The Anabasis of Alexander/Book VI/Chapter I

by Arrian

Layout 2

BOOK VI.

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CHAPTER I.

Preparations for a Voyage down the Indus.

Alexander now resolved to sail down the Hydaspes to the Great Sea, after he had prepared on the banks of that river many thirty-oared galleys and others with one and a half bank of oars, as well as a number of vessels for conveying horses, and all the other things requisite for the easy conveyance of an army on a river. At first he thought he had discovered the origin of the Nile, when he saw crocodiles in the river Indus, which he had seen in no other river except the Nile,^[1] as well as beans growing near the banks of the Acesines of the same kind as those which the Egyptian land produces.^[2] This conjecture was confirmed 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.^[3] In like manner Homer made the river Egypt give its name to the country of Egypt.^[4] Accordingly when he wrote to Olympias about the country of India, after mentioning other things, he said that he thought he had discovered the sources of the Nile, forming his conclusions about things so great from such small and trivial premisses. However, when he had made a more careful inquiry into the facts relating to the river Indus, he learned the following details from the natives: — That the Hydaspes unites its water with the Acesines, as the latter does with the Indus, and that they both yield up their names to the Indus; that the last-named river has two mouths, through which it discharges itself into the Great Sea; but that it has no connection with the Egyptian country. He then removed from the letter to his mother the part he had written about the Nile.^[5] Planning a voyage down the rivers as far as the Great Sea, he ordered ships for this purpose to be prepared for him. The crews of his ships were fully supplied from the Phoenicians, Cyprians, Carians, and Egyptians who accompanied the army.

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1. Herodotus (iv. 44) says that the Indus is the only river besides the Nile which produces crocodiles. He does not seem to have known the Ganges.
2. This was the Nelumbium speciosum, the Egyptian bean of Pythagoras the Lotus of the Hindus, held sacred by them. It is cultivated and highly valued in China, where it is eaten. The seeds are the shape and size of acorns.
3. I.e. the Mediterranean.
4. See Arrian, v. 6 supra. The native name of Egypt was Chem (black). Compare Vergil (Georgic. iv. 291):— Viridem Aegyptum nigrâ, fecundat arenfâ. Usque ooloratis amnis devexus ab Indis.
5. This use of αμφί with the dative is instead of the Attic περί with the genitive or accusative.