[633] Arrian frequently uses the Ionic and old Attic word, σμικρός.
[634] About £480,000.
[635] Alexander probably crossed the Indus near Attock. The exact site of Taxila cannot be fixed.
[636] The Hydaspes is now called Jelum, one of the five great tributaries of the Indus.
[637] Herodotus considered the Danube the largest river in the world as known to him, and the Dnieper the largest of all rivers except the Danube and the Nile. See Herodotus, iv. 48-53.
[638] “Amnis Danubius sexaginta navigabiles paene recipiens fluvios, septem ostiis erumpit in mare. Quorum primum est Peuce insula supra dicta, ut interpretata sunt vocabula Graeco sermone, secundum Naracustoma, tertium Calonstoma, quartum Pseudostoma: nam Boreonstoma ac deinde Sthenostoma longe minora sunt caeteris: septimum ingens et palustri specie nigrum.”—Ammianus (xxii. 8, 44). Pliny (iv. 24) says that the Danube has six mouths, the names of which he gives.
[639] The Indus does not rise in the Parapamisus, but in the Himalayas. It has two principal mouths, but there are a number of smaller ones. Ptolemy said there were seven. The Delta is between 70 and 80 miles broad. “Delta, a triquetrae litterae forma hoc vocabulo signatius adpellata.”—Ammianus, xxii. 15.
[640] The territory included by the Indus and its four affluents is now called Punjab, a Persian word meaning five rivers.
[641] Ctesias was the Greek physician of Artaxerxes Mnemon. He wrote a history of Persia and a book on India. His works are only preserved in meagre abridgement by Photius. Aristotle says that he was false and untrustworthy (Hist. of Animals, viii. 27; De Generatione Animalium, ii. 2). Subsequent research has proved Ctesias to be wrong and Herodotus generally right in the many statements in which they are at variance.
[642] The fact is, that the Indus is nowhere more than 20 stades, or 2-1/2 miles broad.