Page:Ancient India as described by Megasthenês and Arrian.djvu/174

 155 The least breadth of the Ganges is eight miles, and its greatest twenty. Its depth where it is shallow- est is fully a hundred feet; The people who live in the furthest-off part are the Gangarides, whose king possesses 1000 horse, 700 elephants, and 60,000 foot in apparatus of war. Of the Indians some cultivate the soil, very many follow war, and others trade. The noblest and richest manage public affairs, administer justice, and sit in council with the kings. There exists also a fifth class, consisting of those most eminent for their wisdom, who, when sated with life, seek death by mounting a burning funeral pile. Those, however, who have become the devotees of a sterner sect, and pass their life in the woods, hunt ele- phants, which, when made quite tame and docile, they use for ploughing and for riding on. In the Ganges there is an island extremely po- pulous, occupied by a very powerful nation whose king keeps under arms 50,000 foot and 4000 horse. In fact no one invested with kingly power ever keeps on foot a military force without a very great number of elephants and foot and cavalry. The P r a s i a n nation, which is extremely power- ful, inhabits a city called Palibotra, whence seme call the nation itself the Palibotri. Their horses.' These Asvapati were a line of princes whose terri- tory, according to the 12th book of the Rdmdt/cnia, lay on the right or north bank ef the Yipdsa (Hyphasis or Bi&s), in the monntainons part of the Dofib comprised between that riyer and the IJ^per IrAvati. Their capital is called in tiie poem of Y&lmiki Bftjagpha, which. still exists under the name of El^agiri. At some distance from this there is a chain of heights called Sekandor-giri, or ' Alexan- der's monntain.'-'See St.-Martin's E'tude, &c. pp. 108- 111. Digitized by Google