Budge_Ethiopic_Alexander

I 2 2 THE HISTORY OF ALEXANDER. THE GREAT.
aging them to fight, and he bade them to be of
o-ood cheer; and as he went he led his horse/
and he did so because he feared lest she should be
carried off by the enemy. ^ And Porus continued
to fight with Alexander for twenty days, and many
of Alexander's horsemen were slain, and by reason
of this there was such great sorrow among them
' According to Plutarch {Life of Alexander, LXI) Buce-
phalus received several wounds in the battle with Porus, of
which he died some time after. Onesicritus, however, says
that he died of old age and fatigue, for he was thirty years
old. Alexander esteemed him as a friend and companion
and greatly mourned his death, and in his honour he named
a city which he founded Bucephalia.
^ Marco Polo was told in "Badashan" that the people
there had originally possessed a breed of horses from the
strain of Alexander's Bucephalus, all of which had from their
birth a peculiar mark on the forehead; see Yule, Ser Marco
Polo, vol. I. p. i66. The Kataghan breed of horses from
Badakhshan and Kunduz has still a high reputation. The
Chinese have a tradition that a stallion of supernatural origin
lived in a cave in this region, and that the people brought
their mares to him yearly, and that a famous breed was
derived from the foals; see Yule's note, p. 170. The Arabs
have a tradition that God, by the hands of Gabriel, created
the horse out of a handful of the south winds, and that He
set a white mark on his forehead and on his legs. When
Adam was created God asked him which he preferred, the
horse, or the animal Borak {^yS\) which had the form of
a mule and was without sex: Adam chose the more beauti-
ful of the two animals, 1. e., the horse, and God said, "Thou
hast chosen that which shall be a lasting glory for thee and
thy children so long as they live.'' See Mas'udi (ed. B. de
Meynard), tom. IV. p. 23.