Book 15
1.12
We have replied to these writers in the early part of this work.Book ii. ch. i. § 3. At present it is sufficient to say that these opinions are in favour of the writers who, in describing India, solicit indulgence if they do not advance anything with confidence.
1.13
The whole of India is watered by rivers, some of which empty themselves into the two largest, the Indus and the Ganges; others discharge themselves into the sea by their own mouths. But all of them have their sources in the Caucasus. At their commencement their course is towards the south; some of them continue to flow in the same direction, particularly those which unite with the Indus; others turn to the east, as the Ganges. This, the largest of the Indian rivers, descends from the mountainous country, and when it reaches the plains, turns to the east, then flowing past Palibothra, a very large city, proceeds onwards to the sea in that quarter, and discharges its waters by a single mouth. The Indus falls into the Southern Sea, and empties itself by two mouths, encompassing the country called Patalene, which resembles the Delta of Egypt.
1.13
By the exhalation of vapours from such vast rivers, and by the Etesian winds, India, as Eratosthenes affirms, is watered by summer rains, and the plains are overflowed. During the rainy season flax,λίνον, probably the λίνον τὸ ἀπὸ δενδοͅέων, or cotton, of Arrian. millet, sesamum, rice, and bosmorumβόσμοοͅον. § 18. are sowed; and in the winter season, wheat, barley, pulse, and other esculent fruits of the earth with which we are not acquainted. Nearly the same animals are bred in India as in Ethiopia and Egypt, and the rivers of India produce all the animals of those countries, except the hippopotamus, although Onesicritus asserts that even this animal is found in them.
