The Cambridge History of India, Vol. I: Ancient India v1.c25.150

v1.c25.150

The country along the Indus below the confluence presented the Europeans with some conditions they had not met with in the parts of India hitherto traversed. The Brāhmans here had a more effective ascendancy. The Greek observer saw men eating together in great companies, and thought of the public meals of the Spartans¹. In its political organisation this region was unlike the country of free tribes, through which the Europeans had been passing. Here once more they found principalities ruled by rājas, whose mutual enmity gave the foreigners an opening. Alexander first sailed down the river to the ‘Royal seat’ (*basileion*) of the Sogdi, and here founded another Alexandria, marking out docks again for the commerce which he foresaw under Greek initiative in the new age. The site is unidentified and the name Sogdi furnishes a basis for nothing more than unverifiable guessing. Already, it would appear, Alexander designated Sind from the Indus confluence to the ocean as a satrapy of the Empire, and appointed a certain Pithon, son of Agenor, to be its governor.