The Greeks in Bactria and India c14.9

c14.9

The Periplus (62) gives a region Dosarene on the coast of Orissa, where a Greek name is impossible. It is not given in Ptolemy, who only gives a town Dosara and a river Dosaron (VII, 1, 77). The author of the Periplus, in the middle of the first century A.D., was an unlearned trader who knew nothing about the long-vanished Seleucid eparchies; but he knew that in Asia a great many names of districts ended in -ηνῃ, and he just coined Dosarene from Dosara as a likely reproduction of the sound of the Indian name Dacharna.¹ I shall return to Dosarene, which is much later than the Hellenistic period.