Ἰνδική 8.2

8.2

καὶ τὸν μὲν πεντήκοντα καὶ δύο ἔτεα βασιλεῦσαι Ἰνδῶν, τὸν πατέρα, τὸν δὲ παῖδα εἴκοσιν ἔτεα. καὶ τούτου παῖδα ἐκδέξασθαι τὴν βασιληίην Κραδεύαν,

VIII. But when he was leaving India, after having established the new order of things, he appointed, it is said, Spatembas, one of his companions and the most conversant with Bakkhic matters, to be the king of the country. When Spatembas died his son Boudyas succeeded to the sovereignty ; the father reigning over the Indians fifty-two years, and the son twenty ; the son of the latter, whose name was Kradeuas, duly inherited the kingdom, and thereafter the succession was generally hereditary, but that when a failure of heirs occurred in the royal house the Indians elected their sovereigns on the principle of merit ; Herakles, however, who is currently reported to have come as a stranger into the country, is said to have been in reality a native of India. This Herakles is held in especial honour by the Sourasenoi, an Indian tribe who possess two large cities, Methora and Cleisobora, and through whose country flows a navigable river called the Iobares. But the dress which this Herakles wore, Megasthenes tells us, resembled that of the Theban Herakles, as the Indians themselves admit. It is further said that he had a very numerous progeny of male children born to him in India (for, like his Theban namesake, he married many wives), but that he had only one daughter. The name of this child was Pandaia, and the land in which she was born, and with the sovereignty of which Herakles entrusted her, was called after her name, Pandaia, and she received from the hands of her father 500 elephants, a force of cavalry 4000 strong, and another of infantry consisting of about 130,000 men. Some Indian writers say further of Herakles that when he was going over the world and ridding land and sea of whatever evil monsters infested them, he found in the sea an ornament for women, which even to this day the Indian traders who bring us their wares eagerly buy up and carry away to foreign markets, while it is even more eagerly bought up by the wealthy Romans of to-day, as it was wont to be by the wealthy Greeks long ago. This article is the sea-pearl, called in the Indian tongue margarita. But Herakles, it is said, appreciating its beauty as a wearing ornament, caused it to be brought from all the sea into India, that he might adorn with it the person of his daughter. Megasthenes informs us that the oyster which yields this pearl is there fished for with nets, and that in these same parts the oysters live in the sea in shoals like bee-swarms : for oysters, like bees, have a king or a queen, and if any one is lucky enough to catch the king he readily encloses in the net all the rest of the shoal, but if the king makes his escape there is no chance that the others can be caught. The fishermen allow the fleshy parts of such as they catch to rot away, and keep the bone, which forms the ornament : for the pearl in India is worth thrice its weight in refined gold, gold being a product of the Indian mines.