what remarkable that they should have learned hardly anything of importance regarding it from the expeditions which were successively under- taken against it by the Egyptians under Sesoatris, the Assyrians under Semiramis, and the Persians first under Kyros and afterwards under Dareios the son of Hystaspês.[1] Perhaps, as Dr. Eobertson has observed, they disdained, through pride of their own superior enlightenment, to pay attention to the transactions of people whom they considered as barbarians, especially in countries far remote from their own. But, in whatever way the fact may be accounted for, India continued to be to the Greeks little better than a land of mystery and fable till the times of the Persian wars, when for the first time they became distinctly aware of its existence. The first historian who speaks clearly
of it is Hekataios of Miletos (B.C. 549-486),[2]
- ↑ Herodotos mentions that Dareios, before invading India, sent Skylax the Karyandian on a voyage of discovery down the Indus, and that Skylax accordingly, setting out from Kaspatyras and the Paktyikan district, reached the mouth of that river, whence he sailed through the Indian Ocean to the Red Sea, performing the whole voyage in thirty months. A little work still extant, which briefly describes certain countries in Europe, Asia, and Africa, bears the name of this Skylax, but from internal evidence it has been inferred that it could not have been written before the reign of Philip of Makedonia, the father of Alexander the Great.
- ↑ The following names pertaining to India occur in Hekataios:— the Indus; the Opiai, a race on the hanks of the Indus; the Kalatiai, an Indian race; Kaspapyros, a Gandaric city; Argante, a city of India; the Skiapodes, and probably the Pygmies.
