Page:Ancient India as described by Megasthenês and Arrian.djvu/84

 65 oyerflowing its banks ; while others think that it rises in the Skythian mountains. In India there is also the Hupanis,t a very noble river, which formed the limit of Alexander's march, as tKe altars set up on its banks testify. The least breadth of the Ganges is eight miles, and the greatest twenty. Its depth where least is fully one hundred feet. Conf. Fragm. XXV. 1. " Some say that the least breadth is thirty stadia, but others only three; while Megasthenes says that the mean breadth is a hundred stadia, and its least depth twenty orguias. Fragm. XXI. Arr. Ind. 6. 2-8. Of the River Silaa.X See translation of Arrian. Fragm. XXII. Boissonade, Anecd. Orasc. I. p. 419. Of the River Silas, There is in India a river called the Silas, named after the fountain from which it flows, on which nothing will float that is thrown into t The same as the Hnphasis or j X Strab. 703, Diod. II. 37> and afterwards an anonymous writer whom Ruhnken (ad CalUmach. fraam. p. 448) has praised, and whose account may be read in Boisson. Anecd. QroBC. I. 419. The name is written StXXay in Diodorus, in Strabo StXtas, but best SiXo?, in the epitome of Strabo and in the Anecd. Qrosc. Bahr, 369, has collected the passages from Kt^sias. Lassen has also illustrated this fable {Zeitschrift. II. 63) from Indian literature :— " The Indians think that the river Silas is in the north, that it petrifies everything plunged in it, whence everything sinks and nothing swims." (Conf. MahdibhAr. II. 1858.) ^iU means * a stone.' — Schw. p. 37, n. 82. Digitized by Google