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Digital Archive of Toyo Bunko Rare Books

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THE GREEKS AND ROMANS.

ARTEMIDORUS described the Ganges as flowing from the Emodian mountains towards the south till it reached a city which was also called Ganges.'

STRABO wrote about i 9 A. D. and represents the state of geographical science as it existed after the death of Augustus. He brought together in a most clever way all the geographical knowledge of his time, and his work is, excepting that of PTOLEMY, the most important geography that has come down to us from antiquity. In respect to Asia as a whole he followed Eratosthenes, but in his book XV he almost entirely used as his source Megasthenes, as well as NEARCHUS, ONESICRITUS and ARISTOBULUS, who had accompanied Alexander down the Indus and had collected much hearsay information.2 Strabo seems not to have had much confidence in the companions of Alexander, for he mentions that only a few Macedonians ever saw India, and that those who saw it, only saw it partly and hurriedly and got most of their news from hearsay. And many contradictory reports had been brought back. If this be the case with what they saw, says Strabo, what shall we think of their hearsay information!

Strabo used no later sources at all, as reports from his own time. The merchants who in his days sailed from Egypt over the Arabian sea to India, rarely proceeded so far as to the Ganges, and were, as a rule, not sufficiently intelligent to make geographical researches.

Like Eratosthenes, Strabo has a great mountain range bordering India to the north and extending from west to east. He has no detailed knowledge of it and only gives us the native appellations, Paropamisus, Emodus, Imaus, and others, while the Macedonians called it Caucasus. And he correctly points out that this range served as a boundary of India to the north. While our Hindu-kush, the central portion of the Himalayan system was designated with the name Emodus or Emodi montes of Paropamisus, Strabo applied the name of Imaus to the easternmost part, which ended at the coast of the eastern sea.

Thus Strabo had got much more reliable information about the mountains north of India than Eratosthenes possessed. And still even Strabo had a very scanty and confused understanding of the orography. The connection of the different ranges was only partly known. A great latitudinal chain of ranges was, however, imagined to exist stretching all the way from Promontorium Sacrum in Asia 1\Iino r, where it was called Taurus, and extending far to the east through Asia. Then followed the Emodi Montes and Imaus. Some have believed that the name Imaus

I BUNBURY, op. cit. Vol. II, p. i i et seq.

2 BUNBURY, op. cit. p. 209 et seq.

3 Regarding the names of the mountains bordering India to the north he says: »Montes, qui porro ab Ariis excurrunt, Macedones universos Caucasi nomine notaverunt; apud barbaros autem boreales [alia suorum parte appellabantur Paropamisus] alia Emodi montes, alia Imaus, et plura ejusmodi nomina singulis partibus erant indita.» (Book XI, Chapter 8.) As to the position of Imaus he says: ,Dicunt etiam ultimam Tauri partem, que Imaium vocatur, Indicum pelagus attingentern, neque ma gis quam Indiam accedere ad ortum, neque magis recedere ...» (Book XI, Chapter I I.)