[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.