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THE ADVANCE OF PERSIA TO THE INDUS 241
which is the second river that produces crocodiles, discharges itself into the sea, sent in ships both others on whom he could rely to make a true report and also Scylax of Caryanda. They accordingly setting out from the city of Caspatyrus? and the country of Paktyike (Pakthas ?) a sailed down the river towards the east and sunrise to the sea ; then sailing on the sea westwards, they arrived in the thirtieth month at that place where the king of Egypt despatched the Phoenicians, to sail round Libya. After these persons had sailed round, Darius subdued the Indians and frequented the Sea.”
Herodotus tells us that "India" constituted the twentieth and the most populous satrapy of the Persian Empire, and that it paid a tribute proportionately larger than all the rest, -360 talents of gold dust, equivalent to £1,290,000 of the pre-war period. There is no reason to believe that all this gold came from Bactria or Siberia. Gold deposits are not unknown in several tracts of the North-West Frontier, and quantities of gold are recovered from the alluvium of rivers. A small quantity of the precious metal used to be imported by Bhotiya traders from the Tibetan Hills.3 Gandhāra was included in the seventh satrapy. The details regarding "India" left by Herodotus leave no room for doubt that it embraced the Indus Valley and was bounded on the east by the desert of Rājaputāna. "That part of India towards the rising sun is all sand ; for of the people with whom we are acquainted, the Indians live the furthest towards the east and the sunrise, of all the inhabitants of Asia, for the Indians'
1 Camb. Hist. Ind., I, 336. The city was probably situated in ancient Gandhāra. 12 Ibid, 82, 339. Paktyike is apparently the ancient name of the modern Pathan country on the north-west borderland of the sub-continent of India.
3 Crooke, The North-Western Provinces of India, 1897, p. 10; Amrita Bazar Patrika, 19-7-39, p. 6; cf. Watters, Yuan Chwang, I. 225, 239. O. P. 90—31.
