# Ancient India as described by Megasthenês and Arrian/Frag. LVI. B

Fragm. LVI. B.
Solin. 52. 6-17.
Catalogue of Indian Races.
The greatest rivers of India are the Ganges and Indus, and of these some assert that the Ganges rises from uncertain sources and inundates the country in the manner of the Nile, while others incline to think that it rises in the Scythian mountains. [The Hypanis is also there, a very noble river, which formed the limit of Alexander's march, as the altars erected on its banks prove.] ​The least breadth of the Ganges is eight miles, and its greatest twenty. Its depth where it is shallowest is fully a hundred feet. The people who live in the furthest-off part are the Gangarides, whose king possesses 1000 horse, 700 elephants, and 60,000 foot in apparatus of war.
Of the Indians some cultivate the soil, very many follow war, and others trade. The noblest and richest manage public affairs, administer justice, and sit in council with the kings. There exists also a fifth class, consisting of those most eminent for their wisdom, who, when sated with life, seek death by mounting a burning funeral pile. Those, however, who have become the devotees of a sterner sect, and pass their life in the woods, hunt elephants, which, when made quite tame and docile, they use for ploughing and for riding on.
In the Ganges there is an island extremely populous, occupied by a very powerful nation whose king keeps under arms 50,000 foot and 4000 horse. In fact no one invested with kingly power ever keeps on foot a military force without a very great number of elephants and foot and cavalry.
The Prasian nation, which is extremely powerful, inhabits a city called Palibôtra, whence some call the nation itself the Palibôtri. Their ​king keeps in his pay at all times 60,000 foot 30,000 horse, and 8000 elephants.
Beyond Palibôtra is Mount Maleus, on which shadows in winter fall towards the north, in summer towards the south, for six months alternately. In that region the Bears are seen but once a year, and not for more than fifteen days, as Beton informs us, who allows that this happens in many parts of India. Those living near the river Indus in the regions that turn southward are scorched more than others by the heat, and at last the complexion of the people is visibly affected by the great power of the sun. The mountains are inhabited by the Pygmies.
But those who live near the sea hane no kings.
The Pandæan nation is governed by females, and their first queen is said to have been the daughter of Hercules. The city Nysa is assigned to this region, as is also the mountain sacred to Jupiter, Mêros by name, in a cave on which the ancient Indians affirm Father Bacchus was nourished; while the name has given rise to the well-known fantastic story that Bacchus was born from the thigh of his father. Beyond the mouth of the Indus are two islands, Chryse and Argyre, which yield such an abundant supply of metals that many writers allege their soils consist of gold and of silver.
* ↑ See Arrian's Anab. V. 29, where we read that Alexander having arranged his troops in separate divisions ordered them to build on the banks of the Hyphasis twelve altars to be of equal height with the loftiest towers, while exceeding them in breadth. From Curtius we learn that they were formed of square blocks of stone. There has been much controversy regarding their site, but it must have been near the capital of Sopithês, whose name Lassen has identified with the Sanskṛit Aśvapati, 'lord of horses.' These Aśvapati were a line of princes whose territory, according to the 12th book of the Râmâyaṇa, lay on the right or north bank of the Vipâśa (Hyphasis or Biâs), in the mountainous part of the Doâb comprised between that river and the Upper Irâvati. Their capital is called in the poem of Vâlmiki Râjagṛiha, which still exists under the name of Râjagiri. At some distance from this there is a chain of heights called Sekandar-giri, or 'Alexander's mountain.'—See St.-Martin's E'tude, &c. pp. 108-111.
* ↑ Possibly, as suggested by Yule, Mount Pârśvanâtha, near the Damudâ, and not far from the Tropic; vide Ind. Ant. vol. VI. p. 127, note §, and conf. vol. I. p. 46ff. The Malli (see above), in whose country it was, are not to be confounded with another tribe of the same name in the PanjÂb, mentioned by Arrian; see vol. V. pp. 87, 96, 388.—Ed. Ind. Ant.