Page:Ancient India as described by Megasthenês and Arrian.djvu/154

 135 country is Mount M a 1 1 u s, the boundary of all that district being the Ganges. (22.) This river, according to some, rises from uncertain sources, like the Nile,|| and inundates similarly the countries lying along its course; others say that it rises on the Skythian mountains, and has nineteen tributaries, of which, besides those already mentioned, the Condochates, Erannoboa s,^ Cosoagus, and S o n u s are navigable. Others again assert that it issues forth at once with loud roar from its fountain, and after tumbling down a steep and rocky channel is received immediately on reaching the level plains into a lake, whence it flows out with a gentle current, being at the narrowest eight miles, and on the average a hundred stadia, in breadth, and never of less depth than twenty paces (one hun- dred feet) in the final part of its course, which is through the country of the Gangarides. The royal* city of the C a 1 i n g se is called P a r- t h a 1 i s. Over their king 60,000 foot-soldiers, II For an acconnt of the different theories regarding the source of the Granges see Smith's Diet, of Class, Oeog. ^ Condochatem, Erannohoam. — v. 1. Canncham (Va- mam), Erranoboan. • regia. — v. 1. regio. The common reading, however — " Grangaridum Calingarum. Regia," &c., makes the Gan- garides a branch of the Kalingse. This is probably the cor- rect reading, for, as Greneral Cunningham states {Anc. Oeog. oflnd. pp. 518-519), certain inscriptions speak of * Tri-Ka- linga,' or * the Three Kalingas.* " The name of Tri-Ka- linga," he adds, " is probably old, as Pliny mentions the MaccO'CoblingcB and the Gangarides-Calingcc as separate peoples from the Calingse, while the Mahdhhdrata naines the Kalingas three separate times, and each time in con-