The Early History of India, from 600 B.C. to the Muhammadan Conquest, including the Invasion of Alexander the Great c18.88

c18.88

² Strabo, xv, 11. The Moghal *kōs*, the interval between pillars still existing, averages 4,558 yards (Elliot, *Suppl. Glossary*, s.v. Kōs). Fleet takes *aḍhakosikya* in Pillar Edict VII to mean ‘at distances of eight kos’ instead of ‘every half kos’, as usually interpreted (*J. R. A. S.*, 1906, p. 417, 1912, p. 238); and maintains that in ancient India there was only one *kōs* measure, equal to about 1 mile 240 yards. But it is difficult to accept the form *aḍha* as equivalent to *ashṭa*, ‘eight.’ Three stadia were in use in the Roman world in the first century after Christ, namely, the Phileterian of 525 to the degree, or about 650 English feet, nearly a furlong; the Olympic of 600 to the degree, or about 600 feet; and that of Eratosthenes, of 700 to the degree, about 520 feet. The stadium of the *Periplus* seems to be that of Eratosthenes, roughly speaking, the tenth of an English mile, and in all probability the same measure was used by Megasthenes (Schoff, *The Periplus of the Erythraean Sea*, 1912, p. 54).