Page:Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography Volume II.djvu/59

 INCARUS. {;(xldess Eileitliyia is said to luivc l>ecn worsliipped here, and to have obtained one of her epithets from it. (Caliini, Fr. 1G8; Pashlcy, TraiwiA.i. p. 289; Uiick, Knta, vol. i. p. 412.) [E. B. J.] INCAKUS, on the coa.st of Gallia Narbonensis, i.s placed by the Itin. next to Massilia. It is west of Massilia, and the distance is 12 M. P. The place is Carry, which i-ctains its name. The distance of the Itin. was proiiably estimated by a boat rowing along the coast ; and a good map is necessary to show how far it is correct. [G. L.] INCltlO'NES {'lyKpiuivts), a tribe of the Sigam- bri, mentioned only by Ptolemy (ii. 1 1. § 9). They apparently occupied the .southernmost part of the territoiy inhabited by the Sigambri. Some believe them to be the same as the Juliones of Tacitus {Ann. xiii. 57), in whose territory an exlensiye con- flagration of the soil occurred in a. d. 59. Some place them near the mouth of the river Lahi and the little town of Kiujcrs ; while others, with less jirobability, reg.nrd Iiujcrslieim, on the Nackw, a-s the pl.ace once inhabited by the Incrioncs. [L. S.] IXDAl'KATHAE ('Ij-SaTrpafJai, Ptol. viii. 2. § 18, a name, doubtless, connected with the Sanscrit hi- dra-prastha'), a ]>e<iplc occupying nearly the same position as tlie Ii$i;i;ixg.e. [V.] I'XDIA {7) 'IrSia, Polyaen. iv. 3. § 30; Plin. vi. 17. s. 20; T] ruiv ^Iv^Hiv 77}, Arri.an, Anab. v. 4; 7) 'IfSucf], Strab. xi. p. 514: Eth. 'Iv56i), a country of great extent iu the southern part of Asia, bounded on the north by the great chain of the Himalaya mountains, which extend, under variously modified names, from the Braliinapitfra rivor on the E. to the Indus on the W., and which were known in ancient times under the names Emodus and Imaus. [Ejioui MoNTEs.] The.se mountains separated the plain country of India to the S. of them from the steppes of Tdtary on the N., and formed the water-shed of most of the great rivers with which India is so jjlentifully supplied. On the E. the Bralimopuira, which ."sepa- rates it from Ara and Bur mail, is its principal boun- dary; though, if the definition of India be adopted which was in vogue among the later classical geo- graphers, those countries as far as the commencement of the Chinese empire on the S. must be com])re- hended within the limits of India. On the S. it is bounded by the Bay <>f Benr/al and the Indian Ocean, and on the W. by the Indus, which separates it from Gedrosia, Arachosia, and the land of the I'aropami- sad.ac Some writers, indeed (as Lassen, Pentap. Indie. Bonn, 1827), have considered the districts along the southern spurs of the Paropamisus (or Hindu- KusK) as part of India; but the ])assage of Pliny on which Lassen relies would make India com- jirehend the whole of Affjluinistan to Bdiichistdn on the Indian Ocean; a position which can hardly be maintained as the deliberate opinion of any ancient author. It may, indeed, be doubted whether the Indians them- selves ever laid down any accurate boundary of their country westward {LawsofManu,u. v. 22, quoted by La&sexi, Pentap. Indie, p-8); though the 5«?-a«rrtiii (Hydi-aotes) separated their sacred land from Western India. Generally, however, the Indus was held to be their western boundary, as is clear from Strabo's words (xv. p. 689), and may be inferred from Pliny's description (vi. 20. s. 23). It is necessaiT, before we proceed to give the prin- cipal dinsions, mountain ranges, rivers, and cities of India, to trace very briefly, through the remains of classical literature, the gradual progress of the know- INDIA. 45 ledge which the ancient world possessed of this country; a land which, from first to last, seems to have been to them a constant source of wonder and admiration, and therefore not unnaturally the theme of many strange and fabulous relations, which eveu their most critical writers have not failed to record. Though the Greeks were not acquainted with India in the heroic ages, and though the name itself does not occur in their earliest writers, it seems not unlikely that they had some faint idea of a distant land in the far East which was very populous and fruitful. The occurrence of the names of objects of Indian merchandise, such as Htxaa'tTtpos, (t(pas, and others, would seem to show this. The same thing would seem to be obscurely hinted at in the two Aetiiiopias mentioned by Homer, the one towards the setting., and the other in the direction of the rising sun {Od. i. 23, 24); and a sinular inference may probably be drawn from some of the early notices of these Aothiopians, who.se separate histories aie jierpetually confounded together, many things being predicated of the African nation which could be only true of an Indian' jieople, .ind vice i-ersd. That there were a people whom the Greeks called Aethio- pes in the neighbourhood of, if not within the actual boundaries of India, is clear from Herodotus (vii. 70), who states in another place that all the Indians (ex- cept the Daradae) resembled the Aethiopians in the dark colour of their skins (iii. 101); while abundant instances m.-iy be observed of the intermixture of the accounts of the African and Indian Aethiopians, as, for example, in Ctcsias {Indie. 7, ed. Biihr. p. 354), Pliny (viii. 30. 3), who quotes Ctesias, Scylax, in his description of India {ap. Philostrat. Vil. Apall. iii. 14), Tzetzes {Chil. vii. 144), Aeli.m (//. An. svi. 31), Agatharchides (c/e liubro Mai'i,Tp. 44, ed. Huds.), Pollux {Onomast. v. 5), and many other writers. Just in the same way a confusion may be noticed in the accounts of Libya, as in Herodotus (iv. 168—199; cf. Ctesias, Indie. 13), where he intermixes Indian and African tales. Even so late as Alexander's inv;ision, wo know that the tame confu.sion prevailed, Alexander himself believing that he would find the sources of the Kile in India. (Strab. XV. p. 696; Arrian, Erp. Alex. vi. 1.) It is not remarkable that the Greeks should have had but little knowledge of India or its inhabitants till a comjiaratively late pei-iod of their histoiy, and that neither Homer nor Pindar, nor the great Gi'cek dramatists Sophocles and Euripides, should mention by its name either India or any of its people. It is pro- bable that, at this early period, neither commerce nor any other cause bad led the Greeks beyond the shoies of Syria eastward, and that it was not till the Persian wars that the existence of vast and pf^pulous regions to the E. of Persia itself became distinctly known to them. Some indi-idual names may have reached the ears of those who inquired ; perhaps some indi- vidual travellers may have heard of these far distant realms; such, for instance, as the physician De- mocedes, when residing at the court of Dareius, the son of Hystasjies (Herod, iii. 127), and Democritus of Abdera (b. c. 460 — 400), who is said by several authors to liave travelled to Egypt, Persia, Aethio- pia, and India (Diog. Laiirt. ix. 72 ; Strab. xvi. p. 703; Clem. Strom, i. p. 304; Suidas, s. v.). Yet little was probably known beyond a iev! names. The first historian who speaks clearly on the subject is Hecataeus of Bliletus (b.c. 549 — 486). In the few fragments which remain of his writings, and which have been carefully collected by Klausen (Berk