This river Indus Alexander began to cross at daybreak with his army to enter the country of the Indians. Concerning this people I have, in this present work, described neither under what laws they live, nor what strange animals their country produces, nor in what number and variety fish and water-monsters are bred in the Indus, the Hydaspês, the Ganges, and other Indian rivers. Nor have I described the ants which dig up gold for them, nor its guardians the griffins,[77] nor other stories invented rather to amuse than to convey a knowledge of facts, since there was no one to expose the falsehood of any absurd stories told about the Indians. However, Alexander and those who served in his army did expose the falsehood of most of them, although some even of these very men invented lies of their own. They proved also, in contradiction of the common belief, that the Indians were goldless, those tribes at least, and they were many, which Alexander visited with his army; and that they were not at all luxurious in their style of living, while they were of so great a stature[78] that they were amongst the tallest men in Asia, being five cubits in height, or nearly so. They were blacker than any other men except the Aethiopians,[79] while in the art of war they were far superior to the other nations by which Asia was at that time inhabited. For I cannot make any proper comparison between the Indians and the race of ancient Persians, who, under the command of Cyrus, the son of Kambyses, wrested the supremacy of Asia from the Medes, and added to their empire other nations, some by conquest and others by voluntary submission; for the Persians of those days were but a poor people, inhabiting a rugged country and approximating closely in the austerity of their laws and usages to the Spartan discipline.[80] Then with regard to the discomfiture of the Persians in the Skythian land, I cannot with certainty conjecture to what cause it was attributable, whether to the difficult nature of the country into which they were led, or to some other mistake made by Cyrus, or whether it was that the Persians were inferior in the art of war to those Skythians whose territories they invaded.[81]
Chapter V.—The rivers and mountains of Asia
However, I shall treat of the Indians in a separate work,[82] in which I shall set down whatever seems to be most credible in the reports supplied by those who accompanied Alexander in his expedition, and by Nearchos who made a voyage round the Great Sea which adjoins the Indians. I shall then add the accounts of the country which were compiled by Megasthenes and Eratosthenês, who are both writers of standard authority. I shall describe the customs of the Indians and the remarkable animals which their country is said to produce, and also the voyage which was made by Nearchos in the outer sea.[83] In the meantime it will suffice if I content myself with describing only what seems requisite to make the account of Alexander’s operations clearly intelligible. Mount Tauros divides Asia, beginning from Mykalê, the mountain which lies opposite to the island of Samos; then forming the boundary of the country of the Pamphylians and Kilikians, it stretches onwards to Armenia. From the Armenians it passes into Mêdia, and runs through the country of the Parthians and the Khorasmians. Reaching Baktria it there unites with Mount Parapamisos, which the Macedonians of Alexander’s army called the Kaukasos, for the purpose, it is said, of magnifying the deeds of Alexander, for it could thus be said that he had carried his victorious arms even beyond the Kaukasos. It is possible, however, that this mountain range may be a continuation of that other Kaukasos which is in Skythia, in the same way as it is a continuation of the Tauric range. For this reason I have before this occasionally called this range Kaukasos, and in future I mean to call it so. This Kaukasos extends as far as the great Indian Ocean in the direction of the east.[84] All the important rivers of Asia accordingly rise either in Mount Tauros or Mount Kaukasos, and shape their courses some to the north, and others to the south. Those which run northward discharge their waters either into the Maiôtic Lake, or into the Hyrkanian Sea, which is in reality a gulf of the Great Sea.[85] The rivers which run southward are the Euphrates, Tigris, Indus, Hydaspês, Akesines, Hydraôtes, and Hyphasis, together with the rivers between these and the Ganges. All these either enter the sea, or, like the Euphrates, disappear among the swamps which receive their waters.
Chapter VI.—Position and boundaries of India and how its plains may have been formed
If anyone takes this view of Asia, that it is divided by the Tauros and the Kaukasos from west to east, then he finds that it is formed by the Tauros itself into two great sections, one of which lies towards the south and the south wind, and the other towards the north and the north wind. The southern section is divided into four parts, of which, according to Eratosthenês, India is the largest, this being also the opinion of Megasthenes who resided with Siburtios the satrap of Arakhôsia, and who tells us that he frequently visited Sandrakottos the king of the Indians.[86] They say that the smallest part is that which is bounded by the river Euphrates, and which extends to our own inland sea, while the other two parts which lie between the river Euphrates and the Indus will scarcely bear comparison with India even if both were taken together. They also say that India is bounded towards the east and the east wind as far as the south by the Great Sea, and towards the north by Mount Kaukasos, as far as its junction with the Tauros, while the river Indus cuts it off from other countries towards the west and the north-west wind as far as the Great Sea. The larger portion of India is a plain, and this, as they conjecture, has been formed from the alluvial deposits of the rivers, just as in other countries plains which are not far off from the sea are generally formations of their respective rivers, a fact which explains why the names of such countries were applied of old to their rivers. There is, for instance, in the country of Asia the plain of the Hermos, a river which rises in the mountain of Mother Dindymênê, and on its way to the sea flows past the Aiolian city of Smyrna. There is again another Lydian plain, called that of the Kaÿstros, which is a Lydian river, and another plain in Mysia, that of the Kaïkos, and another in Karia, that of the Maiandros, which extends as far as the Ionian city of Milêtos. In the case of Egypt again, the two historians, Herodotos, and Hêkataios (or at any rate the author of the work on Egypt, if he was other than Hêkataios) agree in declaring that in the same way Egypt was the gift of its river,[87] and clear proofs have been adduced by Herodotos in support of this view, so that even the country itself got perhaps its name from the river, for that in early times Aigyptos was the name of the river which the Egyptians and other nations now call the Nile the words of Homer sufficiently prove, since he says[88] that Menelaös anchored his ships at the mouth of the river Aigyptos. Now if the rivers we have mentioned, which are of no great size, can each of them separately form in its course to the sea a large tract of new country, by carrying down silt and slime from the upland districts in which they have their sources, there can be no good reason for doubting that India is mostly a plain which has been formed by the alluvial deposits of its rivers.[89] For if the Hermos and the Kaÿstros and the Kaïkos and the Maiandros and the other rivers of Asia which fall into the inland sea were united, they could not be compared in volume of water with one of the Indian rivers, and much less with the Ganges, which is the greatest of them all, and with which neither the volume of the Egyptian Nile, nor the Istros (Danube) which flows through Europe, can be for a moment compared. Nay, the whole of those rivers if combined into one would not be equal to the Indus, which is already a large river where it issues from its springs, and which after receiving as tributaries fifteen rivers,[90] all greater than those of Asia, enters the sea still retaining its own name. Let these remarks which I have made about the country of the Indians suffice for the present, while I reserve all other particulars for my description of India.
Chapter VII.—The bridging of rivers
In what manner Alexander made his bridge over the Indus neither Aristoboulos nor Ptolemy, the authorities whom I chiefly follow, have given any account; nor can I decide for certain whether the passage was bridged with boats, as was the Hellespont by Xerxes and as were the Bosporos and the Istros by Darius,[91] or whether the bridge he made over the river was one continuous piece of work. I incline, however, to think that the bridge must have been made of boats,[92] for neither would the depth of the river have admitted the construction of an ordinary kind of bridge, nor could a work so vast and difficult have been executed in so short a time. But if the passage was bridged with boats I cannot decide whether the vessels being fastened together with cables and anchored in a row sufficed to form a bridge as did those by which, as Herodotos the Halikarnassian says, the Hellespont was joined, or whether the method was that which is used by the Romans in bridging the Istros and the Keltic Rhine,[93] and by which they bridged the Euphrates and the Tigris as often as necessity required. Since, however, the Romans, as far as my knowledge goes, have found that the bridging of rivers by boats is the most expeditious method of crossing them, I think it worth a description here. The vessels at a preconcerted signal are let go from their moorings and rowed down stream not prow but stern foremost. The current of course carries them downward, but a small pinnace furnished with oars holds them back till they settle into their appointed place. Then baskets of wicker work, pyramid-shaped and filled with rough stones, are lowered into the river from the prow of each vessel to make it hold fast against the force of the current. As soon as one of those vessels has been held fast another is in the same way anchored with its prow against the stream as far from the first as is commensurate with their bearing the strain of what is put upon them. On both of them beams of wood are rapidly laid lengthwise, and on these again planks are placed crosswise to bind them together. In this manner the work proceeds through all the vessels which are required for bridging the passage. At each end of the structure firmly fixed railed gangways are thrown forward to the shore so that horses and beasts of burden may with the greater safety enter upon it. These gangways serve at the same time to bind the bridge to the shore. In a short time the whole is completed amid great noise and bustle, though discipline is by no means lost sight of as the work proceeds. In each vessel the occasional exhortations of the overseers and their rebukes of negligence neither prevent orders from being heard nor the work from being quickly executed.
Chapter VIII.—Alexander arrives at Taxila—Receives an embassy from Abisares and advances to the Hydaspês
This method has been practised by the Romans from of old, but how Alexander bridged the river Indus I cannot say, for even those who served in his army are silent on the matter. But the bridge was made, I should think, as nearly as possible in the way described, or if it was otherwise contrived let it be so.