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Digital Archive of Toyo Bunko Rare Books

Arrian tells us that he has preferred to note only such things as describe In-
dia as it really is. In Book V Chap. IV he also says: »The following are state-
ments 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, 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.»¹

It is always the same story about the source of the Indus: Fontes ejus ex
Parapamiso vel Caucaso monte oriuntur! Or: »Is (Eratosthenes) a monte Tauro,
ubi Indi fontes sunt, secus Indum amnem usque ad magnum oceanum et Indi ostia
Indiæ latus stadia XIII M continere ait . . .» (Indica, Cap. III).

In Chapter III of his *Indica*, Arrian says: »In the whole of the rest of Asia
there are not so many rivers as in India. The largest are the Ganges and the In-
dus, from the latter of which the country takes its name. Both of these are
larger than the Egyptian Nile and the Scythian Ister, even if their waters came
together into one.» And in Chapter IV: »Of the two largest rivers themselves, the
Ganges and the Indus, Megasthenes has stated that the former excels much in
size; and so say all other writers who mention it. He says that it rises great from
its sources. . . .» — »nam et grandem jam inde ab ipsis fontibus oriri.»

Arrian reports Alexander to have said in one of his speeches: »But if anyone
desires to hear what will be the end to our warfare itself, let him learn that the
distance still remaining before we reach the river Ganges and the Eastern Sea is
not great . . .» Book V. Chapt. XXVI. To judge from this the Macedonians must
have believed that they were not far from the eastern end of the Asiatic continent.

But the most curious piece of hydrography is the following, which throws a
bright light over Alexander as an explorer in great style:² »At first he thought
he had discovered the origin of the Nile (Nili se caput reperisse arbitrabatur),
when he saw crocodiles in the river Indus, which he had seen in no other river ex-
cept the Nile, as well as beans³ growing near the banks of the Acesines of the
same kind as those which the Egyptian land produces. This conjecture was con-
firmed when he heard that the Acesines falls into the Indus. He thought the Nile
rises somewhere or other in India, and after flowing through an extensive tract of
desert country loses the name of Indus there; but afterwards when it begins to
flow again through the inhabited land, it is called Nile both by the Aethiopians of
that district and by the Egyptians, and finally empties itself into the Inner Sea (the
Mediterranean). In like manner Homer made the river Egypt give its name to the
country of Egypt. Accordingly when he wrote to Olympias about the country of