Alexander sailed down the Hydaspes(source at Mt Ida) to the Great Sea, and had reached the river Nile, which identifies the three rivers Saraswati, Hydraotes and Akesines along with it within the same geographical plain.
Hydraotes is the other name for the river Drusadvati.; He found crocodiles in the river Indus so also in the river Nile. He saw beans of the same species as those of Egypt near the banks of the river Akesines, the other name for the river Accesines, or the river Chandrabhaga, again same as the river Scamander, which had fallen into the Indus. Modern day scholars do not believe Alexander’s account on the river Nile which partly describes the river Saraswati. They think Alexander mistook Akesines as Nile. Scholars always consider river Nile as an Egyptian river; when Alexander saw it below the Hydaspes, they did not agree with its geographical situations.
According to Strabo(XV,i,29), between the Hydaspes and the Akesines, is a forest in the neighbourhood of the Emodoi mountains, in which Alexander cut down trees for shipbuilding, and brought the timbers down the Hydaspes, the river which he crossed and defeated Poros. Geographical situation of Mt Emodai is given by Ptolemy in his maps which put it in the region of the river Akesines or the Scamander river.
The bean which Alexander found in the Akesines banks is the nelumbum speciosum, or Cynthus Smithii, the sacred Egyptian or Pythagorean bean. Egyptian priests are denied to use this bean(v.Herod, ii. 37). Alexander’s idea on the river Nile is that this river pursued its course through a vast tract of Indian desert land, where it lost the name of the Indus, and from the time when it was again visible with its stream through the inhabited parts of the world it was called the Nile both by the Aithiopians, who lived on its banks. Egyptians, like Homer call it the river Egypt, the country where at last it discharges itself into the Inner Sea. This observation of Alexander’s own historians could not be accepted because they always connect Panjab with the river Indus. Here, geographical knowledge of Greeks on this river has been questioned by Bunbury.
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