Scylax of Caryanda

He is said to have sailed down the Indus River at the behest of the Achaemenid emperor Darius I (522–486 BCE) and then around the Arabian peninsula to reach Suez.

Here they turned westward, and after a voyage of thirty months, reached the place from which the Egyptian king ... sent the Phoenicians to sail round Libya.

Assuming that it is somewhere in the vicinity of Gandhara, which was under the control of the Achaemenid emperor, it is unclear how Scylax was able to assemble a fleet of vessels in this land-locked country.

But these doubts are now laid to rest by the excavations at Suez, which seem to corroborate Scylax's account, and Darius's subsequent acquisition of control over Sindh.

According to Matthew R. Christ and Grant Parker, "Herodotus presents geographical curiosity as a feature of foreign kings, particularly when they plan conquest".

Scholar R. D. Milns states that Scylax would have reported the stories he heard from the natives, which he would have accepted in good faith.

The people of the Indus region were referred to as Hiduš or Hindush in Persian (due to sound change of *s > h from Proto-Iranian Sindhu).

[14] If Scylax wrote in the Ionic dialect of Greek, which did not pronounce initial h sounds, he would have transformed it to Indos (plural: Indoi).

"[17] According to the Suda, he also wrote (perhaps "in the decades around 480 BC"[18]) a life of his contemporary, Heraclides of Mylasa (τὰ κατὰ Ἡρακλείδην τὸν Μυλασσῶν βασιλέα), who is mentioned in Herodotus 5.121.

In the historical fiction novel Creation by Gore Vidal Scylax of Caryanda appears as a character who is on such familiar terms with King Darius I of Persia that they engage in humorous banter about extending Persian rule to India.