Of the ancient dynasties who ruled in India, Colonel Tod, in his Rajasthan (L p.44), endeavoured to bring together what was known of the Solar and Lunar races. The wrecks of almost all the vast cities. founded by them are yet to be traced in ruins,—the cities of Icshwaea and Rama on the Sarjoo, I nd rapreseha, Mat% oora,Soorpoors, Poore; on the Yamuna, Hastinapura, Canyacubja, Raj grabs on the Ganges, Maheswar on the Narbada, Arore on the Indus, and Noosusthulli Dwarica on the shore of the Arabian Sea.
Menu calls India Aryavarta, the abode of the Aryans. Bharata or Bharata-varsha is the classical Sanskrit name; and in Sanskrit poetry it is mentioned as Jambu-dwipa. The name as known to Europeans is derived from the river Sindhu, pronounced by the Aryans Hindu, and known to Europe as the Indus: The Greeks named the people'Ivioi. The seven rivers, Septa Sind havah, in old Persian or Zand were called Hapta Hindu; and to the preientday, all along the western frontier of British India, ? and It continua inter changeable.
The first Greek who speaks of India by name is Ilecatmus of Miletna, n.c. 509-18G. Iferodotna, who wrote about B.C. 450, appears to have heard but indistinctly of any but the western part of it, and that only by its being tributary to Persia. He informs us (book iv.) that Darius Hystaspes had despatched Scylax of Caryandra to explore tile Indus, about B.C. 508, and that he departed from Caspatyrus and Pactya, which were situated near the head of the Indus. Iferodotius con tinues to say that the Indians who inhabit towards the north, and border on these territories of Cita patyrus and Pactya, resemble the Bactrians (that is, their neighbours) in manners, and are the most valiant people of all India. The eastern part, of Lydia, says lie, is rendered desert by sands; which description applies only to the country lying cant of the Indus and south of the Panjab, and this was the eastern limit of Herodotus' knowledge. Following him, Ctesias, the physician, s.c. 401, brought back from his residence in Persia only a few facts about the products of India.
Prior to Alexander the Great, n.c. 327, there are doubts as to anything historical in the Indian accounts, for the Sanskrit-speaking Indians had no historical pursuits; and east of the Indus was earliest made known by the learned men who accompanied Alexander, and particularly by the writings of Meg,asthenes, who, D.C. 306-298, was the Greek ambassador at the court of the Hindu prince of Pataliputra-pum. Other of the Greek
writings have been lost, but Strabo, Pliny, and Arrian have given them in a condensed form.
Most of the about Alexander call the inhabitants of the hilly region to the south of the main ridge of Caucasus and near the Indus, In dians, and also mention an Indian tribe or nation who inhabited the seashore on the western side of the Indus ; and close to the Indus, especially on the lower part of its course, there were other Indian tribes, though less considerable than those two. The Indians on the seashore were named Oritin and Arabitm, and are recognised by Major Rennell (Memoir, p. 21) as the people called Asiatic Ethiopians by Herodotus. Their country was the narrow tract, between the mountains of Baluchistan and the sea, separated from Makran on the west by the range of hills which form Mount Arboo, and on which still stands the famous Hindu temple of Hinglez. The Indiana whom Herodotus includes within the satrapies of Darius, are pro bably the more northern ones under Caucasus, for he mentions (Thalia, pp. 101, 102) that those in the south were independent of the Persian monarchy. Arrian (Indies, pp. 8, 9) denies the alleged inva sions of Bacchus, Hercules, Semiramis, Sesostris, and Cyrus; and Strabo (lib. xv. near the begin ning) denies the mythological invasions, adding that the .Persians hired mercenaries from India, but never invaded it (see Diodorus, lib. ii.). The other Greek writers, though they speak of Indians beyond the Indus, strictly limit India to the eastern side of that river; and Arriau, though lie called the mountaineers Indians, from the place where Alexander entered Paropainisus, is careful to explain that India lies east of the Indus; and Strabo (lib. sr.) declares the Indus to be the western boundary of India from the mountains to the sea. Pliny, indeed, states that some consider the four satrapies of Gedrosia, Arachosia, Aria, and Paropamisus 'to belong to India, but thil would include two-thirds of Persia. The ancient Sanskrit writers also regard the Indus as tin western boundary of India, and class the nation: beyond it as Yavana and barbarians ; and there a tradition that Hindus ought not to cross that river, the town of Attock taking its name from this prohibition. Later on, the countries between Hindustan and China came to be called the Further India, or India extra-Gangem ; whereas Hind, or India, was restricted to the country of the people called Hindus or those of India intra-Gangem.