[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.