AN HISTORICAL DISQUISITION

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SECT, gave of the populouftiefs, fertility, and high culti-I. vation of that region of India through which hiscourfe lay, rendered Darius impatient to becomemafter of a country fo valuable. This he foonaccomplilhed; and though his conquefts in India feem not to have extended beyond the diftridtwatered by the Indus, we are led to form a highidea of its opulence, as well as of the numberof its inhabitants, in ancient times, when welearn, that the tribute which he levied from it,was near a third part of the whole revenue of thePerRan monarchy 17 . But neither this voyage ofScylax , nor the conquefts of Darius, to which itgave rife, diffufed any general knowledge of India .The Greeks , who were the only enlightenedpeople at that time in Europe , paid but littleattention to the tranfadlions of the people whomthey confidered as Barbarians, efpecially in coun-tries far remote from their qwn; and Scylax hadembellilhed the narrative of his voyage with fomany circumftances , manifeflly fabulous 1 *, thathe feems to have met with the juft punifhment, towhich perfons who have a notorious propenfityto what is marvellous, are often fubjecled, of beingliftened to with diftruft, even when they relatewhat is exactly true.

About a hundred and fixty years after the reignof Darius Hyftafpes, Alexander the Great under.

17 Herod , lib. iii. c. 90—9 6 . See NOTE III.

** Philoftr. Vita Apoll. lib. iii. c. 47. and Note ofOlearius Tzetzet. Chiliad. ■ vi?. verb 650.