Age of the Nandas and Mauryas c9.s20: 8. Climate
Age of the Nandas and Mauryas c9.s20
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8. Climate
c9.s20.1
In India's climate, the rains attracted their attention most, as they had not seen anything like them before. Aristobulus noted that rain fell for the first time after Alexander reached Taxila, and continued incessantly all the time he marched eastward to the Beas and back to the Jhelum; he knew that the monsoon (the Etesian winds as he calls them) brought the rain. The relatively very scanty rainfall of the lower Indus valley, which gets little benefit from either monsoon, did not escape him, and he notes that in the spring and summer of 325 B.C., Alexander spent nearly ten months on the voyage down the river ‘without ever seeing rain even when the Etesian winds were at their height’. Eratosthenes speaks of the rains falling regularly every year both in summer and in winter.¹ He thought that the evaporation from the vast rivers was another cause of rain, besides the monsoons.
c9.s20.2
¹ Strabo, XV, 1, 17 and 20 (pp. 21–3, 25).