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334
THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY.
Sillas and Silias. Demokritos and Aristotle doubted the story told of this river, but Lassen states that mention is made in Indian writings of a river in the northern part of India whose waters have the power of turning everything cast into them into stone, the Sanskrit word for which is sila.
Tala. The fan-palm, the Borassus flabelliformis of botany.
CHAP. VIII. Spatembas and his successors were the kings of Magad ha, which in these early times was the most powerful kingdom in India: Palibot hra was its capital.
Boudy as. This is, no doubt, the name of Buddha hellenized.
Souraseni.-This name represents the Sanskrit Sûrasena, which designated the country about Methora, now Mathura, famous as the birthplace and scene of the adventures of Krishna, whom the Greeks identified with Hercules. Methora is mentioned by Pliny, who says, "Amnis Jomanes in Gangem per Palibothros decurrit inter oppida Methora et Charisobora." Chrysobora and Kyrisobora are various readings for Charisobora, which is doubtless another form of Arrian's Kleisobora. This word may represent, perhaps, the Sanskrit Krishnâ putra. Jobares is the Jam unâ. The Palibothri, in the passage quoted, must be taken to denote the subjects of the realm of which Palibothra was the capital, and not merely the inhabitants of that city, as some have supposed.
Pandæ a.-Pliny mentions a tribe called Panda, who alone of the Indians were in the habit of having female sovereigns. The name undoubtedly points to the famous dynasty of the Pandavas, which extended so widely over India. In the south there was a district called Pandavi regio, while another of the same name is placed by Ptolemy in the Panjab on the Bidas pes (Bias).
Margarita. This word cannot be traced to Sanskrit. Murvarid is said to be a name in Persian for the pearl.
Palimbothra.-The Sanskrit Pâtaliputra, now Pâtn â, sometimes still called Pâțaliputra. The name means the son of the Pâtali, or trumpet flower (Bignonia suaveolens).' Its earliest name was Kausambi, so called as having been founded by Kusa, the father of the celebrated sage Visvamitra. It was subsequently called also Pushpapura or Kusuma
[DECEMBER, 1876.
pura, 'the city of flowers.' Megasthenes and Eratosthenes give its distance from the mouth of the Ganges at 6000 stadia.
The Prasians.-"Strabo and Pliny," says General Cunningham, "agree with Arrian in calling the people of Palibothra by the name of Prasii, which modern writers have unanimously referred to the Sanskrit Pr â chya or 'eastern.' But it seems to me that Prasii is only the Greek form of Palåsa or Parâsa, which is an actual and well-known name of Magadha, of which Palibothra was the capital. It obtained this name from the Palúsa, or Butea frondosa, which still grows as luxuriantly in the province as in the time of Hiwen Thsang. The common form of the name is Parâ s, or when quickly pronounced Prâs, which I take to be the true original of the Greek Prasii. This derivation is supported by the spelling of the name given by Curtius, who calls the people Pharrasii, which is an almost exact transcript of the Indian name Parâsiya. The Praxiakos of Elian is only the derivative from Palasaka.
CHAP. XXI. According to Vincent, the expedition started on the 23rd of October 327 B.C.; the text indicates the year 326, but the correct date is 325. The lacuna marked by the asterisks has been supplied by inserting the name of the Macedonian month Dius. The Ephesians adopted the names of the months used by the Macedonians, and so began their year with the month Dius, the first day of which corresponds to the 24th of September. The harbour from which the expedition sailed was distant from the sea 150 stadia. It was probably in the island called by Arrian, in the Anabasis (vi. 19) Killuta, in the western arm of the Indus,-that now called the Pitti mouth.
Kaumara may perhaps be represented by the modern Khâu, the name of one of the mouths of the Indus in the part through which the expedition passed.
Koreestis. This name does not occur elsewhere. Regarding the sunken reef encountered by the fleet after leaving this place, Sir Alexander Burnes says: "Near the mouth of the river we passed a rock stretching across the stream, which is particularly mentioned by Nearehus, who calls it a dangerous rock, and is the more remarkable since there is not even a stone below Tatta in any other part of the Indus." The rock, he adds, is at a distance of
