Page:A Comprehensive History of India Vol 1.djvu/35

 COMPREHENSIVE

HISTORY OF INDIA

INTRODUCTION.

dONG after the name of India had become famiHar in the Ancient

uieas of In- earliest seats of civilization in the Mediterranean, little more '•'»» seo-

was known of the country designated by it, than that it was a region of vast extent situated in the far East, near the outermost verge of the known world. From the in- ^a habitants themselves no satisfactory information could be obtained. Accustomed to veil everything in mystery, they divided the terrestrial globe into seven deeps or islands, each ii>^ ' encompassed by its own peculiar oce.an ; and placing the habitation lifjr^-'" of the human race in Jummoodeep, which is nearest the centre, and Hmdooidea •^1^ (.-onsists partly of Meru, a mountain of gold of enormous height, reaching r as far beneath as above the surface, appropriated to themselves one of its most hiy-hly favoured localities.' The notions of the Greeks, tliouffh disfirrured Greek no- and obscvu-ed by fable, were of a more definite description. Instead of allowing his fancy to run riot, Herodotus diligently consulted the few sources of know- leilge within his reach, and honestly communicated the result. According to him, India was, as its name implies, the country drained by the Indus, and consisted of two great divisions — a western, which was included in the Per.sian empire, and formed the largest, as well as the most productive of the twenty siitrapies or provinces into which that empire was then divided; and an eastern, which, stretching beyond the limits supposed to be habitable, terminated in a sandy desert.-' Crude as these ideas are, so httle was done to correct or enlarge them, that when Alexander, dm-ing his celebrated expedition, first reached the Alexanders Indus, he mistook it for the Nile. Fortunately he took the most effectual means to undeceive himself, by fitting out a fleet, and giving the command of it to Nearchus, who, after descending the river to its mouth in the ocean, con- tinued his coui-se westwards along the shores of the Arabian Sea, and finally

' Gladwin's Aycen Akhery, vol. iii. p. 23, et scq., with its curious map, illustrative of Hindoo geography. » Herodotus, book iii. 97-106. --Vol. I. 1