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._ his _Hist. of
Anc. Geog._ p. 522, also Droysen’s _Geschichte 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 of B.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 summer B.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 the _Periplûs of the Erythraian Sea_ it 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, and _large 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 the _Purana darya_ or _Old 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 the _Bhagavata Purâna_
translated 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 the _Indika_, _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 his _Indika_ at 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 (the _Malana_ of 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 Indian _Râmbâgh_,
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._ his _Anc. Geog. of India_,
pp. 307-310).
[195] D’Anville and Vincent have assumed that Ora is the _Haur_ mentioned
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 the
_Indika_ as 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 the _inland_ region which extends from
the Oreitai to Karmania. The _maritime_ region 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 the _snow-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 his _Indika_ when 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 Latin _triumphi_.
[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’s _Geography_ as 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
his _Indika_ calls 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 the
_Trivênî_, _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’s _Geography_, 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 in _Doanas_ be
transposed, we get almost letter for letter the _Oidanes_ of Artemidôros,
and we get it again, though not so closely, if we discard _r_ from 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) the
_Erymandros_, and by Polybios the _Erymanthus_, 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 century B.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’s _Indika_ (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
the _Erythraean_. 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._ _Himyar_ or _Hhomayr_, or _red men_,
whose name and the Arabic word _ahhmar_ (red) have the same root. The
people here indicated occupied Yemen, and were called _red men_ in
contrast to the _black men_ of the opposite coast. Others again attribute
the name to _Edom_ (Idumea), which bordered the Gulf of Akaba, the
eastern arm of the Red Sea, at its northern extremity. _Edom_ signifies
_red_. 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_, the _Karpâsa_ of 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 the _Periplûs of the Erythraean Sea_ that
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’s _Indika_, 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 the
_Septagen_, 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 the _Kerkiôn_.
[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’s _History
of Animals_ (xvi. 20) in a passage supposed to have been copied from
the lost _Indika_ of 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 his _Christian Topography_ a
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 his _Indika_, 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 the
_Hiranyavâha_—_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 the _Mahavansâ_, sent missionaries to preach Buddhism into the
_gold district_ of Suvarnabhûmi, a region which Turnour identified with
Burma, but which Lassen took to be a maritime district situated somewhere
in the west (_v._ his _Ind. 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’s _Geography of India_, and in the _Periplûs of the
Erythraean Sea_ mention 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 his
_Indika_ (c. 8) that the pearl in India is worth thrice its weight in
refined gold, and that it was called in the Indian tongue _Margarita_.
This, which is also its classical name, may represent either the Sanskrit
_manjari_, or the Persian _marwarîd_.
[220] Arrian, on the authority of Nearchos, states in his _Indika_ (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 called _sutras_
describe 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.