Scylax of Caryanda

Scylax of Caryanda (Greek: Σκύλαξ ο Καρυανδεύς) was a renowned Greek explorer and writer of the late 6th and early 5th centuries BCE. His own writings are lost, though occasionally cited or quoted by later Greek and Roman authors. The periplus sometimes called the Periplus of Scylax is not, in fact, by him; that so-called Periplus of Pseudo-Scylax was written in about the early 330s BCE by an unknown author working in the ambit of the post-Platonic Academy and/or the Aristotelian Peripatos (Lyceum) at Athens.

In about 515 BCE, Scylax was sent by King Darius I of Persia to follow the course of the Indus River and discover where it led. Scylax and his companions set out from the city of Caspatyrus (Gandhara), which would mean he entered the Indus River at Peshawar, Pakistan. Scylax sailed down the river until he found it reached the Arabian Sea. He then sailed west across the Arabian Sea until he arrived at the Red Sea, which he also explored. He travelled as far as the Red Sea's western end at Suez, before returning to report to Darius I. His entire journey took thirty months.

Such, at least, is the prima facie narrative based on Herodotos. Recently, however, Dmitri Panchenko has argued persuasively, on the basis of apparent references to Scylax's work in the late Greek author Philostratos, that Scylax not only traveled through Pakistan, but in fact also travelled to North India as well, and made his way down the Ganges, and arriving at Taprobane (Sri Lanka). He has also calculated the likely date of Scylax's departure for India as July 518 BCE.

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