[328] One of the principal rivers of that part of India known as the Punjaub. It rises in the north-western Himalayah mountains in Kashmere, and after flowing nearly south, falls into the Acesines or Chenab. Its present most usual name is the Jhelum.
[329] The most eastern, and most important of the five rivers which water the country of the Punjaub. Rising in the western Himalaya, it flows in two principal branches, in a course nearly south-west (under the names respectively of Vipasa and Satadru), which it retains till it falls into the Indus at Mittimkote. It is best known, however, by its modern name of Sutlej, probably a corrupt form of the Sanscrit Satadru.
[330] See c. [18] of the present Book. The altars there spoken of, as consecrated by Alexander the Great, appear to have been erected in Sogdiana, whereas those here mentioned were dedicated in the Indian territory.
[331] It does not appear that this river has been identified. In most of the editions it is called Hesidrus; but, as Sillig observes, there was a town of India, near the Indus, called Sydros, which probably received its name from this river.
[332] It has been suggested that this place is the modern Kanouge, on the Ganges.
[333] The modern Jumna. It must be borne in mind by the reader, that the numbers given in this Chapter vary considerably in the different MSS.
[335] The Sanscrit for “snowy” is “himarat.” The name of Emodus, combined with Imaüs, seems here to be a description of the knot of mountains formed by the intersections of the Himalaya, the Hindoo Koosh, and the Bolor range; the latter having been for many ages the boundary between the empires of China and Turkistan. It is pretty clear, that, like Ptolemy, Pliny imagined that the Imaüs ran from south to north; but it seems hardly necessary, in this instance at least, to give to the word “promontorium” the meaning attached to our word “promontory,” and to suppose that he implies that the range of the Imaüs runs down to the verge of the eastern ocean.
[336] A name evidently given to numerous tribes of India, from the circumstance that Alexander and his followers found it borne by the Brahmins or priestly caste of the Hindoos.
[337] Still called the Cane, a navigable river of India within the Ganges, falling into the Ganges, according to Arrian as well as Pliny, though in reality it falls into the Jumna.