15. Onesicritus, for example, says of Taprobane, that its magnitude is 5000 stadia, without distinction of length or breadth, and that it is distant twenty days’ sail from the continent, but that it was a voyage performed with difficulty and danger by vessels with sails ill constructed, and built with prows at each end, but without holds and keels;[337] that there are other islands between this and India, but that Taprobane lies farthest to the south; that there are found in the sea, about the island, animals of the cetaceous kind, in form like oxen, horses, and other land-animals.
16. Nearchus, speaking of the accretion of earth formed by the rivers, adduces these instances. The plains of Hermes, Caÿster, Mæander, and Caïcus have these names, because they have been formed by the soil which has been carried over the plains by the rivers; or rather they were produced by the fine and soft soil brought down from the mountains; whence the plains are, as it were, the offspring of the rivers, and it is rightly said, that the plains belong to the rivers. What is said by Herodotus[338] of the Nile, and of the land about it, may be applied to this country, namely, that it is the gift of the Nile. Hence Nearchus thinks that the Nile had properly the synonym of Egypt.
17. Aristobulus, however, says, that rain and snow fall only on the mountains and the country immediately below them, and that the plains experience neither one nor the other, but are overflowed only by the rise of the waters of the rivers; that the mountains are covered with snow in the winter; that the rains set in at the commencement of spring, and continue to increase; that at the time of the blowing of the Etesian winds they pour down impetuously, without intermission, night and day till the rising of Arcturus,[339] and that the rivers, filled by the melting of the snow and by the rains, irrigate the flat grounds.
These things, he says, were observed by himself and by others on their journey into India from the Paropamisadæ. This was after the setting of the Pleiades,[340] and during their stay in the mountainous country in the territory of the Hypasii, and in that of Assacanus during the winter. At the beginning of spring they descended into the plains to a large city called Taxila,[341] thence they proceeded to the Hydaspes and the country of Porus. During the winter they saw no rain, but only snow. The first rain which fell was at Taxila. After their descent to the Hydaspes and the conquest of Porus, their progress was eastwards to the Hypanis, and thence again to the Hydaspes. At this time it rained continually, and particularly during the blowing of the Etesian winds, but at the rising of Arcturus the rains ceased. They remained at the Hydaspes while the ships were constructing, and began their voyage not many days before the setting of the Pleiades, and were occupied during the whole autumn, winter, and the ensuing spring and summer, in sailing down the river, and arrived at Patalene[342] about the rising of the Dog-Star;[343] during the passage down the river, which lasted ten months, they did not experience rain at any place, not even when the Etesian winds were at their height, when the rivers were full and the plains overflowed; the sea could not be navigated on account of the blowing of contrary winds, but no land breezes succeeded.
18. Nearchus gives the same account, but does not agree with Aristobulus respecting the rains in summer, but says that the plains are watered by rain in the summer, and that they are without rain in winter. Both writers, however, speak of the rise of the rivers. Nearchus says, that the men encamped upon the Acesines[344] were obliged to change their situation for another more elevated, and that this was at the time of the rise of the river, and of the summer solstice.
Aristobulus gives even the measure of the height to which the river rises, namely, forty cubits, of which twenty would fill the channel beyond its previous depth up to the margin, and the other twenty are the measure of the water when it overflows the plains.
They agree also in saying that the cities placed upon mounds become islands, as in Egypt and Ethiopia, and that the inundation ceases after the rising of Arcturus, when the waters recede. They add, that the ground when half dried is sowed, after having been prepared by the commonest labourer, yet the plant comes to perfection, and the produce is good. The rice, according to Aristobulus, stands in water in an enclosure. It is sowed in beds. The plant is four cubits in height, with many ears, and yields a large produce. The harvest is about the time of the setting of the Pleiades, and the grain is beaten out like barley. It grows in Bactriana, Babylonia, Susis, and in the Lower Syria. Megillus says that it is sowed before the rains, but does not require irrigation or transplantation, being supplied with water from tanks.
The bosmorum, according to Onesicritus, is a kind of corn smaller than wheat, and grows in places situated between rivers. After it is threshed out, it is roasted; the threshers being previously bound by an oath not to carry it away unroasted from the threshing floor; a precaution to prevent the exportation of the seed.
19. Aristobulus, when comparing the circumstances in which this country resembles, and those in which it differs from, Egypt and Ethiopia, and observing that the swelling of the Nile is occasioned by rains in the south, and of the Indian rivers by rains from the north, inquires why the intermediate places have no rain; for it does not rain in the Thebaïs as far as Syene, nor at the places near Meroë, nor in the parts of India from Patalene to the Hydaspes. But the country situated above these parts,[345] in which both rain and snow occur, is cultivated by the husbandman in the same manner as the country without India; for the rain and the snow supply the ground with moisture.
It is probable from what he relates that the country is subject to shocks of earthquakes, that the ground is loose and hollow by excess of moisture, and easily splits into fissures, whence even the course of rivers is altered.