i. 21) describes this tree from Onesikritos, who saw it growing in the country of Mousikanos. Pliny also (N. H. xii. 11) describes the tree and its fruit, adding that it grows chiefly in the neighbourhood of the Acesines (Chenâb); see also Theophrastos, De Plantis, iv. 5, and Arrian’s Indika, c. 11. Several English poets have made it the subject of their verse—Ben Jonson, Milton, Tickell, and Southey. Its stately stems rise in solemn grandeur like the basaltic pillars of Fingal’s Cave, and with the over-arching boughs form a vast and wondrous dome—
“Where as to shame the temples decked
By skill of earthly architect,
Nature herself, it seems, would raise
A minster to her Maker’s praise.”
[259] Ailianos (H. A. xii. 32) says that while the Indians knew the proper antidote against the bites of each kind of serpent, none of the Greek physicians had discovered any such antidote. See [Note Z], Indian Serpents.
[260] See [Note Aa], Indian Peacocks.
[261] This must be the town which Arrian calls Pimprama, distant a day’s march from Sangala. The accounts of the two historians are at variance, however, since Arrian says that the place surrendered without resistance.
[262] This place was Sangala, for which see [Note M].
[263] Caesar’s men were similarly alarmed on seeing for the first time the war chariots of the Britons: perturbatis nostris novitate pugnae (Bell. Gall. iv. 34). See also Livy, x. 28.
[264] Arrian mentions gaps between the waggons, but does not state that they were fastened together. Vegetius (De re Militari, iii. 10), however, observes: “All barbarians fasten their chariots together in a ring in the fashion of a camp, and thus keep themselves safe from surprise during the night.”
[265] “It is impossible to compare the numbers given by Curtius and Arrian, as neither gives the total of killed, and the details of the numbers who fell in the separate operations of the siege are not so stated as to admit of comparison” (Alex. in India, p. 130).
[266] The better form of the name is Sôphytes, which properly transliterates the Sanskrit original Saubhutu, but see [Biographical Appendix], s.v. Sôphytes.
[267] According to Strabo the inspection was made when the child was two months old. He notices that the practice of widow-burning was known here.
[268] “The Indians,” says Solinus (c. 55), “rub down the beryl into hexagonal forms in order to impart vigour to the dull tameness of the colour by the reflection from the angles. Of the beryl the varieties are manifold.” Pliny, from whom Solinus no doubt drew this information, states (xxxvii. 5) that beryls were seldom found elsewhere than in India, and that the Indians had discovered how to make counterfeit gems and especially beryls by staining crystal.
[269] See [Note Bb], Indian Dogs.
[270] The ordinary and correct reading is not Phegeus, as in the text from which I translate, but Phegelas, which transliterates the Sanskrit Bhagala. See [Biog. Appendix], s.v. Phegelas.
[271] A sandy desert stretches from the southern borders of the Panjâb almost to the Gulf of Kachh. The breadth of this desert from east to west is about 400 miles. In some places it is altogether uninhabited; in others villages and patches of cultivation are found thinly scattered. On the east it gradually gives way to the fertile parts of India.
[272] For Gangaridae see [Note Cc], and for Prasii, [Note Dd]. The common reading of this name in the editions of Curtius is Pharasii.
[273] The name as given here seems less correct than the form in Diod. Xandrames, which can be referred to the Indian word Chandramas, meaning moon-god. See [Biog. Appendix], s.vv. Xandrames and Sandrokottos.
[274] On the contrary, elephants are easy to tame. Arrian in his Indica (c. 13, 14) has described the manner both of trapping and taming them. The same methods are still employed, with only slight variations. See also Pliny, viii. 8-10; Diodôros, iii. 26; Ailianos, viii. 10 and 15, and x. 10; and Tzetzes, Chiliad, iv. 122.
[275] There was no great disparity of numbers in the battle of the Granîkos between the Greeks and Persians, 35,000 on Alexander’s side and 40,000 on the other.
[276] So Caesar, when his soldiers, terrified by the accounts they had heard of the Germans, refused to advance against them, said, that if nobody else would go with him he would set out with the Tenth Legion alone (Bell. Gall. i. 40). Thirlwall is of opinion that Alexander’s threat to throw himself on his Baktrian and Skythian auxiliaries, and make the expedition with them alone, most likely misrepresents the tone which he assumed.
[277] Cerealis addressed his men in similar terms: “Go, tell Vespasian, or Civilis and Classicus who are nearer at hand, that you deserted your leader on the field of battle” (Tacitus, H. iv. 77).
[278] “This speech, put into the mouth of Coenus, has a peculiar literary interest beyond the ordinary run of orations written for their leading characters by the rhetorical historians of antiquity. In the remaining works of the elder Seneca we have a suasoria or hortatory oration (see Mayor on Juvenal, i. 16) on this very subject, in which are arranged all the telling sentences that some of the most famous Roman rhetoricians could compose to suit the situation. The remarkable parallels found in this collection to the present speech of Curtius illustrates in a very striking way the artificial nature of these harangues, and show what a vast amount of labour this spirited and polished specimen probably took to produce. The corresponding speech in Arrian, v. 27, though less pointed than that in Curtius, is more natural and easy, and certainly far superior to that put into the mouth of Alexander” (Alexander in India, p. 140, n. 5).
[279] See [Note N], Alexander’s Altars on the Hyphasis.
[280] Curtius is here in error as to the place of his death, for he died at the Hydaspês, as will be seen by a reference to Arrian, vi. 2. He is further in error, like Diodôros, in making the fleet start on its voyage from the Akesinês instead of from the Hydaspês.
[281] “It is recorded,” said Colonel Chesney in his Simla lecture on Alexander, “that he sent to Greece for 20,000 fresh suits of armour. A suit of armour and arms probably weighed three-fourths of a maund (60 lbs.), and we may assume that with the arms a good many other articles were indented for at the same time. Altogether we may take it that the requisition was for not less than from 20,000 to 30,000 mule loads—30,000 laden mules to be despatched from Macedonia to the Satlej! A large order. And this suggests another consideration. Alexander’s army on the Satlej was 50,000 strong; how about his lines of communication? During the late Afghan war over 50,000 men crossed the frontier, yet I believe the general had never at any time more than 10,000 men in hand at the front; the rest were swallowed up in holding obligatory posts and keeping up the line of communication. Now if 40,000 men are needed for this purpose to keep 10,000 effective in the front, when the distance to be covered was only 200 miles, what would be the force required to secure the line of communication between Macedonia and the army halted on the banks of the Satlej? The answer is to be found in the system of war pursued by Alexander’s Greek generals, and garrisons were left at certain points on the road; and where complete submission was made, the enemy was left in possession of his country and converted into an ally. But when the resistance was obstinate Alexander left no enemies behind.” As Alexander led into India 120,000 men, Colonel Chesney’s estimate that he had only 50,000 at the Hyphasis (which he calls the Satlej) must surely be far below the mark.
[282] Yet Pliny (vi. 17) says that though Alexander sailed on the Indus never less than 600 stadia per day, he took more than five months to complete the navigation of it! This would give the Indus a length of 12,000 miles! Aristoboulos said the navigation occupied ten months, but we may strike off a month from this estimate. The voyage began near the end of October 326 B.C. The distance from the starting-point to the sea by the course of the river is between eight and nine hundred British miles.
[283] See [Note Ee], The Sibi.
[284] See [Note Ff], The Agalassians.
[285] Curtius has here confounded the junction of the Hydaspês and Akesinês with that of the Indus and the combined stream of the Panjâb rivers. The geography of the passage is inexplicable. Arrian has given a vivid description of the confluence, but does not indicate that Alexander’s life was in danger from its perilous navigation.
[286] This rhetorical passage will remind the readers of Virgil of his description of the zones (Georg. i. 231-251): “Five zones comprise the heaven ... of which two, the frozen homes of green ice and black storms, stretch far away.... One pole is thrust down beneath the feet of murky Styx ... where eternal night, wrapped in her pall of gloom, sits brooding in unending silence.” The passage was probably, however, suggested by the lines of the sixth book of the Aeneid, 794-796: “He (Augustus Caesar) will stretch his sway beyond Garamantian and Indian. See, the land is lying outside the stars, outside the sun’s yearly path.”
[287] Racine (Alex. v. i.), imitating the present passage, says: “des déserts que le ciel refuse d’éclairer, où la nature semble elle-même expirer” (Alex. in Ind. p. 148).
[288] From which they were yet some 600 miles distant!
[289] Called the Oxydrakai by Arrian. See [Note P]. Curtius here differs from Diodôros, who says that the Syrakousai (Oxydrakai) and Malloi could not agree as to the choice of a leader, and ceased in consequence to keep the field together. Both these historians are silent as to the operations conducted by Alexander during his march from the junction of the Hydaspês and the Akesinês to the capital of the Malloi situated above the old junction of the united stream of these two rivers with the Hydraôtês.
[290] But according to Arrian, Strabo, and Plutarch, the city where Alexander was nearly wounded to death belonged to the Malloi.
[291] Thirlwall, with good reason, regards this incident as a mere embellishment of the story. “It is certain,” he says, “that even if Alexander believed in such things less than he appears to have done, he was too prudent to disclose his incredulity, and so throw away an instrument which a Greek general might so often find useful” (Hist. of Greece, vii. c. 54). The story is found in Diodôros also. If a fiction, it may have been suggested by the fact that Alexander on approaching Babylon, where he died, was warned by Chaldaean soothsayers not to enter that city. If true, Alexander had doubtless in his mind the words of Hector (Iliad, xii. 237-243), where he expresses his contempt for omens drawn from the flight of birds. Hannibal had a similar contempt, as appears from Cicero, de Div. ii.
[292] Curtius, like Plutarch, represents Alexander to have been wounded after he had scaled the city wall, and thence leaped down into the city. But this is a mistake. It was the wall of the citadel he scaled, and it was within the citadel he was wounded, as we learn both from Arrian and Diodôros.
[293] “Probably a piece of gratuitous padding put in by Curtius to heighten the effect of his picture. Nothing of the kind is found in Arrian or Diodôros” (Alex. in India, p. 151).
[294] Timaeus and Aristonus are mentioned only by Curtius as among those who came first to Alexander’s rescue. It is supposed that the Timaeus of Curtius is the same person as the Limnaios of Plutarch.
[295] Pliny (vii. 37) mentions a Critobulus who acquired great celebrity by extracting an arrow from the eye of Philip, Alexander’s father. Arrian again says that some authors assigned the credit of the operation in Alexander’s case to Kritodêmos, a physician of Kôs, but others to Perdikkas.
[296] So Marius in like circumstances forbade himself to be bound (Cicero, Tusc. Disput. ii. 22).
[297] The Hydraôtês or Râvi, which in those days joined the Akesinês below Multân.
[298] Arrian, on the contrary, states, on the authority of Nearchos, that Alexander was annoyed by the remonstrances of his friends.
[299] A Thracian tribe whose country is mentioned in Ptolemy’s Geography as a stratêgia—that is, a province governed by a general of the army.
[300] That is when he crossed the Tanaïs (Jaxartês) to attack the Skythians. “Unus Pellaeo juveni non sufficit orbis.”
[301] Referring to his descent from Achilleus, whose career was short but glorious.
[302] Alexander here refers to the plot of Hermoläos and the pages against his life.
[303] Philip was assassinated by Pausanias while entering the door of a theatre. The Elzevir editor aptly quotes an epigram on Henry IV. of France, to whom a saying was attributed Duo protegit unus:
“Gallorum Rex regna, inquis, duo protegit unus;
Protexêre tuum nec duo regna caput.”
[304] The incident is mentioned briefly by Diodôros (xvii. 99). The 3000 Greeks who left their colonies to return home suffered great hardships on the way, and were slain by the Macedonians after Alexander’s death.
[305] The Sudracae and the Malli. They arrived while Alexander was still in camp near the confluence of the Hydraôtês with the Akesinês, where he had joined Hêphaistiôn and Nearchos.
[306] A statement, as Thirlwall observes, hardly consistent either with the boasts of independence made by the two nations, or with their recorded actions.
[307] Athenaios (vi. 13) relates, on the authority of Aristoboulos, that this Dioxippos, the Athenian, whom he calls a pankratiast, when Alexander on a certain occasion was wounded, and the blood flowing, exclaimed: “This is ichor such as flows in the veins of the blessed gods.” Ailianos in his Hist. Var. (x. 22) describes his combat with the Macedonian. Pliny (xxxv. 11) informs us that Dioxippos was painted as a victor in the Olympic pancratium by Aleimachus.
[308] It is uncertain whether the Macedonians were of the same blood as the Greeks. Their kings undoubtedly were, but Grote, influenced by his antipathy to Alexander, who had crushed the liberties of Greece, considered him little better than a barbarian, “who had at most put on some superficial varnish of Hellenic culture.” See on this point Freeman’s Historical Essays, vol. ii. pp. 192-201, 3rd ed.
[309] “The sword blades of India had a great fame over the East, and Indian steel, according to esteemed authorities, continued to be imported into Persia till days quite recent. Its fame goes back to very old times. Ktesias mentions two wonderful swords of such material that he got from the King of Persia and his mother. It is perhaps the ferrum candidum of which the Malli and Oxydracae sent 100 talents’ weight as a present to Alexander. Indian iron and steel are mentioned in the Periplus as imports into the Abyssinian ports.” See Yule’s Marco Polo, i. p. 94.
[310] We learn from the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea that tortoise and other shells formed an important element in the ancient commerce of the East with the West. For an account of Indian shells see British India of the Edinburgh Cabinet Library, III. c. v. pp. 136-144.
[311] Alexander had, however, by this time taken their capital. We learn from Arrian (Indika, c. 4) that their dominions extended to the junction of the Akesinês with the Indus.
[312] Lassen identifies this people with the Sambastai of Diodôros. Orosius calls them the Sabagrae. In Arrian the Sambastai appear as the Abastanoi, a name which transliterates the Sanskrit word avasthâna, which means, however, “a dwelling-place,” and does not denote a people. See note on Arrian, [p. 155].
[313] Two other tribes are mentioned by Arrian as having sent deputies to Alexander while in camp near the confluence, the Xathroi and the Ossadioi, concerning whom see notes on Arrian, [p. 156].
[314] Their alarm would no doubt be increased by the sight of the many coloured flags of the vessels, as we may infer from the words of Pliny (xix. 1): “The first attempt at dyeing canvas with the costliest hues for dyeing wearing apparel was made in the fleets of Alexander the Great when he was navigating the river Indus, for then his generals and prefects had distinguished by differences of colour the ensigns of their vessels, and the natives along the shore were lost in amazement at the variety of their colours. It was with a purple sail Cleopatra came with Antony to Actium, and fled therefrom. This was the colour of the admiral’s ensign.”
[315] Chachar opposite Mithânkôt, a little below the great confluence. See Note on Arrian.
[316] See Note on Arrian, [p. 156].
[317] Called Tyriaspês by Arrian. Oxyartes was Alexander’s father-in-law.
[318] For the Praesti and Porticanus see Note to Arrian, [p. 158].
[320] Aurengzêb captured Surat by a similar device, and to the great astonishment of the inhabitants.
[321] According to Diodôros this happened in the neighbourhood of Harmatelia, for conjectures as to the position of which see [Note T]. Strabo says it happened in the country of the Oreitai.
[322] It has been thought this name may be constructed from Maharâjah, “great king.” For identification of Patala see [Note U].
[323] This island is called by Arrian Killouta, and by Plutarch Skilloustis. See Note on Arrian, [p. 164].
[324] See [Note Gg], Tides in Indian Rivers.
[325] This lake, however, was discovered neither on this voyage nor on this arm of the Indus, but during a subsequent voyage which Alexander made down the eastern arm.
[326] “No magnificent idea,” says Vincent, “is requisite to conceive the building of cities in the East. A fort or citadel with a mud wall to mark the circumference of the pettah or town is all that falls to the share of the founder. The habitations are raised in a few days or hours.... The Soldan of Egypt insults Timour by telling him: ‘The cities of the East are built of mud, and ephemeral; ours in Syria and Egypt are of stone, and eternal.’”
[327] Nearchos with the fleet rejoined the army at a point on the river, Pasitigris or Karun, near the modern village of Ahwaz, where was a bridge by which Alexander led his army from Persis to Sousa, where he arrived February 324 B.C.
[328] The Alexandreia of Diodôros, and probably also the Alexandreia which, as we learn from Pliny (vi. 25), was built by Leonnatos by Alexander’s orders on the confines of the Arian nation. It may also be the fifteenth of the Alexandreias of Stephanos Byz., which he places in the country of the Arachosians next to India. It was perhaps, however, the Portus Alexandri, now Karâchi, where Nearchos was detained by the prevalence of the monsoon for twenty-four days.
[329] Hence their name Ichthyophagoi. They inhabited the maritime parts of the Oreitai and Gedrosians. In sailing along their coast Nearchos and his men suffered great hardships from scarcity of provisions. See Arrian’s Indika, 24-31. Much may also be read of this people in Strabo, Pliny, Ailianos, and Agatharchides.
[330] Arrian (vi. 27) says, however, that Phrataphernes brought the provisions spontaneously. Diodôros is at one with Curtius on the point.
[331] This description is much overdrawn. Thirlwall thus remarks upon it: “We cannot wonder that, in the enjoyment of pleasures, from which they had been so long debarred, they abandoned themselves to some excesses, perhaps only following the example of their chiefs and of Alexander himself;” and this was probably the main ground of fact for the exaggeration of later writers.
[332] Arrian alludes to his execution in his Indika, c. 36.
[333] This happened at Mazaga, the capital of Assakênos. Plutarch, it will be seen, justly condemns Alexander for this gross violation of the compact into which he had entered with the Indian mercenaries.
[334] For its identification see [Note F], Aornos.
[335] Aphrikês is called Eryx by Curtius.
[336] More correctly Omphis as given by Curtius. See [Biog. Appendix], s.v. Omphis.
[337] The father of Omphis had quite recently died, and Omphis did not assume the sovereignty at once on his decease, but waited till Alexander sanctioned his doing so. He then, as a matter of course, along with the sovereignty assumed also the dynastic title Taxilês.
[338] Alexander’s campaign, in which he conquered the country extending from the Hindu Kush to the Indus, took place in the year 327 B.C. In the year following he marched eastward through the Panjâb as far as the Hyphasis, conquering on his way Pôros and the Kathaians, and from the Hyphasis he retraced his way to the Hydaspês. He then sailed down that river, and then down the Akesinês into which it falls, until about the end of the year he reached the Indus. It will be seen from Arrian, v. 19, that the battle with Pôros was fought in the archonship of Hêgemôn at Athens, whose year of office, it is otherwise known, extended from the 28th of June 327 to the 17th of July 326 B.C. Hêgemôn was succeeded by Chremês, so that Diodôros antedates his archonship. He was archon after the defeat of Pôros and not before. With regard to the two consuls named, it does not appear that they ever held the consulship simultaneously. Publius Cornelius (Scipio Barbatus) was consul in 328 B.C. along with C. Plautius Decianus. In the following year Spurius Postumius Albinus was master of the horse to the Dictator Claudius Marcellus, but I can find nowhere in the lists the name of Aulus Postumius as holding any office about that time. In Smith’s Classical Dictionary the year 327 B.C. appears as the annus mirabilis of Alexander’s life, for early in the spring he completes the conquest of Sogdiana and marries Roxana. Thereafter he returns to Baktra, then marches to invade India, and crossing the Hydaspês defeats Pôros. He then marches to the Hyphasis, and thence returns to the Hydaspês. In the autumn he sails down the Hydaspês to the Indus! See vol. iii. p. 1346 and vol. i. s.v. Alexander III. The events of two years are thus compressed into the space of a single year. Clinton’s chronology, which is very confused for the period from 327 to 323, seems to have been followed.
[339] His name appears in Arrian more correctly as Abisares. He may be described as the King of Kashmir.
[340] Boukephala and Nikaia, for which see Note on Arrian, [p. 110].
[341] See [Note Z], Indian Serpents.
[342] This is the whip-snake which is thus described in British India of the Edinburgh Cabinet Library, vol. iii. pp. 121, 122: “The whip snake is common to the Concan, where it conceals itself among the foliage of trees, and darts at the cattle grazing below, generally aiming at the eye. A bull, which was thus wounded at Dazagon, tore up the ground with extreme fury, and died in half an hour, foaming at the mouth. The habit of the reptile is truly singular, for it seems to proceed neither from resentment nor from fear, nor yet from the impulse of appetite; but seems, ‘more than any other known fact in natural history, to partake of that frightful and mysterious principle of evil, which tempts our species so often to tyrannize for mere wantonness of power.’”
[343] The Adraïstai of Arrian. See Note on that author, [p. 116].
[345] More correctly Sôphytês. See [Biog. Appendix], s.v.
[346] This was also a Spartan institution.
[348] More correctly Phegelas as given by Arrian. See [Biog. Appendix], s.v.
[349] Usually called the Hyphasis. It is now the Beäs which joins the Satlej. The name of the Hyphasis was sometimes, however, applied to the united stream, but this is contrary to Sanskrit usage.
[350] See [Notes Cc] and [Dd].
[351] The Indian barber (nâpit) belonged to the Sudra or servile caste. Besides the duties proper to his calling, he has other avocations, his services being often required for the performance of certain domestic ceremonies such as those connected with marriage, etc.
[352] “Kallisthenes adds (after the exaggerating style of tragedy) that when Apollo had deserted the oracle among the Branchidai, on the temple being plundered by the Branchidai (who espoused the party of the Persians in the time of Xerxes), and the spring had failed, it then reappeared on the arrival of Alexander; that the ambassadors also of the Milesians carried back to Memphis numerous answers of the oracle respecting the descent of Alexander from Jupiter, and the future victory which he should obtain at Arbela, the death of Darius, and the political changes at Lacedaemon” (Strabo, XVII. i. 43). See also Introd. p. 28.
[353] Properly the Gangaridai.
[354] Diodôros should have said the Hydaspês.
[355] See Note on Curtius, [p. 231].
[356] See [Note Ee], The Sibi.
[357] See [Note Ff], The Agalassians.
[358] See Curtius, ix. 4.
[359] This happened at the junction of the Akesinês with the Hydaspês and not with the Indus, as here represented. For the contest of Achilles with the Simoeis and Skamander, see the twenty-first book of the Iliad.
[360] The Oxydrakai.
[361] “The two races (Oxydrakai and Malloi) were composed of widely different elements, for the name of one appears to have been derived from that of the Sudra caste; and it is certain that the Brahmins were predominant in the other. We can easily understand why they did not intermarry, and were seldom at peace with each other, and that their mutual hostility was only suspended by the common danger which now threatened their independence.”—Thirlwall’s Hist. of Greece, vii. c. 54.
[362] Called Horratas by Curtius.
[363] For a notice of Dioxippos, see Note on Curtius, [p. 249].
[364] For their identification, see Note on Curtius, [p. 252].
[365] See [Note R] for their identification.
[366] Cunningham inclines to believe that the Massanoi of Diodôros are the Musarnoi of Ptolemy, whose name, he says, still exists in the district of Muzarka to the west of the Indus below Mithankot. See his Anc. Geog. of Ind. p. 254.
[367] For its identification see [Note R] and Note on Arrian, [p. 156].
[368] See Note on Arrian, [p. 157], regarding the position of this country.
[369] Porticanos is called Oxykanos by Arrian. See Note on that author, [p. 158].
[370] For the kingdom of Sambos see [Note S].
[372] See Note on Curtius, [p. 256].
[373] Evidently an error for Patala, for the identification of which see [Note U].
[374] See Note on Curtius, [p. 262].
[375] All these particulars are recorded at length in the Indika of Arrian, from c. 24 to c. 31.
[376] Generally called Parthia, then a small state.
[377] Drangianê, now the province of Seistan. The inhabitants Drangoi, and also Zarangoi. Drangianê was separated from Gedrôsia by the Baitian mountains, now called the Washati.
[378] Areia was a small province included in Ariana which embraced nearly the whole of ancient Persia. The name is connected with the Indian word ârya, “noble” or “excellent.” It occupied the tract from Meshed to Herat.
[379] Arrian, however, relates in his Indika (c. 23), that Leonnatos defeated the Oreitai and their allies in a great battle in which all the leaders and 6000 men were slain, while his own loss was very trifling.
[380] Arrian gives in his Indika (c. 33-35) full details of the journey of Nearchos from the coast to Alexander’s camp, which lay a five days’ march inland, and of the affecting interview between the king and his admiral, whom he had given up for lost. Arrian’s narrative may be implicitly trusted, as it was based on the Journal of Nearchos, whose veracity is unimpeachable. The admiral did not appear in the theatre until his interview with Alexander had been concluded. Diodôros is clearly in error in placing Salmous on the coast.
[381] This incident occurred at Mazaga, the capital of Assakênos.
[382] The Brahmans of Sindh are here referred to.
[383] “When the Greek writers tell us that the district between the Hydaspes and the Hyphasis alone contained 5000 cities (!), none of which was less than that of Cos (Strabo, xv. p. 686), and that the dominions of Pôros, which were confined between the Hydaspes and the Acesines—a tract not more than 40 miles in width—contained 300 cities (id. p. 698), it is evident that the Greeks were misled by the exaggerated reports so common with all Orientals, and which were greedily swallowed by the historians of Alexander with a view of magnifying the exploits of the great conqueror.”—Bunbury, Hist. of Anc. Geog. I. p. 453.
[384] See Note to Arrian, [p. 112], and to Curtius, [p. 212].
[385] This seems an almost inexcusable mistake on Plutarch’s part—his conducting Alexander as far as the Ganges! The author of the Periplûs made the same egregious blunder. It is possible, however, to put a different construction on the expressions used by Plutarch, and to suppose that he wrote so carelessly that he did not mean what his words seem to imply.
[386] See [Notes Cc] and [Dd] for these people.
[387] More correctly Sandrakyptos, or Chandragupta. See [Biog. Appendix], s.v. Sandrokottos.
[388] See [Note N], Altars at the Hyphasis.
[389] See [Biog. Appendix], s.v. Sandrokottos.
[390] This was the wall of the citadel, not of the city, as Plutarch represents.
[391] This fact, attested by all the historians, confirms the truth of the reports as to the great skill of the Indians in archery.
[392] Called Timaeus by Curtius, p. 240.
[393] He is called Sambos by Arrian, and was the ruler of the mountainous region west of the Indus, having Sindimana for his capital, the city now called Sehwan. See [Biog. Appendix], s.v. Sambos.
[394] “He (Alexander) caused ten Indian philosophers, whom the Greeks called gymnosophists, and who were naked as apes, to be seized. He proposes to them questions worthy of the gallant Mercury of Visé, promising them with all seriousness that the one who answered worst would be hanged the first, after which the others would follow in their order. This is like Nabuchodonosor, who absolutely wished to slay the Magians if they did not divine one of his dreams which he had forgotten, or the Calif of The Thousand and One Nights who was to strangle his wife when she came to the end of her stories. But it is Plutarch who tells this silly story; we must respect it; he was a Greek” (Voltaire, Dict. Phil. s.v. Alexandre). See also [Note Hh], Indian Gymnosophists.
[395] The interviews of Onesikritos with the Indian philosophers took place earlier than is here stated—when Alexander was at Taxila.
[396] Called Killouta by Arrian. The native name has not otherwise been preserved. The city which Pliny calls Xylenopolis was probably situated in Killouta, and was the naval station whence Nearchos started on his voyage. The name means “city of wood.”
[397] Arrian relates in his Indika (c. 26) that Nearchos in the course of his voyage, having landed at a place on the Gedrôsian coast called Kalama, received from the natives a present of sheep and fish. The admiral recorded that the mutton had a fishy taste like the flesh of sea-birds, because for want of grass the sheep were fed on fish.
[398] See Note on Curtius, [p. 266].
[399] See Note on Curtius, [p. 194].
[400] The Queen of Mazaga, capital of the Assakenians. See [Note D].
[401] The rock Aornos, identified with Mount Mahaban. See [Note F].
[402] The Adrestae are the Adraïstai of Arrian. See Note on that author, [p. 116]. The Gesteani seem to be the Kathaians. The Praesidae must be the Prasians (though Saint-Martin would identify them with the Praesti of Curtius), and the Gangaridae the people of Lower Bengal.
[403] The river reached was the Hyphasis. How Justin came to call it the Cuphites it is difficult to understand. Can he have had in his recollection the Kâbul river, called sometimes by the classical writers the Kuphes, with Kuphet as the stem for the oblique cases, and mistaken it for the river which arrested Alexander’s progress? Like Plutarch, he erroneously supposes that the Macedonian army was confronted with a great host encamped on the opposite bank of the river.
[404] Hydaspes he should have said.
[405] For the identification of this people, see [Note Ff].
[406] The Silei are probably the Sibi. See [Note Ee].
[407] By the Ambri must be meant the Malli, and by the Sigambri the Oxydrakai. The text must be corrupt.
[408] This is supposed to be a corrupt reading for Ambiregis, in which case Ambi is a mistake for Sambi. We know that the incident referred to happened in the dominions of this king. In Orosius (iii. 19) the name is transcribed as Ambiraren.
[409] Nothing is known of this city, unless it be, as Cunningham thinks, the Barbari of Ptolemy, and the Barbarike Emporium of the author of the Periplûs. See his Anc. Geog. p. 295.
[410] Nandrum has been here substituted for the common reading Alexandrum, which Gutschmid (Rhein. Mus. 12, 261) has shown to be an error.
[411] Quoted by Heitland in the original.
[412] Ibid.
[413] The Râmâyana (ii. 70. 21) mentions among the Kaikeyas, “the dogs bred in the palace, gifted with the strength of the tiger and of huge body” (Dunck. iv. p. 403).
[414] Referring to the terms in which he was summoned to go to Alexander. He was to go to “the son of Zeus.”
[415] According to Dr. Bellew this name is the Greek equivalent of the Persian Mâhîkhorân, “fish-eaters,” still surviving in the modern Makrân. [Since the above note was written the cause of Eastern learning and research has suffered a grievous loss by the death of this distinguished Orientalist, whose work on the Ethnology of Afghanistan will prove a lasting monument to his fame. The work discusses inter alia the ethnic affinities of the various races with which Alexander came into contact during his Asiatic expedition.]
[416] Major E. Mockler, the political agent of Makrân, contributed some years ago to the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society a valuable paper on the identification of places on this coast mentioned by Arrian, Ptolemy, and Marcian, in which he corrected some errors into which the commentators on these authors had fallen.
[417] A slight emendation of the reading (suggested by Schwanbeck) restores the passage to sense, making Arrian say that Sandrokottos was greater even than Pôros.
[418] It seems that Pôros, after Alexander’s death, had possessed himself of the satrapy of the Lower Indus, held till then by Peithôn son of Agênôr.
[419] The passage states that Amitrochates, the king of the Indians, wrote to Antiochos asking that king to buy and send him sweet wine, dried figs, and a sophist; and that Antiochos replied: We shall send you the figs and the wine, but in Greece the laws forbid a sophist to be sold. Athênaios quotes Hêgêsander as his authority.