Ἰνδική 6.8

6.8

ὕεσθαι δὲ κατάπερ τὰ Ἰνδῶν οὐκ ἔξω ἐστὶ τοῦ οἰκότος, ἐπεὶ καὶ τἄλλα ἡ Ἰνδῶν γῆ οὐκ ἀπέοικε τῆς Αἰθιοπίης, καὶ οἱ ποταμοὶ οἱ Ἰνδικοὶ ὁμοίως τῷ Νείλῳ τῷ Αἰθιοπηίῳ τε καὶ Αἰγυπτίῳ κροκοδείλους τε φέρουσιν, ἔστιν δὲ οἳ αὐτῶν καὶ ἰχθύας καὶ ἄλλα κήτεα ὅσα ὁ Νεῖλος, πλὴν ἵππου τοῦ ποταμίου· Ὀνησίκριτος δὲ καὶ ἵππους τοὺς ποταμίους λέγει ὅτι φέρουσι.

VI. Let this be said by way of a digression to discredit the accounts which some writers have given of the Indians beyond the Hyphasis, for those writers who were in Alexander's expedition are not altogether unworthy of our faith when they describe India as far as the Hyphasis. Beyond that limit we have no real knowledge of the country: since this is the sort of account which Megasthenes gives us of an Indian river: — Its name is the Silas; it flows from a fountain. called after the river, through the dominions of the Silaeans, who again are called after the river and the fountain; the water of the river manifests this singular property—that there is nothing which it can buoy up, nor anything which can swim or float in it, but everything sinks down to the bottom, so that there is nothing in the world so thin and unsubstantial as this water.
But to proceed. Rain falls in India during the summer, especially on the mountains Parapamisos and Emodos and the range of Imaos, and the rivers which issue from these are large and muddy. Rain during the same season falls also on the plains of India, so that much of the country is submerged: and indeed the army of Alexander was obliged at the time of midsummer to retreat in haste from the Akesines, because its waters overflowed the adjacent plains. So we may by analogy infer from these facts that as the Nile is subject to similar inundations, it is probable that rain falls during the summer on the mountains of Ethiopia, and that the Nile swollen with these rains overflows its banks and inundates Egypt. We find, at any rate, that this river, like those we have mentioned, flows at the same season of the year with a muddy current, which could not be the case if it flowed from melting snows, nor yet if its waters were driven back from its mouth by the force of the Etesian winds which blow throughout the hot season, and that it should flow from melting snow is all the more unlikely as snow cannot fall upon the Ethiopian mountains, on account of the burning heat; but that rain should fall on them, as on the Indian mountains, is not beyond probability, since India in other respects besides is not unlike Ethiopia. Thus the Indian rivers, like the Nile in Ethiopia and Egypt, breed crocodiles, while some of them have fish and monstrous creatures such as are found in the Nile, with the exception only of the hippopotamus, though Onesikritos asserts that they breed this animal also. With regard to the inhabitants, there is no great difference in type of figure between the Indians and the Ethiopians, though the Indians, no doubt, who live in the south-west bear a somewhat closer resemblance to the Ethiopians, being of black complexion and black-haired, though they are not so snub-nosed nor have the hair so curly; while the Indians who live further to the north are in person liker the Egyptians.