CONCERNING ANCIENT INDIA.

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principal officers, Ptolemy the son of Lagus, SECT.Aristobulus, and Nearchus. The two former have r.not indeed reached our times, but it is probablethat the most important facts which they contained,are preserved, as Annan professes to have followedthem as his guides in his History of the Expeditionof Alexander”; a work which, though composedlong aster Greece had lost its liberty, and in anage when genius and taste were on the decline,

'is not unworthy the purest times of Attic literature.

With respect to the general state of India, welearn from these writers, that in the age of Alex-ander, though there was not established in it anypowerful empire, resembling that which in moderntimes stretched its donsinion from the Indus almostto Cape Comorin, it was even then formed intomonarchies of considerable extent. The king ofthe Prasij was prepared on the banks of the Gangesto oppose the Macedonians, with an army of twentythousand cavalry, two thousand armed chariots,and a great number of elephants ! \ The territoryof which Alexander constituted Porus the sove-reign, is said to have contained no fewer than twothousand towns”. Even in the most restrictedfense that can be given to the vague indefiniteappellations of nations and towns, an idea is con-veyed of a very great degree of population. Asthe fleet failed down the river, the country oneach side was found to be in no respect inferior

,5 Arriati, lib. i. in proemio. 3f Diod. Sicul. lib.

xvii. p. 2 ? 2. 3S Arrian, lib. vi. c. 2.

C 3