The Classical Doctrine of Indian Medicine: Its Origins and its Greek Parallels c14.8

c14.8

These facts, in their totality, are corroborated by Arrian (Ind., I, 3) who writes that the people living between the Kophen (Kubha, river of Kabul) and the Indus, had been the subjects of the Assyrians, then of the Medians and then of the Persians and that they had paid tribute to Cyrus. These facts are nowhere contradicted by tradition, which, though contested, said that the same Cyrus had met with a disaster while trying to attack the Indians, because it manifestly relates to an attack on the people of the lower Indus, of Sindh. It seems that this attack was directed through Gedrosia as, according to Strabo who refers to this tradition without giving it much credence, it was for the glory of marching his entire army through a region, where Cyrus had lost his, that Alexandar withdrew from India through Gedrosia (XV, 1, 5).