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A man of Caryanda, his navigation of the Indus and the eastern seas.
Scylax, (Skulax). A native of Caryanda, in Caria, who was sent by Darius Hystaspis on a voyage of discovery down the Indus. Setting out from the city of Caspatyrus and the Pactyican district, Scylax reached the sea, and then sailed west through the Indian Ocean to the Red Sea, performing the whole voyage in thirty months (Herod. iv. 44). There is still extant a Periplus bearing the name of Scylax, but which could not have been written by the subject either of this or of the following article. The work is edited by C. Muller in the Geographi Graeci Minores (1861); and by Fabricius (1878).
This text is from: Harry Thurston Peck, Harpers Dictionary of Classical Antiquities. Cited Nov 2002 from The Perseus Project URL below, which contains interesting hyperlinks
Scylax of Caryanda : Carian sailor in Persian service, made
a reconnaissance expedition along the shores of the Indian Ocean (c.515 BCE).
Scylax is known from a passage in the Histories of the Greek researcher
Herodotus of Halicarnassus. It can be found in a large topographical discourse
in book 4, section 44.
The greater part of Asia was explored by [the Persian king] Darius,
who desired to know more about the river Indus, which is one of the two rivers
in the world to produce crocodiles. He wanted to know where this river runs out
into the sea, and sent with his ships [...] Scylax, a man of Caryanda.
They started from the city of Caspatyrus in the land of Pactyike,
sailed down the river towards the east and to the sea. Sailing westwards over
the sea, they came in the thirtieth month to the place from whence the king of
the Egyptians had sent out the Phoenicians of whom I spoke before, to sail round
Africa.
Pactyike was a part of ancient Gandara (eastern Afghanistan) and Caspatyrus,
which is not mentioned in other sources, has to be somewhere along the river Kabul.
Since Herodotus tells us in the next line that Scylax' expedition was a preliminary
to Darius' conquest of the Indus valley, we can date this voyage after 519 -when
Darius' rule was secure- and before 512, when India seems to have been part of
the Persian empire. Scylax' voyage led him along the Indus, along
the shores of the Indian ocean and those of the Persian gulf. We do not know the
details of this expedition, but we have a later source, the Indike by Arrian of
Nicomedia, which contains an excerpt of the story of Nearchus, the admiral of
Alexander the Great. He made the same voyage and mentions the tides, whales and
the hard living conditions along the Gedrosian coast. When Scylax
reached Harmozeia (modern Minab) in Carmania, one of the largest ports in the
Persian Gulf, he may have paused. Here he could repair his ships and prepare himself
for the expedition to the west. He passed Maka (modern Oman) and circumnavigated
the Arabian peninsula. We may assume that he had a special interest for the Arabian
towns in Yemen, which were famous for the production of incense. After this, he
sailed to the north, through the Red Sea, until he reached Suez.
In the ancient world, Scylax' fame was great. A naval handbook from
the fourth century BCE was published under his name.
Jona Lendering, ed.
This text is cited July 2003 from the Livius Ancient History Website URL below, which contains interesting hyperlinks.
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