The Cambridge History of India, Vol. I: Ancient India v1.c26.67

v1.c26.67

Besides inquiring as to the figure which India made upon the globe, the Greeks had curious eyes for the unfamiliar physical phenomena which here confronted them. The heavens themselves showed novel features, if one went far enough south—the sun at midday vertically overhead, the shadows in summer falling towards the south, the Great Bear hidden below the horizon³. The companions of Alexander may have seen the sun overhead at the southernmost point which they reached, for the mouths of the Indus almost come under the Tropic of Cancer, and Nearchus may actually just have crossed it; they learnt at any rate that they had only to go a little farther south to see these things. Onesicritus seems to have thought it a pity that his book should lose in sensational interest by this accidental limitation, and therefore to have boldly transferred them to the banks of the Hyphasis⁴. The desire to achieve literary effect interfered continually, in the case of the ancient Greeks, as has been said, with scientific precision.