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exhibiting the picture of a great prince and commander, and into 

 which the military exploits of Cyrus, with whatever truth recorded, 

 are introduced to exemplify his own maxims rather than to afford a 

 regular historical detail of Persian events ; while his celebrated ac- 

 count of the retreat of the ten thousand from the field, in which the 

 younger Cyrus lost his life, is an eulogium on Greek, not Persian, 

 skill and valour, and principally relates to his own personal conduct 

 on that memorable occasion. Xenophon, in no part of his narration, 

 touches on the affairs of India ; he only informs us that Cyrus made 

 the Indus the eastern boundary of his empire*. 



The very mention of this circumstance, however, by Xenophon, 

 is highly deserving of our attention, because even the native histories 

 of India, if the Mahabbarat may be relied on, speak of India long 

 before the time of Cyrus, as subject to the control of the monarchs 

 of Iran ; in truth, as a conquered country, paying tribute, and the 

 Panjab, or the country watered by the five branches of the Indus, 

 as actually annexed to the Persian territory, and its most eastern 

 river as its boundary. Now it is not very probable, if such were 

 the case, that the greatest of the Persian monarchs, and, according 

 to classical writers, the first of them, (though that is not consistent 

 with the Iranian histories, which make him only the third sovereign 

 of the second, or Caianian, dynasty, the first being that of Pishdad, 

 of which Caiumaras was the head,) that the great Khosru, whose 

 general was the celebrated Rostam, or Hercules of the East, should, 

 after all his conquests in Asia, sit down contented with the loss of 

 India, the brightest jewel in the crown of his ancestors, and make 

 the Indus the eastern boundary of his empire. But, farther, it is 

 even said, in the same authentic register, that Khosru, by his general 

 Rostam, actually carried on a war of long continuance in India, and, 







* Xenophon Cyropied. lib. viii. p. 233. 



