OF THE UNIVERSE. CONQUESTS OF ALEXANDER. 163 



ing to Apollonius Myndius ( 24 9) return in long regulated 

 paths, belonged to the Chaldeans : Strabo calls the "mathe- 

 matician Seleucus" a Babylonian, and distinguishes him 

 from the Erythrean who measured the tide of the sea. ( 25 ) 

 Jt is sufficient to remark as highly probable that the 

 Greek Zodiac is borrowed from the Dodecatemoria of the 

 Chaldeans, and according to Letronne's important investi- 

 gations does not go back farther than to the beginning of 

 the sixth century before our era( 251 ). 



The immediate results of the contact of the Greeks with 

 the nations of Indian origin, at the period of the Macedonian 

 campaigns, are wrapped in much obscurity. In science, 

 little was probably gained ; as after traversing the kingdom 

 of Porus, between the cedar fringed ( 252 ) Hydasp^s ( Jelum), 

 and the Acesines (Tschinab), Alexander only advanced in the 

 Pentapotamia (the Pantschanada), as far as the Hyphasis, 

 below the junction, however, of that river, with its tributary 

 the Satadru, the Hesidrus of Pliny. Distrust of his 

 soldiers, and uneasiness respecting a dreaded general insur- 

 rection in the Persian and Syrian provinces, forced the 

 warrior king, who would fain have advanced to the Ganges, 

 to the great catastrophe of his return. The countries passed 

 through by the Macedonians were inhabited by very im- 

 perfectly civilised races. In the space between the Satadru 

 and the Yamuna (the region of the Indus and the Ganges), 

 the sacred Sarasvati, an inconsiderable stream, forms a 

 classic boundary of the highest antiquity between the " pure, 

 worthy, pious" worshippers of Brahma on the East, and the 

 ee impure, kingless" tribes, not divided into castes, on the 

 West( 253 ), Alexander, therefore, did not reach the proper 



