Indian Antiquary Vol 05

SR No.: 032497
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Jas Burgess
Publisher: Swati Publications
Publication Year: 1984
Total Pages: 438
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 20 MB

Page 108

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THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY.
[MARCH, 1876.
other city, Peucelaitis, which is also of springs, along the course of that river and as great size and not far from the Indus. These far as the great ocean and the mouths of the settlements lie on the other side of the river Indus, this side of India will measure 13,000 Indus, and extend in a westward direction as far stadia. But the contrary side, which diverges as the Cophen.
from the same point of Taurus and runs along II. Now the countries which lie to the east the Eastern Sea, he makes of a much different of the Indus I take to be India Proper, and length, for there is a headland which projects the people who inhabit them to be Indians. far out into the sea, and this headland is in The northern boundaries of India so defined are length about 3,000 stadia. The eastern side of formed by Mount Taurus, though the range India would thus by his calculation measure does not retain that name in these parts. Taurus 16,000 stadia, and this is what he assigns as begins from the sea which washes the coasts the breadth of India. The length, again, from of Pamphylia, Lycia, and Cilicia, and stretches west to east as far as the city of Palimaway towards the Eastern Sea, intersecting the bothra he sets down, he says, as it had been whole continent of Asia. The range bears dif- measured by scheeni, since there existed a royal ferent names in the different countries which! highway, and he gives it as 10,000 stadia. But it traverses. In one place it is called Para- as for the parts beyond they were not measured pa misus, in another Emodus, and in a with equal accuracy. Those, however, who write third Imaus, and it has perhaps other names from mere hearsay allege that the breadth of besides. The Macedonians, again, who served India, inclusive of the headland which projects with Alexander called it Caucasus,--this into the sea, is about 10,000 stadia, while the being another Caucasus and distinct from the length measured from the coast is about 20,000 Scythian, so that the story went that Alexander stadia. But Ctesias of Cnidus says that penetrated to the regions beyond Caucasus. India equals in size all the rest of Asia, which is
On the west the boundaries of India are absurd ; while Onesicritus as absurdly demarked by the river Indus all the way to the clares that it is the third part of tbe whole great ocean into which it pours its waters, which earth. Nearchus, again, says that it takes it does by two mouths. These mouths are not a journey of four months to traverse even the close to each other, like the five mouths of the plain of India; while Megasthenes, who Danube, but diverge like those of the Nile, calls the breadth of India its extent from east by which the Egyptian delta is formed. And so to west, which others call its length, says that in like manner does the Indus make an Indian where shortest the breadth is 16,000 stadia, delta, which is not inferior in area to the Egyp- and that its length-by which he means its extian, and is called in the Indian tongue Pattala. tent from north to south-is, where narrowest,
On the south-west, again, and on the south, 22,300 stadia. But, whatever be its dimensions, India is bounded by the great océan just men- the rivers of India are certainly the largest to tioned, which also forms its boundary on the be found in all Asia. The mightiest are the east. The parts toward the south about Pat- Ganges, and the Indus from which the tala and the river Indus were seen by Alexander country receives its name. Both are greater and many of the Greeks, but in an eastern than the Egyptian Nile and the Scythian Dadirection Alexander did not penetrate beyond nube even if their streams were united into the river Hyphasis, though a few authors one. I think, too, that even the Acesines have described the country as far as the river is greater than either the Danube or the Nile Ganges and the parts near its mouths and the where it joins the Indus after receiving its tricity of Palim both ra, which is the greatest bataries the Hydaspes and the Hydraotes, in India, and situated near the Ganges.
since it is at that point so much as 300 stadia III. I shall now state the dimensions of India, in breadth. It is also possible that there are and in doing so let me follow Eratosthenes even many other larger rivers which take their of Cyrene as the safest authority, for this Era- course through India. tosthenes applied himself to descriptive geogra- IV. But I am unable to give with assurphy. He states, then, that if a line be drawn ance of being accurate any information regardfrom Mount Taurus, where the Indus has its ing the regions beyond the Hyphasis, since