Political History of Ancient India, from the Accession of Parikshit to the Extinction of the Gupta Dynasty c13.s1.14

c13.s1.14

Herodotus tells us that "India" constituted the twentieth and the most populous satrapy of the Persian Empire, and that it paid a tribute proportionately larger than all the rest,—360 talents of gold dust, equivalent to £1,290,000 of the pre-war period. There is no reason to believe that all this gold came from Bactria or Siberia. Gold deposits are not unknown in several tracts of the North-West Frontier, and quantities of gold are recovered from the alluvium of rivers. A small quantity of the precious metal used to be imported by Bhotiya traders from the Tibetan Hills.³ Gandhāra was included in the seventh satrapy. The details regarding "India" left by Herodotus leave no room for doubt that it embraced the Indus Valley and was bounded on the east by the desert of Rājaputāna. "That part of India towards the rising sun is all sand; for of the people with whom we are acquainted, the Indians live the furthest towards the east and the sunrise, of all the inhabitants of Asia, for the Indians' country towards the east is a desert by reason of the sands." Curtius refers to extensive deserts beyond the Beas.