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DECEMBER, 1876.]
NOTES TO ARRIAN'S INDICA.
NOTES TO ARRIAN'S INDICA.* BY J. W. MCCRINDLE, M.A., PATNA COLLEGE. a
RRIAN, as a
A statesman, a soldier, and an historian, was
born in Nicomedia, in Bithynia, towards the end of the first century. He was a pupil of the philosopher Epictetus, whose lectures he published. His talents recommended him to the favour of Antoninus Pius, by whom he was raised to the consulship (A.D. 146). In his later years he retired to his native town, where he applied his leisure to the composition of works on history. He died at an advanced age, in the reign of the emperor Marcus Aurelius. The work by which he is best known is his account of the Asiatic expedition of Alexander the Great, which is remarkable alike for accuracy, and the Xenophontic ease and clearness of its style. His work on India (Ινδική or τὰ Ἰνδικα) may be regarded as a continuation of his Anabasis. It is not written, however, like the Anabasis, in the Attic dialect, but in the Ionic. The reason may have been that he wished his work to supersede the old and less accurate account of India written in Ionic by Ktesias of Knidos.
The Indica consists of three parts: -the first gives a general description of India based chiefly on the accounts of the country given by Megasthenes and Eratosthenes (chaps. i.-xvii.); the second gives an account of the voyage made by Nearchus the Cretan from the Indus to the Pasitigris, based entirely on the narrative of the voyage written by Nearchus himself (chaps. xviii.-xlii.); the third contains a collections of proofs to show that the southern parts of the world are uninhabitable on account of the great heat (chap. xlii. to the end).
CHAP. I. The river Kophen.-Another form of the name, used by Strabo, Pliny, &c., is Kophes, -etis. It is now the Kâbul river. In chap. iv. Arrian gives the names of its tributaries as the Malantos (Malamantos), Soastos, and Garroias. In the 6th book of the Mahabharata three rivers are named which probably correspond to them-the Suvâstu, Gauri, and Kampana. The Soastos is no
See translation of the Indica in the Indian Antiquary, ante, pp. 85-108. The main object of the Notes is to show how the localities, &c. mentioned in the text have been identified. In drawing them up I have derived great assistance from C. Müller's Geographi Græci Minores,
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doubt the Suvâstu, and the Garea the Gaurî. Curtius and Strabo call the Suastus the Choas pes. According to Mannert the Suastus and the Garea or Gureus were identical. Lassent would, however, identify the Suastus with the modern Suwad or Svât, and the Gareens with its tributary the Panjkora; and this is the view adopted by General Cunningham. The Malamantos some would identify with the Choes (mentioned by Arrian, Anabasis IV. 25), which is probably represented by the modern Kamehor Khonar, the largest of the tributaries of the Kâbul; others, however, with the Panjkora. General Cunningham, on the other hand, takes it to be the Bara, a tributary which joins the Kâbul from the south. With regard to the name Kophes he remarks:-" The name of Kophes is as old as the time of the Vedus in which the K ubh à river is mentioned as an affluent of the Indus; and, as it is not an Aryan word, I infer that the name must have been
applied to the Kabul river before the Aryan occupation, or at least as early as b.c. 2500. In the classical writers we find the Choes, Kophes, and Choas pes rivers to the west of the Indus; and at the present day we have the Kunar, the Kura m, and the Gomal rivers to the west, and the Kunihar river to the east of the Indus, all of which are derived from the Scythian ku, water.' It is the guttural form of the Assyrian hu in Euphrates,' and 'Eulæus,' and of the Turki suand the Tibetan chu. all of which mean water' or 'river." Ptolemy the Geographer mentions a city called Kabara situated on the banks of the Kophen, and a people called Kabolitæ.
Astakenoi and Assakenoi.-It is doubtful whether these were the same or different tribes. It has been conjectured, from some slight resemblance in the name, that they may have been the ancestors of the Afghâns. Their territory lay between the Indus and the Kophen, extending from their junetion as far westward as the valley of the Guraias or Panj
a work which contains the text of the Indica with notes,-- Dr. Smith's Dictionary of Classical Geography, and Gen. eral Cunningham's Geography of Ancient India. + Ind. Alterthums. (2nd ed.) II. 678ff.
Roth first pointed this out;-conf. Lassen, ut sup.-ED,
