KNOWN. 



,48 G A NOETIC HINDOOS TAN. 



** purify mc." Many perfons who live at a diftance, even the 

 Mahometans^ will caiiie the water to be brought to them in bot- 

 tles at a confulerable price. The antient gov^ernment ufed to 

 take advantage of the fuperftition, and by impoling a duty on 

 the facred element raiie from it no contemptible revenue. 

 When first The time that this river was firft known to the antients is 



not certain. It appears from Strabo, lib. xv. p. loio, to have 

 been failed up as high as Palibotbra, the modern Patna. He 

 fpeaks of the navigations of this river in the plural number, 

 and confequently that they had been frequent. Slrabo fays, 

 that it rifes in the Indian Cancajus. Mela, more particular, 

 places its fountain in the Emodus, and all the antients agree 

 that it was the largeft: of all rivers then known, and that it had 

 feven mouths. Lucan twice afferts, that Alexander the Great 

 had the glory of penetrating as far as this river. I prefer the 

 quotation from the tenth book, as finely expreffive of the bar- 

 barous rage of conqueft which poffeired that hero.~For the 

 benefit of the £;^^'///Z' reader, I fliall give the beautiful tranlla- 

 tion by our admirable poet the ill-fated Rozv. The poet, f^jeak- 

 ing of his tomb at Alexavulria, thus begins : 



There the vain youth who made the world his prize. 

 That profp'rous robber, Alexander lies j 

 When pitying death at length had freed mankind. 

 To facred refl-, his bones v/ere here confign'd : 

 His bones, that better had been tofs'd and hurl'd 

 With juft contempt, around the injur'd world. 

 But fortune fpar'd the dead, and partial fate 

 Forages fix'd his Tharjian empire's date. 



If 



