The Early History of India, from 600 B.C. to the Muhammadan Conquest, including the Invasion of Alexander the Great c16.45

c16.45

¹ Arrian, *Anab.* vi, 15. According to Curtius (ix, 8), Alexander came to a second nation called Malli (whom McCrindle confounds with the Malloi of the Rāvī), and then to the Sabarcae, a powerful tribe with a democratic form of government and no king. Their army was said to comprise 60,000 foot, 6,000 cavalry, and 500 chariots, under the command of three renowned generals. This nation submitted. The name Xathroi (v. 1. Oxathroi) looks like a transcription of the Sanskrit Kshatriya. The Sabarcae are called Sambastai by Diodorus, who agrees with Curtius in his account of the government and military force of the tribe. Diodorus (xvii, 102) adds that two other tribes, the Sodrai and Massanoi, occupied both banks of the river, and that a city named Alexandria was founded within their borders, and occupied by a colony of 10,000 men. The attempts made by McCrindle and many other writers to localize these tribes are necessarily futile, inasmuch as we do not know where the river was. The mention in *Anab.* vi, 15, of Oxyartes as the colleague of Peithōn, satrap of the Lower Indus, is evidently, as Chinnock rightly observes, due to corruption of the text. The Thracians made over to Philippos seem to have been infantry; for the Agrianian light cavalry, who were Thracians, took part in subsequent operations.