National Institute of Informatics - Digital Silk Road Project
Digital Archive of Toyo Bunko Rare Books

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 descriptions of Aornos, 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.¹
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 Choras-
mians. 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 even beyond the Caucasus with his vic-
torious 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 con-
sideration 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 them-
selves 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