Age of the Nandas and Mauryas c9.s15.9

c9.s15.9

Persian governor of Babylon who ‘kept so great a number of Indian hounds, that four large villages of the plain were exempted from all other charges on condition of finding them in food’. The Indus was for him the only river, besides the Nile, that produced crocodiles.¹ Most interesting to the Greeks must have been his discovery that there were trees in India ‘the fruit whereof is a wool exceeding in beauty and goodness that of sheep. The natives make their clothes of this tree wool’. ‘The Indians in the army of Xerxes wore cotton dresses, and carried bows of cane, and arrows also of cane with iron at the point’. Some Indians with similar equipment rode on horses while others used chariots drawn by horses or wild asses.