Chapter 28

[160]Cunningham identifies this well-fortified position with Tulamba. “A whole night’s march (he says) of eight or nine hours could not have been less than twenty-five miles, which is the exact distance of the Râvi opposite Tulamba from Kot-Kamâlia.” It was defended by brick walls and enormous mounds of earthen ramparts. Tulamba lies on the high road to Multân, to which, as the capital of the Malloi, Alexander was marching.[161]The Brachmans, as is well known, formed a religious caste, and were not a distinct race or tribe. Their city Cunningham has identified with the old ruined town and fort of Atâri, which is situated twenty miles to the west-south-west of Tulamba and on the high road to Multân, from which it is thirty-four miles distant. The remains consist of a strong citadel 750 feet square and 35 feet high. On two of its sides are to be found the remains of the old town. Of its history there is not even a tradition, but the large size of its bricks shows that it must be a place of considerable antiquity. The name of the old city is quite unknown, Atâri being merely that of the adjacent village, which is of recent origin. Curtius states that Alexander went completely round the citadel in a boat, and Cunningham thinks this is probable enough, as its ditch could be filled at pleasure with water from the Râvi. Curtius must, however, be romancing when he says that the three greatest rivers in India except the Ganges (Indus, Hydaspês, and Akesinês) joined their waters to form a ditch round the castle (v.Anc. Geog. of India, pp. 228-230). The mention of a special city of the Brachmans, Lassen observes, shows that but few priests lived in this part of the country, and that they had established themselves in particular cities to protect themselves against those people by whom they were held in but small esteem.[162]SeeNote Q, The capital of the Malloi.[163]Arrian (i. 11) relates that Alexander, after crossing the Hellespont, proceeded to Ilion, where, after sacrificing to the Trojan Athênê, he placed his own armour in the temple of that goddess, and took away in exchange some of the consecrated arms which had been preserved from the time of the Trojan war.[164]Called in Greek adimoiritêsin Latin aduplicarius.[165]Alexander’s dress and arms on the day of Arbêla are thus described by Plutarch: “He wore a short tunic of the Sicilian fashion, girt close round him, over a linen breastplate strongly quilted; his helmet, surmounted by the white plume, was of polished steel, the work of Theophilos; the gorget was of the same metal, and set with precious stones; the sword, his favourite weapon in battle, was a present from a Cyprian king, and not to be excelled for lightness or temper; but his belt, deeply embossed with massive figures, was the most superb part of his armour; it was a gift from the Rhodians, on which old Helikôn had exerted all his skill. If we add to these the shield, lance, and light greaves, we may form a fair idea of his appearance in battle.”[166]The descendants of Asklêpios (Aesculapius) were called by the patronymic nameAsklêpiadai. They were regarded by some as the real descendants of Asklêpios, but by others as a caste of priests who practised the art of medicine, combined with religion. Their principal seats were Kôs and Knidos.[167]Plutarch writes to the same effect: “The great battle with Darius was not fought at Arbêla, as most historians will have it, but at Gaugamêla, which, in the Persian tongue, is said to signifythe house of the camel, so called because one of the ancient kings, having escaped his enemies by the swiftness of his camel, placed her there, and appointed the revenues of certain villages for her maintenance.”—Life of Alexander, c. 31.[168]Kleitarchos, who accompanied Alexander to Asia, and wrote a history of the expedition, and Timagenes, an historian in the reign of Augustus, gave currency to this fiction, which Curtius is at one with Arrian in rejecting. Ptolemy received his title of Sôtêr (saviour) from the Rhodians, whom he had relieved from the attacks of Dêmêtrios Poliorkêtês (v.Pausanias, I. viii. 6).[169]Thirlwall has noted that this line is found in Stobaeus. It is a fragment from one of the lost tragedies of Aeschylus, δράσαντι γάρ τι καὶ παθεῖν ὀφείλεται.[170]The Hyphasis is here probably the Satlej, though the application of the name so far down as is here indicated is contrary to Sanskrit usage. Several arms of the Hyphasis may have anciently existed which went to join the Hydraôtês or perhaps the lower Akesinês. Megasthenês was the first who made the existence of the Satlej known. Pliny calls it the Hesydrus, and Ptolemy the Zaradros. The united stream which joins the Indus, called the Panjnad, has before the confluence a width of 1076 yards. The Indus after the confluence is augmented to 2000 yards from 600 yards only above the confluence. From the present confluence to the sea the distance is 490 miles.[171]TheAbastanoiare more correctly designated by Diodôros (xvii. 102) theSambastai, under which form of the name theAmbashtha, who are mentioned as a people of the Panjâb in theMahâbhârataand elsewhere in Sanskrit literature, can be recognised. It is evident from the text that they were settled on the lower Akesinês. They appear to be the people called by Curtius theSabarcae, and by OrosiusSabagrae.[172]The Xathroi are the Kshâtri of Sanskrit mentioned in the Laws of Manu as an impure tribe, being of mixed origin. In Williams’sSanskrit DictionaryaKshâtriis defined as “a man of the second (i.e.military) caste (by a woman of another caste?).”[173]V. de Saint-Martin suggests that in theOssadioiwe have the Vasâti or Basâti of theMahâbhârata, a people whom Hematchandra in hisGeographical Dictionaryplaces between the Hydaspês and the Indus, on the plateau of which the Salt Mountains form the southern escarpment. If the Vasâti were really so placed, it can scarcely be supposed that they would have sent offers of submission to Alexander, who had already passed through their part of the country, and was now marching homeward, leaving them far in his rear. Cunningham prefers to identify them with theYaudheyaorAjudhiya, now theJohiyas, who are settled as formerly along the banks of the lower Satlej.Assodioior Ossadioi seems a pretty close transcription ofAjudhiya.[174]The name of this city is not given by any of the historians, but in all probability it bore the name of its founder. Its site has generally been referred to the neighbourhood of Mithânkôt, a town situated on the western bank of the Indus a little below the junction of that river with the united streams of the Panjâb. V. de Saint-Martin identifies it more precisely with Chuchpûr or Chuchur, an ancient fort standing on the eastern bank of the Indus right opposite Mithânkôt. This fort bore formerly the names of Askalanda, Askelend, and Sikander, which are but variant forms of Alexandreia. The great confluence, however, did not anciently take place at Mithânkôt, but at Uchh, an old city lying forty miles to the north-east of the confluence at Mithânkôt. The place is called by Rashed-ud-dinAskaland-usah, which, as Cunningham points out, would be an easy corruption ofAlexandria UchhaorUssa, as the Greeks must have written it. The worduchhameans “high” both in Sanskrit and in Hindi, and Uchh seems to owe its name to the fact that it stands on a mound. “Uchh is chiefly distinguished (says Masson) by the ruins of the former towns, which are very extensive, and attest the pristine prosperity of the locality.”v.V. de Saint-Martin,Etude, pp. 124, 125; Cunningham’sAnc. Geog. of India, pp. 242-245.[175]v.Note R, Alexander in Sindh.[176]In Strabo (XV. i.) we find several references to the country of Mousikanos. These were based on information supplied by Onesikritos, who expatiates in praise of its fertility, on the virtues of its people, and the goodness of the laws and government under which they lived. It seems now generally agreed that Alôr, which was anciently and for many ages the metropolis of the rich and powerful kingdom of Upper Sindh, was the capital of Mousikanos. Its ruins were visited by M’Murdo and Lieutenant Wood, and afterwards by General Cunningham, who thus describes their site: “The ruins of Alôr are situated to the south of a gap in the low range of sandstone hills which stretches from Bhakar towards the south for about twenty miles until it is lost in a broad belt of sandhills which bound the Nâra, or old bed of the Indus, on the west. Through this gap a branch of the Indus once flowed, which protected the city on the north-west. To the north-east it was covered by a second branch of the river, which flowed nearly at right angles to the other at a distance of three miles.... InA.D.680 the latter was probably the main stream of the Indus, which had gradually been working to the westward from its original bed in the old Nâra.” With regard to the name of the king it appears to be a territorial title, since Curtius designates the peopleMusicani. Lassen (Ind. Alt.ii. 176) takes this to represent the Sanskrit Mûshika (which meansa mouseora thief), and points out that a part of the Malabar coast was also called the Mûshika kingdom. Saint-Martin thinks that the Mûshika still exist in the great tribe of the Moghsis, which forms the most numerous part of the population of Kach Gandâra, a region bordering on the territories of the ancient Mûsikani (Etude, p. 162).[177]Curtius calls the subjects of Oxykanos the Praesti, a name which would indicate that they inhabited a level country, since the Sanskrit word of which their name is a transcript—prastha—denotesa tablelandora level expanse. The name, Saint-Martin thinks, is in Justin altered toPraesidae; but Justin, it appears to me, means the Praisioi thereby. Oxykanos is called both by Strabo and DiodôrosPortikanos, representing perhaps the SanskritPârtha, “a prince.” It is not easy to determine where his dominions lay. They were not on the Indus, for Alexander left that river to attack them. Cunningham places them to the west of the Indus in the level country around Larkhâna, which, though now close to the Indus, was in Alexander’s time about forty miles distant from it. Their capital he identifies with Mahorta, a place about ten miles north-west from Larkhâna, where there are the remains of an ancient fortress on a huge mound, whence perhaps its nameMâhaurddha, “very high.” Lassen, on the other hand, followed by Saint-Martin, places the country of Oxykanos to the east of the river, and therefore in the vast Mesopotamia (the Prasiane of Pliny) comprised between the old or eastern arm of the Indus and the present channel (v.Lassen,Ind. Alt.ii. 177; Saint-Martin,Etude, p. 165; Cunningham,Anc. Geog. of India, pp. 259-262).[178]Seenote S, Sindimana.[179]SeeNote T, City of the Brachmans, Harmatelia; alsoNote Hh, Indian Philosophers.[180]In the 15th chapter of this book Arrian states that Alexander had sent Krateros away by this route after he had left the Sogdian capital (near Bhakar). From this we may infer that Krateros, soon after he set out on his homeward march, had been temporarily recalled by Alexander, who may have found the resistance to his arms more formidable than he had anticipated. Strabo states in one place (XV. ii. 5) that Krateros set out on his march from the Hydaspês and proceeded through the country of the Arachotoi and the Drangai into Karmania, and in another (XV. ii. 11) that he traversed Choarênê and entered Karmania simultaneously with Alexander. Now the former of these routes would have been so needlessly circuitous that it cannot be supposed it was that which Krateros selected. He no doubt marched through Choarênê (the district of Ariana nearest India), to which there was access from India through the Bolan Pass. Before rejoining Alexander he must have encountered formidable difficulties in traversing the great desert of Karman, which occupies the northern part of Karmania, and extends from thence to the confines of Yezd, Khorasân, and Seïstan. “This desert (says Bunbury) is a vast track of the most unmitigated barrenness, and a considerable portion of this interposed between the fertile districts of Murmansheer in Northern Carmania, and the Lake Zarrah in Seïstan must of necessity have been traversed by Craterus with his army. An Afghan army which invaded Persia in 1719 suffered the most dreadful hardships in this waste” (v.hisHist. of Anc. Geog.p. 522, also Droysen’sGeschichte Alexanders, p. 454, and Lassen,Ind. Alt.ii. 180).[181]According to Aristoboulos, as cited by Strabo (XV. i. 17), the voyage down stream from Nikaia on the Hydaspês to Patala occupied ten months. “The Greeks (he says) remained at the Hydaspês while the ships were constructing, and began their voyage not many days before the setting of the Pleiades (late in the autumn ofB.C.326), and were occupied during the whole autumn, winter, and the ensuing spring and summer in sailing down the river, and arrived at Patalênê about the rising of the dog-star (towards the end of summerB.C.325). The passage down the river lasted ten months.” According to Plutarch, Alexander spent seven months in falling down the rivers to the ocean. Sir A. Burnes ascended the Indus up to Lahore in sixty days, a distance of about 1000 miles. He estimated that a boat could drop down from Lahore to the sea in fifteen days, and from Multân in nine days.[182]In the 41st chapter of thePeriplûs of the Erythraian Seait is said that in the regions adjoining the Indus mouths “there are preserved even to this very day memorials of the expedition of Alexander, old temples, foundations of camps, andlarge wells.”[183]v.Note U, Patala.[184]This was the northern channel of the Ghâra, the waters of which, some centuries after Alexander, found another channel more to the south, in the southern Ghâra which joins the main stream below Lâri Bandar.[185]Caesar’s fleet, it is well known, suffered a similar disaster on the shores of Britain. The tides in the Indus are not felt more than sixty miles from the sea, whence Cunningham concludes that Alexander must then have reached as far as Bambhra on the Ghâra, which is about fifty miles by water from the sea. The breaking up of the monsoon, which occurs in October, is attended with high winds, intervals of calm, and violent hurricanes.[186]Plutarch says that Alexander called this island Skilloustis, but others Psiltoukis. It was from this island Nearchos started on his memorable voyage early in October, before the monsoon had subsided. On his reaching the port now called Karachi, the great emporium of the trade of the Indus, he remained there for twenty-four days, and renewed the voyage as soon as the weather permitted.[187]The eastern branch of the Indus is that now called the Phuleli. It separates from the main channel at Muttâri, twelve miles above Haidarâbâd, and enters the sea by the Kori estuary, named by Ptolemy the Lonibari mouth. Its bed is now almost dry except at the time of the inundations, when it assumes the appearance of a great river. At the lower part of its course it is known as the Guni. On its east side it receives the branch of the Indus, which in ancient times passed Arôr, and is now called thePurana daryaorOld river.[188]This exaggerated estimate Arrian has taken from the Journal of Nearchos. Aristoboulos said that the distance was 1000 stadia. The truth is here pretty accurately hit.[189]“This great lake (says Saint-Martin) might have been the western extremity of the Ran of Kachh, a vast depression which abuts on the point where the estuary begins, and which for some months of the year (from July to October) is inundated by the waters of several rivers. By a singular coincidence the terrible earthquake of 1819 has formed a large hollow and created a spacious lake traversed by the Korî, and occupying probably the same site as the lake mentioned by Arrian. Brahmanic tradition, moreover, preserves the memory of a lake formerly existing near the Korî, not far from its embouchure. In theBhagavata Purânatranslated by Bournouf, we read that ‘in the west at the confluence of the Sindhu and the ocean is the vast tank of Nârâyana Saras, which is frequented by the Recluses and the Siddhas.’... A local tradition picked up by M’Murdo refers to the disappearance of this lake of old times, and explains the event by a conflagration of the country” (v.Etude, pp. 178, 179).[190]In Italy the Pleiades set in the beginning of November. The south-west monsoon prevails from April to October. It sets in on the Sindh coast with strong west-south-westerly winds, which cause a heavy swell on the sea. The north-east monsoon, which is favourable for navigation, begins in the Arabian Sea about the middle of October.[191]The name of this river has various forms, Arabis, Arbis, Artabis, and Artabius. It is now called the Purâli and is the river which, rising in the mountain range called by Ptolemy the Baitian, flows through the present district of Las into the Bay of Sonmiyâni. It gave its name to the Arabioi, whose territory it divided from that of the Oritai, who were farther west. Curtius states that Alexander reached the eastern boundary of the Arabioi (which may be placed about Karâchi) in nine days from Patala, and their western boundary formed by the Arabius in five days more. The distance from Haidarâbâd to Karâchi is 114 miles, and from Karâchi to Sonmiyâni fifty miles. The average of a day’s march was therefore about twelve miles, the same as now in these parts.[192]The Arabitai are called in theIndika,Arabies; in Strabo,Arbies; in Diodôros,Ambritai; in Marcian the geographer,Arbitoi; and in Dion. Perieg.Aribes. Their territories extended from the western mouth of the Indus to the river Purâli. This people and their neighbours, the Orîtai, Cunningham would include within the geographical limits of India, although they have always been beyond its political boundaries during the historical period. They were tributary to Darius Hystaspês, and were still subject to the Persians when the Chinese pilgrim Hwen Thsiang visited their country in the seventh century of our aera.[193]In the country of the Oreitai is a river called the Aghor, from which, it has been supposed, the people take their name, as thus: Aghoritai, Aoritai, Oritai, or Horatae, as they are called by Curtius. They are the Neoritai of Diodôros. The length of their coast Arrian gives in hisIndikaat 1600 stadia, while Strabo extends it to 1800. The actual length is 100 English miles, somewhere about half of Arrian’s estimate taken from Nearchos. The western boundary of the Oritai was marked by Cape Mâlân (theMalanaof Arrian), which is twenty miles distant from the river Aghor. According to Strabo the Oritai were the people by whose poisoned arrows Ptolemy was all but mortally wounded.[194]This name is probably a transcription of the IndianRâmbâgh, which designated the place where pilgrims assemble before starting for the Aghor Valley, in which the principal sacred places are connected with the history of Râma, the great hero of the Râmâyana. Cunningham accordingly identifies Râmbâgh with Arrian’s Rambakia, and remarks that the occurrence of the name of Râmbâgh at so great a distance to the west of the Indus, and at so early a period as the time of Alexander, shows not only the wide extension of Hindu influence in ancient times, but also the great antiquity of the story of Râma (v.hisAnc. Geog. of India, pp. 307-310).[195]D’Anville and Vincent have assumed that Ora is theHaurmentioned by Edrisi as lying on the route from Dîbal, near the mouth of the Indus, to Firûzâbâd in Mekran. Its situation is uncertain, however, as its name does not occur in any recently published account of the country. Ora may perhaps have been in the neighbourhood of Kôkala, mentioned in theIndikaas situated on the Oreitian coast, probably near Cape Katchari, to the east of the Hingul river, where the fleet was supplied with a fresh stock of provisions. Perhaps it may have here denoted the country of the Oreitai.[196]Gadrôsia in Arrian denotes theinlandregion which extends from the Oreitai to Karmania. Themaritimeregion between the same limits he calls the country of the Ichthyophagoi. The Gedrôsian desert since the days of Alexander has protected Lower Sindh from any attack by the maritime route. The Persian invader has preferred to encounter the dangers and difficulties of the mountain passes of Afghânistân rather than to expose himself to such horrible sufferings in the burning desert as were experienced by the soldiers of Semiramis, Cyrus, and Alexander. The length of the Makrân or Beluchistan coast between the Oreitai and Karmania is given by Arrian at 10,000 stadia and by Strabo at 7000 only. The actual length is 480 English miles, and the time taken by Nearchos in its navigation was twenty days.[197]A description of this unguent is given by Pliny (N. H.xii. c. 26). He there mentions that a special kind of it was produced in the Gangetic regions. In the 33d chapter of the same book will be found a description of the myrrh-tree and its produce.[198]Chinnock notes that this was probably thesnow-flake.[199]This, says Sintenis, can be nothing else than a kind of acacia. He points out that Dioscorides (i. 33) applies to this thorn the expression ἀκακία, which Willdenow identifies with the acacia catechu. It grows abundantly in the Bombay and Bengal presidencies, producing a gum employed both as a colouring matter and a medicinal astringent, and known in commerce by the name of cutch.[200]These people were the Ichthyophagoi of whom Arrian makes frequent mention in hisIndikawhen describing the voyage of Nearchos along their coast. His description of their appearance and habits closely agrees with that given by Strabo in his chapter on Ariana.[201]Kallatis or Kallatia was a large city of Thrace on the coast of the Euxine, colonised from Milêtos. Pliny says its former name was Cerbatis.[202]v.Note V, Alexander’s march through Gedrôsia, Poura.[203]In Latintriumphi.[204]That is, to one who, like Alexander, approached it from Central Asia.[205]Eratosthenes and other ancient writers describe India as of a rhomboidal figure with the Indus on the west, the mountains on the north, and the sea on the east and the south. Curtius follows them here in reckoning its length from west to east.[206]These are the mountains of the peninsular part of India.[207]By the Red or Erythraean Sea is meant the Indian Ocean, which included both the Red Sea proper and the Persian Gulf. Curtius here makes the two great Indian rivers flow into the same sea. His conception of the configuration of India perhaps resembled that of Ptolemy, in whose map India is so misrepresented that it appears without its peninsula, but with a point (a little below the latitude of Bombay) whence the coast bends at once sharply to the east instead of pursuing its actual course southward to Cape Comorin.[208]“Iomanes, a clever conjectural insertion due to Hedike. Foss had suspected some such omission, as the old attempt to make the Acesines run into the Ganges by finding some other modern name for it was preposterous” (Alexander in India, by Heitland and Raven, p. 90). The Iomanes appears in Ptolemy’sGeographyas the Diamouna—that is the Yamunâ or Jamnâ, the great river which, after passing Delhi, Mathurâ, Agrâ, and other places, joins the Ganges at Allâhâbâd. It rises from hot springs not far westward from the sources of the Ganges. Arrian, who in hisIndikacalls it the Jobares, says that it flows through the country of the Sourasenoi, who possess two great cities, Methora (Mathurâ) and Kleisobara (Krishnapura?). Pliny (vi. 19) states that it passes through the Palibothri to join the Ganges. At its junction with the Jamnâ, and a third, but imaginary river, the Sarasvatî, the Ganges is called theTrivênî,i.e.“triple plait,” from the intermingling of the three streams.[209]This river is most probably that which is called the Doanas in Ptolemy’sGeography, where it designates the Brahmaputra. The Doanas was probably also the Oidanes of Artemidôros, who, according to Strabo (XI. i. 72), described it as a river that bred crocodiles and dolphins, and that flowed into the Ganges. If the first two letters inDoanasbe transposed, we get almost letter for letter theOidanesof Artemidôros, and we get it again, though not so closely, if we discardrfrom the Dyardanes of Curtius. That these two writers had the same river in view is confirmed by their mentioning the very same animals as bred in its waters.[210]No satisfactory identification of this river has as yet, so far as I am aware, been proposed. The river called by Arrian (iv. 6) theErymandros, and by Polybios theErymanthus, and now known as the Helmund, has a name pretty similar, but it does not discharge into the sea. It enters the inland lake called Zarah, in the province of Seistan in Afghanistan. According to Arrian it disappears in the sands.[211]These statements about the north wind as it affects India have no basis in fact, and those that immediately follow reach the very acme of absurdity. The cold season occurs in India as in Europe during winter, but snow never falls on the plains. During the hot season, however, hailstorms occasionally occur and inflict more or less damage on the crops. I have myself witnessed in Calcutta a thunderstorm accompanied with a descent of hail, commingled with large pieces of ice, and this in one of the hottest months of the year, June or July, I forget which.[212]Agatharchides, a writer of the second centuryB.C., begins his work on the Erythraean Sea by inquiring into the origin of its name. On this point four different opinions were held, and of these he adopted that which fathered the name on King Erythrus. He then tells the story of this king (who was a Persian) as he had learned it from a Persian called Boxos who had settled in Athens. Strabo (xvi. 20) gives a brief summary of this passage, and Pliny (N. H.vi. 28) a still briefer. Nearchos, as we learn from Arrian’sIndika(c. 37), in the course of his memorable voyage put into an island called Oärakta (now Kishm), where the natives showed him the tomb of the first king of the island. They said that his name was Erythrês, and that the sea in those parts was called after him theErythraean. Opinions still differ as to the origin of the name. According to some it was given from the red and purple colouring of the rocks which in some parts border the sea, according to others from the red colour sometimes given to the waters by the sea-weed called Sûph. Fresnel, however, rejecting such views, interprets the name as meaning the sea of the Homêritai,i.e.HimyarorHhomayr, orred men, whose name and the Arabic wordahhmar(red) have the same root. The people here indicated occupied Yemen, and were calledred menin contrast to theblack menof the opposite coast. Others again attribute the name toEdom(Idumea), which bordered the Gulf of Akaba, the eastern arm of the Red Sea, at its northern extremity.Edomsignifiesred. Further references to this subject will be found in Mela (III. viii. 1), Solinus (c. 36), Dio Cassius (lxviii. 28), and Stephanos Byz.s.v.Ἐρυθρά.[213]As the dress of the natives was made in ancient times as at present, chiefly from cotton, this perhaps may be the substance meant here by flax. The valuable properties of the wool-like product of the cotton plant (Gossypium herbaceum, theKarpâsaof Sanskrit) were early known, as in one of the hymns of the Rig-veda mention is made of female weavers intertwining the extended thread. “The dress worn by the Indians (says Arrian, citing Nearchos) is made of cotton, a material produced from trees. They wear an under-garment of cotton which reaches below the knee half-way down to the ankles, and also an upper garment which they throw partly over their shoulders, and partly twist in folds round their head” (Indika, c. 16). This costume is mentioned in old Sanskrit literature, and is carefully represented in the frescoes on the caves of Ajanta. We learn from thePeriplûs of the Erythraean Seathat muslin (othonion) was imported into the marts of India from China, and exported thence along with Indian muslin and coarser cotton fabrics to Egypt.[214]Strabo (XV. i. 67) states on the authority of Nearchos that the Indians wrote letters upon cloth, which was well pressed to make it smooth, but adds that other writers affirmed that the Indians had no knowledge of writing. They were, however, acquainted with writing for some centuries before Alexander’s time, but whence they got their alphabet is a question not yet quite settled, though the weight of opinion inclines to assign it a Himyaritic origin. We learn from Pliny (xiii. 21) that paper made from the papyrus plant did not come into common use out of Egypt till the time of Alexander the Great. He then goes on to say that for writing on, the leaves of palm-trees were first used, and then the barks (libri) of certain trees. Some of the Egyptian papyrus-rolls are as old as the sixth dynasty.[215]Nearchos, as we learn from Arrian’sIndika, c. 15, was taken with surprise when he heard in India parrots talking like human beings. Pliny says (x. 58) that India produces this bird, which is called theSeptagen, and that it salutes its masters, and pronounces the words it hears. If it fails to do so it is beaten on the head, which is as hard as its bill, with an iron rod, until it repeats the words properly. Ovid (Amores, ii. 6) calls the parrot the imitative bird from the Indians of the East. Another Indian bird, the Maina, which in size and appearance somewhat resembles the thrush, can be taught to speak with great distinctness. It is probably the bird which Aelian (Hist. Anim.xvi. 3) describes under the name of theKerkiôn.[216]Here Curtius makes a mistake, for not only is the rhinoceros bred in India, but the Indian species is the largest known, and its flesh was, by the Brahmans, allowed to be eaten, though most other kinds of animal food were interdicted. Ktêsias describes it, but very incorrectly, under the name of the one-horned ass. It is described also in Aelian’sHistory of Animals(xvi. 20) in a passage supposed to have been copied from the lostIndikaof Megasthenes. It is there called the Kartazôn. The fables about the unicorn had their source most probably in the fanciful account Ktêsias has given of the Indian wild ass. Aristotle, referring to it, says briefly: “We have never seen a solid-hoofed animal with two horns, and there are only a few of them that have one horn, as the Indian ass and the oryx.” Kosmas Indikopleustes, who, as his surname shows, had visited India, gives in the eleventh book of hisChristian Topographya description of the rhinoceros, illustrated with a picture of the animal which represents it as somewhat like a horse, with its nose surmounted by a pair of horns slightly curved. We know that the picture is meant to be that of the rhinoceros from the name being attached. Kosmas says that he had only seen the animal from a distance. He has also given a description and picture of the unicorn, an animal which he had never seen, but had delineated from four brazen statues of it which adorned a palace in Aethiopia. A single straight horn of great length is represented as springing up from the top of its head.[217]Pliny (Nat. Hist. viii. 11) notes, like Curtius here, that India produced the largest elephants. He had, however, stated previously (vi. 22) that, according to Onesikritos, the elephants of Taprobane (Ceylon) were larger and more warlike than those of India. Many references to the Indian elephants occur in the classics. Arrian, in the thirteenth and fourteenth chapters of hisIndika, describes the mode in which they were hunted, and other particulars regarding them. Polybios (v. 84) says that the African elephants could neither endure the smell nor the trumpeting of their Indian congeners.[218]Herodotos (iii. 106) says that gold was produced in great abundance in India, some of it washed down by the streams, and some dug out of the earth, but the greater part of it being the ant-gold surreptitiously procured. The heavy tribute levied by Darius on the Indian provinces (chiefly west of the Indus) was paid in gold-dust. We learn, notwithstanding, from Arrian that the companions of Alexander found that the Indian tribes they met with, which were numerous, were destitute of gold. The ant-gold produced in Dardistan seems therefore to have found its way rather to the provinces west of the Indus than to the Panjâb. Strabo (XV. i. 57), quoting Megasthenes, says that the rivers in India bring down gold-dust, a part of which is paid as a tax to the king. By the king is here meant Chandragupta (Sandrokottos), at whose court Megasthenes for some years resided. As the river Sôn, which in his time entered the Ganges at Palibothra (now Patna), was called poetically theHiranyavâha—i.e.“bearing gold,”—we may assume that gold was found in the sands of that river. The grandson of Chandragupta, Aśôka, as is stated in theMahavansâ, sent missionaries to preach Buddhism into thegold districtof Suvarnabhûmi, a region which Turnour identified with Burma, but which Lassen took to be a maritime district situated somewhere in the west (v.hisInd. Alt.ii. pp. 236, 237; also i. 237, 238). Strabo (XV. i. 30) says that in the country of Sopeithês there were valuable mines both of gold and silver among the mountains.[219]Pliny, in the latter part of his 37th book, treats of the various kinds of precious stones found in India, and of the uses to which they are there applied. In some of the other books incidental notices of them are also to be met with, while his 9th book is full of details about the pearl. From Strabo (II. iii. 4) we learn that an adventurer, Eudoxos of Kyzikos, who had been sent by Ptolemy Physkôn, king of Egypt, to India, returned thence, bringing back with him precious stones, some of which the Indians collect from among the pebbles of the river, and others of which they dig out of the earth. In his 15th book he states that India produces precious stones, as crystals, carbuncles of all kinds, and pearls. In Ptolemy’sGeography of India, and in thePeriplûs of the Erythraean Seamention is made of the diamond, beryl, onyx, carnelian, hyacinth, and sapphire as precious stones of India. They mention also various pearl fisheries existing in and near India. Arrian states in hisIndika(c. 8) that the pearl in India is worth thrice its weight in refined gold, and that it was called in the Indian tongueMargarita. This, which is also its classical name, may represent either the Sanskritmanjari, or the Persianmarwarîd.[220]Arrian, on the authority of Nearchos, states in hisIndika(c. 16) that the Indians wear shoes of white leather elaborately trimmed, and having thick soles (or heels) to make them look taller.[221]Strabo notes from Kleitarchos similar statements regarding the treatment of their hair by the Indians (XV. i. 71), and Arrian has noted the Indian practice (which is still in vogue) of dying the beard of a variety of colours.[222]“In the processions at Indian festivals (says Strabo, XV. i. 69) are to be seen wild beasts, as buffaloes, panthers, tame lions, and a multitude of birds of variegated plumage and of fine song.” Aelian, in a passage copied most probably from Megasthenes, says that the favourite bird of the king of the Indians (Chandragupta no doubt) was the hoopoe. He carried it on his wrist, and amused himself with it, and never tired gazing with admiration on its exquisite beauty, and the splendour of its plumage. The luxurious mode of life in which the Indian king (Chandragupta) indulged is described by Strabo (XV. i. 55) much in the same terms as by Curtius here. The native writings calledsutrasdescribe in like manner how the kings at festivals march out on elephants to the sound of all kinds of instruments, amid the scent of perfumes and clouds of frankincense.

[161]The Brachmans, as is well known, formed a religious caste, and were not a distinct race or tribe. Their city Cunningham has identified with the old ruined town and fort of Atâri, which is situated twenty miles to the west-south-west of Tulamba and on the high road to Multân, from which it is thirty-four miles distant. The remains consist of a strong citadel 750 feet square and 35 feet high. On two of its sides are to be found the remains of the old town. Of its history there is not even a tradition, but the large size of its bricks shows that it must be a place of considerable antiquity. The name of the old city is quite unknown, Atâri being merely that of the adjacent village, which is of recent origin. Curtius states that Alexander went completely round the citadel in a boat, and Cunningham thinks this is probable enough, as its ditch could be filled at pleasure with water from the Râvi. Curtius must, however, be romancing when he says that the three greatest rivers in India except the Ganges (Indus, Hydaspês, and Akesinês) joined their waters to form a ditch round the castle (v.Anc. Geog. of India, pp. 228-230). The mention of a special city of the Brachmans, Lassen observes, shows that but few priests lived in this part of the country, and that they had established themselves in particular cities to protect themselves against those people by whom they were held in but small esteem.

[162]SeeNote Q, The capital of the Malloi.

[163]Arrian (i. 11) relates that Alexander, after crossing the Hellespont, proceeded to Ilion, where, after sacrificing to the Trojan Athênê, he placed his own armour in the temple of that goddess, and took away in exchange some of the consecrated arms which had been preserved from the time of the Trojan war.

[164]Called in Greek adimoiritêsin Latin aduplicarius.

[165]Alexander’s dress and arms on the day of Arbêla are thus described by Plutarch: “He wore a short tunic of the Sicilian fashion, girt close round him, over a linen breastplate strongly quilted; his helmet, surmounted by the white plume, was of polished steel, the work of Theophilos; the gorget was of the same metal, and set with precious stones; the sword, his favourite weapon in battle, was a present from a Cyprian king, and not to be excelled for lightness or temper; but his belt, deeply embossed with massive figures, was the most superb part of his armour; it was a gift from the Rhodians, on which old Helikôn had exerted all his skill. If we add to these the shield, lance, and light greaves, we may form a fair idea of his appearance in battle.”

[166]The descendants of Asklêpios (Aesculapius) were called by the patronymic nameAsklêpiadai. They were regarded by some as the real descendants of Asklêpios, but by others as a caste of priests who practised the art of medicine, combined with religion. Their principal seats were Kôs and Knidos.

[167]Plutarch writes to the same effect: “The great battle with Darius was not fought at Arbêla, as most historians will have it, but at Gaugamêla, which, in the Persian tongue, is said to signifythe house of the camel, so called because one of the ancient kings, having escaped his enemies by the swiftness of his camel, placed her there, and appointed the revenues of certain villages for her maintenance.”—Life of Alexander, c. 31.

[168]Kleitarchos, who accompanied Alexander to Asia, and wrote a history of the expedition, and Timagenes, an historian in the reign of Augustus, gave currency to this fiction, which Curtius is at one with Arrian in rejecting. Ptolemy received his title of Sôtêr (saviour) from the Rhodians, whom he had relieved from the attacks of Dêmêtrios Poliorkêtês (v.Pausanias, I. viii. 6).

[169]Thirlwall has noted that this line is found in Stobaeus. It is a fragment from one of the lost tragedies of Aeschylus, δράσαντι γάρ τι καὶ παθεῖν ὀφείλεται.

[170]The Hyphasis is here probably the Satlej, though the application of the name so far down as is here indicated is contrary to Sanskrit usage. Several arms of the Hyphasis may have anciently existed which went to join the Hydraôtês or perhaps the lower Akesinês. Megasthenês was the first who made the existence of the Satlej known. Pliny calls it the Hesydrus, and Ptolemy the Zaradros. The united stream which joins the Indus, called the Panjnad, has before the confluence a width of 1076 yards. The Indus after the confluence is augmented to 2000 yards from 600 yards only above the confluence. From the present confluence to the sea the distance is 490 miles.

[171]TheAbastanoiare more correctly designated by Diodôros (xvii. 102) theSambastai, under which form of the name theAmbashtha, who are mentioned as a people of the Panjâb in theMahâbhârataand elsewhere in Sanskrit literature, can be recognised. It is evident from the text that they were settled on the lower Akesinês. They appear to be the people called by Curtius theSabarcae, and by OrosiusSabagrae.

[172]The Xathroi are the Kshâtri of Sanskrit mentioned in the Laws of Manu as an impure tribe, being of mixed origin. In Williams’sSanskrit DictionaryaKshâtriis defined as “a man of the second (i.e.military) caste (by a woman of another caste?).”

[173]V. de Saint-Martin suggests that in theOssadioiwe have the Vasâti or Basâti of theMahâbhârata, a people whom Hematchandra in hisGeographical Dictionaryplaces between the Hydaspês and the Indus, on the plateau of which the Salt Mountains form the southern escarpment. If the Vasâti were really so placed, it can scarcely be supposed that they would have sent offers of submission to Alexander, who had already passed through their part of the country, and was now marching homeward, leaving them far in his rear. Cunningham prefers to identify them with theYaudheyaorAjudhiya, now theJohiyas, who are settled as formerly along the banks of the lower Satlej.Assodioior Ossadioi seems a pretty close transcription ofAjudhiya.

[174]The name of this city is not given by any of the historians, but in all probability it bore the name of its founder. Its site has generally been referred to the neighbourhood of Mithânkôt, a town situated on the western bank of the Indus a little below the junction of that river with the united streams of the Panjâb. V. de Saint-Martin identifies it more precisely with Chuchpûr or Chuchur, an ancient fort standing on the eastern bank of the Indus right opposite Mithânkôt. This fort bore formerly the names of Askalanda, Askelend, and Sikander, which are but variant forms of Alexandreia. The great confluence, however, did not anciently take place at Mithânkôt, but at Uchh, an old city lying forty miles to the north-east of the confluence at Mithânkôt. The place is called by Rashed-ud-dinAskaland-usah, which, as Cunningham points out, would be an easy corruption ofAlexandria UchhaorUssa, as the Greeks must have written it. The worduchhameans “high” both in Sanskrit and in Hindi, and Uchh seems to owe its name to the fact that it stands on a mound. “Uchh is chiefly distinguished (says Masson) by the ruins of the former towns, which are very extensive, and attest the pristine prosperity of the locality.”v.V. de Saint-Martin,Etude, pp. 124, 125; Cunningham’sAnc. Geog. of India, pp. 242-245.

[175]v.Note R, Alexander in Sindh.

[176]In Strabo (XV. i.) we find several references to the country of Mousikanos. These were based on information supplied by Onesikritos, who expatiates in praise of its fertility, on the virtues of its people, and the goodness of the laws and government under which they lived. It seems now generally agreed that Alôr, which was anciently and for many ages the metropolis of the rich and powerful kingdom of Upper Sindh, was the capital of Mousikanos. Its ruins were visited by M’Murdo and Lieutenant Wood, and afterwards by General Cunningham, who thus describes their site: “The ruins of Alôr are situated to the south of a gap in the low range of sandstone hills which stretches from Bhakar towards the south for about twenty miles until it is lost in a broad belt of sandhills which bound the Nâra, or old bed of the Indus, on the west. Through this gap a branch of the Indus once flowed, which protected the city on the north-west. To the north-east it was covered by a second branch of the river, which flowed nearly at right angles to the other at a distance of three miles.... InA.D.680 the latter was probably the main stream of the Indus, which had gradually been working to the westward from its original bed in the old Nâra.” With regard to the name of the king it appears to be a territorial title, since Curtius designates the peopleMusicani. Lassen (Ind. Alt.ii. 176) takes this to represent the Sanskrit Mûshika (which meansa mouseora thief), and points out that a part of the Malabar coast was also called the Mûshika kingdom. Saint-Martin thinks that the Mûshika still exist in the great tribe of the Moghsis, which forms the most numerous part of the population of Kach Gandâra, a region bordering on the territories of the ancient Mûsikani (Etude, p. 162).

[177]Curtius calls the subjects of Oxykanos the Praesti, a name which would indicate that they inhabited a level country, since the Sanskrit word of which their name is a transcript—prastha—denotesa tablelandora level expanse. The name, Saint-Martin thinks, is in Justin altered toPraesidae; but Justin, it appears to me, means the Praisioi thereby. Oxykanos is called both by Strabo and DiodôrosPortikanos, representing perhaps the SanskritPârtha, “a prince.” It is not easy to determine where his dominions lay. They were not on the Indus, for Alexander left that river to attack them. Cunningham places them to the west of the Indus in the level country around Larkhâna, which, though now close to the Indus, was in Alexander’s time about forty miles distant from it. Their capital he identifies with Mahorta, a place about ten miles north-west from Larkhâna, where there are the remains of an ancient fortress on a huge mound, whence perhaps its nameMâhaurddha, “very high.” Lassen, on the other hand, followed by Saint-Martin, places the country of Oxykanos to the east of the river, and therefore in the vast Mesopotamia (the Prasiane of Pliny) comprised between the old or eastern arm of the Indus and the present channel (v.Lassen,Ind. Alt.ii. 177; Saint-Martin,Etude, p. 165; Cunningham,Anc. Geog. of India, pp. 259-262).

[178]Seenote S, Sindimana.

[179]SeeNote T, City of the Brachmans, Harmatelia; alsoNote Hh, Indian Philosophers.

[180]In the 15th chapter of this book Arrian states that Alexander had sent Krateros away by this route after he had left the Sogdian capital (near Bhakar). From this we may infer that Krateros, soon after he set out on his homeward march, had been temporarily recalled by Alexander, who may have found the resistance to his arms more formidable than he had anticipated. Strabo states in one place (XV. ii. 5) that Krateros set out on his march from the Hydaspês and proceeded through the country of the Arachotoi and the Drangai into Karmania, and in another (XV. ii. 11) that he traversed Choarênê and entered Karmania simultaneously with Alexander. Now the former of these routes would have been so needlessly circuitous that it cannot be supposed it was that which Krateros selected. He no doubt marched through Choarênê (the district of Ariana nearest India), to which there was access from India through the Bolan Pass. Before rejoining Alexander he must have encountered formidable difficulties in traversing the great desert of Karman, which occupies the northern part of Karmania, and extends from thence to the confines of Yezd, Khorasân, and Seïstan. “This desert (says Bunbury) is a vast track of the most unmitigated barrenness, and a considerable portion of this interposed between the fertile districts of Murmansheer in Northern Carmania, and the Lake Zarrah in Seïstan must of necessity have been traversed by Craterus with his army. An Afghan army which invaded Persia in 1719 suffered the most dreadful hardships in this waste” (v.hisHist. of Anc. Geog.p. 522, also Droysen’sGeschichte Alexanders, p. 454, and Lassen,Ind. Alt.ii. 180).

[181]According to Aristoboulos, as cited by Strabo (XV. i. 17), the voyage down stream from Nikaia on the Hydaspês to Patala occupied ten months. “The Greeks (he says) remained at the Hydaspês while the ships were constructing, and began their voyage not many days before the setting of the Pleiades (late in the autumn ofB.C.326), and were occupied during the whole autumn, winter, and the ensuing spring and summer in sailing down the river, and arrived at Patalênê about the rising of the dog-star (towards the end of summerB.C.325). The passage down the river lasted ten months.” According to Plutarch, Alexander spent seven months in falling down the rivers to the ocean. Sir A. Burnes ascended the Indus up to Lahore in sixty days, a distance of about 1000 miles. He estimated that a boat could drop down from Lahore to the sea in fifteen days, and from Multân in nine days.

[182]In the 41st chapter of thePeriplûs of the Erythraian Seait is said that in the regions adjoining the Indus mouths “there are preserved even to this very day memorials of the expedition of Alexander, old temples, foundations of camps, andlarge wells.”

[183]v.Note U, Patala.

[184]This was the northern channel of the Ghâra, the waters of which, some centuries after Alexander, found another channel more to the south, in the southern Ghâra which joins the main stream below Lâri Bandar.

[185]Caesar’s fleet, it is well known, suffered a similar disaster on the shores of Britain. The tides in the Indus are not felt more than sixty miles from the sea, whence Cunningham concludes that Alexander must then have reached as far as Bambhra on the Ghâra, which is about fifty miles by water from the sea. The breaking up of the monsoon, which occurs in October, is attended with high winds, intervals of calm, and violent hurricanes.

[186]Plutarch says that Alexander called this island Skilloustis, but others Psiltoukis. It was from this island Nearchos started on his memorable voyage early in October, before the monsoon had subsided. On his reaching the port now called Karachi, the great emporium of the trade of the Indus, he remained there for twenty-four days, and renewed the voyage as soon as the weather permitted.

[187]The eastern branch of the Indus is that now called the Phuleli. It separates from the main channel at Muttâri, twelve miles above Haidarâbâd, and enters the sea by the Kori estuary, named by Ptolemy the Lonibari mouth. Its bed is now almost dry except at the time of the inundations, when it assumes the appearance of a great river. At the lower part of its course it is known as the Guni. On its east side it receives the branch of the Indus, which in ancient times passed Arôr, and is now called thePurana daryaorOld river.

[188]This exaggerated estimate Arrian has taken from the Journal of Nearchos. Aristoboulos said that the distance was 1000 stadia. The truth is here pretty accurately hit.

[189]“This great lake (says Saint-Martin) might have been the western extremity of the Ran of Kachh, a vast depression which abuts on the point where the estuary begins, and which for some months of the year (from July to October) is inundated by the waters of several rivers. By a singular coincidence the terrible earthquake of 1819 has formed a large hollow and created a spacious lake traversed by the Korî, and occupying probably the same site as the lake mentioned by Arrian. Brahmanic tradition, moreover, preserves the memory of a lake formerly existing near the Korî, not far from its embouchure. In theBhagavata Purânatranslated by Bournouf, we read that ‘in the west at the confluence of the Sindhu and the ocean is the vast tank of Nârâyana Saras, which is frequented by the Recluses and the Siddhas.’... A local tradition picked up by M’Murdo refers to the disappearance of this lake of old times, and explains the event by a conflagration of the country” (v.Etude, pp. 178, 179).

[190]In Italy the Pleiades set in the beginning of November. The south-west monsoon prevails from April to October. It sets in on the Sindh coast with strong west-south-westerly winds, which cause a heavy swell on the sea. The north-east monsoon, which is favourable for navigation, begins in the Arabian Sea about the middle of October.

[191]The name of this river has various forms, Arabis, Arbis, Artabis, and Artabius. It is now called the Purâli and is the river which, rising in the mountain range called by Ptolemy the Baitian, flows through the present district of Las into the Bay of Sonmiyâni. It gave its name to the Arabioi, whose territory it divided from that of the Oritai, who were farther west. Curtius states that Alexander reached the eastern boundary of the Arabioi (which may be placed about Karâchi) in nine days from Patala, and their western boundary formed by the Arabius in five days more. The distance from Haidarâbâd to Karâchi is 114 miles, and from Karâchi to Sonmiyâni fifty miles. The average of a day’s march was therefore about twelve miles, the same as now in these parts.

[192]The Arabitai are called in theIndika,Arabies; in Strabo,Arbies; in Diodôros,Ambritai; in Marcian the geographer,Arbitoi; and in Dion. Perieg.Aribes. Their territories extended from the western mouth of the Indus to the river Purâli. This people and their neighbours, the Orîtai, Cunningham would include within the geographical limits of India, although they have always been beyond its political boundaries during the historical period. They were tributary to Darius Hystaspês, and were still subject to the Persians when the Chinese pilgrim Hwen Thsiang visited their country in the seventh century of our aera.

[193]In the country of the Oreitai is a river called the Aghor, from which, it has been supposed, the people take their name, as thus: Aghoritai, Aoritai, Oritai, or Horatae, as they are called by Curtius. They are the Neoritai of Diodôros. The length of their coast Arrian gives in hisIndikaat 1600 stadia, while Strabo extends it to 1800. The actual length is 100 English miles, somewhere about half of Arrian’s estimate taken from Nearchos. The western boundary of the Oritai was marked by Cape Mâlân (theMalanaof Arrian), which is twenty miles distant from the river Aghor. According to Strabo the Oritai were the people by whose poisoned arrows Ptolemy was all but mortally wounded.

[194]This name is probably a transcription of the IndianRâmbâgh, which designated the place where pilgrims assemble before starting for the Aghor Valley, in which the principal sacred places are connected with the history of Râma, the great hero of the Râmâyana. Cunningham accordingly identifies Râmbâgh with Arrian’s Rambakia, and remarks that the occurrence of the name of Râmbâgh at so great a distance to the west of the Indus, and at so early a period as the time of Alexander, shows not only the wide extension of Hindu influence in ancient times, but also the great antiquity of the story of Râma (v.hisAnc. Geog. of India, pp. 307-310).

[195]D’Anville and Vincent have assumed that Ora is theHaurmentioned by Edrisi as lying on the route from Dîbal, near the mouth of the Indus, to Firûzâbâd in Mekran. Its situation is uncertain, however, as its name does not occur in any recently published account of the country. Ora may perhaps have been in the neighbourhood of Kôkala, mentioned in theIndikaas situated on the Oreitian coast, probably near Cape Katchari, to the east of the Hingul river, where the fleet was supplied with a fresh stock of provisions. Perhaps it may have here denoted the country of the Oreitai.

[196]Gadrôsia in Arrian denotes theinlandregion which extends from the Oreitai to Karmania. Themaritimeregion between the same limits he calls the country of the Ichthyophagoi. The Gedrôsian desert since the days of Alexander has protected Lower Sindh from any attack by the maritime route. The Persian invader has preferred to encounter the dangers and difficulties of the mountain passes of Afghânistân rather than to expose himself to such horrible sufferings in the burning desert as were experienced by the soldiers of Semiramis, Cyrus, and Alexander. The length of the Makrân or Beluchistan coast between the Oreitai and Karmania is given by Arrian at 10,000 stadia and by Strabo at 7000 only. The actual length is 480 English miles, and the time taken by Nearchos in its navigation was twenty days.

[197]A description of this unguent is given by Pliny (N. H.xii. c. 26). He there mentions that a special kind of it was produced in the Gangetic regions. In the 33d chapter of the same book will be found a description of the myrrh-tree and its produce.

[198]Chinnock notes that this was probably thesnow-flake.

[199]This, says Sintenis, can be nothing else than a kind of acacia. He points out that Dioscorides (i. 33) applies to this thorn the expression ἀκακία, which Willdenow identifies with the acacia catechu. It grows abundantly in the Bombay and Bengal presidencies, producing a gum employed both as a colouring matter and a medicinal astringent, and known in commerce by the name of cutch.

[200]These people were the Ichthyophagoi of whom Arrian makes frequent mention in hisIndikawhen describing the voyage of Nearchos along their coast. His description of their appearance and habits closely agrees with that given by Strabo in his chapter on Ariana.

[201]Kallatis or Kallatia was a large city of Thrace on the coast of the Euxine, colonised from Milêtos. Pliny says its former name was Cerbatis.

[202]v.Note V, Alexander’s march through Gedrôsia, Poura.

[203]In Latintriumphi.

[204]That is, to one who, like Alexander, approached it from Central Asia.

[205]Eratosthenes and other ancient writers describe India as of a rhomboidal figure with the Indus on the west, the mountains on the north, and the sea on the east and the south. Curtius follows them here in reckoning its length from west to east.

[206]These are the mountains of the peninsular part of India.

[207]By the Red or Erythraean Sea is meant the Indian Ocean, which included both the Red Sea proper and the Persian Gulf. Curtius here makes the two great Indian rivers flow into the same sea. His conception of the configuration of India perhaps resembled that of Ptolemy, in whose map India is so misrepresented that it appears without its peninsula, but with a point (a little below the latitude of Bombay) whence the coast bends at once sharply to the east instead of pursuing its actual course southward to Cape Comorin.

[208]“Iomanes, a clever conjectural insertion due to Hedike. Foss had suspected some such omission, as the old attempt to make the Acesines run into the Ganges by finding some other modern name for it was preposterous” (Alexander in India, by Heitland and Raven, p. 90). The Iomanes appears in Ptolemy’sGeographyas the Diamouna—that is the Yamunâ or Jamnâ, the great river which, after passing Delhi, Mathurâ, Agrâ, and other places, joins the Ganges at Allâhâbâd. It rises from hot springs not far westward from the sources of the Ganges. Arrian, who in hisIndikacalls it the Jobares, says that it flows through the country of the Sourasenoi, who possess two great cities, Methora (Mathurâ) and Kleisobara (Krishnapura?). Pliny (vi. 19) states that it passes through the Palibothri to join the Ganges. At its junction with the Jamnâ, and a third, but imaginary river, the Sarasvatî, the Ganges is called theTrivênî,i.e.“triple plait,” from the intermingling of the three streams.

[209]This river is most probably that which is called the Doanas in Ptolemy’sGeography, where it designates the Brahmaputra. The Doanas was probably also the Oidanes of Artemidôros, who, according to Strabo (XI. i. 72), described it as a river that bred crocodiles and dolphins, and that flowed into the Ganges. If the first two letters inDoanasbe transposed, we get almost letter for letter theOidanesof Artemidôros, and we get it again, though not so closely, if we discardrfrom the Dyardanes of Curtius. That these two writers had the same river in view is confirmed by their mentioning the very same animals as bred in its waters.

[210]No satisfactory identification of this river has as yet, so far as I am aware, been proposed. The river called by Arrian (iv. 6) theErymandros, and by Polybios theErymanthus, and now known as the Helmund, has a name pretty similar, but it does not discharge into the sea. It enters the inland lake called Zarah, in the province of Seistan in Afghanistan. According to Arrian it disappears in the sands.

[211]These statements about the north wind as it affects India have no basis in fact, and those that immediately follow reach the very acme of absurdity. The cold season occurs in India as in Europe during winter, but snow never falls on the plains. During the hot season, however, hailstorms occasionally occur and inflict more or less damage on the crops. I have myself witnessed in Calcutta a thunderstorm accompanied with a descent of hail, commingled with large pieces of ice, and this in one of the hottest months of the year, June or July, I forget which.

[212]Agatharchides, a writer of the second centuryB.C., begins his work on the Erythraean Sea by inquiring into the origin of its name. On this point four different opinions were held, and of these he adopted that which fathered the name on King Erythrus. He then tells the story of this king (who was a Persian) as he had learned it from a Persian called Boxos who had settled in Athens. Strabo (xvi. 20) gives a brief summary of this passage, and Pliny (N. H.vi. 28) a still briefer. Nearchos, as we learn from Arrian’sIndika(c. 37), in the course of his memorable voyage put into an island called Oärakta (now Kishm), where the natives showed him the tomb of the first king of the island. They said that his name was Erythrês, and that the sea in those parts was called after him theErythraean. Opinions still differ as to the origin of the name. According to some it was given from the red and purple colouring of the rocks which in some parts border the sea, according to others from the red colour sometimes given to the waters by the sea-weed called Sûph. Fresnel, however, rejecting such views, interprets the name as meaning the sea of the Homêritai,i.e.HimyarorHhomayr, orred men, whose name and the Arabic wordahhmar(red) have the same root. The people here indicated occupied Yemen, and were calledred menin contrast to theblack menof the opposite coast. Others again attribute the name toEdom(Idumea), which bordered the Gulf of Akaba, the eastern arm of the Red Sea, at its northern extremity.Edomsignifiesred. Further references to this subject will be found in Mela (III. viii. 1), Solinus (c. 36), Dio Cassius (lxviii. 28), and Stephanos Byz.s.v.Ἐρυθρά.

[213]As the dress of the natives was made in ancient times as at present, chiefly from cotton, this perhaps may be the substance meant here by flax. The valuable properties of the wool-like product of the cotton plant (Gossypium herbaceum, theKarpâsaof Sanskrit) were early known, as in one of the hymns of the Rig-veda mention is made of female weavers intertwining the extended thread. “The dress worn by the Indians (says Arrian, citing Nearchos) is made of cotton, a material produced from trees. They wear an under-garment of cotton which reaches below the knee half-way down to the ankles, and also an upper garment which they throw partly over their shoulders, and partly twist in folds round their head” (Indika, c. 16). This costume is mentioned in old Sanskrit literature, and is carefully represented in the frescoes on the caves of Ajanta. We learn from thePeriplûs of the Erythraean Seathat muslin (othonion) was imported into the marts of India from China, and exported thence along with Indian muslin and coarser cotton fabrics to Egypt.

[214]Strabo (XV. i. 67) states on the authority of Nearchos that the Indians wrote letters upon cloth, which was well pressed to make it smooth, but adds that other writers affirmed that the Indians had no knowledge of writing. They were, however, acquainted with writing for some centuries before Alexander’s time, but whence they got their alphabet is a question not yet quite settled, though the weight of opinion inclines to assign it a Himyaritic origin. We learn from Pliny (xiii. 21) that paper made from the papyrus plant did not come into common use out of Egypt till the time of Alexander the Great. He then goes on to say that for writing on, the leaves of palm-trees were first used, and then the barks (libri) of certain trees. Some of the Egyptian papyrus-rolls are as old as the sixth dynasty.

[215]Nearchos, as we learn from Arrian’sIndika, c. 15, was taken with surprise when he heard in India parrots talking like human beings. Pliny says (x. 58) that India produces this bird, which is called theSeptagen, and that it salutes its masters, and pronounces the words it hears. If it fails to do so it is beaten on the head, which is as hard as its bill, with an iron rod, until it repeats the words properly. Ovid (Amores, ii. 6) calls the parrot the imitative bird from the Indians of the East. Another Indian bird, the Maina, which in size and appearance somewhat resembles the thrush, can be taught to speak with great distinctness. It is probably the bird which Aelian (Hist. Anim.xvi. 3) describes under the name of theKerkiôn.

[216]Here Curtius makes a mistake, for not only is the rhinoceros bred in India, but the Indian species is the largest known, and its flesh was, by the Brahmans, allowed to be eaten, though most other kinds of animal food were interdicted. Ktêsias describes it, but very incorrectly, under the name of the one-horned ass. It is described also in Aelian’sHistory of Animals(xvi. 20) in a passage supposed to have been copied from the lostIndikaof Megasthenes. It is there called the Kartazôn. The fables about the unicorn had their source most probably in the fanciful account Ktêsias has given of the Indian wild ass. Aristotle, referring to it, says briefly: “We have never seen a solid-hoofed animal with two horns, and there are only a few of them that have one horn, as the Indian ass and the oryx.” Kosmas Indikopleustes, who, as his surname shows, had visited India, gives in the eleventh book of hisChristian Topographya description of the rhinoceros, illustrated with a picture of the animal which represents it as somewhat like a horse, with its nose surmounted by a pair of horns slightly curved. We know that the picture is meant to be that of the rhinoceros from the name being attached. Kosmas says that he had only seen the animal from a distance. He has also given a description and picture of the unicorn, an animal which he had never seen, but had delineated from four brazen statues of it which adorned a palace in Aethiopia. A single straight horn of great length is represented as springing up from the top of its head.

[217]Pliny (Nat. Hist. viii. 11) notes, like Curtius here, that India produced the largest elephants. He had, however, stated previously (vi. 22) that, according to Onesikritos, the elephants of Taprobane (Ceylon) were larger and more warlike than those of India. Many references to the Indian elephants occur in the classics. Arrian, in the thirteenth and fourteenth chapters of hisIndika, describes the mode in which they were hunted, and other particulars regarding them. Polybios (v. 84) says that the African elephants could neither endure the smell nor the trumpeting of their Indian congeners.

[218]Herodotos (iii. 106) says that gold was produced in great abundance in India, some of it washed down by the streams, and some dug out of the earth, but the greater part of it being the ant-gold surreptitiously procured. The heavy tribute levied by Darius on the Indian provinces (chiefly west of the Indus) was paid in gold-dust. We learn, notwithstanding, from Arrian that the companions of Alexander found that the Indian tribes they met with, which were numerous, were destitute of gold. The ant-gold produced in Dardistan seems therefore to have found its way rather to the provinces west of the Indus than to the Panjâb. Strabo (XV. i. 57), quoting Megasthenes, says that the rivers in India bring down gold-dust, a part of which is paid as a tax to the king. By the king is here meant Chandragupta (Sandrokottos), at whose court Megasthenes for some years resided. As the river Sôn, which in his time entered the Ganges at Palibothra (now Patna), was called poetically theHiranyavâha—i.e.“bearing gold,”—we may assume that gold was found in the sands of that river. The grandson of Chandragupta, Aśôka, as is stated in theMahavansâ, sent missionaries to preach Buddhism into thegold districtof Suvarnabhûmi, a region which Turnour identified with Burma, but which Lassen took to be a maritime district situated somewhere in the west (v.hisInd. Alt.ii. pp. 236, 237; also i. 237, 238). Strabo (XV. i. 30) says that in the country of Sopeithês there were valuable mines both of gold and silver among the mountains.

[219]Pliny, in the latter part of his 37th book, treats of the various kinds of precious stones found in India, and of the uses to which they are there applied. In some of the other books incidental notices of them are also to be met with, while his 9th book is full of details about the pearl. From Strabo (II. iii. 4) we learn that an adventurer, Eudoxos of Kyzikos, who had been sent by Ptolemy Physkôn, king of Egypt, to India, returned thence, bringing back with him precious stones, some of which the Indians collect from among the pebbles of the river, and others of which they dig out of the earth. In his 15th book he states that India produces precious stones, as crystals, carbuncles of all kinds, and pearls. In Ptolemy’sGeography of India, and in thePeriplûs of the Erythraean Seamention is made of the diamond, beryl, onyx, carnelian, hyacinth, and sapphire as precious stones of India. They mention also various pearl fisheries existing in and near India. Arrian states in hisIndika(c. 8) that the pearl in India is worth thrice its weight in refined gold, and that it was called in the Indian tongueMargarita. This, which is also its classical name, may represent either the Sanskritmanjari, or the Persianmarwarîd.

[220]Arrian, on the authority of Nearchos, states in hisIndika(c. 16) that the Indians wear shoes of white leather elaborately trimmed, and having thick soles (or heels) to make them look taller.

[221]Strabo notes from Kleitarchos similar statements regarding the treatment of their hair by the Indians (XV. i. 71), and Arrian has noted the Indian practice (which is still in vogue) of dying the beard of a variety of colours.

[222]“In the processions at Indian festivals (says Strabo, XV. i. 69) are to be seen wild beasts, as buffaloes, panthers, tame lions, and a multitude of birds of variegated plumage and of fine song.” Aelian, in a passage copied most probably from Megasthenes, says that the favourite bird of the king of the Indians (Chandragupta no doubt) was the hoopoe. He carried it on his wrist, and amused himself with it, and never tired gazing with admiration on its exquisite beauty, and the splendour of its plumage. The luxurious mode of life in which the Indian king (Chandragupta) indulged is described by Strabo (XV. i. 55) much in the same terms as by Curtius here. The native writings calledsutrasdescribe in like manner how the kings at festivals march out on elephants to the sound of all kinds of instruments, amid the scent of perfumes and clouds of frankincense.

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