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

ARTEMIDORUS described the Ganges as flowing from the Emodian mountains to-
wards the south till it reached a city which was also called Ganges.¹

STRABO wrote about 19 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, ONESI-
CRITUS 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 Mace-
donians 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 eastern-
most part, which ended at the coast of the eastern sea.³

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 Minor,
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