The Sanskrit word Prâchyâs (plur. of Prachya, “eastern”) denoted the inhabitants of the east country, that is, the country which lay to the east of the river Sarasvatî, now the Sursooty, which flows in a south-western direction from the mountains bounding the north-east part of the province of Delhi till it loses itself in the sands of the great desert. The Magadhas, it would seem, had, before Alexander’s advent to India, extended their power as far as this river, and hence were called Prâchyâs by the people who lived to the west of it. They are called by Strabo, Arrian, and Pliny, Prasioi, Prasii; by Plutarch, Praisioi; by Nikolaös Damask., Praiisioi; by Diodôros, Brêsioi; by Curtius, Pharrasii; by Justin, Praesides. Ailianos in general writes Praisioi like Plutarch, but in one passage where he quotes Megasthenes, he transcribes the name with perfect accuracy in the adjective form as Praxiakê. General Cunningham does not agree in referring the name to Prâchya, as all the other modern writers do, but takes Prasii to be only the Greek form of Palâsiya or Parâsiya, a “man of Palâsa or Parâsa,” a name of Magadha of which Palibothra was the capital. This derivation, he says, is supported by the spelling of the name given by Curtius, who calls the people Pharrasii, an almost exact transcript of Parâsiya (see his Ancient Geog. of India, p. 454). His view, we think, is hardly destined to supplant the other. Ptolemy describes in his Geography a small kingdom with seven cities which he locates in the regions of the upper Ganges, and calls Prasiakê. Kanoge is one of these cities, but Palibothra is not in the number, appearing elsewhere as the capital of the Mandalai. One is at a loss to understand what considerations could have led Ptolemy to push the Prasians so far from their proper seats and transfer their capital to another people.
Note Ee.—The Sibi
The Sanskrit word Śivi denotes a country, the inhabitants of which, Sivayas, may be the Sibi of Curtius and Diodôros. The Sibi inhabited a district between the Hydaspês and the Indus, and their capital stood at a distance of about thirty miles from the former river, and, as appears from Diodôros, above its confluence with the Akesinês. As they were clad with the skins of wild beasts and were armed with clubs, they reminded the Greeks of Herakles, who was similarly dressed and armed, and thence arose the legend that the Sibi were the descendants of the followers of that wandering hero. The truth, however, is that the Sibi represent one of the chief aboriginal tribes of the regions of the Indus. The Sanskrit poems and the Pauranik traditions give this great tribe its real name Śibi, and represent it as one of the important branches of the race which originally peopled all the north-western region. According to Moorcroft, the inhabitants of the district of Bimber are called Chibs, while Baber in his Memoirs had mentioned a people so named as belonging to the same parts. Arrian does not expressly mention Alexander’s expedition against the Sibi in his History, but in his Indika (c. 5) he thus refers to them: “So also when the Greeks came among the Sibai, an Indian tribe, and observed that they wore skins, they declared that the Sibai were descended from those who belonged to the expedition of Herakles, and had been left behind; for besides being dressed in skins, the Sibai carry a cudgel and brand on their oxen the representation of a club.” In the ordinary texts of Curtius the Sibi appears as the Sobii, and in Justin as the Silei. They are mentioned in the History of Orosius (iii. 19), along with a people called Gessonae, who are evidently the people called by Diodôros the Agalassi.
Note Ff.—The Agalassians
Curtius does not give the name of the people whom Alexander proceeded to attack after he had received the submission of the Sibi, but it is supplied by Diodôros, who calls them Agalasseis. Saint-Martin says (Étude, p. 115) that they adjoined the eastern side of the Sibi and occupied the country below the junction of the Hydaspês and Akesinês. Though Agalassi is the most commonly received reading of their name, yet there are many variant readings of it, especially in the manuscripts and editions of Justin, where we find Agesinae, Hiacensanae, Argesinae, Agini, Acensoni, and Gessonae. The last form occurs also in the History of Orosius (iii. 19), where the people it designates are mentioned along with the Sibi. The original name to which these may be referred is probably Arjunâyana. This name occurs between that of the Mâlava (Malloi) and that of the Yaudheyas on the Pillar at Allahabad, whereon Samudragupta, who reigned towards the end of the 4th century A.D., inscribed the names of the countries and peoples included in his dominions. The Arjunâyana are mentioned also by the Scholiast of Pânini, and in the geographical list which Wilford compiled from the Varâha Sanhita. Arrian in his Indika (c. 4) calls the people situated at the junction of the Hydaspês and Akesinês the Arispai (Ibid. p. 116, and footnotes).
Note Gg.—Tides in Indian Rivers
Several Indian rivers present the tidal phenomenon called the bore, the most celebrated being those of the Brahmaputra, the Ganges, the Nerbada, and the Indus. The bore is sometimes many feet in height, and the noise it makes in contending against the descending stream frightful. The bore which rushes up the Hughli has a speed of about seventeen or eighteen miles per hour. A vivid description of the tide or bore of the Nerbada has been given by the author of the Periplûs. “India,” he says (c. 45), “has everywhere an abundance of rivers, and her seas ebb and flow with tides of extraordinary strength, which increase both at new and full moon, and for three days after each, but fall off intermediately. About Barygaza (Bharoch) they are more violent than elsewhere; so that all of a sudden you see the depths laid bare and portions of the land turned into sea, and the sea where ships were sailing but just before turned without warning into dry land. The rivers, again, on the access of flood-tide rushing into their channels with the whole body of the sea, are driven upwards against their natural course for a great many miles with a force that is irresistible.” In c. 46, after explaining how dangerous these tides are to ships navigating the Nerbada, he thus proceeds: “But at new moons, especially when they occur in conjunction with a night tide, the flood sets in with such extraordinary violence that on its beginning to advance, even though the sea be calm, its roar is heard by those living near the river’s mouth, sounding like the tumult of battle heard in the distance, and soon after the sea with its hissing waves bursts over the bare shoals.”
Note Hh.—Indian Philosophers
Arrian has given the account here promised of the Indian sages, whom he calls Sophists, in the eleventh chapter of his Indika. They formed the highest and most honoured of the seven castes into which, he says, Indian society was divided. His account is, however, very meagre compared with that which Strabo, quoting from the same authority, Megasthenes, has given in the fifteenth book of his Geography. We may subjoin a notice of the more important points. The philosophers were of two kinds, the Brachmânes and the Garmanes (Śramanas, i. e. Buddhist ascetics). The Brachmans were held in greater repute, as they agreed more exactly in their opinions. They lived in a grove outside the city, lay upon pallets of straw and on skins, abstained from animal food and sexual intercourse. After living thirty-seven years in this manner each individual retired to his own possessions, led a life of greater freedom, and married as many wives as he pleased. They discoursed much upon death, which they held to be for philosophers a birth into a real and happy life. They maintained that nothing which happens to a man is bad or good, opinions being merely dreams. On many points their notions coincided with those of the Greeks. They said, for instance, that the world was created and liable to destruction, that it was of a spheroidal figure, and that its Creator governed it and was diffused through all its parts. They invented fables also, after the manner of Plato, on the immortality of the soul, punishments in Hades, and similar topics. Of the Śramanas the most honourable were the Hylobioi. These, as their name imports, lived in woods, where they subsisted on leaves and wild fruits. They were clothed with garments made of the bark of trees, and abstained from commerce with women and from wine. The kings held communication with them by messengers, and through them worshipped the divinity. Next in honour to the Hylobioi were the physicians, who cured diseases by diet rather than by medicinal remedies, which were chiefly unguents and cataplasms. See XV. i. 58-60.