Note 177 — Chapter XVI · —Campaign against Oxykanos and Sambos

Curtius calls the subjects of Oxykanos the Praesti, a name which would indicate that they inhabited a level country, since the Sanskrit word of which their name is a transcript—prastha—denotes a tableland or a level expanse. The name, Saint-Martin thinks, is in Justin altered to Praesidae; but Justin, it appears to me, means the Praisioi thereby. Oxykanos is called both by Strabo and Diodôros Portikanos, representing perhaps the Sanskrit Pârtha, “a prince.” It is not easy to determine where his dominions lay. They were not on the Indus, for Alexander left that river to attack them. Cunningham places them to the west of the Indus in the level country around Larkhâna, which, though now close to the Indus, was in Alexander’s time about forty miles distant from it. Their capital he identifies with Mahorta, a place about ten miles north-west from Larkhâna, where there are the remains of an ancient fortress on a huge mound, whence perhaps its name Mâhaurddha, “very high.” Lassen, on the other hand, followed by Saint-Martin, places the country of Oxykanos to the east of the river, and therefore in the vast Mesopotamia (the Prasiane of Pliny) comprised between the old or eastern arm of the Indus and the present channel (v. Lassen, Ind. Alt. ii. 177; Saint-Martin, Etude, p. 165; Cunningham, Anc. Geog. of India, pp. 259-262).