168 COSMOS. 



not go further back than to the beginning of the sixth century 

 before our era." 



The direct result of the contact of the Hellenic races with 

 nations of Indian origin at the time of the Macedonian expe- 

 dition is wrapped in obscurity. In a scientific point of view 

 the gain was probably inconsiderable, since Alexander did not 

 advance beyond the Hyphasis, in the land of the five rivers 

 (the Pantschanada), after he had traversed the kingdom of 

 Porus between the Hydaspes (Jelum), skirted by cedars* and 

 the Acesines (Tschinab) ; he reached the point of junction, 

 however, between the Hyphasis and the Satadru, the Hesidrus 

 of Pliny. Discontent among his troops, and the apprehension 

 of a general revolt in the Persian and. Syrian provinces, forced 

 the hero to the great catastrophe of his return, notwithstand- 

 ing his wish to advance to the Ganges. The countries trav- 

 ersed by the Macedonians were occupied by races who were 

 but imperfectly civilized. In the territories intervening be- 

 tween the Satadru and the Yamuna (the district of the Indus 

 and Ganges), an insignificant river, the sacred Sarasvati, con- 

 stitutes an ancient classical boundary between the "pure, 

 worthy, pious" worshipers of Brahma in the East, and the 

 "impure kingless" tribes in the West, which are not divided 

 into castes. t Alexander did not, therefore, reach the true seat 



tique des Representations Zodiacales en Egypte, 1846, p. 15 and 34. 

 (Compai'e with these Ideler, Ueber den Ursprung des Thierkreises, in 

 the Abhandlvngen der Akademie der Wissenschafien zu Berlin aiis dem 

 Jahr 1838, s. 21.) 



* The magnificent groves of Cedrus deodvara, which are most fre- 

 quently met with at an elevation of from 8000 to nearly 12,000 feet on 

 the Upper Hydaspes (Behut), which flows through the Pilgrim's Lake 

 in the Alpine Valley of Kashmeer, supplied the materials for the fleet 

 of Nearchus (Burnes's Travels, vol. i., p. 60). The trunk of this cedar 

 is often forty feet in circumference, according to the observation of Di'. 

 HofFmeister, the companion of Prince Waldemar of Prussia, who was 

 unhappily too early lost to science by his death on the battle field. 



t Lassen, in his Pentapotamia Indica, p. 25, 29, 57-62, and 77 ; and 

 also in his Indische Alterthumskunde, bd. i., s. 91. Between the Saras- 

 vati in the northwest of Delhi, and the rocky Drischadvati, there lies, 

 according to Menu's code of laws, Brahmavarta, a priestly district of 

 Brahma, established by the gods themselves; on the other hand, in the 

 wider sense of the word, Aryavarta, the land of the worthy (Arians), 

 designates in the ancient Indian geography the whole country east of 

 the Indus, between the Himalaya and the Vindhya chain, to the south 

 of which the ancient non-Arian aboriginal population began. Madhya 

 Desa, the middle land referred to in the text, see vol. i., p. 35, was only 

 a portion of Aryavarta. Compare my Asie Centrale, t. i., p. 204, and 

 Lassen, Ind. Altertkumsk., bd. i., s. 5, 10, und 93. The ancient Indian 

 free states, the territories of the "kingless" (condemned by orthodox 



