In the Greco-Roman world, Ariana was a geographical term referring to a general area of land between Central Asia[1] and the Indus River.

Other significant rulers were, namely, the Greeks and the Indians, such as the Macedonians, the Seleucids, the Mauryas, the Greco-Bactrians, the Indo-Greeks, the Indo-Scythians, and the Parthians (incl.

This large region included almost all of the countries east of Media and ancient Persia, including south of the great mountain ranges up to the deserts of Gedrosia and Carmania,[14] i.e. the provinces of Carmania, Gedrosia, Drangiana, Arachosia, Aria, the Paropamisadae; also Bactria was reckoned to Ariana and was called "the ornament of Ariana as a whole" by Apollodorus of Artemita.

He states that Ariana is bounded on the east by the Indus River, on the south by the great sea and that its parts on the west are marked by the same boundaries by which Parthia is separated from Media and Carmania from Paraetacenê and Persis.

[17] A detailed description of that region is to be found in Strabo's Geographica, Book XV – "Persia, Ariana, the Indian subcontinent", chapter 2, sections 1–9.

Dionysius Periegetes (1097) agrees with Strabo in extending the northern boundary of the Ariani to the Paropamisus, and (714) speaks of them as inhabiting the shores of the Erythraean Sea.