India (Herodotus) India (Herodotus) In ancient Greek geography, the basin of the Indus River (essentially corresponding to the territory of modern Pakistan) was on the extreme eastern fringe of the known world. The Greek geographer Herodotus (5th century BC) describes India, calling it (Roman transliteration: "hē Hindikē chōrē", meaning "the Indian land"), after "Hinduš", the Old Persian name of the Indus river and the associated satrapy of Sindh in the Achaemenid Empire. Darius the Great had conquered this territory in 516 BC. The Greek colonies in Asia Minor (western Turkey) were already part of the Achaemenid Empre since 546 BC and, thus,
Ancient Greek phonology and this cluster underwent metathesis early in the Ancient Greek period. Metathesis is likely in this case; clusters of a voiced stop and , like , do not occur in Ancient Greek, since they change to by assimilation (see below), while clusters with the opposite order, like , pronounced , do occur. Ancient grammarians, such as Aristotle in his "Poetics" and Dionysius Thrax in his Art of Grammar, categorized letters () according to what speech sounds ( 'elements') they represented. They called the letters for vowels ('pronounceable', singular ); the letters for the nasals, liquids, and , and the letters