Intercourse between India and the Western World from the Earliest Times to the Fall of Rome c7.23

c7.23

² Herod. III. 98-99. The "reed" is generally supposed to be the giant bamboo. But no bamboo is large enough to serve this purpose. Hence it has been suggested that the palmyra tree is really meant. With its ringed trunk, it was probably mistaken by Skylax and his companions for a kind of bamboo. Megasthenes speaks of "reeds" 180 feet high and three to six cubits in diameter (Strabo, xv. I. 56). Pliny (N.H. VII. 2) says a section between two nodes of the Indian reed will make a "dug-out" to carry three men. See McCrindle's learned note to the passage of Strabo, Ancient India, pp. 59-60.