国立情報学研究所 - ディジタル・シルクロード・プロジェクト
『東洋文庫所蔵』貴重書デジタルアーカイブ

32

THE GREEKS AND ROMANS.

In expressing his view Vivien de Saint-Martin has been influenced by Major

Abbott. Many other authors have paid great attention to the Aornes problem and still it has proved impossible to determine the situation of that rock. General CUNNINGHAM identifies it with the isolated rock Rânigat, 16 miles north of the town of Ohind on the Indus : »I do not insist upon the identification, but if we admit that the accounts of the historians are very much exaggerated, I think that the ruins of Rânigat tally much better with the vague descriptions of Aornos that have come down to us, than any other position with which I am accquainted.)i BUNBURY cannot accept this identification, which he finds liable to the insuperable

objection of being so far from the Indus as not to agree at all with the descrip-

tions of Curtius, Diodorus and Strabo, who all agree that Aornus rose immediately above the Indus, so that the river actually washed its base. Arrian places it near to a town called Embolima, in the upper valley of the Indus, »a position which explains Strabo's expression that it was near the sources of the Indus, a term by which he undoubtedly meant to designate the place where that river first issues from the gorges of the Himalaya.»2

In his Book V, Chapter V, Arrian has the following important delineation of the mountain ranges of Central Asia: »Mount Taurus divides Asia, beginning from

Mycale, the mountain which lies opposite the island of Samos; then cutting through the country of the Pamphylians and Cilicians, it extends into Armenia. From this country it stretches into Media and through the land of the Parthians and Chorasmians. In Bactria it unites with mount Parapamisus, which the Macedonians who served in Alexander's army called Caucasus, in order, as it is said, to enhance their king's glory; asserting that he went even beyond the Caucasus with his victorious arms. Perhaps it is a fact that this mountain range is a continuation of the other Caucasus in Scythia, as the Taurus is of the same. For this reason I have on a previous occasion called this range Caucasus, and by the same name I shall continue to call it in the future. This Caucasus extends as far as the Great Sea which lies in the direction of India and the east. Of the rivers in Asia worth consideration which take their rise from the Taurus and Caucasus, some have their -course turned towards the north, discharging themselves either into the lake Maeotis, or into the sea called Hyrcanian, which in reality is a gulf of the Great Sea. Others flow towards the south, namely, the Euphrates, Tigris, Indus, Hydaspes, Acesines, Hydraotes, Hyphasis, and all those that lie between these and the river Ganges. All these either discharge their water into the sea, or disappear by pouring themselves out into marshes, as the river Euphrates does.»

In these words Arrian affords us a very graphic description of the great continental mountain system, running from west to east and being a water-parting

I The Ancient Geography of India. London 1871, p. 76. 2 BUNBURY, op. cit. Vol. I. p. 496.