[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.