Note 27 — Chapter XXII · —Alexander crosses the Indian Kaukasos to invade India and advances to the river Kôphên

Kaukasos here denotes the lofty mountain range, now called the Central Hindu Kush, which forms the northern frontier of Kâbul. Its native designation was Parapamisos, or, as Ptolemy more correctly transliterates it, Paropanisos. Till Alexander’s time these mountains were altogether unknown to the Greeks. The officers of his army who wrote accounts of his Asiatic expedition sometimes considered them to be a continuation of the Tauros, and sometimes of the Kaukasos. Arrian, who regarded them as an extension of the former range, says that the Macedonian soldiers called them Kaukasos to flatter Alexander, as if, when he had crossed them to enter Baktria, he had carried his victorious arms beyond Kaukasos. The Greeks of those days, it must be observed, had no definite knowledge of the mountains to which that name was properly applicable, but vaguely conceived them to be the loftiest and the remotest to be found in the eastern parts of the world. The pass by which Alexander recrossed the Paropanisos was most probably the Kushan or Ghorbund Pass.