Strab. XV. I. G-S,—pp. 636-033.
That the Indians had never been attacked by others, nor had themselves attacked others. But what just reliance can we place on the accounts of India from such expeditions as those of Kyros and Semiramis?
Megasthenēs concurs in this view, and recommends his readers to put no faith in the ancient history of India. Its people, he says, never, sent an expedition abroad, nor was their country ever invaded and conquered except by Hērakles and Dionysos in old times, and by the Makedonians in our own.
Yet Sesōstris the Egyptian and Tearkōn the Ethiopian advanced as far as Europe. And Nabukodrosorc who is more renowned among the Chaldaeans than even Hērakles among the Greeks, carried his arms to the Pillars, which Tearkōn also reached, while Sesōstris penetrated from Iberia even into Thrace and Pontos. Besides these there was Idanthyrsos the Scythian, who overran Asia as far as Egypt. But not one of these great conquerors approached India, and Semiramis, who meditated its conquest, died before the necessary preparations were undertaken.
The Persians indeed summoned the Hydrakaif from India to serve as mercenaries, but they did not lead an army into the country, and only approached its borders when Kyros marched against the Massagetai.
The expedition of Semiramis as described by Diodorus Siculus (II. 16-19), who followed the Assyriaka of Ktēsias, has almost the character of a legend abounding with puerilities, and is entirely destitute of those geographical details which stamp events with reality. If this expedition is real, as on other grounds we may believe it to be, some traces will assuredly be found of it in the cuneiform inscriptions of Nineveh, which are destined to throw so much unexpected light on the ancient history of Asia.
It has already been believed possible to draw from these inscriptions the foundations of a positive chronology which will fully confirm the indications given by Herodotus as the real historical character of the expeditions of Semiramis and Kyros, it is certain that their conquests on the Indus were only temporary acquisitions, since at the epoch when Dareios Hystaspēs mounted the throne the eastern frontier of the empire did not go beyond Arakhosia (the Haraqaiti of the Zend texts, the Haraouvatis of the cuneiform inscriptions, the Arrokhadj of Musalman geography, the provinces of Kaṇḍahār and of Ghazni of existing geography)—that is to say, the parts of Afghanistan which lie east of the Sulimān chain of mountains.
This fact is established by the great trilingual inscription of Bisoutoun, which indicates the last eastern countries to which Dareios had carried his arms at the epoch when the monument was erected. This was before he had achieved his well-known conquest of the valley of the Indus.
—St. Martin, Étude sur la Géographie Grecque et Latine de l'Inde, pp. 14 seqq.
