Ganges is a river in India, so called for this reason. A certain
Calaurian nymph had by Indus a son called Ganges, conspicuous for his
beauty. Who growing up to manhood, being once desperately overcome with
wine, in the heat of his intoxication lay with his mother. The next
day he was informed by the nurse of what he had done; and such was
the excess of his sorrow, that he threw himself into a river called
Chliarus, afterwards called Ganges from his own name.
In this river grows an herb resembling bugloss, which the natives
bruise, and keep the juice very charily. With this juice in the dead of
the night they go and besprinkle the tigers’ dens; the virtue of which
is such, that the tigers, not being able to stir forth by reason of
the strong scent of the juice, are starved to death;—as Callisthenes
reports in his Third Book of Hunting.
Upon the banks of this river lies the mountain called the Anatole for
this reason. The Sun, beholding the nymph Anaxibia innocently spending
her time in dancing, fell passionately in love with her, and not able
to curb his loose amours, pursued her with a purpose to ravish her.
She therefore, finding no other way to escape him, fled to the temple
of Orthian Diana, which was seated upon the mountain called Coryphe,
and there immediately vanished away. Upon which the Sun, that followed
her close at the heels, not knowing what was become of his beloved,
overwhelmed with grief, rose in that very place. And from this accident
it was that the natives called the top of that mountain Anatole, or the
rising of the Sun;—as Caemaron reports in his Tenth Book of the Affairs
of India.