The Cambridge History of India, Vol. I: Ancient India v1.c26.15

v1.c26.15

Hecataeus of Miletus had probably already given forth his geographical work, the *Periodos Gēs*, before 500 B.C. At the extremity of his field of vision there was some vague picture, derived from Scylax and the Persians, of the Indian world. His knowledge stopped on the frontier of the Persian Empire, the river Indus. Beyond that was just a great desert of sand. But the name of the people called Gandhāri on the upper Indus had reached him, and the name of a city in that region, whence Scylax had started on his expedition down the river: Hecataeus wrote it as Kaspapyros. He mentioned the names of other Indian peoples too of the frontier hills—Opiai, Kalatiai are the ones preserved in his fragments—and a city of India which he called Argante. The fabulous Skiapodes also appeared in Hecataeus as well as in Scylax, though Hecataeus by some confusion connected them with the African Aethiopians instead of with India².