The Chronology of India, from the Earliest Times to the Beginning of the Sixteenth Century c5.20

c5.20

515 Dareios Hystaspēs sends Skylax, of Karyanda, between B.C. 515 and 509, to explore the course of the Indus. Skylax, starting from Kaspatyros in the district of Paktyikē, navigates the river, and returns by the Indian Ocean to the Red Sea. He is said to have written an account of his voyage, of which possibly a few fragments remain. About this same period Dareios subdues the races dwelling on the right bank of the Indus, north of the Kābul river, the “Northern Indians” of Herodotos. The inscription of Dareios at Persepolis mentions Harauvatis, Idhus, and Gandhāra as subject to him. The inhabitants of Gandhāra, the Sattagydai and Arakhōsians, formed a satrapy of the Persian Empire. The Aśvaka (Assakenoi) on the left bank of the Kābul, with the races farther north on the Indus, formed a special satrapy, that of the Indians. Both, according to Herodotos, furnished soldiers for Xerxēs’ great enterprise against Greece. The Persian power was probably exercised over these peoples as early as the reign of Kyros. Arrian mentions the Astakenoi and Assakenoi as being tributary to him; while his statement that the same tribes were, at an earlier period, subject to Assyria, points to the sovereignty of that empire having, at one time, extended to these regions. Evidence of an Assyrian expedition of some kind in this direction is preserved in a bas-relief found at Birs Nimrud, in which prisoners, with the Baktrian camel, the elephant, and the rhinoceros, are represented as being brought to the king.—Rawlinson, Anc. Monarchies, iv, 433. LIA. i, 1031. Duncker, Gesch. des Alterthums, iii, 14, 294. Droysen, Gesch. des Hellenismus, vol. i, bk. 3, p. 97.