by William Woodthorpe Tarn
The Journal of Hellenic Studies
The Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies
Volume XLIII, p. 93
1923
Maurya ... it seems that Chandragupta went by that name, particularly in the west; for he is known to Arabian writers by the name of Mur, according to the Nubian geographer, who says that he was defeated and killed by Alexander; for these authors supposed that this conqueror crossed the Ganges; and it is also the opinion of some ancient historians in the west.
-- Essay III. Of the Kings of Magadha; their Chronology, by Captain Wilford, Asiatic Researches, Volume 9, 1809. pgs. 94-100.
Highlights:
When Alexander turned back at the Hyphasis (Beas), how much did he know about what lay before him? And why, in the vulgate tradition, does he know of the distant Ganges and the distant kingdom of Magadha, but not of the next great river to the Beas, the Sutlej (a question often asked), or of anything else between the Beas and the Ganges?...
We possess one contemporary document bearing on the matter which has escaped notice, a satrapy-list or gazetteer of ‘Asia,' i.e. Alexander's empire, [‘Asia’ or ’all Asia’ means, in the later part of the fourth century, the Persian Empire which Alexander claimed to rule...]... We can date this document with certainty. It includes the Indian provinces, and so is later than Alexander's return from India. The ‘Hyrcanian sea’ (not Caspian) is still a lake, so it is earlier than Patrocles. Chandragupta is unknown, so it is certainly earlier than Megasthenes and probably earlier than circ. 302. Porus is still alive, so it is earlier than 317. Susiana ‘happens to be' part of Persis, i.e. it was under the same satrap, which can only have happened at one point in the story: the satrap is Peucestas... Media is still undivided; so the document is earlier than the partition of Babylon in 323, when Media was divided between Peithon and Atropates. Lastly, Armenia still appears as a satrapy of the empire, whereas the fiction of an Armenian satrapy was abandoned at the partition of Babylon, and this is decisive. The gazetteer then dates between spring 324 and June-July 323...
It begins in 18, 6. 1 on the southern provinces, working from east to west; India therefore comes first. What it says about India, in Diodorus’ version, is this: India lies along the Caucasus, and is a large kingdom of several peoples, the greatest of them being the Tyndaridae (or Gandaridae), whom Alexander did not attack because of their elephants. A river, the greatest in that district, 30 stades broad, divides this country from the India that comes next, i.e. further westward. Bordering on this country is the rest of India which Alexander conquered, through the middle of which runs the Indus... Note especially that the gazetteer, like the sources used by Arrian in his narrative, does not mention the two names which play such a part in the vulgate tradition, the Ganges and the Prasii: and, looking at what the gazetteer does say about India, this shows conclusively that neither was known to its author, that is, to those about Alexander in 324/3. Alexander then can have known nothing of the Ganges or of Magadha, but it remains to see how the vulgate tradition arose...
The first Greek to visit and describe the Ganges and the Prasii was Megasthenes...The Prasii are his name for Magadha, as is shown by Pataliputra being their capital...Magadha in actual fact lay on this side of (i.e. south and west of) the Ganges, and its empire (before Chandragupta) lay further west still...
Cleitarchus, who fixed the vulgate tradition about Alexander, did not accompany Alexander to Asia and was not with him in India; he was not one of the contemporary historians of the expedition, and is not a primary source, but was a literary compiler belonging to a later generation. It is certain now that he cannot have written earlier than the decade 280-270; and there are grounds, though not conclusive grounds, for putting his book even later, after 260....The points proven are that Cleitarchus used Berossos, Patrocles, and Timaeus, and had never himself seen Babylon...he wrote much later than Megasthenes....
in the vulgate, Alexander, when he reaches the Beas, hears of the Ganges and the Prasii, whom he desires to conquer; the story is given by both Diodorus and Curtius, and is our only professed account of what he knew when he turned back, though the good tradition, as we shall see, has a very different account of what the army believed....Diodorus, Book 17, primarily represents Cleitarchus... Diodorus and Curtius agree here, among other things, in one most extraordinary perversion, which therefore goes back to Cleitarchus also, and which is the key of the whole matter; the Prasii are beyond the Ganges. This strange mistake also occurs in Plut. Alex. 62, where the Prasii hold the further bank...
Cleitarchus must have had before him, among the other documents which we know he used, the two we have here noticed, the gazetteer of 324/3, and Megasthenes.... In the first he found an unnamed river, called the greatest in the district, and a named kingdom beyond it. In the second he found the greatest river in India, the Ganges, and a kingdom whose capital stood on its bank, though in fact the kingdom stretched out westward. Like Fischer in his edition of Diodorus, he identified the two rivers and called the unnamed river the Ganges; and the kingdom of the Tyndaridae or Gandaridae, beyond the unnamed river, he then naturally identified with that of the Prasii, which he then necessarily placed beyond the Ganges; hence in the Cleitarchean vulgate this kingdom regularly appears as ‘the Gandaridae (or Gangaridae) and Prasii.' Starting from this identification, he then wrote up Alexander in his usual fashion, not knowing that he had left out most of Northern India....he was a very bad geographer in any case, and the man who could confuse two such well-known rivers as the Hydaspes and the Acesines would have had no difficulty in confusing the unnamed river and the Ganges....
Fortunately he left untouched an easy means of checking his mistake: the breadths of the rivers. The unnamed river of the gazetteer is 30 stades broad. Megasthenes' Ganges is not less than 100 stades broad.... The breadth alone then is sufficient proof that the ‘Ganges’ of Cleitarchus-Diodorus is only the unnamed river of the gazetteer....
On the other hand, Diod. 17, 108, 3 — the Macedonians refuse to cross the Ganges — has nothing directly to do with this identification: it is a reference, not part of the narrative, and is therefore not Cleitarchus; it belongs to a later legend...As 2, 37, 2 represents the gazetteer, it is interesting to note that it gives one detail not given in 18, 6, 1: the river in question, the unnamed river, runs from north to south. It was well enough known since Megasthenes that all the middle Ganges, above Pataliputra, ran roughly west and east....
Before leaving Cleitarchus, one other point may be noticed. His story about the Ganges and the Prasii is told to Alexander by a rajah on the Beas named Phegeus, who begins by saying that across the river is a desert of eleven (Curtius) or twelve (Diodorus) days’ journey. No Indian living on the upper Beas could have said this. If Phegeus, who is unknown to the good tradition, ever existed, he lived much further south, near the Rajputana desert; but he may be as mythical as some other characters in the vulgate. That Cleitarchus put his Ganges story in the mouth of a man who begins by placing the great desert on the east bank of the upper Beas is itself a good test of what that story is worth...
The statement that Alexander turned back from fear of the elephants is a late legend inserted by Diodorus himself...
Strictly construed, the gazetteer imports that Alexander claimed India up to the Sutlej; and it is possible enough that he did. Across the Beas, says Arr. 5, 25, 1, was a people aristocratically governed (i.e. an Aratta people) with many elephants. [Amplified in Strabo, 15, 702: a ruling oligarchy of 5000, each of whom gave an elephant to the State!] This can hardly go back to the Journal, from its form; probably it is Aristobulas repeating camp gossip, for the Aratta known to us had no elephants... we get some support for the suggestion that the rule of Darius I. had ended at the Beas, where Alexander's men refused to go on...
The conclusion then is that Alexander, when he turned back, knew of the Sutlej, and vaguely of some kingdom beyond it, with which the name Gandaridae or Tyndaridae was connected. He never knew of the Ganges or of Magadha, any more than he ever knew of the vast Middle Country between the Sutlej and the Ganges. What he did know was not of a nature to shake his conviction, based primarily on the Aristotelian geography, that Ocean lay at quite a short distance in front of him, as is proved by his desire still to advance in spite of the great reduction in his small striking force by troops left on communications... The story that he knew of the Ganges and Magadha, which is unknown to the good tradition, has been written into the vulgate from Megasthenes through a mistake which I have traced; and by means of this story the vulgate has attributed to Alexander a scheme of conquest [The vulgate's idea that Alexander meant to cross the Ganges, involving a conflict with Magadha, would almost arise naturally from its substitution of the Ganges for the Sutlej] which has no basis in fact, because he knew nothing of the existence of the place whose conquest was the object of the scheme. The legend of the plan to conquer Magadha, however, matured much faster than the parallel legend of the plan to conquer Carthage and the Mediterranean, whose growth I have previously traced; for while the latter was not actually accomplished till the Romance, Alexander conquered Magadha long before that. The first step was that someone forged a letter from Craterus to his mother (Strabo 15, 702) in which Alexander reaches the Ganges. Then follow two stories; in the one, preserved by Diodorus, 2, 37, 3, Alexander reaches the Ganges but dare not attack the Gandaridae (sic) because of their 4000 elephants; in the other, given in Plut. Alex. 62 and alluded to in Diodorus 17, 108, 3, he reaches the Ganges and desires to cross, but the army refuses. (As in Plutarch the ‘Gandaritae and Prasii hold the further bank, which represents the blunder made by Cleitarchus which this paper has been tracing, we have here an excellent instance of later legend springing from the Cleitarchean vulgate; it is illuminating for Plutarch's indiscriminate use of material.) Finally, in Justin 12, 8, 9, Alexander does conquer Magadha: Praesios, Gangaridas, caesis eorum exercitibus expugnat. The statement in Diodorus' version of the gazetteer, 18, 6, 1, that Alexander did not attack the Gandaridae because of their elephants, is then a mere remark of Diodorus' own, quoted from his own version of the legend in 2, 37, 3. Like many legends, it possesses a minute substratum of fact; the report about the elephants across the Beas. Arr. 5, 25, 1, was one of the causes which decided Alexander's army to go no further.
-- Alexander and the Ganges, by William Woodthorpe Tarn
When Alexander turned back at the Hyphasis (Beas), how much did he know about what lay before him? And why, in the vulgate tradition, does he know of the distant Ganges and the distant kingdom of Magadha, but not of the next great river to the Beas, the Sutlej (a question often asked), or of anything else between the Beas and the Ganges? The answer is not difficult, once the elements of our tradition are sorted out chronologically; that, as in so many questions, is the real problem.
We possess one contemporary document bearing on the matter which has escaped notice, a satrapy-list or gazetteer of ‘Asia,' i.e. Alexander's empire,2 [‘Asia’ or ’all Asia’ means, in the later part of the fourth century, the Persian Empire which Alexander claimed to rule; so used both by Alexander himself (Arr. 2, 14, 8, in 333; Lindian Chron. c. 103. in 330; and Nearchus ap. Arr. Ind. 35, 8, in 32.5) and in common parlance (e.g. Syll.3 326, in 307 '6).] dating from the last year of his life; very possibly Hieronymus used it by way of introduction to his history of the Successors, and it now forms the basis of Diodorus 18, 5 and 6.3 [I called attention briefly to this document in J.H.S. 1921, p. 8, n. 36a. As to Hieronymus, see Reuss’ acute suggestion, Rh. Mus, 57, 1902, p. 586, n. 1. If so, Diodorus got it from Hieronymus.] We can date this document with certainty. It includes the Indian provinces, and so is later than Alexander's return from India. The ‘Hyrcanian sea’ (not Caspian) is still a lake, so it is earlier than Patrocles. Chandragupta is unknown, so it is certainly earlier than Megasthenes and probably earlier than circ. 302. Porus is still alive, so it is earlier than 317. Susiana ‘happens to be' part of Persis.4 [18, 6, 3; Persis [x].] i.e. it was under the same satrap, which can only have happened at one point in the story: the satrap is Peucestas,5 [Dexippus fr. 1 (on the partition of Babylon), with von Gutschmid's emendation of [x]; Sogdiana has already been mentioned, so the corruption is certain, and the emendation is certain also on geographical grounds, the order being Carmania, Persis [x], Babylonia, Mesopotamia. What Dexippos says is this: — as to the Susians, after death overtook 'Oropios’ (name admittedly corrupt) for rebellion, 'then he had the authority over them jointly with‘ something, [x]. The subject of [x], whether [x] has fallen out before [x] or not, is the person last mentioned before 'Oropios,’ i.e. Peucestas, satrap of Persis; and [x] means ‘as well as over Persis.' The fact that, at the time of the partition of Babylon, Susiana was reckoned part of Persis explains the omission of Susiana from all our lists (except Justin’s) of the satrapies dealt with at that partition, the lists being otherwise complete (see the table of lists in Beloch 3. 2. 240). Justin 13, 4, 14 does give gens Susiana Coeno, but 'Coeno' is merely a corruption of [x] and not vice versa, as Beloch, 3, 2, 242 curiously suggested (repeated by Lehmann-Haupt. art. Satrap in Pauly- Wissowa): Coenus was dead (Arr. 6. 2, 1), and no one else of the name is known, and one cannot suppose that Coenus left a younger son of the same name who became a satrap and is never otherwise heard of, seeing that his heir Perdiccas (Syll.3 332), i.e. his eldest or only son, never held any office. Justin's version of the list contains other blunders, and Droysen (Kl. Schr. 2 201) saw long ago that Coeno must be corrupt, though he did not see the solution.] and the date must therefore be before the partition of Triparadeisos in 321, when Susiana was given to Antigenes. The Hyrcanian sea ‘happens to be embraced by‘ Parthia;6 [8, 5, 4. [x]. Fischer's addition of [x] in his text is as indefensible as his insertion of [x] in 18, 6, 2.] that is, Parthia and Hyrcania are still one satrapy, as they were under Phrataphernes, an arrangement which terminated in 321, when Philippus received Parthia alone. Media is still undivided; so the document is earlier than the partition of Babylon in 323, when Media was divided between Peithon and Atropates. Lastly, Armenia still appears as a satrapy of the empire, whereas the fiction of an Armenian satrapy was abandoned at the partition of Babylon,7 [Details collected in Beloch 3. 2. 245.] and this is decisive. The gazetteer then dates between spring 324 and June-July 323. It may or may not be official.
This document divides the empire into north and south of the Taurus-'Caucasus‘ line.8 [Eratosthenes took his similar division from this document, and not vice versa; apart from the date, which is certain, it contains no trace of the real characteristic of his geographical scheme, the [x].] After dealing with the northern provinces, it begins in 18, 6. 1 on the southern provinces, working from east to west; India therefore comes first. What it says about India, in Diodorus’ version, is this: India lies along ([x]) the Caucasus, and is a large kingdom of several peoples, the greatest of them being the Tyndaridae (or Gandaridae), whom Alexander did not attack because of their elephants. A river, the greatest in that district ([x]), 30 stades broad, divides ([x]) this country ([x]) — I think this means the India already described, but it might mean the Tyndaridae — from the India that comes next, i.e. further westward ([x]). Bordering on this country ([x]) — i.e. either on the India already described or on the Tyndaridae — is the rest of India which Alexander conquered ([x] above), through the middle of which runs the Indus. That is to say, Alexander's conquests are divided from the rest of India by an unnamed river: independent India beyond this river is a single kingdom, associated with a name. Note especially that the gazetteer, like the sources used by Arrian in his narrative, does not mention the two names which play such a part in the vulgate tradition, the Ganges and the Prasii: and, looking at what the gazetteer does say about India, this shows conclusively that neither was known to its author, that is, to those about Alexander in 324/3. Alexander then can have known nothing of the Ganges or of Magadha; but it remains to see how the vulgate tradition arose.
The first Greek to visit and describe the Ganges and the Prasii was Megasthenes, who left India for the last time not later than Chandragupta's death, circ. 297, and must have written at latest soon after that date, while he may have written earlier. The Prasii are his name for Magadha, as is shown by Pataliputra being their capital.9 [Strabo, 15, 702; Arr. Ind. 10, 5; both explicitly from Megasthenes.] Magadha in actual fact lay on this side of (i.e. south and west of) the Ganges, and its empire (before Chandragupta) lay further west still, occupying part of the vast district of Northern India known as the Middle Country.10 [See Cambridge History of India. Vol. I. (1922), Map no. 5.]
1. The Greek scholars recorded the names of kings of India as Xandrames, and Sandrocottus. Western historians deliberately identified these names with those of Mahapadmananda or Dhanananda and Chandragupta Maurya. Xandrames was said to be the father of Sandrocottus. According to John W. McCrindle, Diodorus distorted the name "Sandrocottus" into Xandrames and this again is distorted by Curtius into Agrammes. It is totally absurd to link Xandrames with Mahapadmananda and Sandrocottus with Chandragupta Maurya. Most probably, Greeks called Chandra (Chandragupta) as Xandrames and Samudragupta as Sandrocottus. Moreover, the description given by the Greek scholars about Sandrocottus his father Xandrames are quite inapplicable to Chandragupta Maurya and could only apply to Samudragupta too. According to Greeks, Xandrames was the king of Gangaridai and Prasii whereas Dhanananda was the ruler of entire Northwest, central and eastern India. It is also said that Sandrocottus (Samudragupta) killed his father Xandrames (Chandragupta). This fact has been wilfully ignored by the biased western historians and their followers.
2. All Greek writers mentioned that Sandrocottus, the king of Prasii, whose capital was Palibothra i.e. Pataliputra. Megasthenes, Deimachos and other Greek ambassadors of Seleucus Nikator were sent in the court of Samudragupta and Chandragupta II at Palibothra. Pataliputra became the capital of Magadha Empire only during the reign of Chandragupta I around 335 BCE. According to Puranas, Girivraja or Rajagriha (Rajgir) was the capital city of Magadha during the reign of Nandas and Mauryas. Thus, Pataliputra was not the capital city of Chandragupta Maurya. From 3rd century BCE onwards, the city of Pataliputra became famous as the capital of Magadha....
3. According to Megasthenes, Sakas or Scythians were living in the northern side of India. "India, which is in shape quadrilateral, has its eastern as well as its western side bounded by the great sea, but on the northern side it is divided by Mount Hemodos from that part of Scythia which is inhabited by those Scythians who are called the OEakai, while the fourth or western side is bounded by the river called the Indus, which is perhaps the largest of all rivers in the world after the Nile." Many other Greek scholars also wrote about Scythians. Thus, it seems that Northern Saka Ksatrapas were ruling in the North-western frontier region during the time of Megasthenes. It is well known that Saka Ksatrapas were contemporaries of Guptas not Mauryas. Asoka inscriptions mention about only Yavana kings named Antikina, Alikasundara, Maga, Turamaya and Gongakena (not Greeks but indigenous Yavana kings of Afghanistan and Northern Pakistan) ruling in the western frontier regions. Western historians speculated about these kings to be Antiochus Theos II of Syria, Alexander of Epirus, Magas of Cyrene, Ptolemy II Philadelphos of Egypt and Antigonus Gonatus of Macedonia. These baseless speculations are simply based on the resemblance of names without any direct or indirect evidence. The references of Yavana kings in Asoka inscriptions indicate that Yavanas were the rulers in the western frontier regions not Sakas. There is no reference of Saka Ksatrapas in the entire account of Mauryan history. Therefore, Sandrocottus can only be Samudragupta who was the contemporary of Saka Ksatrapas not Chandragupta Maurya.
4. Seleucus Nikator also sent Deimachos on an embassy to Allitrocades or Amitrocades, the son of Sandrocottus. Western historians identified Allitrocades or Amitrocades to be Bindusara, the son of Chandragupta and concocted that Bindusara was also known as "Amitraghata". None of the Indian sources ever referred Bindusara as Amitraghata. Western historians deliberately created the word "Amitraghata" with some sort of resemblance. According to Puranas, Samudragupta was also known as "Asokaditya" and Chandragupta II was also known as "Vikramaditya". Probably, Allitrocades or Amitrocades referred to "Vikramaditya", the son of Sandrocottus (Samudragupta).
5. Megasthenes described the system of city administration of Pataliputra but there is no similarity between the system described by Megasthenes and the system of city administration given in Kautilya Arthasastra. Megasthenes also stated that there was no slavery in India but Kautilya Arthasastra's Chapter 65 named "Dasakalpa" is solely devoted to the status of slaves among the Aryans and the Mlecchas. Probably, the slavery system that existed during Mauryan era has gradually declined by Gupta era. Thus, Megasthenes cannot be contemporary to Chandragupta Maurya.
6. Megasthenes not only often visited Palibothra but also stayed in the court of Sandrocottus for a few years. But he did not even mention about Kautilya or Chanakya who was the real kingmaker and also the patron of Chandragupta. No Greek scholar ever mentioned about Kautilya. Therefore, Megasthenes cannot be the contemporary to Chandragupta Maurya.
7. Greek scholars often mentioned that Sandrocottus was the king of the country called as Prasii (Prachi or Prachya). Pracha or Prachi means eastern country. During the Nanda and Mauryan era, Magadha kings were ruling almost entire India. Mauryan Empire was never referred in Indian sources as only Prachya desa or eastern country. Prachya desa was generally referred to Gupta Empire because Northern Saka Ksatrapas and Western Saka Ksatrapas were well established in North and West India. Megasthenes mentioned that Sandrocottus is the greatest king of the Indians and Poros is still greater than Sandrocottus which means a kingdom in the North-western region is still independent and enjoying at least equal status with the kingdom of Sandrocottus. Chandragupta Maurya and his successors were the most powerful kings of India. It was impossible for any other Indian king to enjoy equal status with Mauryan kings because Mauryans inherited a strongest and vast empire from Nandas. Therefore, Sandrocottus, the king of Prasii can only be Samudragupta not Chandragupta Maurya.
8. The Greek historian Plutarch mentioned that Androkottus (Sandrocottus) marched over the whole of India with an army of 600 thousand men. Chandragupta Maurya defeated Nandas under the leadership of Chanakya. There was no need for him to go on such expedition to conquer the whole of India because he has already inherited the Magadha kingdom of Nandas covering entire India. Actually, it was Samudragupta who overran the whole of India as details given in Allahabad pillar inscription.
9. According to Greek historians like Justinus, Appianus etc., Seleukos made friendship with Sandrocottus and entered into relations of marriage with him. Allahabad pillar inscription tells us that Samudragupta was offered their daughters in marriage (Kanyopayanadana ... ) by the kings in the North-west region. There is nothing in Indian sources to prove this fact with reference to Chandragupta Maurya.
10. The Jain work "Harivamsa" written by Jinasena gives the names of dynasties and kings and the duration of their rule after the nirvana of Mahavira. Jinasena mentions nothing about Mauryas but he tells us that Gupta kings ruled for 231 years. Western historians fixed the date of Mahavira-nirvana in 527 BCE which means Mauryas ruled after Mahavira-nirvana but Jaina Puranas and Jaina Pattavalis had no knowledge of Mauryas after Mahavira-nirvana. Thus, Mauryas ruled prior to Mahavira-nirvana. Therefore, Sandrocottus can only be identified with Samudragupta.
11. If Sandrocottus was indeed Chandragupta Maurya, why do none of the Greek sources mentioned about Asoka, the most illustrious and greatest of Mauryan kings? It is evident that Greek sources had no knowledge of Asoka. Therefore, the ancient Greeks were contemporaries to Gupta kings not Mauryas.
-- Who was Sandrocottus: Samudragupta or Chandragupta Maurya? The Chronology of Ancient India, Victim of Concoctions and Distortions, by Vedveer Arya
Now Cleitarchus, who fixed the vulgate tradition about Alexander, did not accompany Alexander to Asia and was not with him in India; he was not one of the contemporary historians of the expedition, and is not a primary source, but was a literary compiler belonging to a later generation. It is certain now that he cannot have written earlier than the decade 280-270; and there are grounds, though not conclusive grounds, for putting his book even later, after 260.11 [ F. Reuss. Rh. Mus. 57 (1902), 581 and 63 (1909) 58: P. Schnabel, Berossos und Kleitarchos, 1912. Cf. Th. Lenschau, Berucht uber grich. Geschichte, 1907-1914. p. 191, in Bursian's Jahresbericht, 1919; R. V. Pohlmann, Griech, Gesch.5 1914, p. 287, (in Muller's Handbuch): C. F. Lehmann-Haupt, Klio, 15, 1918, 255, n. 3. I do not agree with Reuss and Schnabel on all their points; but I regard their main position, that Cleitarchus was not a primary source, as conclusively established. (The latest exposition of the traditional view that Cleitarchus was a contemporary and companion of Alexander is F. Jacoby's article Kleitarchos in Pauly-Wissowa, 1921 (very full); a careful perusal will show that there is no single one among the suppositions urged in support of the traditional view that is a valid or compelling argument.) The points proven are that Cleitarchus used Berossos, Patrocles, and Timaeus, and had never himself seen Babylon; add perhaps that he used the name Galatai, unknown before 279. Make every deduction you please: say that he might have used Timaeus' chronology before Timaeus had finished his history (though we do not know that it was published in sections), that [x] in Diod. 17, 113, 2 may be a later addition (which I myself find incredible), and that the argument from the first official use of the name Soter in Egypt (on which and on Timaeus Niese's date of ’after 260’ depends) is uncertain: there still remains three things that cannot be explained away: two of these are Berossos and Babylon, and the third is that a named fragment of Cleitarchus (Pliny. N.H. 6. 36) quotes a named fragment of Patrocles (Strabo 11, 508, and that on a matter (the size of the Caspian) as to which no writer before Patrocles could even have attempted a guess.] But in any case, and this is what matters here, he wrote much later than Megasthenes.
The Beas River (Sanskrit: Vipāśā; Hyphasis in Ancient Greek) is a river in north India. The river rises in the Himalayas in central Himachal Pradesh, India, and flows for some 470 kilometres (290 mi) to the Sutlej River in the Indian state of Punjab. Its total length is 470 kilometres (290 mi) and its drainage basin is 20,303 square kilometres (7,839 sq mi) large.
-- Beas River [Hyphasis], by Wikipedia
Now in the vulgate, Alexander, when he reaches the Beas, hears of the Ganges and the Prasii, whom he desires to conquer; the story is given by both Diodorus and Curtius, and is our only professed account of what he knew when he turned back, though the good tradition, as we shall see, has a very different account of what the army believed. The sections of Diodorus (17. 93. 1-3 inclusive) and Curtius (9. 1. 36-2. 7 inclusive) which are material here agree so very closely that their derivation from a common original is certain; and as it is equally certain that Diodorus, Book 17, primarily represents Cleitarchus, that common original can only be Cleitarchus; no one, I think, now doubts this. But Diodorus and Curtius agree here, among other things, in one most extraordinary perversion, which therefore goes back to Cleitarchus also, and which is the key of the whole matter; the Prasii are beyond the Ganges.12 [[x] (Diod.); ulteriorem ripaim colere (Curt.).] This strange mistake also occurs in Plut. Alex. 62 (see post), where the Prasii hold the further bank.
What led Cleitarchus to displace Megasthenes' Prasii in this way, and put them beyond the Ganges? There can only be one explanation. Cleitarchus must have had before him, among the other documents which we know he used, the two we have here noticed, the gazetteer of 324/3, and Megasthenes. (He need not necessarily have used the gazetteer directly.) In the first he found an unnamed river, called the greatest in the district, and a named kingdom beyond it. In the second he found the greatest river in India, the Ganges, and a kingdom whose capital stood on its bank, though in fact the kingdom stretched out westward. Like Fischer in his edition of Diodorus, he identified the two rivers and called the unnamed river the Ganges (see post on Diod. 2. 37, 1); and the kingdom of the Tyndaridae or Gandaridae, beyond the unnamed river, he then naturally identified with that of the Prasii, which he then necessarily placed beyond the Ganges; hence in the Cleitarchean vulgate this kingdom regularly appears as ‘the Gandaridae (or Gangaridae) and Prasii.'13 [Diod. 17, 93, 2; Curt. 9. 2, 3; Just. 12, 8. 9; Plut. Alex. 62.] Starting from this identification, he then wrote up Alexander in his usual fashion, not knowing that he had left out most of Northern India. Whether the mistake was an honest muddle, or a deliberate attempt at panegyric [a public speech or published text in praise of someone or something], is immaterial; probably the former, for he was a very bad geographer in any case, and the man who could confuse two such well-known rivers as the Hydaspes and the Acesines would have had no difficulty in confusing the unnamed river and the Ganges.14 [On the confusion of Hydaspes and Acesines cf. Diod. 17, 89, 4 with 95. 3 (see Arr. 6, 1, 1). On Cleitarchus as a geographer see Jacoby op. cit., who gives instances.]
The Jhelum River is a river that flows from the Indian union territory of Jammu and Kashmir, through the Pakistani-administered territory of Azad Kashmir, and into Pakistani Punjab. It is the westernmost of the five rivers of the Punjab region, and passes through the Kashmir Valley. It is a tributary of the Chenab River and has a total length of about 725 kilometres (450 mi).
-- Jhelum River [Hydaspes], by Wikipedia
Fortunately he left untouched an easy means of checking his mistake: the breadths of the rivers. (I refer, of course, to the conventional breadths.) The unnamed river of the gazetteer is 30 stades broad. Megasthenes' Ganges is not less than 100 stades broad.15 [Arr. Ind 4. 7; Strabo, 15, 702, [x]. (Both Megasthenes.)] But the ‘Ganges’ in Diodorus is 30 stades broad (2. 37. 2) or 32 stades (17. 93. 2): 32 also in Plut. Alex. 62. from the same source ultimately as Diod. 17. 93. That 32 is merely an (old) error for 30 is certain: partly because it is 30 in Diod. 2. 37. 2: partly because Strabo 15. 702. after giving Megasthenes’ figure, adds that some called it 30, and we know of nothing to which this can refer except Diodorus' source (Cleitarchus):16 [The other figures we have all give a very different breadth from 30 stades. Mela 3, 68, 10, ten Roman miles (= 100 stades); Pliny. N. H. 6, 65, on a moderate estimate 100 stades, on the lowest 7 miles (= 70 stades); Solinus 52, 7, minimum 80 stades, maximum 200; Aelian, [x] 12, 41, minimum 80, maximum 400. Mela and Pliny of course reproduce the 100 of Megasthenes; I do not know what the other figures represent.] partly because these big rivers were naturally always given in round figures.17 [E.g. the Indus: Ctes, ap. Arr. 5. 4. 2. 100 stades to 40; Strabo, 15, 700, either 100 or 50; Arr. 6. 14, 5, perhaps 100 at Patala; Pliny. N.H. 6. 71, fifty. For the Ganges see n. 16.] (I have only found one other case of a river in India 30 stades broad: Arr. Ind. 3. 10 suggests that the Acesines (Chenab), after receiving the other rivers, is 30 stades broad when it joins the Indus: but obviously the Chenab is not the unnamed river of the gazetteer.) The breadth alone then is sufficient proof that the ‘Ganges’ of Cleitarchus-Diodorus is only the unnamed river of the gazetteer.
And in fact we can probably trace the actual process of identifying this river with the Ganges. In 2, 37, 2 Diodorus gives by anticipation18 [Such anticipations are common enough in Diodorus; e.g. 17, 23. 2 (Agathocles), 17, 57, 2 (the Argyraspids); 18, 4, 1 compared with 18, 12, 1; 18, 4, 8 compared with 18, 7. 1 seq.] a bit of his own version of the gazetteer which he was to give in its place in 18, 6, 1: — a river 30 stades broad, with the Gandaridae (not Prasii) to the east of it; but in 2, 37, 1 he calls this 30-stade river the Ganges, just as Cleitarchus does in 17, 93, 2; this shows that 2, 37, 1 is from Cleitarchus also, and it seems that here we have reproduced the actual identification by Cleitarchus.19 [This identification is clearly seen again in the late rhetorical composition which figured as Alexander’s speech at the Beas; Arr. 5, 26, [x], so markedly inconsistent with what follows in 5, 26, 3, — between the Beas and the eastern sea are many war-like nations. On the other hand, Diod. 17, 108, 3 — the Macedonians refuse to cross the Ganges — has nothing directly to do with this identification: it is a reference, not part of the narrative, and is therefore not Cleitarchus; it belongs to a later legend, see post. — That Diodorus did use Cleitarchus in Book 2 is shown by the reference to him in 2, 7, 3.] As 2, 37, 2 represents the gazetteer, it is interesting to note that it gives one detail not given in 18, 6, 1: the river in question, the unnamed river, runs from north to south. It was well enough known since Megasthenes that all the middle Ganges, above Pataliputra, ran roughly west and east;20 [Strabo 13, 690 and 719. It is to be remembered that, for a long period subsequent to Megasthenes, the Ganges to Greeks meant primarily the Ganges at Pataliputra (Patna).] the remark should therefore be older than Megasthenes, and probably belongs to the original gazetteer.
The Ganges River
Before leaving Cleitarchus, one other point may be noticed. His story about the Ganges and the Prasii is told to Alexander by a rajah on the Beas named Phegeus, who begins by saying that across the river is a desert of eleven (Curtius) or twelve (Diodorus) days’ journey. No Indian living on the upper Beas could have said this. If Phegeus, who is unknown to the good tradition, ever existed, he lived much further south, near the Rajputana desert; but he may be as mythical as some other characters in the vulgate.21 [For example, the eunuch Bagoas, who was merely part of the revenge which the Peripatetics took on Alexander for Callisthenes’ death; see Dicaearchus. fr. 19 - Athen. 13, 603 b.] That Cleitarchus put his Ganges story in the mouth of a man who begins by placing the great desert on the east bank of the upper Beas is itself a good test of what that story is worth.
Rajputana: An area northwest of the Arāvalli Range including part of the Great Indian (Thar) Desert, with characteristics of being sandy and unproductive.
To return to the gazetteer. The unnamed river, 30 stades broad, running north and south, and separating Alexander's India from what lay beyond, cannot be the well-known Beas (which, incidentally, Diodorus, 17, 93, 1, calls 7 stades broad), and must therefore be the Sutlej, which very likely did not then join the Beas at all, but flowed down the Hakra channel and was one constituent of the ‘lost river.’
Sutlej River
Now was the kingdom of the Tyndaridae or Gandaridae, which lay across (east of) the Sutlej and ‘along the Caucasus,' an old tradition? In the gazetteer, Diod. 18, 6, 1, the MSS. have [x], in the parallel passage, Diod. 2, 37, 2, it is [x], with MS, variants [x] and [x]. In the Cleitarchus passage, Diod, 17, 93, 2, we have [x], and, in the parallel passages. Gangaridas in Curt. 9, 2, 3 (so in Just. 12. 8, 9), and [x] (an obvious confusion with Gandhara) in Plut. Alex. 62. Now Gangaridas and [x] are from Megasthenes' Gangaridae in lower Bengal; is the name Gandaridae then merely a mistake of Diodorus', and is the whole thing taken from Megasthenes? I think not. In Diod. 17, 91. 1 the bad Porus flies [x]; while Strabo 15, 699 has a version that Gandaris was his country. Now Porus really did fly eastward before Alexander across the Ravi (Arr. 5. 21, 4), and as Alexander never caught him he must have gone further east than Alexander ever went, i.e. across the Beas, or further; and whatever the confusion in Strabo, I think these passages make it difficult to say that Diodorus' version of the gazetteer is wrong, and that there was not across the Sutlej a real people called Gandaridae or Tyndaridae, or however their name got transcribed.22 [Kiessling, s.v. Gandaridai in Pauly-Wissowa, makes the people of Gandhara, the Gandaridae, and the Gangaridae, three sections of one tribe, which had moved across India leaving parts of itself behind.] Whether they were part of a confederacy, or whether the mention of a confederacy got written into the gazetteer later, must remain uncertain...
Beyond the Hydaspes was the powerful kingdom of Porus, who held sway as far as the Acesines, which we know as the Chenab, the next of the "Five Rivers." East of the Chenab, in the lands of the Ravee and the Beas, were other small principalities, and also free "kingless" peoples, who owned no master.
-- Chapter XVIII: The Conquest of the Far East, Excerpt from "History of Greece for Beginners", by J. B. Bury, M.A.
...but the part of the gazetteer given in Diod. 18, 6. 1 seems to be given with substantial accuracy, subject, of course, to this, that the statement that Alexander turned back from fear of the elephants is a late legend inserted by Diodorus himself; I shall return to this.
Strictly construed, the gazetteer imports that Alexander claimed India up to the Sutlej; and it is possible enough that he did. Across the Beas, says Arr. 5, 25, 1, was a people aristocratically governed (i.e. an Aratta people) with many elephants.23 [Amplified in Strabo, 15, 702: a ruling oligarchy of 5000, each of whom gave an elephant to the State!] This can hardly go back to the Journal, from its form; probably it is Aristobulas repeating camp gossip, for the Aratta known to us had no elephants. But there may really have been an Aratta people there, and a great one, the Oxydracae, whom the late V. A. Smith did for other reasons place along the Beas.24 [J.R.A.S. 1903, 685. — Arr. 5, 22. 1. [x] may mean that it was the Oxydracae who adjoined the Cathaeans.] (The maps in the Cambridge History of India put them east of the lower Ravi; but Arrian shows that this was Malli country.) It is probably impossible to ascertain for certain where the Oxydracae really lived, though Arrian 6. 11. 3 implies that their centre was some distance away from that of the Malli; but if they did stretch north between Sutlej and Beas we can understand Arr. 5. 25, 1, and also justify the gazetteer's claim (if it be one) of the country up to the Sutlej; for the Oxydracae submitted and were (nominally) placed under a satrap. It leads also to a most interesting hypothesis. Strabo. 15, 687 ( ? from Megasthenes), says that the Persians got mercenaries from the [x]. If this, as I suppose, means the Oxydracae (Kshudraka),25 [So Muller in F.H.G. n. p. 415, where the numerous variants of the name are collected.] why did any Achaemenid go to so distant a people for mercenaries? Clearly because the nearer peoples were his subjects; i.e. we get some support for the suggestion26 [By A. V. Williams-Jackson in Camb. Hist. India, i, 341.] that the rule of Darius I. had ended at the Beas, where Alexander's men refused to go on.
This finishes the deductions to be drawn from the gazetteer; but it remains to notice two possible objections to the conclusion that Alexander never knew of the Ganges. One is the suggestion27 [Kiessling, Ganges in Pauly-Wissowa.] that Aristotle (and therefore presumably Alexander) knew of it, because it is the ‘fluvius alter' of the Liber de inundacione Nili.28 [Rose,3 fr. 248; a Latin summary of Aristotle's lost [x]. For its genuineness, see Partsch. Abhandlungen d. k. sachsischen Ges. d. Wiss., Ph. -h. Kl., 27, 1909, p, 551; it dates from before Alexander's expedition, Bolchert, Neue Jahrb. 27, 1911, 150.] A perusal of the Liber disposes of this idea at once. Aristotle is considering whether the Erythrean sea be a lake or part of the circumfluent ocean. Artaxerxes Ochus, he says, thought that it was a lake [that India joined Ethiopia], and that the Indus was the upper Nile; some Indians, however, told him that the Indus flowed into the Erythrean sea, but that there was a second river, fluvius alter, rising in the same mountain as the Indus, and flowing into (or through) the same parts of India, ad illas partes Indie fluens, which did flow round the Erythrean lake, circumfluere exterius rubrum mare (as Ochus had supposed the Indus to do). It is clear, therefore, that the ‘fluvius alter' was in the same part of India as the Indus, quite apart from the fact that ‘India’ meant to Aristotle only the country of the Indus and the Punjab; and if this river has any real meaning,— and one must bear in mind the darkness in which, for Western men, 'India' had become enshrouded during the fourth century, — it is one of the Punjab rivers, possibly enough the river of the gazetteer, the Sutlej-Hakra: for the Sutlej alone of the Punjab rivers rises, like the Indus, beyond the Himalaya and bursts through. However, I am only concerned here with what the ‘fluvius alter' was not.
The other objection is an a priori argument: traders and students from the east came to Taxila, and therefore Alexander must have heard of the Ganges and its kingdoms. It is not much good setting up an a priori argument against the evidence of a contemporary (and perhaps official) document like the gazetteer of 321/3; but, apart from that, one may well ask what sort of information Alexander would really have got from a trader, after it had trickled through two different interpreters, via Persian. The way to answer that question is to look (say) at the sort of information the early Spanish voyagers got in America, and the queer manner in which it sometimes fitted in with their preconceived notions. If the Staff did question some trader, or even Taxiles, we may be sure that the answer did not fit in badly with Alexander's Aristotelian geography, because the same thing had actually happened elsewhere; Pharasmanes of Khiva knew the Aral well enough, but what he tried to tell Alexander merely confirmed Aristotle. [v]It is, too, possible that we do possess an earlier piece of trade information of the sort here suggested, the river Hypobaros in Ctesias (Plin. N.H. 37, 39). What river the name ‘bringer of good things’ suggests no man can say; the Ganges is periodically suggested,29 [Most recently by Kiessling, s.v. Ganges and Hypobaros in Pauly-Wissowa.] in spite of Ctesias’ statement that the river was ‘not large,’ and one can only say what Lassen said seventy years ago, — it may be, but it is extremely doubtful. Essentially, the river is the Greek fairy river, the Eridanos, transferred to the east.30 [Kiessling, Hypoboros, above.] But what Ctesias has to say about the gum suggests that so much of the story as he did not invent is a trade story, i.e. came to Persia with the gum; and what one can say for certain about it is, that if Ctesias really got hold of a Persian translation of an epithet, unknown in Sanskrit, which belonged to the Ganges, he did not with the epithet get the faintest notion of where the Ganges was or what it was like. That Alexander also heard some ‘travellers’ tales is possible enough; but that has nothing to do with any real information about the real Ganges.
The conclusion then is that Alexander, when he turned back, knew of the Sutlej, and vaguely of some kingdom beyond it, with which the name Gandaridae or Tyndaridae was connected. He never knew of the Ganges or of Magadha, any more than he ever knew of the vast Middle Country between the Sutlej and the Ganges. What he did know was not of a nature to shake his conviction, based primarily on the Aristotelian geography, that Ocean lay at quite a short distance in front of him, as is proved by his desire still to advance in spite of the great reduction in his small striking force by troops left on communications.31 [We have not the context of Nearchus’ obscure statement (Strabo 15, 689) that the [x] took four months; but it cannot have anything to do with the real size of India, and must relate in some way to Alexander’s march.] The story that he knew of the Ganges and Magadha, which is unknown to the good tradition, has been written into the vulgate from Megasthenes through a mistake which I have traced; and by means of this story the vulgate has attributed to Alexander a scheme of conquest32 [The vulgate's idea that Alexander meant to cross the Ganges, involving a conflict with Magadha, would almost arise naturally from its substitution of the Ganges for the Sutlej.] which has no basis in fact, because he knew nothing of the existence of the place whose conquest was the object of the scheme. The legend of the plan to conquer Magadha, however, matured much faster than the parallel legend of the plan to conquer Carthage and the Mediterranean, whose growth I have previously traced;33 [J.H.S. 1921, 1.] for while the latter was not actually accomplished till the Romance, Alexander conquered Magadha long before that. The first step was that someone forged a letter from Craterus to his mother (Strabo 15, 702) in which Alexander reaches the Ganges. Then follow two stories; in the one, preserved by Diodorus, 2, 37, 3, Alexander reaches the Ganges but dare not attack the Gandaridae (sic) because of their 4000 elephants; in the other, given in Plut. Alex. 62 and alluded to in Diodorus 17, 108, 3, he reaches the Ganges and desires to cross, but the army refuses. (As in Plutarch the ‘Gandaritae and Prasii hold the further bank, which represents the blunder made by Cleitarchus which this paper has been tracing, we have here an excellent instance of later legend springing from the Cleitarchean vulgate; it is illuminating for Plutarch's indiscriminate use of material.) Finally, in Justin 12, 8, 9, Alexander does conquer Magadha: Praesios, Gangaridas, caesis eorum exercitibus expugnat. The statement in Diodorus' version of the gazetteer, 18, 6, 1, that Alexander did not attack the Gandaridae because of their elephants, is then a mere remark of Diodorus' own,34 [Diodorus' habit of occasionally interpolating remarks or quotations of his own is now well established, anyhow for the later books; for instances see Jacoby, Hieronymos in Pauly-Wissowa: Schubert Die Quellen zur Geschicte der Diadochenzeit, passim.] quoted from his own version of the legend in 2, 37, 3. Like many legends, it possesses a minute substratum of fact; the report about the elephants across the Beas. Arr. 5, 25, 1, was one of the causes which decided Alexander's army to go no further.
W. W. Tarn.