The Anabasis of Alexander/Book V/Chapter IV

by Arrian

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CHAPTER IV.

Digression About India.

The following are statements about the river Indus which are quite unquestionable, and therefore let me record them. The Indus is the largest of all the rivers in Asia and Europe, except the Ganges,^[1] which is also an Indian river. It takes its rise on this side mount Parapamisus, or Caucasus, and discharges its water into the Great Sea which lies near India in the direction of the south wind. It has two mouths, both of which outlets are full of shallow pools like the five outlets of the Ister (or Danube).^[2] It forms a Delta in the land of the Indians resembling that of Egypt^[3]; and this is called Pattala in the Indian language. The Hydaspes, Acesines, Hydraotes, and Hyphasis are also Indian rivers^[4] and far exceed the other rivers of Asia in size; but they are not only smaller but much smaller than the Indus, just as that river itself is smaller than the Ganges. Indeed Ctesias^[5] says (if any one thinks his evidence to be depended upon), that where the Indus is narrowest, its banks are forty stades apart; where it is broadest, 100 stades; and most of it is the mean between these breadths.^[6] This river Indus Alexander crossed at daybreak with his army into the country of the Indians; concerning whom, in this history I have described neither what laws they enjoy, nor what strange animals their land produces, nor how many and what sort of fish and water-monsters are produced by the Indus, Hydaspes. Granges, or the other rivers of India. Nor have I described the ants which dig up the gold for them,^[7] nor the guardian griffins, nor any of the other tales that have been composed rather to amuse than to be received as

the relation of facts; since the falsity of the strange stories which have been fabricated about India cannot be exposed by any one.^[8] However, Alexander and those who served in his army exposed the falsity of most of these tales; but there were even some of these very men who fabricated other stories. They proved that the Indians whom Alexander visited with his army, and he visited many tribes of them, were destitute of gold; and also that they were by no means luxurious in their mode of living. Moreover, they discovered that they were tall in stature, in fact as tall as any men throughout Asia, most of them being five cubits in height, or a little less. They were blacker than the rest of men, except the Ethiopians^[9]; and in war they were far the bravest of all the races inhabiting Asia at that time. For I cannot with any justice compare the race of the ancient Persians with those of India, though at the head of the former Cyrus, son of Cambyses, set out and deprived the Medes of the empire of Asia, and subdued many other races partly by force and partly by voluntary surrender on their own part. For at that time the Persians were a poor people and inhabitants of a rugged land, having laws and customs very similar to the Laconian discipline.^[10] Nor am I able with certainty to conjecture whether the defeat sustained by the Persians in the Scythian land was due to the difficult nature of the country invaded or to some other error on the part of Cyrus, or whether the Persians were really inferior in warlike matters to the Scythians of that district.

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1. Herodotus considered the Danube the largest river in the world as known to him, and the Dnieper the largest of all rivers except the Danube and the Nile. See Herodotus, iv. 48-53.
2. "Amnis Danubius sexaginta navigabiles paene recipiens fluvios, Beptem ostiis erumpit in mare. Quorum primum est Peuce insula supra dicta, ut interpretata sunt vocabula Graeco sermone, secundum Naracustoma, tertium Calonstoma, quartum Pseudostoma: nam Boreonstoma ac deinde Sthenostoma longe minora sunt caeteris: septimun ingens te palustri specie nigrum."—Ammianus (xxii. 8, 44). Pliny (iv. 24) says that the Danube has six mouths, the names of which he gives.
3. The Indus does not rise in the Parapamisus, but in the Himalayas. It has two principal mouths, but there are a number of smaller ones. Ptolemy said there were seven. The Delta is between 70 and 80 miles broad. "Delta, a triquetrae litterae forma hoc vocabulo signatius adpellata."—Ammianus, xxii. 15.
4. The territory included by the Indus and its four affluents is now called Punjab, a Persian word meaning five rivers.
5. Ctesias was the Greek physician of Artaxerxes Mnemon. He wrote a history of Persia and a book on India. His works are only preserved in meagre abridgement by Photius. Aristotle says that he was false and untrustworthy {Hist. of Animals, vii. 27; De Generatione Animalium, ii. 2). Subsequent research has proved Ctesias to be wrong and Herodotus generally right in the many statements in which they are at variance.
6. The fact is, that the Indus is nowhere more than 20 stades, or 2 1/2 miles broad.
7. See Strabo, xv. 1; xvi. 4; Herod., iii. 102, with Dean Blakesley's note.
8. ουδαμων is the Ionic form for ουδενων.
9. The Greek name Αιθιοψ means sun-burnt. The Hebrew name for Aethiopia is Gush (black). In ancient Egyptian inscriptions it is called Keesh. It is the country now called Abyssinia. Aethiopas vicini sideris vapore torreri, adustisque similes gigni, barba et capUlo vibrato, non est dubium. (Pliny, ii. 80).
10. Cf. Xenophon (Cyclopaedia, vii. 5, 67).