Ἀλεξάνδρου ἀνάβασις 6.1.1: Down the Hydaspes and Indus; the Malli; Patala and the Ocean

6.1.1

Ἀλέξανδρος δέ, ἐπειδὴ παρεσκευάσθησαν αὐτῷ ἐπὶ τοῦ Ὑδάσπου ταῖς ὄχθαις πολλαὶ μὲν τριακόντοροι καὶ ἡμιόλιαι, πολλὰ δὲ καὶ ἱππαγωγὰ πλοῖα καὶ ἄλλα ὅσα ἐς παρακομιδὴν στρατιᾶς ποταμῷ εὔπορα, ἔγνω καταπλεῖν πρότερον μέν γε ἐν τῷ Ἰνδῷ ποταμῷ κροκοδείλουσκατὰ τὸν Ὑδάσπην ὡς ἐπὶ τὴν μεγάλην θάλασσαν.

When Alexander had got ready upon the banks of the Hydaspes a large number of thirty-oared galleys, and others of one bank and a half of oars, besides numerous horse transports and every other requisite for the easy conveyance of an army by river, he resolved to sail down the Hydaspes to the Great Sea. As he had before this seen crocodiles in the river Indus, and in no other river but the Nile only, and had besides seen beans of the same species as those which Egypt produces growing near the banks of the Akesines, and as he had heard that this river falls into the Indus, he was led to think that he had discovered the sources of the Nile. His idea was that this river rose somewhere among the Indians and pursued its course through a vast tract of desert country, where it lost the name of the Indus, and that from the time when it began to flow through the inhabited parts of the world it was called the Nile both by the Aithiopians, who lived there and by the Egyptians, just as Homer also changed its name, calling it the river Egypt after Egypt, the country where at last it discharges itself into the Inner Sea. Accordingly when he was writing to his mother Olympias about the country of the Indians, he mentioned, it is said, among other things that he thought he had discovered the sources of the Nile, actually basing on such slight and contemptible evidence his judgements respecting questions of so much importance. When, however, he investigated with special care the facts relating to the river Indus, he ascertained from the natives that the Hydaspes unites with the Akesines, and the Akesines with the Indus, to which the other two rivers lose both their waters and their names. He learned further that the Indus discharges itself into the Great Sea by two mouths, and that it has no connection with the Egyptian country. He is said to have then deleted what he had written about the Nile in the letter to his mother, and as he had set his mind on sailing down the rivers to the Great Sea he ordered a fleet for this purpose to be prepared for him. Adequate crews for the vessels were supplied by the Phoenicians, Cyprians, Karians, and Egyptians who accompanied the army.