Geography

​As in such matters, then, one must accept everything that is closest to credibility. We ourselves have made, even in our first books on Geography, such an examination of these matters as was possible, and now we shall both make use of those results as ready at hand and add other details, as many as may seem to be needed for clarity. And especially from that examination, the things set forth summarily by Eratosthenes in the third book of his Geography concerning the India then believed in, at the time when Alexander invaded it, seemed to be the most trustworthy. And the Indus was the boundary between this and Ariane, which lay next to it on the west and was held by the Persians; for later, indeed, the Indians also held a large part of Ariane, having received it from the Macedonians. The things which Eratosthenes says are as follows.

​He has bounded India as follows: on the north, by the extremities of the Taurus, from Ariane to the eastern sea, which the natives name section by section Paropamisus, Hemodus, Imaus, and other names, but the Macedonians call Caucasus; on the west, by the Indus River; while the southern and the eastern sides, which are much larger than the others, project into the Atlantic Sea, so that the shape of the country becomes rhomboidal, each of the larger sides exceeding its opposite side by as much as three thousand stadia, which is the extent to which the common cape of the eastern and the southern coast projects outwards equally in each direction beyond the rest of the shore. Thus, of the western side, from the Caucasian mountains to the southern sea, along the Indus River to its outlets, the distance is said to be about thirteen thousand stadia; so that the eastern side, opposite to it, by taking in the three thousand of the cape, will be sixteen thousand stadia. This, then, is the breadth of the country, both the minimum and the maximum. And the length is the distance from west to east; of this, one might speak with greater certainty of the portion as far as Palibothra, for it has been measured with measuring-lines and there is a royal road of ten thousand stadia; but the parts beyond are taken by conjecture, from the voyages up from the sea along the Ganges River to Palibothra, and this would be some six thousand stadia. The total, at its shortest, will be sixteen thousand stadia, as Eratosthenes says can be gathered from the register of the stations which is most trusted; and Megasthenes agrees in declaring the same, though Patrocles says it is a thousand less. Now if to this distance there be added again the distance of the cape which projects further towards the east, the three thousand stadia will make the maximum length; this is the distance from the outlets of the Indus River along the adjacent coast to the aforesaid cape and its eastern boundaries; and here live the people called Coniaci.

​From these things one can see how much the statements of the others differ, Ctesias saying that India is not less than the rest of Asia, Onesicritus that it is a third part of the inhabited world, Nearchus that the journey through the plain is four months, and Megasthenes and Deïmachus being more moderate; for they place the distance from the southern sea to the Caucasus at over twenty thousand stadia, and Deïmachus at over thirty thousand in some places. These writers we have answered in our first books, but for the present it is enough to say this much, that these discrepancies also support those who ask for indulgence if, in speaking of India, they do not make positive assertions.